Page 23

"It was hockey."

"It was a thirty-five-year-old man with no cartilage throwing himself on the ice to save a twenty-year-old from a bad headline." She reaches for the ice machine. "Doc's going to want an MRI."

"After the road trip."

"Owen."

"After the road trip, Dana."

She fills the bag harder than she needs to.

Castel is waiting for me in the parking garage. He's leaning on my tailgate exactly where Brandt leaned on it, arms folded, sunglasses back on.

"Everybody leans on my truck," I say.

"It's a good truck. It's very leanable." He doesn't move. "What was the thing?"

"What thing."

"Moretti said hang a. Hang a what?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Gus looked at me like I was sick. You threw something in the trash." He pulls his sunglasses off. His eyes are still red. "Tell me or I'll ask Gus, and he'll tell me, because he likes me better than you."

"He does like you better than me."

"So tell me."

I could lie. I've been lying to everyone for four days, and I've been lying to myself for longer than that, and I'm good at it. It would take one sentence.

"Somebody hung a tutu in your stall," I say. "The morning after opening night. With a note. For the parade."

He doesn't flinch. That's the worst part. He just nods, slowly, like I've told him the weather.

"Brandt?"

I don't say anything.

"Brandt and Kowal," he says. "Okay."

"I threw it out before you got in."

"Why?"

"So you wouldn't see it."

"Why, though?" He tips his head. "So I wouldn't be upset? Or so nobody would have to do anything about it?"

That lands somewhere under my ribs. I don't answer, which is an answer.

"Okay," he says again, quieter. He pushes off my tailgate. "I've had worse. In juniors, someone put a dildo in my skate. A big purple one. At least a tutu has a sense of style."

"Castel."

"Rémy. It's Rémy." He looks at me, and for the first time since I've known him, there's nothing playful in his face at all. "If we're going to be roommates, you can say my name. It's two syllables. You'll survive."

I look at him standing in the gray light of the parking garage in a hoodie with a moose on it, and I think about Kline taking off her reading glasses and asking about intimacy, and about Brandt patting my truck like a horse, and about the fact that the only person who's told me the truth all week is twenty years old and was drafted by this team for the jerseys.