Chapter 8 Elise #2
The word hit harder than she was prepared for.
Grief. She'd been calling it frustration, calling it boredom, calling it the natural impatience of an athlete sidelined.
Calling it grief made it real. Made it bigger than a shoulder injury and a rehab timeline and the number of weeks until she could lace up her skates again.
She pressed her thumbnail into her palm beneath the sling, the sharp crescent of it grounding her.
"Nobody else gets it," Elise said. "My friends are trying, but they're still in it.
They've got the next game and the next training session and the next road trip, and I'm sitting in my apartment eating takeaway for the third night in a row watching highlights on my phone.
They can't see what this is like from the inside because they've never been on the outside. "
Sienna's hands were still in her lap. "I have."
Two words. Quiet, without weight or drama, but Elise looked down from the ceiling and met Sienna's gaze and saw it: the recognition.
Not sympathy, not pity, not the well-meaning but hollow "I'm sure it'll be fine" that everyone else offered.
Recognition. Sienna knew what this felt like because she'd lived it.
The tennis career, the broken ankle, the six months in a boot watching other players take her place.
She had stood on the outside of her own life and watched it move on without her, and that shared wound was more comforting than anything Lou or Frankie or her mother had said in three weeks.
Elise swallowed hard. "Thank you. For actually hearing me."
Sienna held her gaze. The medical suite was very quiet. "Anytime."
The moment stretched between them. Then Elise cleared her throat and pulled her zip-up back on, one-armed and awkward again, and the mood shifted back toward ground she could stand on.
"Come over to mine tonight," she said. "For dinner."
The words came out with more confidence than she felt.
She'd been thinking about it since yesterday, since the walk back from Lavender's when their arms had brushed and neither of them had moved away.
She wanted more of that. More of the conversation and the ease and the way Sienna made her feel seen instead of broken.
Sienna's hands stilled on her tablet. "Tonight?"
"Nothing fancy. Just food and company. I'm tired of eating alone." She kept her voice casual, but her heart was hammering. "You could meet my terrible cooking."
Sienna's eyebrow rose. "I've noticed your terrible cooking in the players kitchen. You burned toast yesterday and ate it anyway."
"That was for the crunch."
Sienna's mouth curved. She looked down at her tablet, then back at Elise, and the internal debate was visible on her face. Her fingers tapped once against the tablet case, a tiny, restless movement.
"I'll come," Sienna said. "But I'm picking up the food. You are not cooking with one arm."
"That's insulting."
"That's a medical directive." The softness in Sienna's voice took the edge off the words, and Elise grinned, and Sienna's cheeks coloured, and the whole room felt brighter.
Elise was already backing toward the door. "Seven?"
"Seven."
Elise gathered her bag and headed for the door with a lightness in her step that hadn't been there when she'd arrived.
At the threshold, she turned back. Sienna was already at her laptop again, but her posture was different, softer, and there was the ghost of a smile on her face that she probably didn't know was there.
"See you tonight, Sienna."
"See you tonight."
She walked out of Medical and down the corridor toward the team lounge with the dinner plan glowing in her chest like a warm coal.
The corridor was busier now, the facility fully awake, and the sounds of the team filled the building in all the ways that usually made her ache.
But for the first time in weeks, the ache was muted.
Sienna was coming to her apartment. Tonight. For dinner.
She pushed through the lounge door.
The team lounge was a large, bright room with leather sofas and a wall-mounted screen showing game replays and a kitchenette in the corner where someone had made coffee that smelled burned.
The windows looked out onto the parking lot, where the late morning sun threw sharp shadows across the asphalt.
Lou was on one of the sofas with Camille, both in training gear.
Frankie was sprawled in an armchair with her legs over the armrest, scrolling her phone.
Dani sat cross-legged on the floor near the window, her braided hair damp from practice, eating a banana with the calm, unhurried focus she brought to everything.
And Lex was at the kitchenette counter, pouring coffee, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
"Moreno!" Frankie swung her legs down. "How's the shoulder?"
"Getting there." Elise flexed her shoulder gingerly.
"Getting there means what? Playing soon? Playing eventually? Playing in my lifetime?"
"Playing when Dr. Park says so."
Frankie waggled her eyebrows. "Ah, Dr. Park. How is the good doctor?"
Elise ignored the eyebrow waggle and sat down on the sofa opposite Lou and Camille. The leather was cold against the backs of her legs.
Lou looked up from her phone. "You look better."
Elise blinked. "I do?"
"Less like someone kicked your dog." Lou's gaze was sharp and assessing as it always was, the captain's eye that missed nothing. "You've been looking rough, Elise. Don't argue, you have. But today you look better."
Elise shrugged with her good shoulder. "Good rehab session."
Lou held her gaze, then went back to her phone. She didn't push it. Lou never pushed. She saw, and she let it go, and Elise loved her for it.
Camille leaned forward from behind Lou's shoulder. "We're talking about Saturday's game. Montreal's defence has been tight this season and Mara wants to run a new power play set. Lex has an idea for a cross-ice pass sequence that could exploit their weak-side coverage."
"It's not just an idea," Lex said from the kitchenette.
She came over with her coffee and settled onto the arm of the sofa beside Frankie.
Her energy was restless and bright, the kinetic confidence of someone who was playing the best hockey of her career and knew it.
"I've been watching their penalty kill footage.
Their left D-man cheats to the slot every time.
If Camille sets up on the half-wall and I drift to the far post, there's a seam that opens up for a one-timer. "
"Show me," Lou said, and Lex grabbed a pen and started drawing on a napkin, and suddenly the lounge was alive with hockey talk.
Lines and formations and defensive reads and the velocity of Camille's wrist shot from the left circle.
Frankie jumped in with a point about puck retrieval.
Dani made a quiet observation about the Montreal goalie's glove-side weakness.
Lou listened to everyone and then said three sentences that somehow synthesised all of it into a coherent strategy.
Elise sat in the middle of it and felt the gap widen.
Not that they excluded her. Camille asked her opinion on the power play formation and she gave it, and Lex nodded and said "good point" with genuine respect.
But when the conversation moved on, it moved on without her, back to the game she couldn't play and the ice she couldn't touch.
Lex was animated, talking about the Montreal game with a fire that said she was about to be brilliant and knew it.
Camille leaned into Lou's side. Dani braided her hair with both hands, calm and fully present.
She picked at the protein bar wrapper in her lap, rolling the foil into a tight cylinder between her fingers.
On the screen behind Lou's head, game footage played on mute, the Valkyries' last road win.
There she was on the ice in the opening shift, number seventeen, digging a puck out of the corner with the ruthless efficiency she'd built her career on.
Four weeks ago. It could have been four years.
Frankie glanced over. "You okay, Moreno?"
"Fine. Just tired."
Frankie studied her. The joking energy dropped away and what was left underneath was sharper, more careful. "You'd tell us, right? If you weren't fine?"
Elise picked at the wrapper in her lap. "I'm fine, Frankie."
"Because you've got that look. The one where you're smiling but your eyes aren't in on it."
Elise forced a grin and dropped the balled-up foil wrapper onto the table. "My eyes are fully in on it."
Frankie didn't look convinced but she let it go, bumping Elise's good shoulder gently before turning back to Lex's napkin formation.
Elise stood up. "I'm going to head out. Good luck on Saturday."
"You're coming to watch, right?" Frankie asked.
"Wouldn't miss it."
She left the lounge with a wave that felt hollow and walked through the corridor toward the exit. The sounds of the team faded behind her, muffled by the closing door, and the corridor was quiet again. Her trainers squeaked on the polished floor.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
Any dietary restrictions I should know about? — S
Sienna. Already planning the dinner. The message was so perfectly her, practical and organised, that Elise smiled despite the weight sitting on her chest.
No restrictions. Surprise me.
I'll try. See you at seven.
Elise pocketed her phone and pushed through the staff exit into the parking lot.
The sun was warm on her face. The salt air carried in from the ocean, mixing with the smell of hot asphalt and the jasmine that grew along the stadium fence.
She stood by her car for a moment, keys in her good hand, and let the two feelings sit side by side in her chest: the ache of being on the outside, and the quiet comfort of someone on the inside seeing her there.
Seven o'clock. Sienna at her door. Food she didn't have to cook. Conversation that didn't make her feel invisible.
She got in the car and drove home.