Before the Fire (Atlanta Firebirds Prequel)

Chapter 1 Avi

Seven missed calls.

I don't see them right away. I'm standing on the trail along the Schuylkill with my hands on my knees, breathing hard, watching the river move south through the morning haze. Late June in Philadelphia means the air is already thick by seven a.m., and the run was longer than I planned. Past the Strawberry Mansion Bridge and back, which is what happens when I forget to turn around. My legs feel good. My lungs feel full. And my body reminds me it’s still working, but thirty-four doesn’t feel the same as twenty-four.

I pull my phone from the armband and switch off airplane mode.

Seven missed calls. Four from Laura. Three from a number I don't recognize but have saved in my contacts. Brian Sullivan, The Inquirer. And texts. A wall of texts, the previews stacking before I can read any of them.

Laura first, time-stamped starting forty minutes ago:

Call me.

Five minutes later:

Avi, call me before you talk to anyone. Then: Pick up the phone.

One text, twelve minutes ago:

Hey Avi, Brian Sullivan. Working on a piece, hoping to get a comment. Going to try you.

My phone rings in my hand.

Sullivan.

I answer because I don't know yet. That's the part I'll think about later. I answer because I don't know, and in two minutes I'll never not know again.

"Avi, hey. Brian Sullivan, Inquirer. Thanks for picking up.

" His voice has that careful, slightly hurried warmth that reporters use when they're on deadline and need you to feel comfortable fast. "I know this is probably a tough morning.

I'm putting together a piece on the Atlanta expansion draft and wanted to see if you had any comment on Philadelphia's decision to leave you unprotected. "

The river is still moving.

"Avi? You there?"

I watch a sculling crew cut through the water in perfect synchronization, eight oars breaking the surface at the same angle. Precise. Mechanical. The sound carries. A rhythmic thud of oars locking, then the glide.

"I'm here."

"Like I said, I know it's a lot. If you want to call me back later, that's —"

"They left me unprotected."

A pause. Then Sullivan's voice changes, dropping the professional polish. "Shit. Avi, did you…they didn't call you?"

"No."

He swears again, quieter this time, and for a moment he's not a reporter.

He's a guy from the press box who's asked me about my father's career at All-Star weekends, who knows I take my coffee black, who once sat next to me on a delayed team flight and talked about his daughter's figure skating. Then I hear him exhale and he's back.

"Listen, I'm sorry. I am. I'll give you time. Call me when you're ready, no rush. But the list goes public at noon, and I'd rather have your words than speculation." He pauses. "For what it's worth, everyone I've talked to in the building is surprised. This wasn't the consensus pick."

I say something. I don't remember what. Something short and professional that closes the conversation without giving him anything, because that's what twelve years in this league teaches you. You learn to make sounds that function as a sentence while your brain is somewhere else.

My phone buzzes before I've lowered it from my ear. Laura.

I stand on the trail for another thirty seconds. Cyclists pass. A woman with a jogging stroller. The sculling crew is almost out of sight now, moving together in that perfect, mechanical rhythm, every body doing exactly what it trained to do.

I pick up.

"I just found out." My voice is even. I make sure of that.

Laura exhales hard. "Avi, I am so sorry. I got a call from the front office at six and I've been trying to reach you since. This was not the information I had. Everything I was hearing said you were protected."

"I was running. Phone was off." There’s a pause, and I try to catch my breath.

"I'm sorry." She means it. I can hear that she means it, and I can also hear the two years between us.

The distance between an agent who's had you since you were twenty-one and the one who took you on at thirty-two.

Laura is sharp, really good. But Laura wasn't the one who told me to sign the extension. Laura wasn’t my agent when I had that conversation with the front office about my personal life being private and I needed assurances.

That thought stops me. I push it aside. Can’t think about that right now. Not on the walking path along the river, where anyone could come up to me and I need to focus on the life crumbling around me and try to hold it together.

"What happens now?" I ask.

She walks me through it. Expansion draft mechanics, timelines, that Atlanta's been signaling their interest in me. Her voice is steady and organized and I hear all of it and none of it. I remember random snippets. Opportunity. Fresh start. I know this feels like being thrown away.

She doesn't know me well enough to say that last part, which is the whole problem, which is why I'm standing on a trail in Philadelphia learning the shape of my own disposability from a newspaper beat reporter at seven in the morning.

"Avi? What do you need from me right now?"

"I'll call you back."

I hang up. Put the phone in the armband.

The screen is still lit up with texts I haven't opened.

Teammates, maybe. People who heard the rumor.

People performing shock or sympathy or whatever you're supposed to perform when someone you shared ice with for seven years gets left on the curb, and you remain safe. Hard to watch, but also grateful it’s not them.

The walk back to the condo takes twenty-two minutes.

I know this because I've done it hundreds of times; the distance between the trail and my building so familiar it exists in my legs more than my memory.

Philadelphia. The condo I've owned for seven years.

The one with the crack in the living room ceiling that I've been staring at since I moved in, that I’ve had patched twice and that keeps coming back, a thin dark line running from the window to the light fixture like the building itself can't hold together.

I let myself in. Lock the door. Stand in the hallway where the light from the kitchen window falls in a stripe across the floor.

The place is quiet the way it always is.

No music, no television, no other person's noise filling the gaps.

My running shoes are by the door next to my winter boots, still out from March.

A framed photo of a Finnish lake on the wall that my mother sent two Christmases ago, the only personal thing visible from the entryway.

Everything else is behind doors, in closets, packed into the controlled interior of a man who learned a long time ago to keep the surface clean.

Maybe they found out. Maybe someone talked. Maybe years of locker rooms and road trips and carefully not looking too long finally caught up with me. I can’t help the spiralling that happens given how everything is crumbling around me.

Seven years. I gave Philly seven years, and they didn't even have the guts to call me. Didn’t give me any warning. It may not be official yet, but it feels like it’s all but over.

The ceiling crack is there when I look up. Still there, still spreading. The same thin line it's always been. I stare at it until my breathing evens out and my hands stop shaking, and I press them flat against my thighs, and I stand in my hallway, and I don't call anyone.