"Which what?"
"Which I only know," Knox said, "because Matthew tracks this kind of thing. Because Matthew—" He stopped again. "The point is the ticket's been purchased. Thought you should know."
He walked away.
I stood in the corridor.
Section 112 adjacent.
Nathan Cross, who had reported himself, who had restructured his career, who had packed compression cubes and found my hand on the armrest and saidobviouslyon a beach in a hat—Nathan Cross had bought a ticket.
Not a team credential. Not a staff pass. A ticket.
His own seat. His own row. His own choice to be there, visible, in section 112 adjacent where he'd be able to see the ice and I would be able to see him and the Morr Roar would come down from section 214 and Nathan would be in the stands for it, not at the bench, not with the team, just there.
Because he wanted to be.
I took out my phone.
Me:knox told me about the ticket
A pause.
Nathan:Matthew must have told him
Me:yep
I looked at the phone for a moment.
Me:Section 112 adjacent
Nathan:The sightlines are good. I checked.
Me:I'm going to look for u before the puck drops. i'm going to look for u in the stands
A pause. Longer than the others.
Nathan:I hope so.
Me:k
Nathan:Okay.
I put my phone in my pocket and went back to practice.
Friday was two days away.
Nathan had already figured out where he was going to be.
34
The thing about playing hurt was that the crowd never knew the difference.
But I wasn't playing hurt tonight.
That was new. Or not new exactly. I'd played healthy before, I knew what it felt like—but different now, different in the way things were different when you'd been through something and come out the other side of it. When you could feel the difference between before and after in your body and your edges and the way the ice came up to meet you when you'd had enough sleep and your head was a zero and the lights were just lights.
Zero. My head was a zero.
