When I came back from the kitchen, he had shifted on the couch and his hand was on top of the blanket on his good leg, palm up. I set the bowl on the coffee table and sat again.
We watched the rest of the episode. The contestant with the crumbled pie came in last. In second was the contestant with the seized caramel. The winner was a quiet woman who had made something with lamb that the British host called very confident.
The credits rolled. He didn’t reach for the remote.
“Rook.”
“Yeah.”
“What time is it?”
I looked at my phone. “Quarter after eleven—p.m.”
“You’ve got practice tomorrow.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“You should go then.”
“Soon.”
The credits ended. The autoplay timer started counting down on the next episode.
“Stay,” he said.
It was a small word spoken in a quiet voice on painkillers, from a man who had been alone for three days. He didn’t look at me when he said it.
I should have said I needed the sleep and that I would come back tomorrow after practice. Instead, I said, “Okay.”
He nodded once and pressed play on the next episode.
We watched for another forty minutes. Somewhere in the middle of it, his breathing changed. I looked over and his eyes were closed and his head was tipped against the back of the couch at an angle that would give him a sore neck by morning.
I muted the television and retrieved a pillow from the bedroom. I slipped it behind his head as carefully as I could. He didn’t wake up.
I pulled the blanket over both legs and made sure the injured one was still elevated.
I turned off the TV and sat on a chair opposite him in the dark.
The apartment was quiet. Somewhere above us, someone walked from one room to another and back. Varga breathed slowly through his nose. His hand was still resting open on the blanket.
I looked at it and then at his face.
He hadn’t shaved since before the injury. It was almost a week of growth, dark and uneven, heavier along the jaw than at the cheek. It changed him.
Awake and clean in the locker room, Varga was all motion and edges; here he was a tired athlete in his mid-twenties with a bad leg. The shadows under his eyes were dark.
I had brought my mother’s chowder recipe to a teammate. He was bored and alone, and I thought he shouldn’t have to spend all his time by himself.
Sitting in the dark, I watched him breathe. Somewhere after two, he listed. Not toward the back of the couch, where the pillow was. Toward the coffee table. Slowly, the way a boat drifts when nobody’s holding the wheel.
Tumbling onto the floor with a leg like that was a real risk. I got up and placed myself on the edge of the couch by his torso. He kept leaning until his shoulder touched the side of my arm and stopped there. His weight settled against me as if it had been looking for the spot.
He didn’t wake up, and his breathing didn’t change.
I was a hockey defenseman. Steering a man’s weight without him feeling it was a big part of my job. I could have shifted him back onto the pillow without waking him. It would have taken four seconds.
Instead, I sat there with his shoulder against my arm and didn’t move for another hour.
