Page 81 of Breakaway
"Can we do video for some of them? I travel with the team."
"Of course. We'll work around your schedule. And I'm available between sessions if something comes up."
She stands. I stand. Her handshake is warm and unhurried. I am at the door when she speaks again.
"Luca."
I turn and look at her.
"You said your teammates might not be wrong. That took courage to say."
I said it. I don't remember deciding to say it but I realize it came out with everything I was trying not to say.
"Yeah," I say. "I'll see you Thursday."
I sit in my car for two minutes and I don't turn it on. Through the windshield, the sky is white. My phone is in my pocket. I pull it out. The wallpaper. Blue water, white railing, palms. I look at it for a long time and drive back to my apartment.
Wes is on the couch with Mouse in his lap. She has her paw on his hand and her eyes are half-closed. He looks up when I come in.
"Hi," he says. "How was it?"
I stand in the doorway of my own living room and look at the man on the couch with my cat in his lap. His hazel eyes. The question on his face that he is trying to ask without pushing.
"I went," I say.
He nods. He opens his arm. I cross the room and sit down beside him and his arm comes around my shoulders and Mouse adjusts between us with a sound that is either a complaint or a welcome. I press my face into his neck and close my eyes and he holds me and neither of us says anything else.
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Chapter 29: Wes
The bag is on the bed. I fold the shirt I wore on the plane four days ago and set it inside. Jeans on top of the shirt. The packing takes less time than it should because I brought one bag and wore the same three things.
Luca is in the kitchen. I can hear him filling Mouse's bowl, the dry rattle of the kibble against the ceramic, and then her scream. Definitely not a meow and has never been a meow. He says something to her, low and steady, and the screaming stops and the eating starts.
The apartment is not the apartment I walked into four days ago. The dishes are in the cabinet. The mail is in a stacked and sorted on the counter. The trash went out yesterday. The suit is at the cleaners.
I zip the bag. I leave it on the bed and go to the kitchen.
He is standing at the counter with a glass of water and his phone face-up beside the glass. His hair is damp from the shower. The T-shirt is one of mine, the gray one with the soft collar, and it sits on him the way my clothes always sit on him, alittle looser on him than on me. He has been wearing it for two days and I haven’t asked for it back and I won’t.
"Your flight's at one?" he asks.
"One-fifteen."
"That's early."
"It's a two-hour flight. I'll be home by four."
He drinks the water. Sets the glass down. Looks at the counter.
"You could stay."
"I know." It’s what I want to do, but I know I can’t. For both of us.
"You could tell Kyle you need another day."
"I've already missed four days of practice and two game. Kyle bought me the time but I need to get back."
