I needed to make the hockey case first.
Then I could,
Then I would,
Tomorrow, I thought.
I had thoughttomorrowbefore.
I pushed off the railing.
I walked back toward the locker room.
Shay was at his stall, already changed, talking to Mivo about something , I caught the tail of it, the easy back,and,forth of two people who had settled into a comfortable rhythm. His back was to me. He didn't see me come in.
I went to my stall.
I got my bag.
I left.
I did not tell him.
I drove home in the direction of the rink without meaning to and had to correct course twice. I made dinner , the correct macros, the right sequence, the protocol doing its patient, reliable work , and I ate it at my counter and I looked at the crack in the ceiling of the living room, visible from where I stood, branching left.
I picked up my phone.
I put it down.
I picked it up again and I opened the team statistics database on my laptop and I pulled up every relevant metric , zone entries, scoring chance differentials, line combinations, plus,minus in all situations , and I built the case with the methodical, thorough precision of a man who had been doing this for years and who was doing it now for a reason that had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with the word he still hadn't said to the person who deserved to hear it.
I worked until midnight.
The case was airtight.
I looked at it on the screen , columns of numbers, clean and irrefutable, the professional argument complete , and I thought about Shay not knowing, three days into the professionalism, going to practice tomorrow with no knowledge that the conversation had happened.
I thought aboutI didn't want it to be the reason.
I thought about how much longertomorrowhad been costing.
I closed the laptop.
I turned off the light.
I lay on my back and looked at the crack in the ceiling, the one I knew, the one that branched left, and I thought:
You are running out of time.
I knew.
I had known for a while.
I was still, somehow, in the dark, building the case instead of walking through the door.
Tomorrow, I did not tell myself.
I told myself:soon.
