Page 104

And Cash — who covers everything with volume, who gets meaner the worse he feels, who I’ve watched do this since freshman year — almost goes again, almost lands one on Theo to keep from feeling the loss, and then he catches whatever’s on the room’s face and clocks that nobody’s laughing, that the chirping isn’t landing, that this isn’t a night the noise fixes.

He shuts up.

That’s how I know it’s bad. When Cash runs out of room to be funny in, the house is on fire.

The room stays quiet after that, the bad quiet, guys peeling off their gear without the usual noise. Wyatt’s got his head down, methodical, the way he gets when he’s taking a loss personally and won’t say so. Theo’s a black hole in the corner, radiating the Theo silence that means he’s already three days into a film session in his head, dissecting every shift, assigning blame — most of it to himself, because that’s how Theo loves the people he won’t admit he loves. River Callahan’s sitting with his elbows on his knees staring at the floor like he personally cost us the game — the kid’s a freshman, eighteen, fast as hell and twice as hard on himself, and he played fine tonight, better than most of us — and I make myself go over and tap his shin with my stick on the way past.

“Hey. Not on you. We all stunk. Reset for Friday.”

He nods, grateful, eighteen and gutted, and I remember being him, and being captain means you find the room for that even on the night you’ve got nothing, especially on the night you’ve got nothing. That’s the job. The chin stays up and you find a thing to say to the kid who thinks it’s his fault, because if you don’t, the loss metastasizes, it gets into the room and lives there, and a room that believes it’s bad becomes bad. River’s going to be better than all of us in two years. He doesn’t know that yet. Tonight he just needs to know it wasn’t him.

I’m good at that part. I’ve always been good at that part — being what the room needs, performing the captain whether or not there’s a captain left in me by the end of the night. Tonight there isn’t much left. Tonight I do it on fumes and muscle memory, the same way I played the third period, ninety-five percent and hiding it.

Cash drops onto the bench next to me, quieter now, the manic gone out of him. He bumps my good shoulder with his.

“You good, Cap?” Low. Just for me. The real question under all his noise, the one he only asks when the noise has failed. “You looked—” he stops, picks the word carefully, which Cash never does “—off. Tonight. Step slow.”

And there it is. Cash, who plays the fool, who I’ve let everyone think is the least observant man in the building — Cash saw it. Of course Cash saw it. He’s watched me play for almost three years; he knows my game the way you know a song. He saw the half a stride.

“Long season,” I say. “I’m fine.”

He looks at me for a beat. He doesn’t believe me. I can see he doesn’t believe me. But he also knows the rule — the same rule I run, the same one Sloane runs — that you don’t pull a thread a man’s holding shut, not in a locker room, not on a bad night.

“Yeah,” he says, and lets it go, and bumps my shoulder again. “Friday. We bury Northeastern and nobody remembers UConn happened.”

“Friday,” I agree.

But he keeps looking at me a half-second too long before he gets up, and I add Cash to the growing list of people starting to see the thing I’m hiding, O’Grady from his doorway and Cash from the bench and Sloane from two rows up, the circle of people who know me well enough to catch a half a stride, tightening.

I peel my gear off slow, on the side away from the room, careful with the left arm, and I get my shirt on before anyone can see the shoulder, which is a deep ugly ache tonight, worse than it’s been, the kind that’s stopped being a bruise and started being a question. I catch O’Grady looking at me from the door of his office as I leave. Just looking. He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t have to. O’Grady’s been coaching twenty years. He knows what half a stride looks like, and he knows it doesn’t come from nowhere, and the fact that he’s not asking yet means he’s decided to watch a while longer before he asks.

I’ve got time. Not much. But some.

Sloane’s awake when I get home, which she usually isn’t after a late game.

She’s at the kitchen table in my hoodie with her thesis stuff spread out, and she looks up when I come in and she reads me in about a second — the loss, the mood, the way I’m holding the arm — and she doesn’t say how was the game, because she watched it, she watches all of them now, and she doesn’t say are you okay, because she knows I’m not and asking would make me perform a no.

“UConn,” she says. Just that. An acknowledgment, not a question.

“UConn.”

“I watched. You looked—” and she stops, and recalibrates, and I brace because Sloane doesn’t miss things and I don’t want her to land on the thing I’m not saying. “You looked frustrated.”

Frustrated. Not slow. Not half a stride behind. She gave me the kinder word, and I don’t know if it’s because that’s what she saw or because she saw the real thing and decided to hand me the version I could carry, and I’m too tired to figure out which.

“Bad night,” I say. “Whole team. We didn’t compete.”

“O’Grady?”

“Quiet.”

She winces. She’s learned my coach’s weather by now, the way she learns everything. “That’s the bad one.”

“That’s the bad one.” I get a glass of water I don’t want, mostly for something to do with my hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”