She doesn’t.
You’d think that would make this easier. It doesn’t.
What the fuck is it about me?
Locker room after.
Brody will not shut up.
“Nova asked me about line chemistry and I ended up telling her about my grandmother’s pasta recipe. I don’t even know how that happened. She has some kind of—I don’t know. Thing.”
Nova.
There it is.
“A thing,” I say.
“Yeah, like a thing where you just keep talking and you can’t stop and you don’t know why you’re still going but you are.”
Sebastian’s already looked her up. Caleb wants to know if she’s coming to team dinner Friday. Marcus wants his stats from last Tuesday mentioned specifically.
I say nothing. Sit down. Start taping my stick.
Left to right. Thirteen wraps. Same number every time. Same since I was nineteen.
I’m on the ninth wrap when it all catches up at once.
My hands go still on the tape.
Fuck.
Grocery store girl’s Nova.
And she’s been in this building all morning acting like Tuesday night never happened. That mouth. The attitude. The way she came around that corner in the store like the rest of the world could sort itself out around her.
She’s been six feet away at the boards. Two hours in my peripheral. Recorder in her hand. Credential around her neck. Talking to my teammates. Not saying a damn thing to me.
That part lands. Not loud. Just deep. Here’s what I can’t get a handle on.
Does she know?
She got a clean look at me eventually. Buzz cut now, gear on, different context, but still. Then again, maybe she didn’t. Maybe to her I’m just the goalie. Except she never came near me. Not once. That doesn’t feel accidental.
Feels like a choice.
Maybe she figured it out last night. Maybe she didn’t until this morning. Either way, she’s standing in my building acting like she’d rather eat the tape off my stick than say a word about it.
I did the same.
That’s something.
I finish the thirteenth wrap. Set the stick down.
She wrote that piece. Her name’s on it. That’s enough.
Neither of us has said a word about Tuesday night in a grocery store.
And I let her win at rock-paper-scissors like an idiot.
