Page 6 of Breakaway
The texts go on leading up to training camp. He asks real questions and he listens to the answers. I offer the guest room once. He declines. Says he's booked a hotel until he finds a place.
On the first day of training camp, I'm at my stall by seven, lacing up in the quiet of early arrivals. The room is doing what it does before coffee hits: tape, phones, the low ambient of guys who aren't ready to talk yet. The ice will be good this morning. It is always good the first week of camp, when the legs are fresh and the plays haven't started to grind yet.
The kid walks in at seven-thirty.
I raise my head as he's passing through the threshold with a bag over one shoulder, moving toward his stall with a face that is working carefully to look like he belongs here.
He's leaner than I expected. Tall enough, six-one or close, but narrow through the shoulders, a frame built for speed and angles. Light brown hair pushed back off his forehead, messy in a way that doesn't look planned. Clean-shaven. He looks young. But when you hit thirty-four, anyone younger than twenty-five seems like a kid.
He sets the bag down and starts unpacking. Skates first, set on the floor aligned with the stall frame. Helmet to the shelf, visor forward. Gloves hung on hooks, fingers down. Tape, two rolls, placed left of the gloves. The bag itself gets folded and tucked under the bench, zipper out. Nobody else in this room sets up a stall with this precision. The kid has been here less than five minutes and what he's built is deliberate, specific, entirely his.
He looks up. When his gaze lands on me, I see the spark of recognition. He crosses the room toward my stall.
"Hey." He stops a few feet from me. "Mercer, right? I mean, I know. Obviously. Just…" He runs his hand through his hair. "Hey."
"Hey, Berger." I lean forward on my knees. "Welcome. You find the place all right?"
"GPS sent me to the marina."
I chuckle. "I should have warned you about that. Everyone ends up at the marina the first day."
"Good. I thought my phone was broken." He's grinning now and then lifts one finger. "I have a question about the Cuban place you sent me."
"What about it?"
"You described it as solid. So, what’s your definition of solid?"
"Solid means I'd go back," I say.
"That’s it? That’s the whole of the evaluation?"
"I’d eat there again. That sums it up."
Berger’s grin doesn’t fade. "See, that’s binary. It lacks nuance."
"It's a restaurant, Berger, not a courtroom."
"We’ll need to do a proper autopsy on that menu later. I suspect we have very different ideas of what constitutes a passing grade," he says, his tone turning mock-serious. He nods once and turns back toward his stall.
I watch him cross the room. He settles back into the stall and picks up where he left off, adjusting the gloves on the hooks, tuning what he started building the second he arrived.
?
Chapter 3: Luca
THEN
Wes's guest room has been mine for ten days. I looked for a place, but the realtor said there wasn’t much available. Wes offered his place again, and the thought of another night stuck in a generic hotel was just too much.
This is the fourth restaurant we've gone to since I moved my suitcase in. He picks every restaurant since he knows the area. This has become the routine after practice. We practice hard, go home, shower, talk about making dinner in the kitchen. Spend too much time debating what to have, and then Wes chooses a restaurant.
Tonight's restaurant has tile floors and low ceilings, and our server keeps calling Wes "boss" in a way that should be annoying but lands with enough warmth to survive. Wes ordered the branzino and it's better than my lamb, but if I say this out loud,he will hold it over me for the rest of the week. The appetizer is where we disagree. Wes thinks the ceviche is a seven-one. I think the ceviche is a six-eight. The texture is mistaken, and I think the acid ratio needed another ten minutes, and I am going to be right about this when we discuss it later.
Wes pays the bill without looking at the total. He does this every time. Pulls his card, signs, puts the receipt in his pocket. I reach for my wallet, and he looks at me the way he has looked at me the last three times I have reached for my wallet, which is to say he does not look at me at all. He just signs.
We walk home and Wes stops at the gelato place two blocks from the building. The woman behind the counter knows his order, or knows him, or both. He comes back with two cups. Pistachio for him. Stracciatella for me.
The penthouse is cool after the sidewalk. Wes drops his keys on the counter, kicks off his shoes, and settles into the corner of the couch with one leg curled under him. His polo shirt has come untucked on one side and he doesn't fix it. He eats the pistachio with the small silver spoon and looks at his phone and then puts his phone down and looks at me, as if he knows I am just waiting for the opening.
