Page 138 of Offside

“Doesn’t matter. The rule is⁠—”

“The rule,” Theo said, finally turning around and interrupting, his arms crossed, “exists because most people cannot handle it. Not because it’s impossible.” He looked at me steadily. “The question is whether you handled it.” He looked at me with little in his expression, more like he was waiting for confirmation of what he already knew. What everyone in the locker room knew.

“I did not handle it well,” I said.

“Obviously,” Theo said. “We played like shit today.”

“Thank you, Theo.”

“I’m not criticizing. I’m observing.”

“There’s a difference?” Cole asked.

“Yes. One is helpful.”

“So,” Cole said, turning back to me, “when you say seeing each other since October—you mean really seeing each other.”

“Yes.”

“Like—”

“Cole.”

“I’m just clarifying the scope of the situation.”

“The scope,” I said, “is that it’s real. It’s been real since the beginning of the season. Griffin found out Friday night and it went badly and now we’re here.” I gestured at the locker room, the morning, the general catastrophe of the past week. “That’s the scope.”

Cole was quiet for a moment. “Does she know how real it is?”

“She knows.” I fixed my eyes on my skates. “She knows everything except—” I stopped.

“Except what,” Danny said.

“Except the part I haven’t said yet.” I looked up. “And I’m not saying it here to you before I say it to her.”

“Saying what?” Danny pressed.

Cole looked at him with a pointed stare. “Danny.”

“I’m just asking⁠—”

“He’s not going to tell you. Read the room.”

“I’m reading the room, it seems like⁠—”

“Danny.” This was Eli. Loudly and with finality, from across the room. Danny stopped talking immediately.

Eli looked at me. “She knows you’re going to fix it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

Kasperi, twenty-two, Finnish, and apparently constitutionally incapable of reading a room, spoke up from three stalls down. “So we played like garbage because the captain and the goalie are in a fight about his sister?”

The locker room held its breath.

I turned to face him with the quiet, complete stillness I used when something needed to land and needed to stick.

“She’s not just his sister,” I said.