Chapter 15 #2
“I needed to log the post-game observations.”
“You could do that from up there.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her pen clicks once. Twice. “The sight lines are better down here,” she says. The genuine smile. The one she saves.
I smile. Slow. “Mm-hm.”
Her chin tips up. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you look at me like you already know what I’m going to say before I say it.”
I take one step closer. One step. Less distance in a tunnel that's almost empty now. “Do I know?”
“You took a retaliation penalty today,” she murmurs.
“I’m aware.”
“Because of a reporter touching my elbow?”
“He laughed too hard at your jokes.”
“I wasn’t making jokes.”
“Exactly.”
She almost smiles. I notice immediately. “Don’t encourage me,” I warn.
She likes the fact that I’m jealous. I can tell right before she turns back into coach. Her facial muscles clench. But her eyes stay on mine, which is its own answer. “You played a good game,” she says, professional and final, the way she says things when she’s done negotiating with herself.
“Yeah,” I say. “I did.” She moves past me. “Toni.” She stops but doesn’t turn all the way. Profile. Half her face in the tunnel light. “I let Rourke go four times.” I keep my voice level. “You want to know why?”
A beat. “Because it was the right call.”
“Because it was the right call,” I agree.
“And because I knew you were watching, and I wanted you to see that I could.” Silence.
The kind of silence where words have landed.
She's deciding what to do with them. She turns.
Fully. Looks at me with those sharp green eyes that miss nothing and have missed nothing since the first morning she walked into the locker room as if she owned it.
“That,” she says soberly, “is either the most honest thing you’ve said to me or the best line I’ve heard in two years.”
“First one.”
She holds my gaze for three full seconds.
Then she looks down at her tablet. Writes a note I can’t see.
“Good game, Max,” she says. And she walks back up the tunnel.
I watch her go, and the hollow from two years of not knowing her name is gone.
This time, I know her last name, where she parks.
I know she carries tension in her left shoulder during internal struggles, drinks gin upon receiving texts from Piper, and monitors the statistics of players she claims to be indifferent to.
I know her now. And she came down from the press box.
The locker room music gets louder. Trey’s voice carries down the tunnel, looking for me. I push off the wall, skates still on, stick still in hand. I played a good game tonight. I played it for her. She’s aware of that now. So am I.
Antonia Amato is sitting two rows ahead of me on the team bus, iPad open, hair up, and she keeps tapping a pencil against her knee in a rhythm that has nothing to do with the music she’s not listening to.
We’re twenty minutes from O’Hare, four hours from Washington, and I have spent the last eleven minutes being extremely professional about it.
I count the taps. Can’t help it. I’ve been counting things I can’t help since Monday.
Mac drops into the seat beside me, unwrapping a bar that smells strongly of peanut butter. “You’re doing the thing.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“The staring thing.”
“I’m looking out the window.”
“The window’s on the other side.” He takes a bite. He chews and watches me with the patience of a man who has all day. “Road trips are good for two things,” he says, “and losing sleep is one of them.”
“What’s the other one?” He glances at Toni’s row. Glances back at me. Says nothing. Takes another bite. “I’m going to throw you out of this bus.”
“We’re moving.”
“I know.”
He smiles into his peanut butter. The pencil tapping stops.
Toni turns a page on her screen without looking up and somehow that's worse.
I've spent four days learning the difference between Toni not paying attention and Toni paying fierce, deliberate attention to something she's decided not to look at.
She's paying attention to that page like it owes her money.
Fuze climbs over the seats dramatically.
Too invested.
“Okay,” Fuze says, pointing between us. “I need everyone to understand what we’re witnessing here.”
“Don’t,” I say.
“Max Stevens,” he continues loudly, “the man once ejected from a preseason game before the national anthem finished—”
“Historic moment.”
“—is currently making yearning eye contact on a team bus.”
Lucas loses it laughing.
Trey closes his eyes. “This is exhausting.” He leans over the seat back from behind me. “Damian Price emailed the team account.”
“Yeah?”
“Performance review. Two-week marks. You’re the only one getting an individual note.”
“Fantastic.”
“It’s a good note, Max,” he says with the tone he uses when he needs me to actually hear what he says instead of performing like I heard it. “He said your decision-making in Boston showed quote demonstrable progress unquote. Which is Damian Price speak for you’re not a disaster.”
The pencil taps again. Two rows up. “The meaning is clear to me.”
“I know you know. He cc’d the GM. I’m telling you.”
That registers differently. I stare at the seat back in front of me. The GM doesn’t get cc’d on player conduct emails unless someone’s deciding something. “Okay,” I say.
“There’s a contract year conversation coming. Spring. You want that note in the file when it does.”
“Yeah.” I drag a hand through my hair. “I know.”
Trey gives me a look. The other look. The one reserved for things that actually matter. “She’s good,” he says. Muted enough that it doesn’t carry. “At the job. What she’s doing with you.” A pause. “I’m not telling you anything. I’m saying what I see.”
He drops back into his seat before I have to answer. The pencil has stopped tapping.