"She loves you," I say.
"She does." He tips his cup toward me. "Also thinks you work too damn much."
Both of you.
The cardboard buckles where my thumb presses. I make my thumb loosen. My wrist shifts against the sleeve. Fourteen inches of bench still sits between us. Cole reads it all from beside me.
My coffee cup meets the bench. His free hand rests on the slat between us, three inches from the cup. As I release it, his thumb nudges it an inch farther from the edge. I slide it back where it was, two fingers on the cardboard. It sits the same distance from the edge. My hand stays.
Cole's jaw flexes once. He settles into the bench and sips his coffee.
"I need Dante's stat line from the scrimmage," I say. "For the feature. Can you get it?"
He drinks, looking at me over the rim before he answers, holding there two seconds longer than the swallow takes. My mouth goes dry, and I press my tongue to the roof of it.
"Four goals." He pauses. "Was pissed about it, actually. Like the goals personally offended the fuck out of him."
The cup flexes under my thumb. Taped knuckles flash, a stick, Dante going rigid after a goal, and the arena air comes with it, chemical and sharp, before it's gone. My next breath comes a second too late. Heat builds under my coat, trapped between wool and skin. My hand around the cup has gone steady; the one in my lap hasn't, and I press my fingers into my thigh until they ache.
Cole's gaze is already fixed when I look up. His cup pauses near his mouth. His expression hasn't changed.
“Four goals and pissed about it.” My voice stays flat because I make it. “That's consistent with his scrimmage pattern.”
"Is it?"
"He scores easy and gets angry. Scores hard and gets quiet. I've got three months of data on it."
"Three months." He turns the cup in his hand, one rotation, counterclockwise. "On Dante specifically."
"On every player on the roster. That's how features work."
"Sure." He drinks. "Every fucking player on the roster."
Cole's phone vibrates against the bench slat. He lets it sit before he lifts it, and the screen lights his face from below. A text. One line. His jaw goes hard. He thumbs a quick reply, two taps, then sets it facedown on the slat again.
"Dante," he says, before I can ask. "Wants to know if you're coming tonight."
"You didn't answer."
"I said you were thinking about it."
"I'm not."
"Then tell him your damn self." Cole's voice drops half a register. "He's right over there."
I follow his glance. Across the quad, two hundred yards away from the service entrance, the arena's main doors stand wide. A figure waits alone in the rectangle of light, backlit, but I know the silhouette: shoulders squared, head tilted just enough to watch.
It's Dante.
The service door. The bench. Cole reading the text beside me. The cup Cole nudged and I moved back. All of it sits inside his line of sight from that bright rectangle.
Cole pulls in a slow breath through his nose. Holds it. Lets it out before he speaks.
“Come to Elm House tonight,” he says, still looking at the figure in the distance. “Team’s watching Michigan-Denver. Before Addison pulls us for film review.”
"Pass."
"Maya." He puts weight on the name. "Last semester. Come tonight."
