“Nice shift,” he says, conversationally, because we ran a couple of shifts after the hit and I scored on one of them. “Clean finish.”
“Thanks.”
I get my jersey off. I fold it.
“You fold your jersey,” he says. It isn't a chirp. It's an observation. That's worse.
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
He has his gear off faster than I have mine off because I am going slowly and he is not. He stands up with his towel over his shoulder. He doesn't move toward the showers yet. He stands there, in my peripheral, facing his own emptied stall, not moving.
I get my own pads off. I get the base layer off. I get my own towel and I do not look at him.
“After you, sweetheart.”
I don't answer. I walk. He walks behind me.
The showers are the same showers I was in two days ago. The tile is the same. The stall at the far end is open and I go to it because it seems like mine. I step in. I turn the water on. I face the tile.
He steps into the stall next to mine. He does not turn on his water.
I hear the other showers start up one by one around us. I hear Jax say something about Maddox's bench speech from yesterday and somebody laughs. I hear the hiss of hot water and the slap of feet on tile and the rising background roar of a room that is mostly done for the day.
Behind it all I hear what isn't happening. He hasn't turned his water on. He is standing in a stall with no water running and the room is starting to notice the dropped beat, the thinning of a song when a guitar in a band stops playing.
Then I hear him lean on the partition between us.
“Sweetheart.”
I do not answer.
“Look at me.”
I do not.
“Theo.”
My name in his mouth is the thing I should not have let him have. I let him have it two days ago when he said it like a joke and I let him have it again yesterday when he said it into my ear at the bench and I am letting him have it now. I did not give it to him. He took it. I did nothing about the taking.
I keep my face in the water.
“Here's what you're going to do, sweetheart.”
His voice is not quiet. It is not loud. It is pitched exactly for the level the room is at, which means it's pitched so that anyonelistening for it can hear it, and half the room is listening for it because the room knows Mad Dog Creed does not pick a new stall unless he's picking something.
“You're going to turn around. You're going to get on your knees. And you're going to put that pretty fucking mouth of yours to work.”
The sound the room makes is not a word. It's a shift. It's a dozen men simultaneously deciding whether to laugh or leave or lean closer, and about half of them choose to laugh.
Somebody whoops.
Somebody else says, “Welcome to the show, Virgin.”
I am not breathing. The water is hot on my face and is running into my open mouth and I am not swallowing.
Here is what my body does. My body goes hot from throat to ankle, a full-body flush that has nothing to do with the water temperature. My body is ready for it. My body has already decided. My body is sayingyeswith a clarity that I have never allowed my body to say anything, and the rest of me, whatever that is, is standing somewhere outside my body trying to remember what my name is and what room I'm in and what the rules of this room are.
