"Best seat in the house," Maya says, quiet but firm, holding the line.
Dante nods once, a sharp dip of his chin.
Maya's hand is on the table, her fingers resting beside her laptop. The color in her neck is changing, a flush climbing from her collar toward her jaw, a slow bloom of pink against her skin. She doesn't know she's doing it. I do. I've watched that flush since she was fifteen, across dinner tables, in the backseat of my car when she fell asleep on my shoulder, in her bedroom doorway the night she told me she was changing her major.
Dante's eyes fall to her throat for a fraction of a second. The flush. Then back to her eyes. He saw it too.
"Send me the shot charts," he says. "I want to see the data."
"I'll send you the finished piece."
"I want the raw data. The charts. Before it runs."
"That's not how journalism works, Voss."
"It's how hockey works, Maddox."
They hold each other's eyes across the table. I'm wedged between them. I did this.
Maya's shoulder still rests three inches from mine. Her knee still presses against mine under the table. But her body has turned toward Dante, angled away from me, her collarbone bare above the hoodie collar, the flush still climbing, bright and hot. I'm sitting between them, the heat from Maya's knee on my left, Dante's locked jaw across the table, my stepsister's skin flushed because of the man I've been sleeping with for six years. I press my thumb into my own thigh under the table, digging in hard until it hurts, but it doesn't fucking work.
Her eyes flick to me for half a second. A question in them, heat and confusion sitting side by side. Then she looks back at Dante, and the moment snaps.
"I'll think about it," she says, her voice flat again, the professional mask back in place.
She takes another bite of the wrap. Conversation over.
I lean against the booth, the vinyl creaking under my weight. My thumb stays pressed to my thigh, the bruise already forming, and the pressure doesn't help at all.
We stand, gather trays, dump them at the conveyor on our way out. Maya tucks her laptop under one arm and shoulders her bag, and the three of us move through the swinging doors into the lobby in a loose triangle, Maya half a step ahead of me, Dante half a step behind on my right.
Gio is on a bench near the entrance, slumped with Zoë beside him, her hand a steady weight on his knee. His shoulders curve forward over his phone, but the tension in his body loosenswherever they touch, like she's the only thing keeping him upright.
He glances up as we pass, his eyes tired. "Practice at three?"
"Film first," I say. "Addison's in a mood."
"When isn't he?"
Zoë tilts her head at Maya, a smirk playing on her lips. "Nice hoodie."
Maya glances down at the navy fabric, my fabric, and her voice stays flat, but I hear the edge underneath. "It's comfortable."
"It's Cole's."
"It's comfortable," Maya repeats, and the finality in her tone could cut glass.
Zoë grins, because she knows she's won, because she sees what I see.
Then Gio turns back to Zoë and kisses her. It's unhurried, deep, his thumb tracing her cheekbone while her fingers curl into the front of his jacket. When he pulls back, she's looking at him like the whole fucking lobby just emptied and it's only the two of them left.
The kiss was too slow for a performance. Zoë's fingers pulled him closer instead of holding him at the polite, fake-girlfriend distance. The deal was supposed to be fake.
He falls into step beside us. Maya peels off to the right, toward the corridor that runs past the registrar and dead-ends at the Chronicle office, her bag swinging. She passes Dante's shoulder close enough that the strap brushes his arm. His hand closes into a fist at his side, the knuckles whitening, then opens with deliberate control.
She cuts past my side as she goes, and her fingers tap my arm twice, quick, casual. My hoodie on her body. Her fingers on my arm. I keep walking.
I watch her cross the lobby, her stride confident, her head high. Dante is watching too. He catches himself, turns his head away, and my chest tightens all over again.
