12
Chapter 12
MATEO
The bus leaves at seven Friday morning, and I’m there at six forty-five because I’m always there first. And also because I didn’t sleep.
I find a seat near the back, put my headphones in and watch the team load on. Mercer loud from the moment he steps through the door, Barrett still half asleep, Chen with his coffee and his book and his complete calm that I find both admirable and slightly irritating that early in the morning.
And then Elida.
She comes on with Calloway - dark jacket, hair up. She scans the bus and her eyes find mine briefly before her gaze drops and she takes a seat three rows ahead.
I stare out the window.
Outside the campus is dark and the path lights are still on. I watch it slide past as the bus pulls out.
The thing about being on a bus with someone you can’t stop thinking about is that you’re on a bus. There’s nowhere to go. It’s hours of highway and the awareness of her that I’ve stopped being able to turn off.
She doesn’t look back.
Chen drops into the seat beside me after an hour and opens his book. We sit in comfortable silence for a while.
Then he says, “you good for today?”
“Yeah.”
“Scouts will be there.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been skating well.”
“I know.”
Outside, the highway opens up grey and endless. I think about scouts and the window that doesn’t stay open forever. Underneath all of that, I think about the week of careful professional distance that has somehow been harder to take than the weeks of open hostility.
At least when she was pushing back I knew where I stood.
All I know is I need to play the best hockey of my season and I need to do it while she’s sitting somewhere in those stands watching.
Which is either going to help or destroy me and I genuinely don’t know which.
I close my eyes.
Two hours to Ridgewood.
ELIDA
I can feel him back there.
That’s the absurd part. The bus is full and Calloway is beside me talking through the game plan yet I’m aware of exactly where Mateo Russo is sitting.
“You seem tired,” he says.
“Long week.”
He nods and goes back to his notes.
