Chapter 11
The Gap
The conversation should have ended at least three times already. Possibly five. Instead, Calder somehow ends up sitting cross-legged on my couch arguing with me about whether hockey coaches are legally allowed to be emotionally stable.
"They're not," Calder says immediately.
I snort into my coffee. "That answer came out way too fast."
"My coach once made us do suicides because somebody lost rock-paper-scissors on the team bus."
I stare at him. "That cannot be real."
"You figure skaters literally normalize emotional warfare before breakfast."
"That's artistry."
"That's psychological damage with glitter."
The laugh escapes before I can stop it. Calder grins immediately. Like he was waiting for it. Which feels dangerous information to possess. The conversation keeps going. Then keeps going some more. The coffee gets colder. The sky outside the window gets brighter. Neither of us mentions either fact.
We drift from ridiculous stories to things that matter and then back again before either conversation can settle long enough to become uncomfortable.
A coach who threw a clipboard. A competition disaster I still refuse to discuss publicly.
The worst road trip of Calder's life. The time I accidentally skated onto the wrong warm-up group and didn't realize for six full minutes.
The topics barely connect. The conversation does.
Every time a pause appears, one of us fills it.
Not because we have to. Because we keep finding something else to say.
The strange part is that it doesn't feel like work.
No performance. No careful selection of answers.
No effort. Just Calder on my couch. Coffee in his hand.
Morning light creeping slowly across my apartment. And neither of us leaving.
Calder tells me about a teammate once throwing up directly into a championship trophy after a game. I laugh so hard I nearly choke on my coffee.
"You cannot tell me hockey players are functioning adults."
"We're not."
"That explains so much."
Calder points toward me. "You're judging us from beneath a blanket you color-coordinate with your throw pillows."
I glance down. The blanket is, unfortunately, the exact same shade. "That's irrelevant."
"It feels relevant."
"One of your teammates used a championship trophy as a biohazard container."
"Resourceful under pressure."
I stare at him. He grins. The audacity is genuinely impressive.
"You like me."
"I absolutely do not."
"That wasn't what I meant."
The grin widens. Which is somehow worse.
"You ever have a complete disaster competition?" Calder asks.
I groan. "Oh my God."
"That's a yes."
"I fell during a regional competition when I was fourteen because somebody sneezed during a spin."
Calder stares at me. One second. Two. Then completely loses whatever battle he was attempting to fight. His head tips back slightly. His shoulders shake. The laugh arrives all at once. Loud enough that I immediately regret giving him the story.
I point at him accusingly. "That was a highly traumatic experience."
Which only makes him laugh harder. The traitor. The really irritating part is that the sound drags another smile out of me anyway.
"You're a terrible person."
"You got taken out by seasonal allergies."
"It was startling."
Calder laughs harder. And somehow, instead of getting defensive, I start laughing too. The sound tangles together easily in the apartment. Warm. Comfortable. For a second I can't tell where his laughter ends and mine begins.
We keep talking after that.
Travel disasters. Terrible sleep schedules. The increasingly concerning rituals athletes convince themselves are lucky. I admit I have to listen to the exact same playlist before competitions. Calder admits he tapes his stick the same way before every game or he gets irrationally irritated.
"That's insane," I tell him.
"You color-code emotional damage in binders."
"Fair."
The apartment grows quieter around us. The conversation gets easier.
No sparring. No competition. No instinctive need to win every exchange.
Just stories. One after another. Calder stretched across my couch talking about terrible hotel rooms. Me curled deeper into the corner cushions with my coffee balanced against my knee.
Morning light creeps slowly across the apartment. Neither of us notices until it reaches the couch. And somewhere along the way I realize I've stopped paying attention to how long he's been here. I've stopped waiting for him to leave. I've stopped thinking of this as unusual at all.
At some point Calder stops sitting like he's about to leave.
Earlier he stayed perched on the edge of the couch with his bag nearby and his posture alert, like he was prepared to remember this was temporary at any moment.
Now he stretches out fully against the cushions beside me.
The shift is small. The effect isn't. The entire apartment feels different afterward.
Calder pushes his hoodie off after another argument about whether hockey players should legally be allowed near microwave ovens. The fabric catches briefly against his shoulders before he tosses it onto the arm of the couch. I immediately regret having functioning eyesight.
"You're staring again," Calder says lazily. His voice sounds rougher now. Relaxed.
I take a slow sip of coffee. "You are incredibly needy for attention."
"Interesting deflection."
I ignore him. Mostly because he's smiling.
Not the sharp grin he used to wear at the rink.
Something easier. At some point the constant edge he carries around has started fading.
No teammates. No coaches. No game waiting for him.
Just Calder on my couch in the middle of the morning looking entirely too comfortable.
Then he stretches one arm along the back of the couch behind me without seeming to notice he's doing it.
The movement is absentminded. Natural. Which somehow makes it worse.
The space between us suddenly feels very specific.
Me. Him. The narrow strip of couch cushion separating us. I become aware of all of it at once.
The really dangerous part is that Calder doesn't look like someone waiting for the conversation to end. He looks like someone who forgot he was ever supposed to leave.
""You always this quiet outside the rink?" Calder asks eventually.
He's stretched comfortably across my couch when he says it, one arm hooked over the back cushion like he forgot this isn't his apartment. The thought lands with surprising force.
"I could ask you the same thing."
Calder huffs out a quiet laugh.
"Fair."
The silence that follows settles easily between us. It isn't empty, just quiet.
Calder rubs a hand across the back of his neck before letting his head fall fully against the cushion. The movement looks unconscious and unguarded. At the rink he's always holding something in reserve. Here, pieces of that armor keep disappearing when he isn't paying attention.
Somewhere in the middle of a story about an entire hockey team nearly missing a flight because somebody locked themselves inside an airport bathroom, I stop paying attention to the story and start paying attention to Calder.
Not the obvious things. Not his shoulders, not his hands, and definitely not the stubble I've spent weeks pretending not to notice.
The smaller things.
The way tiredness roughens his voice. The way his attention never drifts when I'm talking. The way he watches for my reaction before he finishes a story, like it matters to him whether I laugh and what I think.
I look down at my coffee before he can catch whatever expression just crossed my face.
"You okay over there?" Calder asks. His voice is quieter now, careful. I glance up. Calder is already watching me.
The look on his face catches me off guard. Not concern or curiosity, but something softer. Something that makes my pulse shift once and then refuse to recover.
The strange thing is that Calder doesn't rush to fill silences anymore. He lets them exist and handles them carefully, like they're something worth keeping.
The conversation quiets eventually, not because it dies but because exhaustion starts softening the edges off both of us.
The apartment glows warm around the couch while darkness settles gradually against the windows.
Calder sits beside me with one arm stretched loosely across the back cushions, his coffee mug balanced between both hands.
"You ever actually sleep before games?" I ask eventually.
Calder huffs softly. "Barely."
The answer comes too fast to be filtered. He stares down into his mug while turning it slowly between his palms.
"My brain gets annoying before important games," he says.
"That's one way to describe psychological collapse."
Calder laughs quietly, but the sound fades faster this time.
"After losses is worse," he admits.
The words arrive before he seems to realize he's said them. I don't interrupt. Calder leans his head back against the cushion and stares toward the ceiling.
"I hate going home after bad games."
His voice sounds rough with exhaustion.
"The apartment feels..."
The sentence trails off.
"Empty?" I offer.
Calder turns his head toward me.
"Yeah."
The word lands softly between us. No joke. No deflection. Just recognition.
I look down at my hands for a moment.
"Silence usually feels safer to me than people do," I admit.
The truth slips out quietly enough that I almost wish I could pull it back.
Calder doesn't answer immediately. When I glance up, his expression has gone still in a way I've started recognizing. Not surprised. Not uncomfortable. Careful.
"That sounds lonely," he says.
"Probably."