"He found me."
"He was looking at me, too. Whenever you were on the ice, he found me on the bench." I felt it the way you feel a shooter's eyes find the spot, a flat heavy attention from two hundred feet away that never once dropped.
"That's Matty. He looks. He's deciding something."
"About what."
"About you." Jules sits at the table, finally, in front of the half-done crossword that's been there since Tuesday. "He'll let you know when he's decided. He won't use words."
So I don't get an answer. I get a thing that's going to happen later, on Matty's clock. I set that next to everything else. The stack I keep not looking at.
"You want the chicken or just the sauce over rice?" I ask.
"I'm not hungry."
"You'll be hungry in twenty minutes. You always are after a game. I'll keep it warm."
"I'm good."
"I'll warm it anyway." My hands keep finding the next thing. The spoon squared on the rest. The towel folded over the oven handle. Each gesture a little smaller than the one before it. I know they're pointless. I can't make them stop. The only other thing to do is sit down across from him and ask the question. I'm not going to ask the question.
"Ash and Avi drove in together again," I say. "Third time this week."
"They carpool."
"Third time. Same as us, more or less."
"We carpool because the goalie schedule lines up. It's not the same thing." He says it to the crossword, pen not moving.
"Right. No. Of course." It is, though. The two of us in one car every morning for a season. Three months ago he'd have said the line back to me with the corner of his mouth going. Tonight he took the observation and handed me a fact, and whatever runs between us stalled out on the table. Neither of us reached for the key.
"Berger had four points," I say, because the silence needs filling and I'm the one who fills it. "Whatever moved in him this winter, it landed in the right place. You called that."
"I called that something moved. You called where it landed."
"Same operation."
"Sure."
I bring him the crossword like an offering, set it square in front of him the way he keeps things square. I know the answers. I've had twelve across and four down since Tuesday, turning them over while I waited for a night when we'd sit here and fill them in together.
"Twelve across has been killing me," I say. "Six letters. 'Sheltered water.'"
He looks at it for a long time, longer than the answer takes. I watch him not say it.
"I don't know."
"You always know. You knew quiet harbor was haven before I finished the clue, last month, in the car." It comes out lighter than I feel it.
"Not tonight. Leave it. I'll get it later."
"Okay, easy one, then. Four down. 'Steady.' Five letters." I already know the answer. I want to hear him say it.
He doesn't have it before I finish saying it. He doesn't have it at all.
"Four down," I say. "'Steady.'"
"I heard you."
