I don’t know if what I said in the tunnel did that or if tonight was always going to happen andI’m not going to ask, because asking would mean looking at the answer, and I am very specifically not doing that.
After the buzzer the building loses its mind.
He finds Aurora in the family section first — picks her up belly and all, makes her laugh, sets her down careful. Then the team is on him. Aiden in a headlock. Brody yelling directly into his ear. The whole noisy righteous mess of a forty-four-save Game 2 win.
His eyes come up.
Press box.
Me.
I lower the camera.
Just look back.
That look is a problem and I am going to deal with it later.
Aurora’s photo hits my phone before I’m out of the building.
His eyes. Mine. The whole celebration happening around us and neither of us in it. Her caption: just so you know.
I look at it walking to my car.
I look at it sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine off.
I look at it for longer than I would tell anyone I looked at it.
Aurora knows.
I don’t know when she figured it out and I don’t know how long she’s known, but she knows.
And now I have proof of it on my phone in the form of a photo of Jax Mercer looking at me like the rest of the arena dropped out.
I drive home.
I keep the radio off.
I think about all those press boxes, the tunnel, the forty-four saves, and a man who said okay in a way that wasn’t agreement, exactly — it was something more like I heard you. I’m taking it in. I’ll get back to you.
I’m in a lot of trouble.
I already knew that.
I get home. Apartment quiet. I sit on the couch with my laptop on my knees and look at the photo Aurora sent me and don’t put it in the file with the press shots. It goes in a different folder. The one I’ve been pretending isn’t there for a couple of months now. I add it. I close the laptop.
Open it again. Look at his face.
The relief on his face.
Real. Unguarded.
Like he got through forty-four shots, looked up, and found what he was looking for.
I close the laptop. That’s enough of that.
V. North wrote about that ghost like it was a character flaw.
I sat in a tunnel and named it for him and watched him breathe.
