She did as I asked.
I was angry with her, but I wasn’t going to snap. The instinct to make space for her was apparently nonnegotiable, regardless of how I felt about what she’d done, which irritated me more than my growl had.
She stopped inside and turned back, holding out the pastry bag.
“It’s raspberry,” she said. “The filling. My favorite. I don’t know what you like, however, but I took a chance this could be it. There’s a big unruly glob of jam right in the center, and thedough on the outside shatters when you bite into it. Megha, who runs the place, has three orclings who look exactly like her, and they all help on weekends. They’re…”
I didn’t say anything, though I did take the bag from her.
She looked at me like she wanted to explain and didn’t know how. I was angry about what she’d done and angrier that the explanation might actually matter.
“I should’ve told you who I was,” she finally said.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t because—” She shook her head, making her long brown hair shift across her shoulders. “You were talking to me like I was a regular person and I liked that. No one ever does.”
I understood. I might’ve done the same thing. But irritation still churned through me.
“I have practice.” Turning toward the locker room, I left her standing in the entryway.
I didn’t look back, though I did hold the pastry bag close to my chest to keep it from being crushed.
The locker room smelled different, though not bad. Unfamiliar. Every building had its own scent, a combination of cleaning products and old gear and whatever the ventilation system did or didn’t manage. This one was new, with an undercurrent of something I couldn’t place yet. Hope, maybe, though that didn’t have a smell.
The other players moved around like they’d been here all their lives. They knew which stalls had the best airflow, which showers ran hot longest, where to sit if you wanted to be part of the conversation, and where to sit if you didn’t. I moved with the ease of someone who’d learned not to claim things prematurely.
A couple of players nodded at me.
I nodded back. This part I knew how to do.
My stall was third from the left, my name already printed on a placard above it. Someone in equipment had hung my jersey, number 4, same as always, and set out the rest of my gear in the configuration I’d requested. Small courtesies that mattered.
The Purple Punishers.
I sat, facing away from everyone, the pastry bag in my hand, staring down at it. I opened it carefully, as if it might bite, before pulling out the treat. Damn, it smelled amazing. I ate some before gobbling the rest down fast.
Then I carefully folded the empty bag and placed it inside my locker.
After gearing up in my padding, I tucked the bag inside the waistband of my compression pants. I was stupid to carry it around. I knew this. But I couldn’t hold back.
I pulled my new team jersey over my head, the weight of it settling on my shoulders. It felt different from my old one in ways that were purely physical. Also in ways that weren’t.
Fourteen minutes later, I was suited up and thinking about last night again despite every effort not to. I shoved the thoughts aside.
The first skate on new ice was always methodical. I stepped out of the tunnel and onto the new surface, doing my own circuits before drills began. Read the surface the way I’d read a play developing.
This I could control.
The rest of the team filtered out in clusters. Forwards grouped together while defensemen paired off. I stayed in my lane and focused on the ice and didn’t let myself look at the box yet.
I lasted about four minutes.
Haley sat there, in the second row, with her laptop open, already working. I didn’t look directly, but I was aware of where she was in the same way I was aware of where the net was. Peripheral vision and spatial sense. The kind of thing you couldn’t turn off even when you wanted to.
She was watching the entire rink, not specifically me, and I told myself that was fine.
Drills started. All teams did them at the start of camp to see who’d kept up their conditioning and who’d spent the summer pretending they would. I fell into the rhythm of it easily enough. My body knew what to do even when my head was somewhere else.
