That night, I stop at a grocery store on the way home and buy a bottle of red wine because the label has a bicycle on it and I do not owe anyone a useful reason.
I buy a frozen pizza too.
At home, I put my phone in the bedroom and leave my laptop closed.
The apartment does not know what to do with me when I am not arguing with a draft. I put the pizza in the oven, pour one glass, and stand barefoot in the kitchen while the preheat light glows.
No recorder.
No comments section.
Just dinner because I am hungry and wine because I want it.
The pizza burns at one edge. I eat it anyway over the sink, then decide I am a person with standards and move to the table for the second slice.
Nora, my old roommate from California, texts a photo of a ceramic dog wearing sunglasses.
Nora: Saw this and felt accused by its posture.
I stare at it for a full minute.
Peyton: That dog knows what you did.
Nora: Impossible. I have done so much.
I laugh into my wine.
That, apparently, is the whole thing.
It does not solve anything.
It does not need to.
I sit at my small table. The window is cracked. A cooking show runs on mute while a woman in an apron ruins a sauce with confidence.
For once, I do not make the quiet prove anything.
At ten, I wash the glass and put the cork back in the bottle.
The notebook stays closed.
Later, I open the Stampede recap and read it like a person pressing a bruise. Ryan blocked three shots and won fourteen of nineteen faceoffs. Evan played twenty-four minutes and took a slashing penalty described as “emotionally understandable, tactically annoying” by one beat writer I have always liked.
Sunday evening, I pull up the Stampede schedule.
Home game. Seven-thirty. Chance to clinch the first playoff berth in franchise history.
I do not have credentials. I cannot get rinkside, enter the locker room, ask questions, or pretend this is work.
But I can buy a ticket.
Upper deck. Section 312. Forty-two dollars plus fees, because even heartbreak has a convenience charge.
My thumb hovers over the purchase button.
This is a bad idea, and journalism is not the problem.
I want the game without a lanyard around my neck.
