“Are you in a rush? Somewhere to be?” I smirk, but she doesn’t take my jest well. In fact, I think I’ve just royally pissed her off.
“One more incident and you're done. No appeal." She presses the page flat with two fingers, like it might get up and walk off. "He won't give you another chance, and I want you to understand that I won't either."
"Noted, Dixon."
"It's in section three. And don't call me Dixon."
"It's your name."
"It's his name." Her response comes out fast. Unplanned. I watch her hear it about a half second after I do, and watch some door behind her eyes start to swing open, then lock again. "Initial the bottom of five and six."
Now I’m curious. So there's a spunky person in that beautiful shell. Locked up tight, but in there.
I reach for the pen. So does she.
My fingers come down on hers. Cold metal underneath, warm hand in the middle, one full second. A second is longer than people give it credit for. Her hand goes dead still under mine. Not even a flinch. It’s like I’m the hunter and she’s the prey. Her whole body is holding its breath at once, trying its best not to be caught.
What’s interesting is I understand that one. It's what your nervous system does when the only safe move left on the board is to disappear while standing completely still. I learned it under a different roof a long time ago, and I have never once seen it on another living person. Until right now. The coach's daughter is using the exact survival trick I thought belonged to me alone. I pray it’s not for the same reasons.
I pull back first.
"Sorry."
"It's fine."
But her tone is a good two octaves flat of fine.
She clicks the ballpoint pen and hands it to me grip-first, careful, like a scalpel she'd rather I not cut myself on. And while I sign my name eleven separate times, she lifts a paper clip off the corner of the stack and works it under the table, down where she's decided I can't see. Bending it out of shape and back. Out and back. Slow.
She has a lot of interesting tics.
So I watch.
Catching what nobody else catches is the only thing I've ever been good at that isn't hockey. My whole life, it's been a survival skill. Where are the hands, where are the exits, who in this room is about to turn into a problem? This is the first time it has ever felt like a gift instead of a sentence.
"We're done." She squares the stack perfectly. “Next Tuesday. Seven forty-five."
"You said that already."
"I repeat things for people with documented judgment issues."
The laugh's out before I can kill it. It’s loud and ugly, but I can’t take it back. She doesn’t immediately respond until I see her chin lift. And for about a quarter of a second, right before she locks it down, the corner of her mouth moves.
That's all.
But hell, that’s all I needed.
She leaves first. The paper clip stays behind on the table, bent into nothing, finished. There is no good reason on God's earth for what I do next.
It goes in my pocket.
It’s a hot Nevada night, and I’m chilling in my new apartment, if you want to be generous about the word. New guys and freshmen don’t get to live in the Ice House with the other players, so this is where I will continue to lay my head.
I’m sitting among three boxes that I have no intention of unpacking, a mattress on the floor, and a phone charging next to it. Home is a place you decorate. This is a place where I wait.
I lie there and run back through the day, same as every night. The hit after the whistle has cost me currency with my new coach, my captain, my new teammates…but particularly with Jasmine. Is this even worth trying to make work?
Then I remember the pen.
