Page 23 of Breakaway
"Six-one. The plant carries it."
"Of course there's a plant." He shakes his head. "What did he ask about?"
"The usual. How's the transition. How's the team. Do I miss Miami."
"What did you say?"
"I said I miss the ceviche."
"That tracks."
I sit at my stall. The tape is where I left it, two rolls, left of the gloves. The hangers are separated by type. The toiletry bag is at the right angle. Everything is where I put it because I put it there and I check it every time I come back to make sure nothing has moved.
"You good?" Marchetti says. He is not looking at me when he says it. He is looking at his phone, scrolling, the earbud back in. The question is casual.
"Yeah," I say. "Hey, what's the name of that pour-over place again? The one on Piedmont."
"Lighthouse. Tasha's there until four."
"I'm going after practice. You want anything?"
"Just a regular drip. Nothing fancy."
"Noted. Nothing fancy for the man who listens to trumpet accidents."
"It's not an accident. It's a genre."
I tape my stick. Two rolls, even pressure, the pattern I have been using since I was fourteen. The locker room fills with the sounds of the team arriving. Equipment bags, skate blades on rubber mats, someone laughing about last night.
The plant in Dr. Pryce's office is either fake or the most cared-for thing in the building and I did not ask which because askingwould have meant staying in that chair for one more minute and one more minute in that chair was one more minute of being perfect and on and broadcasting that I couldn’t do.
I was in there for forty-five minutes and I told him everything a well-adjusted player tells a team psychologist six weeks into a new situation. None of it was really wrong but also, none of it was really true. Because the truest thing about me wasn’t in there. Not that I am gay. Not the man I love. Not that the distance is hard. None of that was in the room, because that version of me doesn’t exist in this building.
I open my phone and go to the spreadsheet. The last entry is the barbecue place in Decatur from earlier this week. My column is filled in. The column next to mine is empty. It has been empty since September. Every restaurant I have walked into since I moved here sits in a row where half the data exists. The averages calculate from one input instead of two. The formula still works. The spreadsheet still runs. It runs the way it always has, except the weighted average is mine alone now, and the Notes column has no one to argue with about the bread.
?
Chapter 9: Wes
THEN
The penthouse door closes behind us when we return back from dinner at a new tapas restaurant. Luca kicks off his shoes the way he does every night, heels against the wall, no arrangement. I set my keys on the counter in the spot they go. He is already moving toward the living room.
He settles into his corner of the couch with one leg curled under him. I sit on the other end. The foot of space between us is the same foot that has been there for a month. On the couch. At the table. At the sink where his elbow brushes mine when he hands me a plate. Neither of us has mentioned the balcony.
"Did you shoot this morning?" he asks.
"Yeah. The clouds were right for once. That broken overcast, where the sun comes through in columns."
"Did you get anything?"
"One frame. Maybe."
"Show me."
I pull out my phone and open the photo. Hold the screen toward him. The water shifts from pale green to a blue so dark it is nearly black, and the light comes through the clouds in two clean columns that hit the surface and scatter.
"That is a nine," he says.
