Page 159 of Full Contact

We sat by the window until the evening session thinned out. Dana’s daughter was taking her to an early movie the next night, and she wanted to get to bed early so she’d stay awake through the previews. Felix had a delivery coming first thing in the morning.

In the parking lot, lilacs were blooming along the fence by the dumpster, and the asphalt still held some of the day’s warmth. Dana hugged me with one arm and got into her car. Felix walked backward toward his, still talking about the cups. Then they were both gone, and I drove home by myself.

At the condo, I dropped my shoes under the entry table and washed my hands at the kitchen sink. The chalk didn’t come out from around my nails. It never did.

I had leftover rigatoni in the refrigerator from earlier in the week. I dropped it in a pan with a splash of water and stood over it, stirring.

I turned on the Cubs game on the kitchen radio and ate at the counter. They were down two in the fourth. I washed the pan and the fork and took my book to the leather chair.

It was a thriller I’d picked up at the airport, about a crew planning to rob an armored truck on Lower Wacker. I was two-thirds through and still didn’t know which of them was working for the FBI. The lake beyond my windows was going from blue to gray. I turned on the reading lamp and set my heels on the worn corner of the ottoman.

I read for over an hour.

In the next chapter, the crew pulled the job. Eleven months of planning, a stolen van, two burner phones each, and a timetable down to the second. They got the money. Then the getaway driver, who’d parked on the street to save time, came back to find a ticket on the windshield and stopped to argue with the meter maid while the alarms went off behind him.

I laughed out loud.

Trier would have loved it. He’d have wanted to know why nobody fed the meter, and whether the driver was the one working for the FBI or just an idiot. He’d have taken the book out of my hands to read the argument himself.

Later, I moved to the sofa to finish the chapter with my legs stretched out along the cushions. My phone buzzed on the side table.

It was the Peaches list. Anna had sent a photo of Peaches asleep in Trier’s armchair with her chin on the TV remote.

Anna: She’s changed the channel. We’re watching golf now.

Kelsey: She’s earned it. It’s been a long postseason for everyone at your place.

A minute later, from a hotel in Dallas:

Trier: Tell her golf isn’t a playoff sport.

I was still on the list. Trier could have taken me off it. I enlarged the photo. His heating pad was still folded over the arm of the couch.

The evening had gone exactly the way I’d planned it, and I still wanted him in it. I saved the photo and went to bed.

***

Game Six was in Dallas the next night. Felix brought soup.

He arrived during warmups with a quart container in a grocery bag and set it on my counter.

“Chicken tortilla,” he said. “I made too much. I always make too much, and Dana wouldn’t take the extra this time.”

“Thank you.”

He opened my bread drawer without asking. There was half a loaf from the bakery. He picked it up, squeezed it, and turned it over to look at the bottom.

“This is fine. I’ll stay. Do you have bowls? Real bowls. Not the shallow things you use for pasta.”

“I have bowls.”

I heated the soup while Felix sliced the bread. He’d packed the tortilla strips separately in a sandwich bag so they wouldn’t go soft, along with half an avocado wrapped tight in plastic, and a lime. He cut the avocado on my board with my newly sharpened knife.

We ate on the sofa with the game on and the sound low. The soup was smoky and spicy enough that I reached for water after the first spoonful. Felix didn’t follow hockey, but he followed me. When Dallas scored on a power play late in the first, he looked at my face before he looked at the screen.

Dallas scored twice more in the second. Midway through the third, the broadcast showed our bench. Trier sat with his elbows on his knees and a towel around his neck, watching the ice. His beard had filled in. I watched him until the camera moved on.

We lost four–two. The series was tied. Game Seven would be back in Chicago in two nights.