“I’ve been looking at cats.”
He doesn’t laugh. That’s the first gift he gives me. “Yeah?”
“It’s a stupid idea. I travel. The apartment’s the way it is for a reason. I built a whole list of why it doesn’t work and gave it to Gwen. She let me get to the end of it and then told me there was a name for what the kittens did to me anyway.”
“What’d they do to you?”
“My hands stopped. The thoughts stopped.” It’s the first time I’ve said it to anyone who isn’t paid to hear it. It comes out flatter than it sat in my chest. “For a while at least. I didn’t notice till they started up again.”
“When did you start looking for a cat?”
“After Tikh’s living room. The night Bug decided I was there for her.”
“She has taste.”
“She has no taste. But then she picked me.”
“She did pick you.” He says it light, but there’s something behind it. I’ve been clocking it since the off-day and haven’t been able to place it.
He’s been a half-beat behind himself all week. A man with something he isn’t sure what to do about.
“You good?” I ask him, which isn’t a thing I ask people, because asking opens a door both ways.
“Long few days.” He says it to the windshield, then lets out a sigh. “Tikh bought me coffee and rearranged some stuff in my head and didn’t help me move any of it back.”
“That sounds like Tikh.”
“It’s exactly like Tikh.” He doesn’t say what it was and I don’t ask.
He pulls up outside my building and puts it in park. Twelve seconds, normally. Bag, door, a simplesee you tomorrow.
My hand isn’t on the door though. I notice that, and I leave it where it is.
I told myself I study him. That was a true statement. Years ago when I first saw his film, before we ever shared a bench. I knew he was who I wanted to be in front of the net, what I wanted to strive towards.
But the study isn’t why I know he hums when he tapes his stick. Not why I know his calm is a thing he builds at night, not a thing he gets naturally. I’ve been cataloguing this man the way I catalogue the things that keep me upright. I called it scouting. But it doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.
My hands are still, but not the crease-still, where the brain goes clean. A different register. A frequency finding a place that fits.
Both flat on my thighs, not moving. Not because I’m holding them but because nothing is asking them to move.
My body registered him before I let myself notice.
I’ve never wanted anyone the way other people describe wanting. Attraction has always worked differently for me. Slow, specific, built out of attention paid over months until the knowing becomes its own gravity. But the thing the words are afraid of isn’t the want. The want arrived on its own schedule instead of mine.
Except now, I find my heart going like I’ve taken one off the mask, sitting here in a parked car.
I’ve spent my whole life being precise. I choose the words. I’ve never chosen any words more carefully. The smallest door I own and the only one that matters.
“You can call me Jules.”
He doesn’t ask what it means. He doesn’t turn it into a moment, which is the thing that undoes me. I’d braced for the moment and there isn’t one.
He just turns in the seat, unhurried. Same as when he took the names for the goalposts the first time I handed them over. No questions.Of course they like to be called that.
“Not in the locker room. But between us, call me Jules.”
“Okay,” he says. And then, fitting it into his mouth, gentle and plain and without ceremony. “Jules.”
