Page 81 of On His Team

“Hello?”

“You got it,” he says easily. He sounds pleased.

“I got one part of it.”

“You got the hard part.”

“That’s the hard part?”

“The youth program saying yes is harder than getting Derek to hold a sheet.”

I lean one hip against the counter. “You’re very smug for somebody who did not personally accomplish anything here.”

“I told you it would work.”

“You said it could work.”

“Same thing.”

“No.”

He laughs softly.

There’s noise behind him. A door shuts. Somebody says something I can’t make out.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“Rink.”

“You guys done?”

“Just got off.”

I look toward the equipment room door without meaning to, like he might somehow walk through it while I’m talking to him.

“You’re calling me from forty feet away?”

“Probably more like sixty.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I smile down at the open box in front of me.

Cole glances over again. I turn slightly away from him.

I say, “So now I need Athletics to sign off, and then Derek can hold the space.”

“Yeah.”

“And then I can actually start building the thing.”

He replies, “You’ve been building it.”

“You know what I mean.”

There’s a pause, but it isn’t the kind that makes me want to fill it immediately. That has been happening with Rowan more often. I used to think silence with somebody meant the conversation was dying. With him, it mostly means one of us is doing something else and neither person feels like hanging up yet.

I hear what sounds like a zipper on his end.

“How was practice today?” I ask.