Practice. I do my job. Camera up. Recorder out. Brody. Sebastian and Caleb. Liam.
Then Jax comes out for warmups and I keep the camera on him and then I put it down. Just to look.
Katarina appears beside me with two coffees. Holds one out.
“You didn’t shoot,” she says.
“I know.”
“That’s new.”
She watches the ice. Doesn’t push it. We drink our coffee in silence and I pick the camera back up after a while and she doesn’t mention it again. She doesn’t have to.
Night two. Eleven PM.
He’s on game film. I’m editing photos. An hour of quiet that has been its own kind of dangerous.
I find the photo of him and Aurora from the series win. The thing that released in his face. The real version under the careful.
I close the folder and open my mouth and say something sharp about the play he’s been running — the left side breakdown, the same gap, five times now.
He looks up.
“You’re watching my film.”
“You’re watching it loudly.”
“I have one earbud in.”
“Your face is loud.”
He looks at me. That look. All the way in.
“The left side breaks down on that play every time,” I say. “Same gap.”
“I know.”
“You’ve run it five times.”
“Six.”
“Then you definitely understand it.”
“Are you coaching me right now.”
“I’m observing.”
“From my film.”
“Very large screen.”
He looks at me for a long moment.
The room shifts.
Two nights of acting normal, and apparently this is where that ends.
It’s been shifting all night — quiet, incremental, like something tightening one click at a time. The towel. The coffee. The space between us.
