“Interesting.” His voice is even. “How much more?”
“Professionally speaking, the events of last evening fall outside the scope of?—”
“Toni.”
“The assignment parameters require?—”
“An-ton-i-a.” My full name in his mouth does what it always does, and I hate him for it. No woman should have to conduct disciplinary oversight while a man built like this wanders around in a towel. I keep my gaze on the loading bay. On the padlocked gate. The gray Chicago sky. On anything that is not the six-foot-two man in a towel whose arm is approximately four inches from mine and whose body heat is the only thing standing between me and genuine hypothermia.
“I’m not doing this here,” I say.
“Where would you like to do it?”
“Somewhere that isn’t a service dock next to a dumpster.”
“I agree it’s not ideal.” He extends his legs out across the concrete. Skate socks. I will not look at the skate socks. “But we’ve got time.”
The alarm is still going off. Distantly, I can hear voices from the front of the building, the muffled sound of the team assembling at the main muster point. Nobody is coming aroundthe fence. Dave has the medical kit and the radio and is almost certainly efficiently managing the front zone and has not yet registered that we are not there. We are alone on this dock. No buffer. Just a dumpster, a pallet of water bottles, and a man in a towel four inches from my arm.
“You were timing something,” I say. “Before the alarm.”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“How long your professionalism would hold.” He glances at me sideways. “I’ve been running the experiment for three weeks.”
“And?”
“It’s impressive,” he says. “Genuinely. I’ve never met anyone who could maintain a wall that consistently.” A pause. “Most people have one weak spot. You build another wall in front of yours.”
“That’s called discipline.”
“That’s called exhausting.” His voice is warm. “I should know. I’ve been running the same play.”
I turn to look at him. He is already looking at me. Up close, in the gray morning light, without the arena overhead lighting or the film room monitor or the rink glass between us, he is disarmingly real. Expressive eyes. The sharp jawline. Superstar bracelet still on his wrist, I notice, because he is still wearing it and I have been not-noticing it since he walked into morning skate.
“You’re still wearing it,” I say.
He looks at the neon bracelet. “Christopher will ask.”
“It’s been three days.”
“He will absolutely ask.” No performance in it or grin deployed for effect. He is stating a fact about a three-year-old and a rubber superstar bracelet with the straightforward certainty of a man who has already decided what his priorities are. The thing that caused the feelings I had at Piper’s house does it again. I face forward.
“Ask me,” he says.
“Ask you what.”
“Whatever you’ve been not-asking for three weeks.”
I smash my lips together as if it will stop the overflow. The wind picks up off the loading bay. I’m cold and stuck on a plastic armrest and the honest answer is I have approximately fourteen things I have been not-asking, and none of them belong on a service dock next to a dumpster.
“You first,” I say.
He accepts this without comment. Tips his head against the chair. Exhales once, a breath that fogs in the October air. “I looked for you,” he says. My spine stiffens. “After Rockford.” His voice is level. No accusation in it. No performance. “I had your first name. The name of the company that dispatched the officiating crew. A city of two and a half million people met me on Tuesday morning.” A pause. “I found four Antonias in the league database. Wrong ages, wrong cities, wrong everything. I revisited the bar, questioning diners plus workers.” He tilts his head toward me. “I checked your Instagram. Or tried to. You don’t have one.”
“I have a professional LinkedIn.”
