Chapter 10 #2
“Yeah.” I forced myself to sound casual. Aloof. “Sometimes you want quiet.”
“Yeah,” she echoed. “Quiet.”
We didn’t move for a breath or two. Then she nodded toward me.
“Lead the way?”
My room looked like I’d barely checked in—which was accurate. I’d changed clothes for the game, not wanting to still be in the outfit I’d worn on the plane, but my carry-on suitcase sat open on the bench at the foot of the bed, still mostly packed.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said automatically. I grabbed the shirt and joggers I’d traveled in off of the bed and tossed them into my open suitcase.
Dani stepped inside, taking it all in. I imagined her room was the mirror image of mine, but with two beds instead of one. “This is nothing. You’ve seen how Cat travels. She makes every hotel room look like a crime scene.”
Despite everything—the nerves, the suspended what-are-we-doing energy—I laughed. Dani looked proud of herself.
She sat on the corner of the single king-sized bed, comfortable but not too comfortable, like she was respecting an unspoken boundary. I grabbed the room service menu from the desk and joined her, careful not to sit too close.
But close enough.
“So,” I said, flipping through the menu’s pages. “What are you in the mood for?”
“I just burned like a thousand calories,” she said, leaning in to look. “Everything.”
When she leaned in, she was close enough for her shoulder to graze mine. Close enough that I could smell her—the clean scent of her soap and a hint of the laundry detergent the team’s equipment manager probably used. My head went fuzzy.
I handed off the menu to her, fully frazzled. “Your choice.”
Dani glanced up at me as she took it. “Careful,” she said. “You used to regret giving me that kind of control.”
My brain, already struggling, short-circuited completely.
Dani picked up the hotel phone and punched the room service button. She glanced over at me while the call rang.
“You still a chicken nuggets person?” she asked.
My mouth formed a slight pout. “That feels judgmental.”
She smiled to herself just as someone answered on the other end. Her voice shifted automatically—a polite, professional athlete with media-training.
“Hi, yes—I’d like to order some food, please.” She paused. “Can we do the chicken nuggets?”
She covered the receiver with her hand. “Fries or onion rings?”
I sat up in bed. “Yes.”
Dani laughed softly into the phone. “I guess we’re getting both.”
I watched her as she confirmed the order, nodding slightly. She looked comfortable. At ease. Like this—ordering food together, late at night in a hotel room—was the most natural thing in the world.
“Oh—and cheesecake,” she added.
She thanked the hotel staffer and hung up, careful to set the phone back into its cradle. “Shouldn’t be too long,” she announced.
“Cheesecake, eh?”
She shrugged, unbothered. “We’ll split it,” she reasoned as she settled back onto the bed. “Half the calories.”
The question had been sitting in the back of my mind ever since the shock of seeing her downstairs had worn off: “Were you waiting for me in the lobby?”
Dani’s eyebrow lifted. “What?”
“Down in the lobby,” I repeated. I tried to sound casual, but failed. “You were just … there.”
“We always stay at this hotel when we play New York.”
I blinked. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
I held up my hands. “I swear I didn’t know that.”
I’d booked the room because of the hotel’s proximity to the arena. Plus, it wasn’t a dump and was moderately priced.
She tilted her head slightly. “You think I was keeping tabs on you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You heavily implied it,” she countered.
I huffed a laugh. “It just felt suspicious.”
Dani smiled. “Maybe I was hoping I’d run into you.”
My curiosity was far from sated. Staying at the same hotel was one thing—teams had routines, media booked nearby all the time—but the same floor? I refused to let her easy flirting derail the question.
“Did you see me at the game?” I pressed.
“In the stands?”
I nodded.
“There were a lot of people in that arena, Reese. In fact,” she noted, “we might have even set an attendance record tonight.”
A sharp knock at the door interrupted my interrogation.
I rose from the bed and waggled my finger at her. “This isn’t over,” I chided.
Dani grinned and reclined even more on the bed, crossing her feet at her ankles and folding her arms behind her head.
Room service had neatly arranged Dani’s oversized food order onto a single tray. We sat cross-legged on top of the duvet with the containers spread between us. The food was steaming, the fries perfect, the chicken nuggets crispy. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I started eating.
Dani bit into an onion ring and groaned dramatically. “Oh my God. Why does food taste better after a loss?”
“I guess you should lose more often,” I joked.
“Bite your tongue.”
I reached out without thinking and flicked a deep-fried crumb off the front of her hoodie.
Her eyes dropped to my hand, still hovering between us.
Fifteen years was disappearing with terrifying ease. Muscle memory didn’t care about time or distance or breakups.
Dani reached for a fry and brushed salt from her fingers like she’d already decided to ignore the too-familiar gesture.
“So,” she began, “you’re writing a story about away games.”
I instantly bristled. “It’s not ground-breaking journalism, but fans like looking behind-the-scenes.”
Dan held her hands in a defensive position. “Hey, I’m not judging.”
“No,” I sighed. “You’re not. But maybe I am.”
I stared down at the food between us and turned a fry over in my fingers. Grease covered the tips of my fingers.
“Sometimes it feels like I’m writing the same story over and over. Different city, different sport,” I said, “but it’s always the same thing. Big game tonight. Tough loss. We’ll get ‘em next time.”
The words came out easier than they should.
“I keep telling myself what I do matters,” I went on. “But sometimes I wonder if I’m just filling space.”
I focused hard on the faint geometric pattern stitched into the duvet, suddenly embarrassed by how much I’d revealed.
I didn’t talk about work like this. I’d never actually vocalized job dissatisfaction before.
Reporting on women’s sports was supposed to be different—the job that made a difference.
The proof I hadn’t wasted years prioritizing a career over everything else.
Across from me, Dani had fallen silent.
“All the rinks feel the same after a while,” she said finally. “Same ice, same boards, same awful locker room smell. You fly somewhere, play, and then leave.”
She smiled faintly, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Half the time I have to stop and remind myself what city I’m even in.”
She picked apart an onion ring, separating the breading from onion with careful fingers.
“That’s why the stuff outside the game matters so much to me,” she said. “Community skates, school visits, working with kids.”
I watched her while she talked. The lines at the corners of her mouth were new. Not age exactly—experience. College Dani had grinned constantly, reckless and bright and convinced the world would arrange itself around her and her talent.
We kept eating. We kept talking. Talking about the game. Talking about nothing. Easy things. Familiar things. At one point she shifted to grab a fork and her knee touched mine.
She didn’t move it.
Neither did I.
She swallowed, throat working. “Feels like old times.”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a way.”
“Better, maybe.”
I looked up. “Better?”
She held my gaze. “Yeah.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t know what she meant. I didn’t know if I wanted to know what she meant.
But I felt it.
She reached for the cheesecake and set it between us. “You can take the first bite.”
“You’re the one who had a game tonight,” I rejected.
“Humor me. I’m being polite,” she said, echoing what I’d said earlier in the elevator.
The callback made my chest tighten.
I took the fork mostly so I wouldn’t have to react. I took a bite. The cheesecake was cold and impossibly rich.
She watched my mouth a little too long.
“This is dangerous,” I mumbled around the bite.
“The cheesecake …” Her voice dipped, “or the situation?”
I swallowed with difficulty.
Dani looked away almost immediately. “I didn’t mean—sorry. That came out weird.”
“No,” I said quietly. “It didn’t.”
I passed her the fork and our fingers brushed. It wasn’t an accident this time.
“We should probably …” she began.
She didn’t finish. I didn’t think she knew the ending. Neither did I.
“Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”
But neither of us made a move to stand.
Her leg was still pressed against mine. Her breathing was slower now. Her eyes darker than they’d been earlier.
For a moment—just one—there was a world where I could have leaned in. Or she could have. Where something could have happened.
But she exhaled, long and low, and broke the spell.
“I should get back to my room,” she said. “Cat probably thinks I got kidnapped.”
She stood, and the loss of contact felt immediate. The space between us felt too wide all of a sudden.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said.
She rubbed her jaw—a nervous tell I remembered from college before big exams, before playoffs, before saying something vulnerable.
“Well—goodnight, Reese.”
“Goodnight, Dani.”
She hesitated at the door. Just a half-second. A small, suspended moment where I thought—please, just stay.
But she didn’t.
She slipped out into the hall, and the latch clicked behind her.
I stayed on the bed for a long time, breathing the charged, leftover air. And the part of me I’d been trying to keep quiet whispered that someday soon, we were going to have to stop almost-ing.
I dragged out my bedtime routine afterward, lingering over meaningless tasks like they might settle me. Like brushing my teeth or folding clothes could quiet the pull I felt whenever Dani and I were alone.
My phone buzzed.
I wanted to kiss you.
My breath caught in my throat and my body flushed with an unexpected heat. I pictured Dani’s dark, intense eyes, and the way they always seemed to be cataloguing me and my actions. I thought about the heat of her knee as it pressed innocently against my thigh while we sat on the bed.
My fingers tripped over my response.
Why didn’t you?
I stared at the words. Things were unraveling just as I’d suspected they would.
I closed my eyes, took a breath—
—and deleted it.
Goodnight, Dani.
I’ll see you back in Boston.
I hit send before I could change my mind.