Chapter 9
The car was very quiet.
This was a problem I had identified on the way to Cross's apartment last night and had apparently not solved, because here we were again, same car, same quiet, same Cross in the driver's seat doing nothing visibly but existing in a way that took up all available atmospheric space.
The morning was gray outside the windows. Boston doing its thing, overcast and self-contained, the streets not yet fully committed to the day.
My head was a four. Maybe a four and a half. I was choosing to consider this an improvement. I probably just needed coffee.
I was also choosing not to think about Cross's shirt, which I was wearing.
"So do you always kidnap patients," I said, "or am I special?"
Cross looked at the road.
"That's a yes to both," I said. "Interesting."
Nothing.
Why did I expect anything else?
I sighed and watched the city pass the window. A coffee shop with its lights on. A guy walking a dog who had opinions about the pace. The same streets I’d been driven through in the dark, reversed now, making more sense in the morning.
"Your cat," I said.
Cross's jaw did something almost imperceptible. “Leo.”
"Leo," I said. "How long have you had him?"
"Not long."
"Like months? A year?"
"Less than a year."
I waited to see if more was coming. It wasn't.
"Where'd you get him?"
"Wesley—"
"I'm just asking about your cat. This is normal conversation. People talk about their cats."
"I don't," Cross said.
I looked at him. He looked at the road.
"You don't seem like a cat person," I said.
He gave me a look. Just briefly, just for a second, angled sideways, and I had the distinct impression that the look had a temperature and the temperature was cold.
"What?" I asked. "You don't. You seem like a. . . I don't know, a succulent person. Or one of those people who has a single large houseplant.”
"I have a plant," Cross said.
"See—"
"And a cat."
"Right, but the cat seems like a—" I tried to find the word. "An accident."
“Indeed.”
And then we were back to silence.
I let it go, mostly because my head was doing the thing where the car's motion had an opinion and the opinion was mildly unfavorable. I was managing it by looking at the horizon and not talking, which was a skill I had in limited supply but was currently deploying.
The rest of the drive passed without incident or conversation. My building appeared through the windshield like a destination I hadn't entirely believed in, and Cross pulled up in front of it and stopped with a finality that was slightly more abrupt than the traffic conditions required.
I sat in the passenger seat for a second.
The Ice Doc, I thought, really did hate me.
Which was fine. That was fine, I had established this, it was documented and accounted for in my understanding of my own life.
He'd tolerated me through the night because that was his job, because benching me in my rookie season and removing me from bars and monitoring my concussion overnight were all the same category of activity to Cross: asset management.
Franchise liability control. Wesley Morrison, problem to be solved, filed and handled.
I was very tired of being handled.
"Practice tomorrow," I said. I reached for the door.
"Yes." A pause. "You won't be playing."
I stopped.
I turned back around.
Cross was looking at the windshield, hands still on the wheel. His voice had the same weight it always had, not heavy, just final, like the words had already been true before he said them and he was merely reporting it.
"Rest," he said. "Hydration. No contact. I want to reassess before I clear you to go back out with the team."
“Are you serious right now?”
“I’m always serious.”
He wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring out the stupid windshield, telling me I couldn’t skate, and he wouldn’t even look at me?
I huffed a laugh. "Pulling people off the ice," I said. "You love it." A pause. "Or is it just me you love it with?"
He didn't answer immediately, which with Cross meant something. Cross always knew what he was going to say.
"You're not cleared," he said.
"I need your permission?"
"As the team doctor, yes."
The words sat between us, plain and undefended, just yes, no explanation attached, no apology for it.
I got out of the car.
The air outside was cold and damp. I had my door half-closed when my foot found the curb at the wrong angle, not a fall, not a stumble, just a brief disagreement between my foot and the ground about where exactly the ground was. I caught myself on the door frame.
In my peripheral vision, Cross moved.
Not much. Just forward, toward the passenger side. I didn't look at him directly. I didn't want to see the expression, because I was standing on a sidewalk in his shirt with a headache that was still a four and a half and the last thing I needed was whatever Cross's face was doing right now.
I pushed the door shut.
The car didn't move immediately. I knew this because I walked to the building entrance without looking back. He was still there when I pulled the door open. I could feel it in the way you felt things you were pretending not to notice.
Then I heard him pull away.
The lobby was warm and bright and smelled like the building, familiar and ordinary, and I took the elevator up and stood in it watching the numbers and running an inventory.
Head: four, maybe trending three. Stomach: resolved, mostly.
Dignity: not available at this time, check back later.
I got to my door and got inside and stood in my apartment, which was a chaos of unpacked boxes and takeout containers and the accumulated evidence of a person who lived there without really living there, and looked at all of it.
Then I caught a faint trace of clean soap.
I looked down.
His shirt. Cross's shirt, too wide in the shoulders, still on my body, which I had apparently walked out of Cross's apartment and into the car and out of the car and into my building and up the elevator in without once taking it off.
Great, I thought.
Now I smell like him.
I pulled it off, dropped it on the couch, and went to find my own clothes—and I did not think about the way he'd moved toward the passenger door before I'd slammed it.
I did not think about any of it.
I thought about it the entire time.