"Good night."
The hotel room is like every other hotel room. Clean sheets, heavy curtains, the thermostat set to sixty-eight. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull out my phone.
The wallpaper is still the Miami balcony. I should change it. Gwen and I talked about that last Thursday. I told her I wasn't ready and she said that was fine. I told her I'd know when I was ready because the picture would feel like a picture instead of a window and she wrote that down.
I open Instagram. I don't know why. My thumb moves, the muscle memory of a habit I have been trying to break. Three swipes down the feed. Team posts. A sneaker ad. A reel from a food account I followed in Miami that I keep meaning to unfollow.
Then a picture Grant posted.
Wes. Kevin. Austin. Grant. A booth at Carmelo's, the Cuban place in Miami. Kevin is mid-laugh. Austin's arm is on the back of the booth. Grant is holding up a drink. Wes is at the end of the table with a half-smile and a beer and his arm resting along the booth in the way I know means he is comfortable and settled and present.
They are at Carmelo's without me.
They are continuing. The city kept going. The booth at Carmelo's kept going. The four of them are there and I am in a hotel room in a city I will not remember the name of in a week. I was never part of that life. Not really. I was a guest, a temporary addition to the booth. They have filled the space where I sat and the space doesn't miss me.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
My hands are on my knees. My jaw is tight. The tightness has been building since the turnover and the picture cracked it loose.
Nobody in that photograph is thinking about me. Nobody at that table said my name tonight. I was useful in Miami and now I’m not in Miami. The useful version is gone and the version that’s left is the one who turns the puck over at the blue line and sits in hotel rooms and—
I hear it. I hear the voice doing what it does. The absolutes. Nobody. Never. Not really. I hear it and I know what it is because I have sat in an office on Juniper Street four times now and named it each time. The depression is talking.
The depression is telling me I was never part of that booth but it’s wrong. I was part of that booth. I sat in that booth and ordered the ropa vieja and rated the plantain chips and Wes's hand was on my knee under the table and Kevin told the story about the fishing trip and I laughed until my ribs ached.
The depression is wrong and I am tired and both things are true.
I pick up the phone. Not to open the picture again. I open the text thread with Gwen. I type: bad night. Can we set up an extra session by video?
I don’t expect her to reply this late at night. I put the phone down and get ready for bed and the picture is still in my head. The depression is still talking at low volume and I fall asleep with the sound of it underneath the hum of the hotel air conditioning.
Gwen responds by the time I wake up and has a window at two.
Practice is at ten. The turnover from last night is still in my hands and I run the drill wrong twice and Coach pulls me aside and says nothing that matters and I nod and go back to the line.
At one-fifty I am sitting on the hotel bed with my laptop open and a glass of water on the nightstand. Gwen's face appears. The purple hair. The rainbow glasses. The bookshelf behind her with the small pride flag propped against the books.
"Hey, Luca."
"Hey."
"How are you doing?"
"Okay, I guess.” We both know if I were okay I wouldn’t have asked for an extra session. “I'm on a road trip. I had a bad game last night and then I saw a picture on Instagram that messed me up."
She tilts her head. "Tell me about the picture."
"Wes. His friends. At a restaurant we used to go to in Miami. They were at our booth." I stop. "It's not our booth. It was just a booth."
"What did you feel when you saw it?"
"That they were continuing without me. That I was never really part of it. That the space I used to take up had been filled and nobody noticed."
"Were those your words?"
The question lands the way it always lands, slightly ahead of where I expect it. "The depression's. I think. I could hear it doing the thing. The absolutes. Never really part of it. Nobody noticed."
"But you caught it."
