9. Maya
Maya
I look at it every night I'm here late. Boston. Seven hundred fucking miles from wherever Cole and Dante end up after the draft.
Twenty games down, eight left. The Titans are climbing the conference standings with the steady rhythm of a team that knows exactly what the next six weeks mean.
My laptop screen glows in the dim room. The document open in front of me is a profile.
Top line: Voss-Maddox. Twelve hundred words on the most productive offensive pairing in the conference.
Their chemistry on the ice, the way they move through transition, the silent adjustments that turn routine plays into goals.
If this piece lands the way I need it to, it goes in the portfolio. The portfolio goes to the Globe.
Earlier tonight, Cole leaned in the doorway with two coffees, one already half-empty, the other held out toward me.
"You're here late," he said.
"I'm always here late."
"I know." His mouth curved, a shadow of a smile. "That's the problem."
He set the coffee on my desk, and his fingers brushed the edge of the keyboard—a touch that landed somewhere low in my stomach. "Dante says your piece on the weak-side rotation changed how he reads zone entries."
My hands stopped on the keys. "He said that?"
"He said 'the data was useful.'" Cole's shoulder rested against the frame, the hallway light behind him catching the edge of his jaw, the chain at his neck. He smelled like the arena—ice and soap and the cold that clings to clothes after a rink. "For Dante, that's a marriage proposal."
"Go home, Cole."
"Going." He pushed off the frame. "Eat something."
His knuckles rapped once on the doorframe as he left, and the sound echoed in the empty hallway long after he was gone.
The coffee sat on my desk, still warm. I wrapped both hands around it, and the ceramic held the trace of his warmth, transferring it through the cup into my palms. I held it there until the heat was mine.
Now it's eleven. The cup is empty, drained an hour ago and pushed to the corner beside the keyboard when I needed the space for my notes. The cursor blinks at the end of the third paragraph.
I type a sentence. Delete it. Type another. Delete that too.
My right hand reaches into my bag, finds the side pocket where the recorder used to sit. My fingers close on nothing but fabric lining and the slight depression still pressed into the shape of the device. Two and a half weeks since I left it on Dante's desk and walked out of his doorway without it.
I pull my right hand back. Both hands settle on the keyboard.
The hockey itself is easy. I can write about their transition game, their cycle patterns, the way Cole reads Dante's cuts before they happen, shifting a half-step before the puck moves.
The numbers. The statistical anomaly of a line that's played together since high school and still produces like this. That's data. That's my job.
The cursor blinks.
The hard part is everything between the hockey.
The line changes where Cole's body angles toward Dante before the puck even drops.
The way Dante's chin lifts a fraction when Cole comes off the bench, the muscle in his jaw easing in a way it doesn't ease for anyone else.
The stick taps after goals—always the same place, low on the shin, where cameras catch nothing and the gesture stays between them.
The memory comes back whole: music upstairs, a party loud enough to hide everything underneath it, a sliver of light through a door left ajar.
Dante's hand on the back of Cole's neck.
Cole's mouth on Dante's throat. The press of their bodies against the far wall, close enough that the light between them vanished.
I backed out before the floor creaked. Before either of them turned.
Six years. Every article I've written about the Voss-Maddox line has a blank space carved out of the middle of it.
Their chemistry is the product of six years of shared ice time, a rarity in college hockey.
The sentence sits on the screen, sterile and safe.
My phone buzzes against the desk. The vibration rattles the wood. I glance down.
Unknown number. Area code 413.
My hand stops. Western Massachusetts.
The phone buzzes again. Three seconds. Four. Five. The screen pulses white in the dim room.
The room narrows around me, the edges of my vision graying out until only the desk lamp's circle stays sharp.
My palms flatten against the wood, bracing.
Somewhere underneath the adrenaline, a memory surfaces—not a sound from the phone, but the specific quiet of the house that area code belongs to.
A door closing too softly in a house where soft meant something was about to happen.
The call stops. The screen goes dark. Duration: six seconds.
I pick up the phone. My thumb hovers over the call log. The number sits there, a string of digits that means nothing and everything. I could save it. I could file it the way I file everything, cataloged, cross-referenced, kept on record.
Instead I press delete. The entry disappears.
I've never deleted data before. I file, I hold, I keep—that's what I do. This I erase, and something under my ribs contracts once before I lock the screen.
Four seconds in. Four hold. Four out. I repeat it until the rhythm steadies my pulse. The room settles back into place—desk, corkboard, laptop, the unfinished profile waiting on the screen.
My right hand rests on the phone. My left stays on the keyboard. I could call Richard. I could text my mother.
My right hand moves back to the keyboard.
I look at the third paragraph.
Their chemistry is the product of six years of shared ice time, a rarity in college hockey that coaches and scouts consistently cite as the Titans' most significant competitive advantage.
The sentence stays. I write the next one.
The Voss-Maddox transition game operates on a read-and-react system that eliminates the half-second delay most pairings experience between recognition and execution. Voss signals nothing. Maddox waits for nothing. The cut happens and the pass is already there.
The words appear clean on the screen. I keep typing. The office hums quietly around me. The desk lamp pools light across the keyboard. My fingers move steadily, the rhythm returning.
Twenty minutes pass.
My phone buzzes against the desk. My elbows jerk off the surface. The chair wheels scrape back two inches. My hands lift before I realize they've moved.
The screen lights up. Chronicle notification. Staff schedule update.
I exhale through my nose, a sharp sound in the quiet, and pull the chair back in. My hands return to the keyboard, but the muscles in my forearms stay tight, coiled.
The piece. Focus.
My fingers move again.
Voss's neutral zone reads have improved significantly since the Greystone game, suggesting an external input that the coaching staff hasn't publicly acknowledged.
I stop typing. The cursor blinks.
External input.
I showed him the data. He acted on it. The improvement I'm writing about exists because I crossed a line between covering the subject and influencing the subject, and I'm sitting here documenting the results without disclosing that the analyst and the external input are the same person.
A month ago he called it tourism. Observation from a safe distance.
The word still sits in my chest like a splinter I can't reach.
He was wrong. A tourist doesn't hand her subject shot charts across a dining hall table.
A tourist doesn't watch the data change and feel it in her chest, a low, hot pull that has nothing to do with hockey.
I'm not sixty feet above the ice anymore. I'm in it.
And I did that to myself. I crossed the line because the data was good and the conversation pulled me forward and I let it, and the proof is sitting on my screen.
The tourism line still burns. It burns worse now because I erased that separation on my own.
I leave the disclosure out. The blank space stays where it is.
The dining hall is still in my body while I type.
Cole's knee against mine—the pressure still mapped on my skin days later, a brand I can't scrub off.
The heat on my neck that climbed when Dante leaned forward lives there now, a low burn that would still answer if my hand drifted to my collarbone.
My hands stay on the keys. The collar of his hoodie slipping.
The flush I didn't know was happening until it was too late to stop it.
The tightness across my shoulders like every muscle along my spine locked the second I stood up from that booth and hasn't let go since.
Forty-five minutes pass. The piece keeps coming, easier than it should, because I've routed around the truth. Tactical analysis, quotes, the structure of a feature meant to show exactly what I can do with a game. My hands move steadily across the keys. The sentences fall into place.
The notebook is in the drawer. I leave it there. But my hand keeps drifting to the drawer pull between paragraphs, fingers resting on the metal before I pull them back.
Thirty minutes pass before I stop pulling them back.
The drawer slides open. The paper inside smells faintly of ink and cardboard. I flip to a blank page.
Unknown call. 413 area code. 11:03pm. Duration: 6 sec. Deleted from log. Physical response: HR elevated. Peripheral graying. Hands braced. Flinch on subsequent notification (11:47pm). Time to baseline: Incomplete.
I stare at the last word. Incomplete. The ink glistens under the desk lamp, still wet.
I close the notebook and slide it back into the drawer.
The laptop clock reads past midnight when I file the profile.
The send confirmation flashes on the screen.
I close the laptop, slide it into my bag, lift the bag onto my shoulder.
Jacket off the hook by the door, badge dropped into the side pocket where I always keep it.
My hands move through the motions automatically.
I watch my hands while I zip the jacket, like they belong to someone else.
The walk back to my apartment takes ten minutes across campus.
Late-winter cold bites through the air, the raw kind that comes after the snow stops but before anything thaws.
My breath leaves my mouth in thin white ribbons.
Streetlights throw pale circles across the cleared paths. The quad is almost empty.
Halfway across, two figures step out of the library doors. Gio. Zoe.
I slow. His arm rests across her shoulders. Her body leans into his side. His hand sits low on her arm, fingers curled loosely. Her hip pressed against his. No gap. It's one in the morning. The quad is empty. There's nobody to perform for.
They walk past a pool of light. His head dips toward hers. She says something and his laugh carries across the cold air, soft and unguarded. The sound of a man who can breathe.
I start walking again. From sixty feet away, you can see everything and understand nothing.
They disappear around the corner of the science building.
I pull my phone out of my coat pocket as I cross under the next streetlight, thumb already on the screen because Cole always texts at this hour and I'm tired of flinching at the buzz. It buzzes against my palm a second later. My shoulders twitch. Small. Quick. I look down.
Cole: You still at the office? It's almost 1am, Maya.
My thumbs move.
Me: Walking home now.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Cole: Want me to come meet you?
I stop under a streetlight and stare at the screen. Cole awake at one in the morning. Watching the time. Offering to walk across campus in the cold. He's been doing that since we were fourteen, and the fact that it still happens now closes my throat.
Me: I'm fine. Almost home.
Cole: Text me when you're in.
Me: Okay.
I pause. Start another message.
Cole, I got a call tonight.
The words sit there. My thumb hits backspace. One letter at a time. The sentence disappears.
I stare at the blank text field. The cursor blinks, waiting.
I type:
Goodnight.
Send.
My apartment building comes into view. Inside, the hallway is silent. I lock the door. Check the windows. Slide the chain into place.
My phone lights up in my hand.
Me: In.
Cole responds almost instantly. The moon emoji. He's been sending it since high school. The nights I sat on my bedroom floor with my phone in my hand and the house quiet around me. I'm up if you need me.
I sit on the edge of my bed without taking my coat off. My keys are still in my hand, the metal warming against my palm. The jacket is heavy on my shoulders, holding the outside cold against my body like it hasn't decided I'm home yet.
The moon glows on the screen.
My phone buzzes again. Not a text. A call. The screen lights up the dark room.
Unknown. 413.