Page 84 of Gave Proof Through the Night

She’s been circling the suite for ten minutes now, picking up a room key. A hotel pen. Picks up a stack of hotel stationery, reads the letterhead. Picks up a roll of my skate tape, turns it over once, sets it back down. Picks up the paperback I never finished, flips to the dog-eared page, reads half a line, snorts, closes it.

Her bare feet drift straight through the middle of a shaft of light cutting along the carpet. I don’t move. I just watch her cross the light and come out the other side of it, laughing at something only she finds funny. The sound of it does something to my chest.

She’s a fairy in a fantasy story. A Midsummer Night's Dream. For one deeply unserious second I think, if she’s the enchanting fairy, I’m the guy with the donkey head. The burro.

Fitting.

She picks up the framed photo on the dresser next, my team picture from the Jr. Kings I take to all my away games like a lucky mojo. In the picture are sixteen scrawny kids with expressions more serious than mugshots. We really thought we were so tough.

“Which one’s you?”

“Guess.”

She studies it, squinting at each face. “This one. Front row. Looks like he’s about to throw up.”

“No, that’s just my regular face.”

She laughs again, that scratchy, low sound I find far too attractive. She has several laughs I find attractive, actually. I’ve started keeping a list without meaning to. The way she laughs when something surprises her. The way her whole face gets involved, not just her mouth. I could listen to her laugh on a loop for the rest of my life and never once get bored of it.

She sets the photo down and floats over to the desk.

She picks up my watch next. The same one she tried to lift off my wrist. She holds it, testing the weight of it, turning it once in her palm. When she looks up and catches me watching her do it, she just raises an eyebrow.

She finds the horrible GILL POWER hat on the desk and puts it on without a word, tips the brim back, catches her reflection in the mirror by the door, and decides on the spot to keep wearing it. She turns her head one way, then the other, admiring herself with a straight face.

Something about the way it swallows half her head, the ridiculous orange barf color of it against her hair, makes my heart expand.

Keep it on forever. Give me an excuse to keep looking at you like this.

Room service arrives and she abandons her perusing for the cart, lifting every lid one at a time.

“Fruit. Croissants.” A pause over the eggs. “These smell amazing.”

Brooke, the team nutritionist, has strong feelings about her protein oatmeal. The breakfast of champions. I actually went downstairs to shovel some down my throat before Erica was due to arrive. Then, because I’ve made friends with the hotel staff, I requested someone in room service bring up a selection from the team’s buffet. Eggs, sausage, a fruit platter, the works, exactly what the team gets every morning. Plus one bowl tucked in the corner that isn’t on the menu.

Erica finds it before I can explain it. “Is this homemade salsa?”

“I have a salsa guy.”

“Of course you do.”

There’s a small dining table in the corner, but we end up on the loveseat by the window instead. I drag the cart close enough to double as a table.

She steals bites off my plate, and I let her, because watching her reach across me for a piece of melon is my new favorite program. I feed her the next piece with my fingers instead, and she takes it without breaking eye contact, her knee pressed against mine on the cushion.

Heaven help me.

My phone buzzes on the side table. I glance over, see my mother’s number and a string of exclamation points, and turn the screen face down without picking it up.

Erica watches me do it.

“You’re not going to get that?”

“No.”

“Everything okay?”

"It's my mother," I say. “She wants a photo for some press anniversary thing. It’ll wait.”