Chapter 19
"So," I said to my reflection. "How was your day?"
My reflection stared back.
"Right," I said. "We were at the same practice. Okay."
I tried again.
"So." I pointed at my reflection. "Us. You and me. What are we—"
My reflection had the decency to look horrified.
"I like you," I said.
That was—okay. That was a thing a person could say. Simple. Direct. Nathan would appreciate direct. Nathan was a direct person.
"I like you," I said again, trying it out. "I think about you a lot. The thumb thing you did. On my jaw. I think about that a lot."
I closed my eyes.
"Do not say the thumb thing," I told myself.
I opened them.
"What are we doing?" I tried. "Like, what is this? Are you my boyfriend? Can I call you my boyfriend? Are you too old to be called a boyfriend, is there another word, should I ask—"
I stopped.
"Do not ask if he's too old to be called a boyfriend," I said. “He’s not even old.”
I thought about it for a second.
"What do you want from me?" I tried.
Worse. That was way worse.
"What do I want from you?" I tried instead, which was technically more accurate. It was also something I absolutely could not say out loud to Nathan in a restaurant.
I knew what I wanted. That was the problem. I had a very detailed answer to that question, and it was not something you said on a first date. If it was a date. Which it probably was.
"So," I said to my reflection, one more time, with feeling. "Do you come here often?"
My reflection stared at me.
"That's a joke," I told it. "I know that's not—I'm not going to say that."
A pause.
"Probably."
It was time for a different approach. The crowd approach. The thing that had never failed me: the energy, the arms, the grin, the full Morrison experience. I rolled my shoulders back. Took a breath.
I did the Morr Roar.
Full volume. Both hands up, curved into paws. I always did the paws, the crowd loved the paws, fifteen thousand people lost their minds for the paws. I did the paws in my bathroom, at my own reflection, alone, forty minutes before a dinner that was probably a date with my team's doctor.
The sound bounced off the tile and came back at me from four directions.
I stood there in the ringing silence with my hands still up, still curved, still in the paw position, looking at myself.
A grown man.
A professional athlete.
In a bathroom.
Doing paws.
I lowered my hands very slowly.
"Nobody saw that," I told my reflection.
My reflection had seen it. My reflection had seen the whole thing.
"Get it together," I said.
I looked at myself properly for a second.
The hair was doing the thing it did, which was whatever it wanted.
It was disheveled in a way that worked on the ice and in bars and which I was hoping also worked in restaurants.
Brown eyes, which Nathan had looked into approximately a hundred times for medical reasons and which I was hoping he might look into tonight for different ones.
The general Wes Morrison situation, which reporters called boyish and which my brother called annoying and which fifteen thousand people did a lion roar for, for whatever that was worth.
It was worth something.
It had always been worth something.
The question was whether it was worth anything to Nathan Cross.
Get it together, I told myself again.
I went back to the closet.
I had things. I had a lot of things. I had expensive things that fit correctly because I had a stylist now apparently, or I had been dressed by a stylist once, and the experience had made me briefly aware that most of my clothes were wrong in ways I couldn't fully articulate.
Too formal: trying too hard.
Too casual: not trying.
My usual going-out clothes: I look like I'm going to Broderick's. I am not going to Broderick's.
I texted Dylan.
Me: if u were going somewhere nice and u wanted 2 look good but not like u were trying 2 look good what would u wear
Dylan: did you mean to text me
I put my phone face-down on the bed.
I picked an outfit. I stood in front of the mirror. I looked fine. Good, objectively. I knew I looked good.
I changed my shirt.
I put the first shirt back on.
I changed my jacket.
I had been standing in the middle of my living room for at least twenty minutes holding two jackets and saying okay to myself in the tone of someone who had made zero progress on anything when someone knocked on my door.
I opened it.
Dylan?
"Hey," I said. Normal. Easy. A person who was definitely just standing in his apartment holding two jackets for completely ordinary reasons. "What are you doing here?"
"I was close by," Dylan said.
Dylan had dropped by my apartment approximately never in two years of living in the same city.
He was holding something. It looked like it might be food from our parents, one of mom’s containers that made the rounds.
His eyes had already done the thing where they moved to the two jackets in my hands and back to my face.
Knox walked in behind him.
Not invited. Just in, moving through the doorway like the concept of a threshold was optional, and then he was in my living room, and he was looking at it.
"Huh," Knox said, kicking something—a shoe, maybe—on the floor.
"What?" I asked.
"It's cleaner than I expected."
"Yeah, well, I cleaned."
"Morrison." Knox turned in a slow circle, taking inventory. "There are still takeout containers on the counter."
"Those are recent."
"There's a jersey on the floor."
"That's—"
"Is that a skate?" Knox asked, pointing at the corner, "Just on the floor. By itself. Where's the other one?"
"I don't know," I said. "That's not the point—"
"How do you live like this?" He said it without judgment, genuinely curious, like he was observing a habitat.
“Like you can talk?” Dylan asked him. “I saw your apartment before Matthew moved in.”
Knox huffed and pointed. "There are three phone chargers on this idiot’s couch, and none of them are plugged into anything."
I blinked. "Oh shit, really? I've been looking for one of those—"
"Wes." Dylan, from the doorway, still holding the container, watching this with the expression of a man who had seen this behavior for twenty-three years and had made his peace with it. "Who are you going out with?"
"Nobody," I said.
Knox looked at me. "What's his name?"
I tried to think of a lie.
"Don't lie to us," Knox said, because he was smarter than me. "You're holding two jackets and you've been standing here like you’re about to throw up. What's his name?"
"It's not—" I stopped. Started. "I'm just going out."
"On a date," Knox said.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't not say it."
Dylan sat down on the couch, moving one of the unplugged chargers. He had the look. The older brother look, the one that meant he'd already done the math and was waiting.
"Is it the guy from Broderick's?" Dylan said. "The one Jenkins told me about?"
"Which one from Broderick's?" Knox said to Dylan before I could answer.
"I think he was the tall one."
"There were two tall ones hitting on him."
"The one with the—" Dylan did something with his hand near his face.
"Oh," Knox said. "Him. What about that trainer? From the Hawks game? Morr, didn’t you fuck?"
"Jason? No, Jason was—” I started.
"The journalist," Dylan interrupted.
"Let’s fucking hope not. That guy had a podcast," Knox said. "What about the bartender?"
"Which bartender?"
"The one he kept making out with at O'Connor's."
"Oh." Dylan considered it. "No. He keeps texting Jenkins."
"Still?"
"Apparently."
"I'm standing right here," I said.
"Is it the flight attendant?" Knox said.
"No," I said. "It's not any of those. It's someone new. Can we please—"
"Someone new," Dylan and Knox said at the same time.
They both looked at me. Assessing. I was a problem they were solving and I was not a participant in the solving, I was the problem.
"Name," Knox said.
"I'm not—"
"Or physical description," Knox said. "Start talking or I’m going to tell everyone you do the Morr Roar by yourself in your apartment."
I looked at him. “Wait. You heard that?”
“No, you dumbass. It was just a guess. What the hell is wrong with you?” Knox pointed at me. “I don’t actually give a shit about your relationships, but now this is pissing me off. Tell us everything, now.”
"Oh. Well. Um. He’s. . . tall," I said, because I had apparently decided to do this. "Dark hair. Kind of—he's got this whole—" I moved my hand vaguely. "Precise thing. Like, everything he does is very considered. Very—"
"Controlled," Knox said.
"Yes," I said. "Exactly, yeah. And he's—" I stopped. "He's really smart. Like annoyingly smart. And he has this way of looking at you where it feels like he's actually—"
"Seeing you," Knox said.
"Yes," I said, and then heard myself, and looked at Knox, who was watching me with an expression I had never seen on Knox's face before.
"Man," Knox said. "You might as well just date Cross."
The apartment was very quiet.
Dylan looked at Knox. Then at me. Then he laughed, short, dismissive, the laugh of a man who has just heard something absurd.
"Cross," Dylan said. "Right."
"I'm just saying," Knox said.
"Cross hates Wes," Dylan said.
"Does he though?"
"He's pulled him from three games. He dragged him out of a bar. He—"
"Yeah," Knox said. "I know what he did."
“Can you even imagine doc dating someone?” Dylan shook his head. “Has doc ever even smiled? Certainly not at Wes. No, that’s not a guy who's interested in my brother. That's a guy who finds my brother exhausting.”
Knox was watching me.
"I don't know," Knox said, in the tone of a man who did know.
Something shifted in Dylan’s expression, not the full picture, not yet, just the first edge of something he hadn't considered.
Warning alarms were sounding in my head.
"Okay," I said. "Great chat. Thank you both for coming. So good to see you. Time to go."
I moved toward the door.
"Wes—" Dylan said.
"Yep," I said.
"I just want to—"
"Loved this, really, great visit, we should do it again sometime—" I had the door open. I was gesturing at the hallway. "Drive safe."
Knox walked out, and I could see from the set of his shoulders that he was laughing, silently, with his whole body, and had made the decision to do it in the hallway rather than in my face which was the most generous thing Knox had ever done for me.
Dylan stopped in the doorway.
He looked at me for a long moment. The good jacket. The slightly cleaner apartment. Me, with my hand on the door, having the worst poker face of my entire career.
Something moved through his expression.
"Wear the good jacket," he said.
I looked down. I was already wearing it. I had put it on at some point without deciding to.
"Yeah," I said. "Okay."
"Wes."
"Dylan."
He looked at me one more second. Then he nodded, once, and walked out, and I closed the door behind him and stood in my apartment in the good jacket with the lion roar still somewhere in the tile of my bathroom and Knox's voice in my head.
You might as well just date Cross.
I picked up my keys and headed to the restaurant.