“Do you?”
I catch her hand before she can pull back and hold it for a second. “Yeah. I do.”
She squeezes my fingers and goes.
Sitting in the back room for another minute, I listen to the salon come back to life around me. Carrie greeting someone at the front. Gisele’s professional voice shifting into the warm register she uses with clients. The particular hum of a busy small business that belongs entirely to one person who built it from nothing.
I pick up my phone.
The group text has two new messages.
Shep: Cap. 4pm. power play. Dress casual. Don’t overthink it.
Shep: Also don’t look up what we’re doing. Trust the process.
Virgil: I’ll be there.
Shep: Virgil you weren’t invited
Virgil: I’ll be there.
Beth: I made snacks :)
Shep: Beth also wasn’t invited
Beth: I own the place, you little chaos goblin.
Nurse Aggie: I cleared my four o’clock diaper rash. See you there, sweetheart.
Shep: Aggie
Boone: We’re all coming Sawyer
Shep: This was supposed to be an intimate emotional support session. A bonding moment between me and my Cap.
Brogan: Power Play at 4. Got it.
Coach Duff: I don’t understand this telephone
Pru: Coach Duff I will drive you.
Slammy: ??
I stare at the fist bump up from Slammy for a long moment.
Then I put my phone in my pocket, stand up, and go find Boone.
Practice is exactly as rough as I knew it would be.
Not visibly—we execute, we run the sequences, we do everything a professional hockey team is supposed to do in a Tuesday practice. but I know this team. I know the difference between playing and going through the motions, and today we’re deep in the second category.
The slump is real. We know it. Everyone in the building knows it, including Franklin, who appears on the observation deck twenty minutes in and doesn’t leave.
I feel him up there the same way you feel weather changing—a pressure shift, something in the air.
“Tighten up,” I call, pushing the next drill harder. “We’re sloppy on the transition. Again.”
They go again. Better. Not good enough.
