Felix
I had a system.
Most people found this annoying. I found it necessary. The system was not complicated , it was just disciplined, which I'd learned early was a word people used admiringly when it applied to sport and judgmentally when it applied to everything else. Recovery protocol after a win was the same as after a loss: ice bath, twenty minutes. Protein within forty,five. Eight hours, non,negotiable. Film review the following morning at seven before the rest of the team was coherent enough to argue about it.
The system worked. It had always worked. I was twenty,six years old, I had not had a serious injury in three seasons, and my plus,minus was the best on the team. The system was not the problem.
The problem was currently in the shower two stalls over, singing something that I was almost certain was not a real song. Just syllables. Enthusiastic, rhythmless syllables delivered at a volume that suggested Shay believed he was performing for an audience of thousands rather than one irritated man and a failing shower head.
I pressed my forehead briefly against the cold tile.
The system did not have a protocol for this. I had checked.
I was in bed by 10:15pm , which was exactly on schedule.
I was still awake at eleven,forty, which was not.
The ceiling of my apartment was extremely familiar to me at this point. I knew the crack in the plaster near the light fixture , the way it branched left like a river delta. I knew the way the streetlight outside moved across it when a car passed. I had been conducting an intimate and unwanted study of this ceiling for approximately ninety minutes, and it had yet to offer any useful information.
My phone was face,down on the nightstand. I had put it there deliberately. The deliberateness was, itself, a symptom I didn't want to look at.
It buzzed.
I did not reach for it. I was in control of my own motor functions. I was an adult. I was a professional athlete with an established recovery protocol and significant personal discipline. I stared at the ceiling.
It buzzed again.
I picked up the phone.
Shay, 11:43pm: [video attachment]
The thumbnail was a cat. Specifically a very large orange cat attempting to fit itself into a very small cardboard box with the total conviction of an animal that had never once doubted itself. It was failing comprehensively. It did not appear to care.
I watched it twice.
Shay, 11:43pm: this is you trying to fit your personality into the word "fine" every time someone asks how you are
I put the phone face,down again.
I picked it up.
Me: Go to sleep, Shay.
Shay: ur awake tho
Me: I'm telling you to go to sleep. That requires me to be awake.
Shay: right but WHY are you awake, felix. it's 11:45. you have a system. the system says 10:30 latest. I've seen the spreadsheet. I know about the spreadsheet
Me: There is no spreadsheet.
Shay: there is absolutely a spreadsheet and it has color coding and I love you for it but also you should be asleep
I stared at the words. I love you for it. Shay said things like that constantly , easily, casually, the way other people said see you later or sounds good. It meant nothing. It was just how he talked. The warmth that moved through my chest when I read it was a response to the sentiment in the abstract, not the specific delivery, and I was going to stop thinking about it right now.
Me: Good night, Shay.
Shay: [photo attachment]
