Page 166 of Full Contact

He hadn’t texted. I didn’t expect one. We’d agreed on ten o’clock tomorrow, and Mark kept agreements.

Treatment ran ten minutes long. When the trainer finally unstrapped the ice, my hip was numb from my waist to my knee, and I walked back to my stall in the locker room carefully, the way you walk on a foot that’s fallen asleep.

The locker room was empty. A radio was playing in the equipment room, too low to make out the song. Danny’s front page was still on the whiteboard, with a corner curling away from the magnet. I had one arm in a T-shirt when the door at the far end opened.

Mark walked toward me between the stalls, a carry-on over his shoulder.

I stopped with the shirt half on. He’d come straight from the airport. He was still in a suit, with his collar open and his tie balled in his jacket pocket. He’d carried his bag in from the car. He walked straight down the row toward me without looking at anything else.

I pulled the shirt the rest of the way down. For a moment, I thought it was a fever dream. I wasn’t supposed to see Mark until tomorrow, at a coffee place on 47th Street at ten o’clock.

“You’re supposed to be in New York,” I said.

“I was there.”

“Did something happen at the interview?”

“No. I finished it.” He stopped a few feet away. “They offered me the job, and I turned it down.” He kept his hands at his sides. “I came back because I want you.”

For a second, neither of us moved.

Then I laughed. It came out of nowhere, short and stupid, and I put my hand over my mouth.

“Sorry,” I said through my fingers. “I’m not laughing at you. You’re just here.”

“I’m here.”

“You were supposed to be in New York until tomorrow. I had a whole—“ I waved at nothing. “I had a plan.”

“I know. You texted me the plan.”

“Not here,” I said. “Let’s go to the lounge.”

Mark followed me to the players’ lounge. My hip was still numb. I hobbled slightly, misjudged the doorframe and caught my shoulder on it. Mark reached out to steady me.

The lounge was empty. A deck of cards lay spread across the table from an interrupted game, and the coffee machine ticked as it cooled. I shut the door and stood with my back against it.

Are you sure? almost came out first. I swallowed that.

I dug my phone out instead. It took me two tries to open the airline app.

“I was really coming,” I said, and held it out to show my ticket. “Look. Five fifty-two tomorrow morning. LaGuardia. I paid for the extra legroom, which I’ve never done in my life.”

Mark looked at the phone.

“I was going to ask you—“ I stopped and started over. “I was going to ask whether we could try again even if you took the job. I looked at the summer, and it isn’t full. I act like it is, but it isn’t. I could be in New York for some of it. I wanted to talk through the hard parts with you instead of telling you I couldn’t do them.” I ran out of air. “That was the speech. It was better in my head.”

“You paid for the legroom,” Mark said.

I put the phone in my pocket.

“When I ended it,” I said, “I wanted you to stay the whole time I was telling you to go. In my head, I called it giving you room for New York. That made it easier to say.” I made myself finish. “I decided you’d be better off, and I didn’t ask you. Then I let you spend weeks thinking I meant it.”

Mark rubbed the back of his neck. “On your couch, I said, ‘We can step back,’ like I was reading it off a card.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to step back. I wanted to throw something. Instead I used the voice I save for a reporter with a bad story when I need him to go away.”

“I remember the voice.”

“I know. You recognized it.” He exhaled. “I should have just said it. ‘I don’t want to go.’ That’s all it needed to be. Five words.”