5. Cyaire #4
I laugh and turn to look out the window again.
Seattle grows larger and more detailed around us with every passing minute, the city filling in the spaces between buildings, becoming itself.
The Space Needle appears briefly between two structures before disappearing behind them again, fleeting and then gone.
For some reason, the sight of it makes everything feel more real.
“So, when do we start?” I ask.
“Tomorrow.”
My eyebrows rise toward the hood still covering my head. “This is the mystery meeting?”
“Yes, tomorrow is introductions,” Jasper continues, shifting into the efficient register he uses when he’s working through a list. “We’re meeting with the production team, studio representatives, and several people from the Seattle Vipers organization.”
That gets my attention in a way that the rest of the schedule has not.
“The Vipers?” I ask in surprise.
“Yes.”
I shift slightly in my seat. The image of Jamie on that airport banner resurfaces without being summoned. Number seventeen. One hand on the Cup. That completely unguarded smile.
I push the thought aside with the practiced discipline of a man who has been doing exactly this for two months, and I concentrate on what Jasper is saying.
“They’ve been fantastic partners throughout the early stages,” Jasper continues. “Climate Pledge Arena is available. Several of their facilities are available. The organization is fully committed to helping make the project feel authentic.”
“Authentic,” I repeat.
“Authentic.”
I laugh. “That’s a dangerous word when we’re talking about me and hockey.”
“Which brings me to my next point,” Jasper says, and the slight shift in his tone is the only warning I get.
“What next point?” I ask, with the wariness of a man who has learned to read Jasper’s conversational gear changes.
“You need help,” he says, quickly enough that it lands before I can prepare for it.
“Wow. Tell me what you really think.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Still rude,” I grumble, without real feeling.
Jasper, predictably, ignores me. “The production team is assigning a hockey liaison.”
I nod slowly, the wariness dissolving into something more useful. That actually sounds reasonable. That actually sounds like exactly what this situation requires.
“What exactly does a hockey liaison do?”
“They answer questions. They help with terminology. They explain systems and routines and locker room culture and training methods and practice structure and skating mechanics. Essentially, anything you need in order to genuinely understand the world you’re stepping into rather than simply performing your idea of it. ”
I exhale, slow and deliberate. “Thank God.”
“That worried?”
“Jasper, the last time I wore skates I was a teenager and I spent more time horizontal than vertical.”
His laughter fills the line. “You’ll be fine.”
“That’s very easy for you to say. Nobody’s expecting you to look convincing on ice.”
“I’d look fantastic on ice, for the record. I can skate.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
His laughter continues for a moment and then settles.
For the first time since I answered the phone, the nervous energy that has been sitting somewhere behind my sternum loosens slightly, as though something has been given permission to relax.
Maybe because the project finally feels real rather than hypothetical.
Maybe because for the first time since I landed, I understand exactly why I’m here and what I’m doing and what comes next.
Maybe because I finally have something concrete and purposeful to orient myself around, something that isn’t a hockey banner or a question I can’t answer.
Whatever the reason, the uncertainty starts quietly giving way to something that feels considerably more like excitement.
The conversation continues for several more minutes before Jasper finally exhausts his notes. Which may, in fact, be a historical first.
“Alright,” he says. “I’ll send the full schedule over tonight.”
“I’ll actually read it.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” he says, the echo deliberate.
I laugh. “Talk to you later, Jasper.”
“See you tomorrow, movie star.”
The call ends.
I lower the phone into my lap and sit with the quiet for a moment, looking out the window as the city goes about its business with complete indifference to any of mine.
Three years ago, I met a stranger in a hotel bar.
Two months ago, I discovered he plays hockey for a team that is apparently about to become my professional world.
Now I’m sitting in the back of an SUV, moving through an overcast afternoon in a city I didn’t expect to return to, preparing to spend the next several months learning everything I can about a sport I never expected to care about, working alongside an organization connected to a man I have been trying and failing to stop thinking about since the night I walked into that arena.
I shake my head slowly and let myself smile at the window, at the city, at absolutely nothing.
Life has a strange sense of humor sometimes.
Fate, it seems, does too.