Chapter 17
Practice was at nine, and Nathan wasn't there.
I noticed at warm-ups, which was when Nathan usually appeared at the boards, tablet in hand, running his pre-practice checks.
The boards were empty. The training staff was there, the assistant coaches were there, Coach was there with his coffee and his clipboard and his expression of mild existential suffering that he wore to every practice.
No Nathan Cross.
I told myself it wasn't notable. Nathan had things to do that didn't involve standing at the boards watching drills.
He had paperwork and assessments and probably a whole section of his tablet dedicated to things that had nothing to do with me, and the fact that I knew his schedule well enough to clock his absence in the first five minutes of warm-ups was—that was just familiarity.
Proximity. We'd been in the same building for months.
I was fine.
"Morrison!" Knox, from the blue line, with the particular volume he reserved for when I'd done something that wasted his time. "Are you skating or are you sightseeing? Because if you're sightseeing I've got notes."
"I'm skating," I said.
"Then skate like it!"
I skated like it.
Nathan still wasn't at the boards.
Dylan found me after. He fell into step beside me the way he always did, quiet and inevitable.
"Cross wasn't at practice," he said.
"I noticed," I said.
"First time in two years."
I kept walking.
"I'm not saying it's your fault," Dylan said, in the tone of a man saying exactly that.
"Why are you even telling me this?”
"You were with him last night." Not a question. Statement, delivered sideways, the Dylan way. "I saw you leave together."
I didn't say anything.
"Wes." He said it flat. Not angry. Something more tired than angry. "He's the team doctor."
"I know what he is."
"Do you?" A pause. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like—" He stopped. Started differently. "Cross doesn't do this. Whatever you think this is. He doesn't."
"You don't know that."
Dylan looked at me then. Really looked, the way he rarely did, the way that meant he'd decided something and was going to say it regardless.
"He missed practice," Dylan said. "Cross. Who has never missed practice. Who came in with a stomach bug last February and ran assessments anyway." A pause. "Whatever happened last night, it got to him."
I kept walking.
"I'm just saying watch yourself," he called after me. "Both of you."
He went into the locker room.
I stood in the corridor.
Nathan’s office was at the end of the medical wing, past the training room, past the equipment room, past the stretch of corridor that smelled like athletic tape and something chemical that I'd never identified. The door was closed.
I stood outside it.
The light under it was off, which meant he wasn't in there. That meant he'd closed it before he left, and I didn't know why that mattered but it did. The closed door sat in my chest in a way I couldn't explain.
I stood there for a while.
Then I went home.
The next day the door was open.
I stood in the doorway.
Nathan was at his desk, fountain pen in hand, notes open in front of him, and he looked up when I appeared and then looked back down, which was the professional version of acknowledging me, which I had a whole catalogue of by now.
"Your door was closed yesterday," I said.
"I know," he said.
"You never close your door."
He looked up again. And the thing was—he looked tired. Not the controlled tired of a man who'd had a long day and was managing it precisely. Actually tired, the kind that lived around the eyes and in the set of the jaw, the kind you couldn't fully hide no matter how good you were at hiding things.
Nathan looked like shit.
I didn't say that. I filed it.
"I needed to think," he said.
"About what?"
He held my gaze for a moment. "Things."
The office was quiet, the facility mostly empty at this hour, and Nathan had a pen in his hand and dark circles under his eyes.
"Okay," I said.
I left.
But I thought about it the entire drive home, and the thing I kept landing on was: Nathan needed to think. Nathan, who was the most certain person I'd ever encountered, who arrived at conclusions before most people had finished forming the question, needed to think.
About things.
I had a working theory about the things. I had more than a theory. I had two years of it, handed to me drunk in a bar, and I was still figuring out what to do with that.
The day after that I stayed late.
Not for any reason. Practice had ended, the team had filtered out in the usual way, Dylan had given me a look that I ignored, and I stayed.
Did some extra conditioning, some work on my edges, the kind of thing I could justify if anyone asked but which was mostly just an excuse to still be in the building at seven p.m.
At six-thirty I called the Thai place two blocks from the facility and ordered enough food for two people. I didn’t even change, just took off my skates, met the delivery guy, grabbed the food, and headed to the office.
Nathan’s light was on.
I knocked on the open door. He looked up.
I held up the bag.
"I didn't know what you liked," I said. "So I got several things."
Nathan looked at the bag. Then at me. Then back at the bag,
"You don't have to do that," he said.
"I know," I said. "I already did it though."
"Wesley—"
"It's food," I said. "You're still here at six-thirty. You haven't eaten. That's just—that's a fact about the situation."
Nathan looked at me like he had a response to that and was deciding whether giving it to me was worth it.
"I'm working," he said.
"I can see that."
"I'll eat when I get home."
"When are you getting home?"
A pause.
"Later," he said.
"Right." I held up the bag. "So."
He looked at it. Something moved through his jaw. This was not a man who had forgotten what I'd said last night. This was a man who had remembered it very clearly and was doing the math on whether letting me sit in his office and eat pad Thai with him was a good idea.
The math was apparently inconclusive because he didn't tell me to leave.
He also didn't tell me to stay.
"I didn't know what you liked," I said. "So I got several things."
"Is this—" he started. Stopped. Looked at his desk. "Do you do this. For people."
I looked at him. "Do I bring people food?"
"Yes." Still not looking at me. Pen in hand, not writing anything with it.
"Sometimes Dylan makes me pick up food when it's his turn to cook. Which is—"
"I don't mean Dylan." A pause. The pen moved slightly. "Other people."
I tilted my head. "What other people?"
Nathan looked up then, briefly, like he had said more than he intended and was recalibrating. "People. In general. That you—" He stopped again. "People you spend time with."
I stared at him.
Nathan Cross, who delivered difficult medical news without blinking, was sitting at his desk not finishing sentences and looking at his pen like it had done something to offend him.
"Are you asking if I'm bringing anyone else takeout right now?" I said.
A pause that was approximately one year long.
"Yes," Nathan said. To the pen.
"No," I said.
He nodded. Once. Very small. Like he was trying not to.
"How many people?" he asked. Still to the notes. "Generally speaking. How many people do you generally do this for?"
"Generally?"
"In the past." A pause. "Year."
"Nathan."
"It's a straightforward question."
"It is not a straightforward question," I said. "It's a very specific question, and we both know it."
Nathan said nothing. He had gone very still in the way he went still when he was waiting for something and was prepared to wait as long as it took.
I looked at him. At the pen. At the notes he wasn't reading.
"Zero," I said. "The answer is zero."
Something shifted in his jaw.
"I don't bring people food," I said. "I don't stay late after practice. I don't—" I stopped. Looked at the bag in my hand. "I don't do this. For people."
A pause that was shorter than the previous one.
"Good," Nathan said. And then, like he couldn't stop it: "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why me?"
I didn’t answer him right away.
"I don't know yet," I said. "But it's just you."
Nathan looked at his pen.
Then he looked at me.
"Pad Thai?" I said.
"Please," said Nathan, and picked up his fork.
There was a small round table in the corner of his office that I'd never noticed before. It had two chairs and nothing on it except a neat stack of folders that Nathan moved to his desk without comment. We ate there.
Nathan ate slowly and with the same precision he brought to everything. He was careful about it. Considered. Like eating was something worth doing properly.
I found myself watching him more than eating.
"Jenkins asked me today if I thought you were okay," I said.
Nathan glanced up.
"I said yes." I moved my fork. "Are you?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Eat your food, Wesley."
"That's not a yes."
"It's not a no either."
I looked at him. He looked back. The office lamp was low, the window behind him showing the dark of the parking lot, and Nathan was sitting across a small table from me eating takeout Pad Thai with a fork instead of chopsticks, which was another piece of information I was storing without knowing what I was going to do with it.
"For a guy who talks about data," I said, "you're very bad at giving direct answers."
Something shifted in his expression. "I give extremely direct answers."
"When it's about medicine."
"Medicine is my area of expertise."
"What about everything else?"
He looked at me over the takeout container.
"I'm working on it,” he said.
It wasn't funny. It wasn't meant to be. But something about the delivery — the deadpan, the slight resignation in it, the fact that Nathan had just admitted to a limit with the same precision he used to report clinical findings—hit me in a way I hadn't prepared for, and I laughed.
Not the performance laugh. Not the one I used when something was supposed to be funny.
The real one, the one that came from somewhere I didn't usually let people see.
It was out before I knew it was happening, and when I looked up Nathan was watching me with that expression—the one I'd been collecting for months—and it was closer to the surface than I'd ever seen it.
I put my fork down.
Leaned across the small table.
Waited to see if he moved away.
And when he didn’t?
I kissed him.
Easy. Unhurried. Not like in the corridor, not desperate or making a point.
No, this time I kissed him because I wanted to and had decided that was sufficient reason.
His mouth was warm, and he went still for exactly one second, the way he went still when he was processing something.
Then he kissed me back with that thoroughness he brought to everything, his hand coming up to the side of my face.
The office was quiet and the facility was empty and none of the usual rules seemed to apply.
I pulled back.
"This okay?" I said.
Nathan looked at me. Something in his face that I was going to spend a significant amount of time learning to read.
"Yes," he said.
I kissed him again.
Longer this time, his hand still at my jaw, the table between us not quite enough of a barrier to be inconvenient and not quite enough to be ignorable.
When I finally pulled back we were both breathing slightly differently and Nathan’s tie was more loosened than it had been and his hand was still at my face, not gripping, just resting, like he'd forgotten to move it or hadn't wanted to.
"I should shower," I said. "I came straight from practice."
Nathan’s eyes were very blue in the low light.
"I know," he said, which were his favorite two words.
I held his gaze.
This was probably a terrible idea.
"Want to shower with me?"