Chapter Twenty #2
“I want to know him outside work,” she said.
“That sounds suspiciously simple.”
“It is not.”
“No, but what you want is.”
Tessa looked up.
Nina shrugged.
“You want to date him.”
“I cannot date him.”
“You already did.”
“The bar was not officially a date.”
“Three drinks, personal conversation and kissing afterward.”
“He did not call it a date.”
“He is Russian, not an alien. He knew.”
Tessa smiled reluctantly.
“The problem is not whether we both wanted it.”
“It’s what happens if anyone finds out.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think someone will?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tessa.”
“I really don’t. We were careful in Helsinki. Halifax is different.”
“Because people know you?”
“Because people know him. Because the same reporters see us every day. Because there are cameras around the building and team staff everywhere.”
Nina rested her elbows on the table.
“Are you going to tell your editor?”
The question tightened Tessa’s stomach.
“Not yet.”
“Because?”
“Because I don’t know what there is to disclose.”
“You slept together.”
“One time.”
“And kissed multiple times.”
“That is not a relationship.”
“But it is a conflict.”
Tessa looked down.
Nina did not sound condemning. If anything, she seemed frustrated on Tessa’s behalf, as though rules had intruded on the story she preferred.
“I know,” Tessa said.
“What happens if he asks to see you again?”
The answer arrived before she could construct a safer one.
“I’ll go.”
Nina smiled.
Tessa frowned. “You could at least pretend to be conflicted for me.”
“I am not the one in conflict.”
“This could ruin my career.”
“And you are still going to see him.”
Tessa hated that Nina had reduced the issue to its clearest form.
“Yes.”
“Then maybe the question is not whether this continues.”
“What is it?”
“How long you plan to act like it isn’t continuing.”
Tessa looked toward the window.
People moved along the sidewalk outside, collars raised against the January cold. Halifax looked unchanged from the city she had left less than two weeks earlier.
She felt entirely different inside it.
“I do not know where this goes,” she said.
Nina’s voice softened.
“You don’t need to know yet.”
“That is not how I operate.”
“I know.”
“I like knowing the ending.”
“You are a reporter. You rarely know the ending when you start.”
Tessa smiled.
Nina reached across the table and squeezed her wrist.
“For now, I am happy you finally did something irresponsible.”
“That is terrible friendship.”
“You work every holiday, eat toast for dinner and have organized your adult life around hockey schedules.”
Nina released her.
“You were overdue.”
Tessa wanted to argue.
Instead, she laughed.
The next morning, the Convoy practiced at ten-thirty.
Tessa knew because the schedule remained saved in her phone, even though Elaine had assigned someone else to cover it.
At nine, she stood in the kitchen staring at the time.
Normally, she would already be at Atlantic Centre.
Her laptop would be open in Frank’s old seat, coffee beside it and the practice lines waiting to be recorded in a notebook.
She would know which players had missed the morning skate, whether Viktor had joined the team for any portion of practice and how Joona looked after returning from Helsinki.
Instead, she wore sweatpants and held a garbage bag.
Tessa had committed to staying off.
That meant not checking the substitute reporter’s messages, not opening the team’s live practice updates and not inventing a reason to drive past Atlantic Centre.
She started with the mugs.
Four sat beside the sink. Two required soaking before the dried coffee released. Tessa filled them with hot water, wiped the counter and threw away three grocery receipts from before Christmas.
The apartment looked worse once she began noticing it.
Laundry had accumulated inside and around the basket. Mail covered one corner of the table. A stack of media guides occupied the chair across from her usual seat, beneath a winter coat she had not worn in years. Charging cables crossed the floor near the couch.
She opened the curtains.
Gray winter light filled the room and made every neglected surface more visible.
Tessa turned on music and cleaned.
Not quickly.
There was nowhere she needed to be.
That realization felt strange enough that she checked the time repeatedly, expecting a deadline to materialize.
At ten-thirty, when practice began, she was scrubbing the inside of the microwave.
At eleven, she folded laundry.
At eleven-twenty, she found a Convoy lineup sheet beneath the couch from a game six weeks earlier and nearly checked the team’s social media before remembering she was not working.
She threw the sheet away.
By noon, the apartment had begun looking like someone lived there rather than only passed through.
Tessa cleared the dining table completely. She moved the notebooks to a shelf, sorted the mail and returned the charging cords to a drawer. The empty surface looked unnatural.
She placed Matvei’s watch at the center.
Then moved it to the dresser because the display felt too deliberate.
Her phone remained quiet.
She had not expected Matvei to text during practice. He was back inside his normal routine, working through the transition from international ice to the Convoy’s systems and preparing for the next game.
Still, she noticed the absence.
Tessa hated how quickly he had become someone whose silence occupied her attention.
At one, she ate an actual lunch.
At two, she opened the closet and found the yoga mat behind a vacuum she rarely used.
The mat carried dust along one edge.
Tessa had once attended yoga twice a week.
During university, then during her first years at the Tribune, when her schedule still contained predictable mornings and evenings.
She liked that the classes forced her to spend an hour thinking about where her body existed rather than what her mind needed to complete next.
Junior hockey reduced the routine to occasional weekends.
The Convoy eliminated it entirely.
Tessa checked the studio schedule.
A class began at four.
She registered before she could use the remaining two hours to invent a reason not to go.
The studio had changed since her last visit.
The walls were a warmer color. New shelves held blocks, straps and blankets near the entrance. The instructor did not recognize her, which meant Tessa had been gone longer than she wanted to calculate.
She placed her mat near the back.
For the first fifteen minutes, every movement felt wrong.
Her hips resisted poses they once entered without thought.
Her shoulders carried the memory of airplanes, press-box chairs and hours spent leaning toward a laptop.
During the first downward dog, her hamstrings complained so sharply that Tessa considered pretending to receive an emergency phone call.
She stayed.
The room warmed gradually as the class continued. Breath replaced thought in small stretches. Tessa stopped wondering whether the Convoy’s power-play units had changed and started concentrating on keeping her balance.
The instructor guided them into a long forward fold.
Tessa closed her eyes.
By the end, she lay flat on the mat beneath dimmed lights while the instructor spoke about allowing the day to end without requiring anything more from it.
Tessa almost laughed.
Her days always required more.
A story. A call. A question she had not asked yet.
For several minutes, she allowed herself to imagine they did not.
When class ended, her muscles ached pleasantly.
She rolled the mat, put on her coat and stepped into the cold.
The air smelled like snow.
Matvei would have approved.
The thought appeared naturally.
Tessa walked toward her car smiling.
His message arrived at six-twelve.
Tessa had showered after yoga and changed back into sweatpants. She sat on the couch with a bowl of soup balanced on one knee, watching a television show she had restarted twice because she kept missing important dialogue.
Her phone lit beside her.
Matvei: You work today?
Tessa looked at the message.
Tessa: No. I followed instructions.
Matvei: Impossible.
Tessa: I cleaned my apartment and went to yoga.
The typing indicator appeared.
Matvei: Yoga.
Tessa: It is a real activity.
Matvei: I know.
Tessa: Then why did you say it like that?
Matvei: I picture.
Tessa stared at the screen.
Heat moved across her face despite the innocent wording.
Tessa: Stop picturing.
Matvei: No.
She put the phone facedown on the couch.
Then picked it up again.
Tessa: How was practice?
The response took longer.
Matvei: No work.
Tessa smiled.
Tessa: That was a personal question.
Matvei: Good. Tired. Small rink again.
She understood. NHL ice after the larger international surface required recalibration, especially for a goaltender reading angles and lateral movement.
Tessa began typing a follow-up, then erased it before the question became an interview.
Tessa: Are you playing next game?
She erased that too.
The phone vibrated.
Matvei: I want take you dinner.
Tessa read the sentence twice.
Her heart beat harder on the second.
The invitation was different from walking into the old bar.
No missed shuttle. No cold. No tournament separating them from normal life.
He was asking.
Deliberately.
Tessa: Dinner where?
Matvei: Restaurant.
Tessa imagined it immediately.