“Good. Can you send me the notes? I want to adjust his deployment for Seattle.”
“I’ll have them to you by end of day.”
Coach Bodie nods. His eyes move to me on the table. My hand is still pressing into my own shoulder, into a trap that is fine, that was fine this morning and last week and has been fine for a while now. “How’s the wing, Marchetti?”
“Good.” My voice sounds normal and I don’t know how. “Brooks was just checking a spot in my trap that’s been pulling.”
“Good to hear.” He taps the doorframe with his tablet. Turns. Walks out. His footsteps go down the corridor and around the corner and then there is nothing in the hallway but the hum of the fluorescents.
I look at Zay.
He’s standing at the desk with the chart in both hands and his face has something on it I have never seen. His eyes are on the door Coach Bodie just walked through and the chart isn’t moving because his whole body has gone still in a way that isn’t composure. His jaw is tight and his fingers are white on the edges of the chart. I have seen him composed. I have seen him guarded. I have never seen him look like this.
“Hey.” I slide off the table. “He didn’t see anything. He was asking about Hájek.”
Zay looks at me and whatever is on his face doesn’t change.
“He saw where I was standing relative to you on that table. If he thinks about it for ten seconds, it doesn’t explain the positioning.” He takes a breath. Lets it out.
“You were standing by the desk. You had the chart. That’s where you always stand.”
“That’s not where I was standing and you know it.” He rubs the back of his neck, pressing into the muscle there.
“Okay. So what do we do?”
“He’s not going to ask. He’s going to mention it to Gary, or he’s not. We don’t get to control which one.” His eyes are doing the math in real time. Gary Miller. The man who brought him in. Whose trust holds up the floor Zay stands on in this building. “One sentence from Coach to Gary about a session that looked off, and Gary starts watching. And if Gary is watching, it’s over.”
“Zay…”
“Not here.” The quietest he’s ever been in this room and the most final. His eyes move to the corridor. His face is the clinical face and the man I was touching thirty seconds ago is behind it, unreachable. “I have the Hájek notes to write. You should go.”
I stand there. My hands want to reach for him and I keep them at my sides because reaching for him in this room is what caused this. My finger tracing up his arm because I got comfortable.
I leave. Walk down the corridor with my bag over my good shoulder, past the rehab room where Tyler is setting up for an afternoon session, past the whiteboard where someone has written the magic number for the playoff clinch in green marker, past the double doors and into the parking lot where the afternoon sun hits my face and nothing about the outside matches what just happened inside.
I don’t text him. I stand by my car with the sun coming through the windshield and I think about the man in that treatment room and the word arrives without permission.
Love.
My sisters nailed it weeks ago. Not someone I think I love. Not someone I might love if I let myself. I love him. The word is plain and sure. I love him and it changes nothing about what just happened inside that building.
Chapter 22 — ZAY
Teo is on the arm of my couch, perched like he’s ready to stand or stay depending on what I give him. I’ve been at the kitchen counter with my hands flat on the granite since I got home, running the math on what Coach Bodie saw when he opened that door. Where I was standing. How close I was. The chart I grabbed a half second later.
“Talk to me.” He’s asking for me to give him words that I am not sure I can.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’ve been thinking for fifteen minutes. You’re standing there like someone bolted you to the floor and I’m over here trying to figure out if you’re going to talk to me or if I should start guessing.”
“Don’t guess.”
“Is it the Hájek thing? Because Coach came in asking about the groin. That’s it. He wasn’t looking for anything.”
“He didn’t have to be looking for something to see something.”
“Okay. So what did he actually see? Walk me through it.”
