Page 28 of Across His Line

I keep turning it over in my head that little Tessa has been here the whole time. She knows my schedule. She listens for my fucking door that sticks––I will be fixing it. The only thing I know is that she’s three doors down and sits next to a curly-headed fuck in micro, and that’s it. It’s uneven. If I have hers, it’s even. If I know where she’s going to be, I don’t go there. I need to make it clear that she can’t come to my games and that I really don’t want to see her face again. She can keep her distance, and we don’t run into each other. It’s efficient. It’s practical. It means I don’t have to wonder where she is.

Berwyn called me into his office, so I walk over. He waves me in without looking up and points at the chair.

I sit.

He finishes writing something. He takes his time. Then he puts the pen down and leans back and looks at me.

“Your father called me again.”

My jaw locks. I hear the hinge going tight under my ear.

“Yesterday,” Berwyn says. “To confirm Saturday. In case I’d forgotten.” He picks up one of the mugs, looks into it, and puts it down. “I hadn’t forgotten.”

I don’t say anything.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Waleska, because I don’t think anybody in your life is.” He laces his fingers on his stomach. “I don’t enjoy parents managing my roster. I don’t enjoy it when they’re nobodies, and I enjoy it a lot less when they’re somebodies.”

It surprises me. I don’t let it show. But something in my chest goes loose for half a second, the way it does when you’ve been bracing for a hit, and it doesn’t come.

“Then don’t let him,” I say.

Berwyn almost smiles. It doesn’t get far.

“Your father has friends in this athletic department. Friends who are above me, and friends who sign things. I can tell him no. And then I can spend the rest of the season answering emails about why I told him no. So you’re going home Friday, and you’re missing Saturday. That’s done. I’m not telling you that because I agree with it.”

“Great.”

“I’m telling you because I want you to understand something.” He leans forward. Elbows on the desk. “You’re an adult, Waleska. You’re going to be an adult a lot longer than you’re going to be a hockey player. At some point, you’re going to have to decide who speaks for you.”

I look at him.

He looks back. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t soften it. He just lets it sit there on the desk between us, next to the dead coffee.

“Are we done?” I say.

“We’re done.”

I get up. I close the door behind me very gently, because slamming it is exactly what he’d expect, and exactly what my father would hear about.

The hallway under the rink smells like rubber and cold. I walk it with my hands in my pockets and my jaw still locked, and I don’t think about what he said. I think about the ice. I think about my stick needing new tape. I think about the paper due Friday.

I take my phone out on the stairs. I check.

Nothing.

There’s a slip in my mailbox when I get back to Corvin, which means a package at the student center, which means my mother.

It’s a long flat box with the name of a store on it. I know what it is without opening it. I carry it out of the mailroom under my arm and up the stairs to the main level, past the bookstore and the line for the sandwich place, and out the side door onto the walkway that runs along the café.

The café has a glass wall. The whole thing. It looks out over the walkway and the quad, so the people inside can feel like they’re outside without being cold, and the people outside can see exactly who’s inside.

Little Tessa Canten is at the table closest to the glass.

I stop walking.

She has no idea I’m here. She’s sitting sideways in her chair with one leg tucked under her, in a big cream sweater that comes down over her hands, and she’s leaning over a laptop. The curly-haired guy from the hallway yesterday is sitting next to her, the one who yelled her name like he was delighted to see her. He’s pointing at something on the screen. She shakes her head. She takes the pen right out of his hand, without asking, and writes something on his notebook and taps it twice with the end of the pen and says something.

He puts his face in his hands.