“Can I ask you something real?”
“That’s ominous.”
“Tomorrow.” She turns her glass a slow quarter-turn on the cloth — her father’s gesture, hers now too. “The meeting. Sign now, leave, go pro — or finish out the season at Camden and sign in the spring.” She looks up. “What do you want to do?”
And I open my mouth to hand her the answer I hand everyone — wherever they want me, whatever’s right for the org, you go where the game takes you — the smooth one, the round one, the one I sanded down nice for exactly this question.
It dies in my throat.
Because that’s not what she asked. She didn’t ask what’s smart, or what the org wants, or what the kid named for the trophy is supposed to do. She asked what I want.
“I want it.” It comes out honest and raw. “Obviously, I want it. I’ve wanted it since before I could spell it. I’ve put in more hours at that rink than I’ve spent doing anything else in my life, so that part’s not a question. I want it so bad I can’t see around it.”
“But.”
“But nothing.” I drag a hand through my hair. “That’s the whole problem, Linwood. There’s no but. I want exactly the thing they built me to want, down to the letter, and I can’t tell if that makes it mine or just makes me good at following instructions. You’re asking what I want, and the honest answer is I’ve never once gotten to find out, because the wanting got installed before I had a vote. So I want it. I just don’t know if it counts.”
That’s more than I meant to say. It sits there on the table with no joke under it, and I feel the bareness of it crawling up my neck.
And something doesn’t track.
She’s too still. There’s something running under this, and for a second I almost ask her straight out — why do you want to know, Linwood, what is this really — because it isn’t lost on me that this woman who ran from me is now asking, very carefully, whether I’m about to sign a contract and leave.
I don’t ask. So I do what I do.
“Anyway,” I say, and display the grin, “the league would be lucky to have me. I’m a delight. I bring snacks.”
It’s a bad one. I know it’s bad even as it leaves me. And she lets it go. The waiter drifts past and starts quietly turning chairs up onto tables at the far end of the room. I should fill the silence. That’s the move, that’s always the move. I’ve got six things ready to go.
I don’t reach for any of them. I just sit there, mask off, the realest thing I almost said still sitting on the cloth between us where we can both see it, and I let it be quiet. I have never in my life let a table go quiet on purpose. It turns out it’s the loudest thing I’ve ever done.
We get our food and eat our hearts out. We don’t talk about it again. We eat in complete silence, and because the server is trying to get out of here, we make it fast. I get the check and sign the receipt. Then we’re standing. She’s pulling her coat on, and I’m holding the door, and we’re walking out of the empty restaurant into the lobby, and the whole way, I am aware of exactly how much space is between her shoulder and mine, which is not very much, and getting smaller.
The elevator comes. We get in. I hit eleven.
The doors close, and the box gets very small, and very quiet. I have nothing to put in it because I used them all up on a waiter named Channing, and there’s nothing left between me and the fact of her standing eight inches away with her hair down, breathing, watching the numbers climb. I can smell her perfume. I can hear her swallow. Eleven floors has never taken this long in the history of my life.
I don’t look at her. If I look at her, I’m going to do something, and the one thing I have figured out is that this cannot be me. Not this time. I’ve reached for her twice now. I told her the truth and kissed her with no audience. Both times I was the one who moved, and both times she ran. I am done being a thing that happens to Aspen Linwood.
So I keep my eyes on the numbers, my hands to myself, and I do the hardest thing I have done all year, which is nothing.
The doors open on eleven.
We walk. Her door comes first. She stops at it, key card in her hand, and I keep going the two steps to mine like my whole bodyisn’t screaming, like I’m a guy who’s going to say goodnight to a friend and sleep just fine.
“Goodnight, Linwood.” I get my own card out. I mean it. I’ll do it. I’ll walk into that room and shut the door and lie in the dark and let her keep every inch of distance she needs, because it’s hers to keep. “Sharp day tomorrow. Wake me if you want the hotel coffee, it’s—”
“Stanley.”
I look at her.
She hasn’t opened her door. She’s standing in the hall with the key card still in her fist and a look on her face I’ve never seen on her.
“I don’t want to do the thing I always do,” she says. “Where I get scared, and I leave.”
My own card is dead weight in my hand.
“Then don’t,” I say.
