Café Louisa is slammed, every table claimed by a laptop zombie or a pensioner triple-fisting espresso shots.
The line snakes out the door, Seattle’s finest elbowing each other for precious square inches of bench space, but somehow Nia’s scored the back corner, the one under the window with the view of the cracked crosswalk and the bagel place that never lasts a whole lease.
Three years running, and we’ve never met anywhere else.
She sees me at the door, lifts two fingers in a crisp V, our signal since freshman year.
She looks exactly like I expected, Huskies volleyball hoodie, hair cinched so tight it could anchor a suspension bridge, Nike slides with socks even though it’s wet as hell outside.
Her face is set in neutral, jaw relaxed, but her eyes do the scan, hair, hands, how I’m standing, like she’s triaging a shanked serve.
I drop my parka, let it drip dry on the ancient radiator, and weave past a gauntlet of bodies to the corner.
She’s already got two cups, mine black, hers with the foam art you need a PhD to pour, and she pushes one across without aword. I take a sip, mouth too dry to taste it, and let the ceramic burn my palm.
“You’re late,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. It’s the opening volley, the way we always start.
“Bus broke down. Or maybe my will to live did.” I try for a grin but it dies halfway up my face.
She’s not buying it. She leans forward, elbows on the tiny round table, and eyes me like she’s reading the X-ray of my skull. “You okay?”
“Define okay.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know, standard issue: sleeping, eating, not on a federal watchlist.”
I make a show of considering. “I’m at two out of three. Not bad for Thursday.”
She snorts, then glances down at her phone, probably checking her patient notes.
She hates to be away from work this time of day, peak injury hour at the campus clinic, but she never cancels on me, even when she should.
“So,” she says, tucking the phone away. “Team drama?”
There’s a phrase for this, deflection by exasperation. Nia’s never liked hockey.
She tolerates it the way you tolerate a roommate’s pet snake, you get used to it, but you never pretend it’s cuddly.
I swirl the coffee, stare at the brown tide pooling on the rim. “It’s not team drama. Not really.”
“Then what is it?” She leans back, folds her arms. “You called this. Said it was ‘important.’”
I feel my own hands, fingers tapping a dumb staccato against the cup. “You ever feel like you’re living someone else’s life? Like, you wake up and every decision was made by a version of you that had better hair and way more confidence?”
She frowns, not getting it. “I don’t have time for existential dread, Darius. My existential dread is orthopedic. Try again.”
There’s no good way to do this, so I do what I always do: stall.
“How’s your rotation going?” I ask.
She softens, just a little. “Good. Two new referrals this week. Both pitchers, both convinced their labrum is a time bomb.” She cracks her knuckles. “You?”
I almost say, “We lost another guy last week.” I almost say, “Practice is just punishment now, nobody even pretends we’re going to win.” But the words stick.
All I manage is, “I think I’m done with it.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “The season?”
“All of it.”
