“I know.” He doesn’t stop.
He finds the zipper at the side of my blouse. Helps me out of it without making it anything other than what it is, which is one person taking care of another person at the end of a very long day. He finds the oversized t-shirt I sleep in—second drawer, which he knows because he’s been paying attention—and helps me into it.
Then he does the thing that breaks me a little.
He finds my hairbrush on the dresser and sits behind me on the bed and starts working through the day’s damage. Not roughly. Not impatiently. Just section by section, the way you do when you actually know how hair works, or in his case when you’ve watched someone who knows how hair works do it enough times to understand that it matters.
“You learned to do this,” I say, because the evidence is clear.
“I watched you,” he says simply.
I don’t have an answer for that. I just sit there and let him, which is its own kind of surrender, the good kind, the kind that means I trust this person with the parts of me that only come out when I’m too tired to protect them.
When he’s done, he sets the brush down and tips me gently back against the pillow, and pulls the blanket up, and I am ninety percent asleep before he finishes tucking it around me.
“Bennett.” My voice comes out smaller than I intend.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for dinner.”
“Go to sleep, Gisele.”
I feel him press a kiss to my forehead—brief, certain, the kind that doesn’t ask for anything—and then I hear him moving backtoward the living room, cleaning up what’s left of the evening without being asked, without expecting anything in return.
The last thing I think before I go under completely is that this is what it feels like.
Not the fireworks. Not the confession or the bingo card or the first kiss in the equipment room. This. Someone staying. Someone taking care of the small things because they want to, because you matter, because being with you is enough even when all you can offer is this—a half-eaten plate of pasta and fourteen hours of exhaustion and a bracelet clasp that needs undoing.
I’m asleep before I can finish the thought.
I don’t need to. I already know what it was going to say.
Forty-Seven Emotions and a Curtain
Bennett
You can dress it up however you like—games, photo booths, carefully assigned emotions and a crowd of people pretending not to watch too closely—but at some point, all the noise falls away and what’s left is the thing itself. No labels. No strategies. No one telling you what to feel or how to show it. Just amoment that lands clean and undeniable, the kind you don’t have to explain because everyone in the room already understands it. And once that happens? Well. There’s really no putting it back where it was.
Playlist: “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by Justin Timberlake
Power Play resembles a feelings carnival.
I stand in the doorway for a full ten seconds taking in the damage. Tables pushed to the walls. A cleared space in the center of the bar that used to contain furniture and now contains a photo booth—a full, curtained, light-up photo booth with a glittery sign on the front that reads FEEL IT TO HEAL IT: THE CAPTAIN’S EMOTIONAL JOURNEY—and approximately forty people who have all, without exception, turned to look at me the moment I walked through the door.
This is not the first time my mother’s bar has been commandeered for my emotional development. Two days ago, the team showed up here for what Shep billed as a “feelings check-in session” and what actually turned out to be Shep forcing everyone to share their current emotional state while Joely and Lynsie served drinks and wings while trying not to laugh. Virgil said his emotion was “fine.” Coach Duff said his emotion was “irrelevant.” Gage said his emotion was “still mad about the stick” and looked directly at me.
It was, by any objective measure, a disaster and also the most effective team bonding exercise we’ve had all season. I don’t know what that says about us. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out.
Tonight, Shep is at the center of it all, because Shep is always at the center of everything. He spreads his arms wide when he sees me, like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment, which knowing Shep he probably has.
“There he is,” he announces to the entire bar. “The man of the hour. Gentlemen—and ladies—Operation Soft Boy has entered the building.”
I look at my mother behind the bar. She has the expression of a woman who orchestrated this entire thing and is very proud of herself.
“Mom.”
“Bennett.” She hands a drink to a waiting customer without breaking eye contact with me. “You look surprised.”
