“I am.”
“I’ve noticed.” He straightens his collar. “And I’ve chosen not to say anything.”
“You literally just said something.” He gives me a look then turns back to the front of the room.
“Athletic training staff,” Coach Bodie says. “You’ll be seeing a lot of these folks.”
Gary Miller stands up first, gives the standard intro. I met him earlier in the week. Solid guy.
Then the guy next to him stands. And I know him. Takes me less than a second to realize from where.
That wide smile. The warm light from the overheads catching his sepia brown skin, his jaw, the line of his neck. Deep brown eyes. Though from this distance, I can’t see the gold flecks that I could last night.
He stands up straight and easy with his hands clasped in front of him. Navy polo, team crest on the chest, badge clipped to his belt. His eyes sweep the room and my stomach flips as they glance past me. I spent part of the night looking up at those eyes while I was on my knees on a concrete floor. A very good part of the night.
Zee.
“Isaiah Brooks, assistant athletic trainer.” His voice is warm and even and nothing like the voice from last night. “Most of you I’ll get to know over the next few weeks as we build out your individual plans.”
I’m watching his hands while he gestures and I’m thinking about those hands undoing my belt, wrapping around me. The twist of his wrist that made me forget how to finish a sentence. His grip on the back of my neck. All of it, flooding back in the middle of a team meeting while he talks about building plans and early intervention, and I should not be thinking about his hands right now.
“My approach is pretty straightforward. You come to me with what’s bothering you, I figure out why, and we build a plan to fix it. I’d rather hear about something small on Monday than deal with something big on Thursday.”
My shoulder throbs right on cue. Because of course the man who had his hands on me in a club bathroom last night is the same man who’s going to have his hands on my shoulder for the next however many months. The shoulder that’s the whole reason I’m in this city. The shoulder that needs careful, professional, ongoing attention from a person I was on my knees for twelve hours ago.
“My door’s open. Literally. If the door is open, walk in. You don’t need an appointment. You don’t need a reason. If something doesn’t feel right, come talk to me.”
The name on the polo. I read it twice. BROOKS.
Zee is Isaiah Brooks.
The voice he’s using now belongs to a staff polo and a treatment room. The voice from last night was low and private and belonged behind a locked door.
I’m staring. I can’t stop.
He finishes and sits back down. He doesn’t look at me. Not because he’s avoiding it but because there’s nothing to avoid.I’m just another hockey player in a room of hockey players and he just did his two-minute introduction and he’s moving on. He doesn’t know that the guy he was in a bathroom with in a dark club is sitting a few rows behind him.
Thompson leans over. “You good?”
“Great.” Because I actually am. And apparently my whole face isn’t hiding what I am feeling. Never has and today won’t change that. “Never been better. Best day one of my entire life, Thompson. And I include the day I got drafted in that.”
“You look weird.”
“I look happy. This is what happy looks like. It’s a new team, new building, the ice is incredible. I’m allowed to be happy.”
“You can’t be this happy about the ice.”
“I am exactly this happy about the ice.”
He gives me a look and turns back to the presentation.
Berger, from my other side: “Who’s the trainer?”
“Miller’s the head guy. I met him earlier this week.”
“Not Miller. The young one. Brooks.”
“No idea.” True from a professional standpoint. From every other standpoint, the most spectacular lie I’ve told in months. “Why?”
