Page 100 of The Overtime Persuasive

Two hockey games in a little over twenty-four hours have reduced the Alexandria Dominion players to a collection of expensive sweatpants and untreated personality defects.

We’re spread throughout the private terminal, waiting for someone to tell us the plane is ready. Owen has claimed three chairs and is lying across them with his hood pulled over his face. Ty sits near the windows wearing headphones, while Tripp and Sawyer pillage and prowl the vending machines, trying to find something that qualifies as food.

My body is tired in ways I won’t fully appreciate until I attempt to stand again, but there’s a five-hour flight between me and my bed. Longer if you count the three hours California plans to steal from us somewhere over the middle of the country.

My phone vibrates in my hand.

Eva

Interesting development while you’ve been away.

Side B now has a sports bar.

A photograph follows. The television from her apartment is balanced on the café counter beside the coffee machine. Our game fills the screen, frozen on an image of Owen in goal. With bottles of vanilla, caramel, and hazelnut syrups lined up next to it, the entire setup looks less like a sports bar and more like one that recently lost its liquor license.

One television does not make a sports bar.

Eva

It does when the owner watched two hockey games on it.

I smile.

You watched today too?

Eva

I needed to make certain yesterday wasn’t a fluke.

And?

EVA

Still violent. Still confusing.

Number 22 remains attractive.

He had a good game.

EVA

He spent four minutes in the penalty box.

The announcer called it “textbook interference.”

The announcer wasn’t on the ice.

EVA

Is that where the rules are different?

I lean back in my chair, my thumb hovering over the screen while I decide how much hockey education our relationship can withstand in one sitting.

EVA

I carried that thing down two flights of stairs by myself, and no one appreciated the accomplishment for 90 full minutes.

I’m proud of you.