Page 38 of The Grumpy Defenseman

The saxophone from Jazz, TX was still in my head.

And now it sounded like something I had lost.

Chapter seventeen

Evan

Ishould have left the building.

Practice had ended four hours ago. The locker room was empty. The cleaners had come and gone. The facility had settled into the after-hours hum I usually only heard when I was the first one in, not the last one still there.

I was on the leg press doing sets of weight I had no business doing without a spotter, and the only reason I was still doing them was that the alternative was sitting in my condo with my own face.

Going home meant time to think about her face when I said it: the half-smile from Brick’s joke breaking into recognition.

I added another plate.

Bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea. I racked it anyway.

The weight-room door opened.

I did not have to look. I knew Brick’s footfalls.

He came around to the front of the machine and looked at the stack.

“You’re doing six-twenty without a spotter,” he said.

“Five-seventy.”

“You added the plate when I came in.”

“Then it’s six-twenty.”

He did not smile.

That was the first sign.

He was not smiling now.

He sat on the bench across from me with his elbows on his knees and his hands loose between them, the way he sat in front of rookies when something in their game had to be said out loud. He waited until I racked the weight.

Then he said, “You’re done.”

It was not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Get up.”

I sat up and wiped my face with the front of my shirt. The room felt smaller than it had twenty seconds ago.

“Brick.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Whatever you’re about to say. The version where you explain it. Don’t.”