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I get down on the floor and look under the bed. My shoe's there, right where he said. Next to it is a folded piece of hotel notepaper that must have fallen out of my jeans last night.

It's the list. I unfold it and look at number ten again. If anybody in the room gives you trouble, you tell me.

I think about my dad, sitting in his truck for an hour with the engine running. I think about Hale in the chair this morning, asleep with his mouth open, looking like somebody finally let him put something heavy down.

I fold the list up and put it back in my pocket.

When he comes out of the bathroom, I've got both shoes on, and my bag's by the door, and I've even made my bed. Badly. But it counts.

He looks at the bed. The corners are a disaster, and one of the pillows is on upside down. He looks at me.

"Don't say anything," I tell him.

He doesn't. But on the way out the door, he picks up my hoodie off the lamp and hands it to me, and his fingers brush mine, and he holds on to it for one second longer than he needs to before he lets go.

Chapter Nine

OWEN

The bill comes in a leather folder the size of a hymnal.

Castel opens it. He looks at it for a long time. Then he closes it, opens it again, and looks some more, like the number might have changed while he wasn't watching.

"Is this in pesos?" he says.

The whole table loses it.

Rookie dinner. Every team does some version of it: somewhere expensive on a road trip, the rookies pick up the check for the whole team, and the veterans order like they've been stranded on an island for a month. Brandt got a bottle of wine that came with its own guy. Kowal ordered two steaks and ate one. Webb asked for the most expensive thing on the dessert menu without reading what it was, and it turned out to be a plate of gold-leaf chocolate that he said tasted like a battery.

There are three rookies on the team this year. Adeyemi and a kid named Pratt from the minors are splitting a quarter between them. Castel's covering half. Number-one pick. Biggest contract. Those are the rules.

"You're good for it, rook," Brandt calls down the table. "Nadia from brand says you're worth millions."

"Nadia from brand can come pay for your wine, then," Castel calls back, and a couple of guys laugh at that too, which is new. Two weeks ago nobody would have laughed at him talking back to Brandt.

He signs the slip with a big looping signature that goes off the edge of the line. He doesn't look upset. He looks like he's having the time of his life.

"Worth it," he announces to the table. "Every penny. Webb, I'm keeping the gold chocolate wrapper. I'm going to frame it."

"There wasn't a wrapper," Webb says.

"Then I'll frame the plate."

Nobody goes back to the hotel after that. That's also tradition.

Sorel knows a place, because Sorel always knows a place. It's in West Hollywood, a converted warehouse with brick walls and a DJ in a booth on a mezzanine, and a dance floor that's already packed when we get there. The lights are purple and pink and blue, and the music's so loud I can feel it in the fillings of my teeth.

It is, very obviously, a gay bar.

A couple of the older guys stop in the doorway like they've walked into the wrong locker room. Kowal says, "Nope," turns around, and leaves. Brandt looks around at the crowd, and at the rainbow flag hanging behind the bar, and smiles his parking-garage smile.

"Well," he says. "Rook's choice."

"I didn't choose it," Castel says. "Sorel chose it."

"I chose it because it's the best bar in L.A.," Sorel says. "Also, nobody will recognize us here. Nobody here watches hockey."

"Somebody here watches hockey," a bartender says, passing with a tray, and winks at Castel. "Love the pink laces, babe."