“I’ll call down.” She pulls out her phone. I lean against the wall because the alternative is going inside and pretending I don’t hear her. “Hi, yes, this is room 1216. My key isn’t—yes. Yes, how long?” A pause. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fine.” She hangs up. Gapes at her door. Looks at me. “Fifteen minutes,” she says.
“You could wait in here.”
“I’ll wait right here.”
“The carpet is aggressively floral.”
“I’ve worked in hockey arenas for two years. I’m immune to aggressively floral.” She leans against the wall, arms crossed, tablet tucked under one arm, and I should go inside.It’s twelvefeet away.Instead, I cross the hall and lean against the wall beside her. She says nothing. Neither do I.
This is new, the two of us standing somewhere without a clipboard between us, and we notice it simultaneously. Her arms remain crossed. Her posture is event-appropriate, professional, and unbothered. I’ve spent two weeks learning the distance between being unbothered and working intensely not to be bothered. This is the second one.
“Mac thinks I’m making progress,” I say.
“Mac thinks everything in six-inch increments.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“He’s usually not.” A pause. “Price cc’d the GM.”
“Trey told me.”
She turns her head toward me. The light is the specific yellow of expensive hotels attempting warmth. It catches the line of her cheekbone, a loose strand she didn't catch when she put her hair up. I look at the strand instead of her face. Looking at her face right now will be a problem. “That’s not nothing,” she says.
“I know what it is.”
“I want to make sure you?—”
“Toni.” I meet her eyes. “I know what it is.”
Her chin lifts a fraction. Recalibration. Not argument. “Okay.”
“I was going to end the season suspended,” I say. It comes out plain. The way real things do when you stop building a presentation around them. “Before you got here. Damian wasthis close to recommending a review. Coach knew it. I knew it.” A pause. “I don’t think the GM knew it.”
She’s subdued as she watches me. I let her. Not performing. That's new. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re the reason it’s different.” It’s just the floral carpet and the recycled air and whatever this is. “Not the clipboard,” I add. “Not Price. Not the threat of suspension. You.” She goes absolutely still. “You mentioned my instincts were better than my record suggested. And I...” I stop. Run my thumb across my beard. “Nobody had said that to me before.”
Her arms uncross by a degree. One arm drops. Her tablet shifts. It’s a small thing. I note it anyway because I catalog everything she does; she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. “It’s true,” she says.
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “That’s why it worked.”
The elevator opens at the far end of the hall. A man in a suit steps out, passes us without looking, and disappears into a room. The floor is deserted again.
“This is a bad idea,” she says. Hushed. The professional distance gone from it.
“Probably.”
“My job?—”
“Your job is going well.”
“It could stop going well.”
“It won’t.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“I know you.” I push off the wall. Half a step. Closeenough now that I can see the line of tension across her shoulders. It always shows up when she’s holding two things at once. “You do everything right. You haven't compromised on this job once. Price's email is going to say exactly what Trey said, because you've been handling a complication you didn't ask for, and you handled it right." My feet stay planted as close as before. “I know you. The version you don’t put in the file.”
