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I reach into my back pocket. They're both still there. I carry them everywhere now, soft at the folds from being opened so many times. His list and mine.
I take out his. I unfold it. I read him number ten out loud.
"If anybody in the room gives you trouble, you tell me."
He closes his eyes.
"I didn't have to tell you," I say. "You were standing right there."
I fold it back up. I put it back in my pocket, next to mine.
Then I lie down on my bed, on top of the covers, still in my clothes, facing the wall. I don't say there's room over here. I don't say anything.
After a long time, I hear him turn off the lamp.
I hear him lie down on his own bed. I hear him breathing, slow and careful, the way you breathe when you're trying not to make any sound at all.
It's the first night since Toronto that we've slept in separate beds.
At some point, very late, when he thinks I'm asleep, I hear him say it. So quiet it's barely there.
"Rémy."
I don't answer. I keep my eyes shut and my face to the wall, and I let him think I didn't hear.
It's the first time I've ever pretended not to.
Chapter Nineteen
OWEN
On the plane home from Nashville, I watch it.
I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. But it's everywhere. It's on every sports site, every hockey account, the top of every feed. Somebody's already cut the two clips together, side by side. On the left, the scrum from the glass-mounted camera, with the audio turned all the way up, Varga's voice clear as a bell. Your boyfriend's got a nice grip. Then the word. On the right, me in front of my stall with my hair wet, looking straight into the camera.
I didn't hear it.
The clip loops. The word. My face. I didn't hear it. The word. My face.
Under it, somebody's written: Captain of the year, folks.
Three hundred thousand views. The comments are split down the middle. Half of them are defending me. He was in the scrum, it was loud, give the guy a break. The other half aren't.
He was standing RIGHT THERE.
Look at his face when the kid gets sent to the box. He doesn't even look at him.
Imagine being twenty and your captain throws you under the bus on national TV.
I close the app. I put the phone face-down on my thigh. I look out the window at the clouds.
Somebody sits down in the seat next to me. It's Webb.
Webb doesn't sit up here. Webb's sat in the fourth row for twelve years, next to Kowal, because they both like the aisle and they figured out a system. He's sitting next to me now, in the second row, with his hands folded on his stomach like he's settling in for a nap.
"You heard it," he says.
It isn't a question. I don't pretend it is.