Page 20 of Rookie Mistake
"It's pattern recognition."
He looks at me. The reading glasses are off. His face in the blue light is the underneath face. The face I saw in the kitchen when I fisted his shirt. The face I saw in the bedroom when the control was gone and his hands were on my body and his mouth said "mistake" and his hands said "stay."
"I should call my mom," I say.
"Yes."
"I should call my agent."
"Yes."
"I came here first."
The sentence lands. I can see it land because his posture changes. The change is small: a loosening in his shoulders, a shift in his hands, a softening around his eyes that the control does not authorize and that the control, apparently, can no longer prevent.
"I noticed," he says.
"What happens now?" I ask.
I am not asking about the roster. I am not asking about the season or the contract or the training schedule. I am asking about the ten feet between the guest room and the bedroom and the six inches between our bodies in the dark and the word "mistake" that came from his mouth while his hands said the opposite.
Nikolai stands. He walks toward me. The walking is the Nikolai walk: measured, deliberate, each step a decision. He stops in front of me. One foot of distance. The successor to the inch in the video room and the zero in the elevator and the six inches in the bed. The distances have been shrinking since the corridor. The relationship measured in physical space.
"Now you stop sleeping in the guest room," he says.
I stare at him. "That's your move? That's the big emotional speech? Relocation?"
"You asked what happens."
"I want more than logistics, Nikolai. I want more than you giving me coffee and hockey advice and then looking at me like I'm a structural weakness in your moral code."
"You are a structural weakness in my moral code."
"That's not the compliment you think it is."
"It is not a compliment. It is a fact." He pauses. "I want more than pretending this is only about camp."
"This isn't just because I made the cut?"
"No."
The certainty settles something in me. Not the wanting - the wanting does not settle, the wanting is the speed and the speed is permanent. What settles is the fear. The fear that the pasta and the film sessions and the elevator and the bedroom were hospitality, generosity, the kindness of a veteran toward a rookie. That the wanting was one-directional. That the mistake was real and not the cover story for something bigger.
The certainty says: the something bigger is real.
He steps closer. He touches the side of my neck. The touch is warm and brief and the brevity is the control, but the touch is the underneath, and the underneath is winning.
"You should not have come here first," he says.
"Where should I have gone?"
"To your mother. To your agent. To anyone whose opinion of you is professional and appropriate."
"I came to the person who told me to be effective instead of impressive. I came to the person who cooked pasta at 10:30 because I couldn't sleep. I came to the person whose hands are more honest than his words."
His jaw flexes. The flex is the control processing information that the control cannot categorize, because the information is emotional and the control does not have a filing system for emotion. The control has a filing system for hockey and routine and the management of proximity. The control does not have a file for "a man came to me first."
He takes my hand. He turns it over. He presses his mouth to the center of my palm.
