"Leo," I said. "How long have you had him?"
"Not long."
"Like months? A year?"
"Less than a year."
I waited to see if more was coming. It wasn't.
"Where'd you get him?"
"Wesley—"
"I'm just asking about your cat. This is normal conversation. People talk about their cats."
"I don't," Cross said.
I looked at him. He looked at the road.
"You don't seem like a cat person," I said.
He gave me a look. Just briefly, just for a second, angled sideways, and I had the distinct impression that the look had a temperature and the temperature was cold.
"What?" I asked. "You don't. You seem like a. . . I don't know, a succulent person. Or one of those people who has a single large houseplant.”
"I have a plant," Cross said.
"See—"
"And a cat."
"Right, but the cat seems like a—" I tried to find the word. "An accident."
“Indeed.”
And then we were back to silence.
I let it go, mostly because my head was doing the thing where the car's motion had an opinion and the opinion was mildly unfavorable. I was managing it by looking at the horizon andnot talking, which was a skill I had in limited supply but was currently deploying.
The rest of the drive passed without incident or conversation. My building appeared through the windshield like a destination I hadn't entirely believed in, and Cross pulled up in front of it and stopped with a finality that was slightly more abrupt than the traffic conditions required.
I sat in the passenger seat for a second.
The Ice Doc, I thought, really did hate me. Which was fine. That was fine, I had established this, it was documented and accounted for in my understanding of my own life. He'd tolerated me through the night because that was his job, because benching me in my rookie season and removing me from bars and monitoring my concussion overnight were all the same category of activity to Cross: asset management. Franchise liability control. Wesley Morrison, problem to be solved, filed and handled.
I was very tired of being handled.
"Practice tomorrow," I said. I reached for the door.
"Yes." A pause. "You won't be playing."
I stopped.
I turned back around.
Cross was looking at the windshield, hands still on the wheel. His voice had the same weight it always had, not heavy, just final, like the words had already been true before he said them and he was merely reporting it.
"Rest," he said. "Hydration. No contact. I want to reassess before I clear you to go back out with the team."
