"You never close your door."
He looked up again. And the thing was—he looked tired. Not the controlled tired of a man who'd had a long day and was managing it precisely. Actually tired, the kind that lived around the eyes and in the set of the jaw, the kind you couldn't fully hide no matter how good you were at hiding things.
Nathan looked like shit.
I didn't say that. I filed it.
"I needed to think," he said.
"About what?"
He held my gaze for a moment. "Things."
The office was quiet, the facility mostly empty at this hour, and Nathan had a pen in his hand and dark circles under his eyes.
"Okay," I said.
I left.
But I thought about it the entire drive home, and the thing I kept landing on was: Nathan needed to think. Nathan, who was the most certain person I'd ever encountered, who arrived at conclusions before most people had finished forming the question, needed to think.
About things.
I had a working theory about the things. I had more than a theory. I had two years of it, handed to me drunk in a bar, and I was still figuring out what to do with that.
The day after that I stayed late.
Not for any reason. Practice had ended, the team had filtered out in the usual way, Dylan had given me a look that I ignored, and I stayed. Did some extra conditioning, some work on my edges, the kind of thing I could justify if anyone asked but which was mostly just an excuse to still be in the building at seven p.m.
At six-thirty I called the Thai place two blocks from the facility and ordered enough food for two people. I didn’t even change, just took off my skates, met the delivery guy, grabbed the food, and headed to the office.
Nathan’s light was on.
I knocked on the open door. He looked up.
I held up the bag.
"I didn't know what you liked," I said. "So I got several things."
Nathan looked at the bag. Then at me. Then back at the bag,
"You don't have to do that," he said.
"I know," I said. "I already did it though."
"Wesley—"
"It's food," I said. "You're still here at six-thirty. You haven't eaten. That's just—that's a fact about the situation."
Nathan looked at me like he had a response to that and was deciding whether giving it to me was worth it.
"I'm working," he said.
"I can see that."
"I'll eat when I get home."
"When are you getting home?"
