Cole is on the same line. The passes connect because they always connect. Six years of shared space translates into a fluency that does not require communication. He feeds me thepuck on a neutral zone entry and I receive it and we execute the play and the execution is perfect, and the perfection is the cruelest part. On the ice, we still work. The kitchen, the couch, the missing mug—none of it disrupts the pass.
After practice, I shower, dress, and leave.
Cole finds me in the tunnel, the concrete corridor between the locker room and the parking structure. Fluorescent lights. The smell of sweat and institutional bleach.
"Stop," he says.
I keep walking.
"Dante." His hand lands on my shoulder. I stop. "Tell me what I did."
I turn.
"You know what you did."
His jaw works. The tell.
"Thursday," he says.
"Thursday."
"While you were at film."
"While I was at film."
The corridor holds the echo.
"I'm not going to apologize," he says.
"I didn't ask you to."
"You asked me with two empty mugs and a closed door and thirty-six hours of silence. That's you asking."
"That's me responding."
"That's you punishing. And you know what the word for that is? Hypocrisy." Cole's voice is steady. "You came home from Maya's apartment with a bruised lip and a scratch on your neck and you looked me in the face and said nothing happened. You lied, Dante. You did it first. You did it worse. And I sat in the kitchen and watched you lie and I went for a walk because I couldn't stand to be in the same room with you. I didn'twithdraw the mugs. I didn't close my door for two days. I went for a walk and I came back."
My chest tightens. I have no defense ready.
"She wanted it," Cole says. "She asked. Came downstairs without her phone, without her laptop, without the notebook. Empty-handed for the first time in three weeks. She sat on the counter and told me to stop pretending. I stopped pretending."
"On the couch."
His eyes shift.
"Where she falls asleep," I say. "The same place I put the blanket on her."
"Yes."
"Was the blanket still there? On the arm? While you—"
"Yes."
My sternum tightens around the word. The step back is involuntary, stopping only when my shoulder blades meet the tunnel wall. I press into the concrete because the alternative is moving toward him, and I am not sure what my hands would do.
"I'm going home," I say.
"Dante—"
