1. Evan #2
Seven, eight of us around the tables. The room running at its Tuesday-evening energy — close enough to game pace that no one had fully exhaled, but far enough from game day that the exhale was possible.
The named ones and the unnamed ones, the veterans and the guys who were still figuring out what this level required of them.
You learned a team by watching who talked and who listened and who did both at the right moments.
This one was still learning itself. First season. Everything being written for the first time.
—
This was the part everyone pretended didn't matter.
It always mattered.
The hour. The window after practice when the game pressure hadn't fully lifted but the formality was gone and everyone was just themselves.
Hayes delivering his read on Petrov's positioning thesis with the economy of someone who had made his point and intended to make it only once.
Petrov gesturing too broadly and nearly clearing someone's glass off the table.
Mason eating — there was always food materializing in front of Mason — half-listening to four conversations at once, his attention distributed across the table in the particular way of someone who was always tracking the room.
The table got loud fast. Someone brought up a call from last week's game that had gone against us, and the table divided immediately and pleasurably along predictable lines. Nobody wanted a resolution. The argument was the thing.
Two weeks from now, every call like that would matter differently. Right now it was still safe to argue about it over drinks.
The orbit built the way it always did — gradually, then all at once.
People at nearby tables noticing. A few conversations in the room reorienting in our direction.
Someone came over for a photo. Viktor stood up for it immediately, chin down, shoulders back, the expression he'd workshopped.
The younger guys signed things. The server sent over a round we hadn't ordered.
I signed an autograph for a kid who couldn't have been older than twelve and was somehow out at a bar on a Tuesday night. His parents looked mildly apologetic. I told him to keep playing.
After a while I stepped outside.
The path was simple — through the open doors, past the last two tables, out onto the deck.
The transition between inside and outside had its own quality here, the bar noise dropping off quickly once you cleared the doorway.
The deck boards were worn smooth, the railing solid under my hands when I put my drink down and leaned against it.
The water. I stood there and looked at the river the way I'd been looking at it since the first time we'd come here — the marina lights doing their slow movement on the surface, the far bank dark and green against the evening sky, a single boat in the channel with its running lights on against the last of the light.
The air off the water at this hour was slightly cooler than inside.
Quieter in a way that had nothing to do with sound level — something about being close to moving water that quieted a different part of the brain.
Jacksonville had this quality I'd started to appreciate. The water was always close enough to feel. Here the river was present in almost everything — the light, the air, the way the city oriented itself toward the water even when you couldn't see it.
It was a good city. I'd decided that early in the season and hadn't reconsidered.
I finished my drink and went back in.
—
The table had expanded while I was gone.
Viktor was on his feet demonstrating a play sequence using a beer bottle and a coaster.
Hayes was watching with an expression of complete neutrality.
Mason had finished eating and was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, monitoring the room the way he monitored most things — from a slight remove, like he was keeping an informal count.
I sat back down and read the table automatically.
Drinks arriving. Someone explaining something too loudly over the music.
The girls from two tables over now at the edge of our group, standing rather than sitting, the particular body language of people who had attached themselves to something without being formally included.
The table had started attracting orbit. It always did. It wasn't something you stopped — only managed. You learned the edges of the public version of yourself in rooms like this. You learned where you ended and the performance began.
I wasn't the loudest thing at the table. I never was. That was Viktor's job, and he was good at it.
My phone buzzed on the table.
Unknown number. 404 area code — Atlanta. I let it sit for a second, running a quick inventory of who in Atlanta might have a reason to call. Nothing obvious. I picked it up.
"Evan Shaw?"
The voice on the other end was calm. Precise. The particular tone of someone accustomed to getting to the point.
He stood in the parking lot and held the phone slightly tighter than he needed to.
He noted that and kept moving.
"This is Blair Collins. I'm calling about your house."