External input.
I showed him the data. He acted on it. The improvement I'm writing about exists because I crossed a line between covering the subject and influencing the subject, and I'm sitting here documenting the results without disclosing that the analyst and the external input are the same person.
A month ago he called ittourism.Observation from a safe distance.The word still sits in my chest like a splinter I can't reach. He was wrong. A tourist doesn't hand her subject shot charts across a dining hall table. A tourist doesn't watch the data change and feel it in her chest, a low, hot pull that has nothing to do with hockey. I'm not sixty feet above the ice anymore. I'm in it.
And I did that to myself. I crossed the line because the data was good and the conversation pulled me forward and I let it, and the proof is sitting on my screen.
Thetourismline still burns. It burns worse now because I erased that separation on my own.
I leave the disclosure out. The blank space stays where it is.
The dining hall is still in my body while I type. Cole's knee against mine—the pressure still mapped on my skin days later, a brand I can't scrub off. The heat on my neck that climbed when Dante leaned forward lives there now, a low burn that would still answer if my hand drifted to my collarbone. My hands stay on the keys. The collar of his hoodie slipping. The flush I didn't know was happening until it was too late to stop it. The tightness across my shoulders like every muscle along my spine locked the second I stood up from that booth and hasn't let go since.
Forty-five minutes pass. The piece keeps coming, easier than it should, because I've routed around the truth. Tactical analysis, quotes, the structure of a feature meant to show exactly what I can do with a game. My hands move steadily across the keys. The sentences fall into place.
The notebook is in the drawer. I leave it there. But my hand keeps drifting to the drawer pull between paragraphs, fingers resting on the metal before I pull them back.
Thirty minutes pass before I stop pulling them back.
The drawer slides open. The paper inside smells faintly of ink and cardboard. I flip to a blank page.
Unknown call. 413 area code. 11:03pm. Duration: 6 sec. Deleted from log. Physical response: HR elevated. Peripheral graying. Hands braced. Flinch on subsequent notification (11:47pm). Time to baseline: Incomplete.
I stare at the last word.Incomplete.The ink glistens under the desk lamp, still wet.
I close the notebook and slide it back into the drawer.
The laptop clock reads past midnight when I file the profile. The send confirmation flashes on the screen. I close the laptop, slide it into my bag, lift the bag onto my shoulder. Jacket off the hook by the door, badge dropped into the side pocket where I always keep it. My hands move through the motions automatically. I watch my hands while I zip the jacket, like they belong to someone else.
The walk back to my apartment takes ten minutes across campus. Late-winter cold bites through the air, the raw kind that comes after the snow stops but before anything thaws. My breath leaves my mouth in thin white ribbons. Streetlights throw pale circles across the cleared paths. The quad is almost empty.
Halfway across, two figures step out of the library doors. Gio. Zoë.
I slow. His arm rests across her shoulders. Her body leans into his side. His hand sits low on her arm, fingers curled loosely. Her hip pressed against his. No gap. It's one in the morning. The quad is empty. There's nobody to perform for.
They walk past a pool of light. His head dips toward hers. She says something and his laugh carries across the cold air, soft and unguarded. The sound of a man who can breathe.
I start walking again. From sixty feet away, you can see everything and understand nothing.
They disappear around the corner of the science building.
I pull my phone out of my coat pocket as I cross under the next streetlight, thumb already on the screen because Cole alwaystexts at this hour and I'm tired of flinching at the buzz. It buzzes against my palm a second later. My shoulders twitch. Small. Quick. I look down.
Cole: You still at the office? It's almost 1am, Maya.
My thumbs move.
Me: Walking home now.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Cole: Want me to come meet you?
I stop under a streetlight and stare at the screen. Cole awake at one in the morning. Watching the time. Offering to walk across campus in the cold. He's been doing that since we were fourteen, and the fact that it still happens now closes my throat.
Me: I'm fine. Almost home.
Cole: Text me when you're in.
