Page 65 of Puck the Coach's Son
“Yes.”
My teeth graze his earlobe.
“Say it.”
“You.”
“Good.”
I turn off the water.
We dress in silence. He dresses at his stall. I dress at mine. We don't meet in the middle of the room. He finishes first. He picks up his bag. He looks at me from his stall, for just a second. I nod.
He nods back.
He walks to the door.
At the door he stops. He doesn't turn.
“Maddox?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Then he is gone.
I sit down on the bench in my half-tied sneakers.
I laugh.
It isn't a laugh. It's the shape a laugh takes when a man has just realized the ground under him is going to give. He's going to fall. On the way down he's happier than he's been in a decade.
I put my face in my hands.
I'm smiling into my palms.
This is about Paul,I tell myself.
I don't even bother waiting for the sentence to land. It doesn't. It hasn't in a week.
11
THEO
Ilook at my phone on the way out of the locker room to see a text from my father.Mansfield's at one. Don't be late.
The timestamp says he sent it forty minutes ago, while I was in the shower, while Maddox's hand was between my legs.
I text back,on my wayand think,Okay. I can do this.
I can walk to lunch with my father. I can sit across from him and order what he orders and answer his questions about the power play, and I can do all of it with another man's come not yet out of my body.
I put my jacket on and walk out of the building.
Mansfield's is two blocks off the rink. White tablecloths, brass fixtures, the kind of restaurant where the waitstaff wear ties. Paul likes it because the booths are deep and you can't hear the table next to you. He likes anywhere he can talk without being overheard.
He's already seated when I come in. Suit jacket off, folded on the bench beside him. Water glass half-empty. Phone face-down on the linen. He looks up when the hostess brings me over and his eyes do the quick sweep they always do, catching hair andposture and watch and shoes. I pass the sweep. I usually do. It's the one thing I'm reliably good at.
