“No.”
He nods once and looks back at his hands.
The silence goes long. I let it.
“Thanks for coming down,” he says finally.
My throat does something stupid.
“Yeah,” I say.
We sit there until people start coming through. Then I stand up. I don’t look back when I leave. If I look back I’ll do something with the expression on his face and I don’t have a place to put that yet.
Katarina’s at the glass when I come up.
Not waiting. Just there. Two coffees in her hands the way there are always two coffees in her hands, like the woman has a supply chain.
She holds one out. I take it.
We watch the ice get resurfaced.
“You went down without your camera,” she says.
“I know.”
“Brave.”
“Questionable.”
“Could go either way.” She drinks her coffee. “I’d lean brave.”
I don’t say anything. She doesn’t push. That’s the thing about Katarina — she just waits and somehow the waiting is worse than questions.
She leaves first.
I stand at the glass with her coffee in my hand and watch the Zamboni do its lap and try not to think about a man who said okay in a tunnel like he was filing it for later.
I drink the coffee.
This is bad.
Like, specifically for me.
Game 2.
Everything is different and I don’t try to explain it to anyone because the only person I’d want to explain it to is the reason it’s different and I can’t say it to him until I’ve said the other thing first.
I do my job.
Camera up. Recorder on. File clean copy. Brody scores in the second and I get the shot. Liam wins a battle along the boards I also get. I am professional. I am working.
My chest is doing all kinds of bullshit. Every shot that comes at him does something ugly to my chest until he gets there.
He always gets there.
The wall holds for forty-four shots and I count every one, which is not the job. The job is goals. I count them anyway because apparently this is where my dignity lives now.
The ghost is quiet.