Page 47 of Rookie Mistake
"The word is yours."
"The word is bisexual."
"The word is bisexual."
"The world doesn't get to edit it."
"The world does not get to edit it."
We sit. The apartment holds us. The not-immaculate apartment with the sneakers and the plant and the sofrito and the teaspoon. The apartment does not care about the headline. The apartment does not care about the comments. The apartment holds the word the way the cabinet holds the sofrito: without conditions.
The grin comes down. The wall comes down. The underneath is tired and stung and held.
The holding is enough. For tonight, the holding is enough.
But the sting is not gone. The sting is resting. The sting will combine with something else, something that has not arrived yet, and the combination will be the crisis that tests whether the fortress with the door can survive a siege from outside.
The siege is coming. I can feel it in the sting.
NIKOLAI
The notification appears on my phone at 3:12 PM on a Tuesday while I am eating a protein bar in the player lounge.
TRANSACTION: Alexei Petrov, F, acquired by Carolina Hurricanes via trade from Minnesota.
Carolina. Eastern Conference. Same division.
The protein bar is in my hand. The protein bar stays in my hand for four seconds because my hand has stopped receiving instructions from my brain and my brain has stopped receiving instructions from anything except the name on the screen.
Alexei Petrov.
Three years. Three years of the name living in the architecture like a crack in a foundation. Three years of the name being abstract, distant, a wound from a different team in a different conference on a different timeline. The name was manageable because the name was far away. Minnesota is far away. The Central Division is far away. The probability of encountering the name on the ice was low enough that the model could categorize it as a non-variable.
Carolina is not far away. Carolina is four hours by bus. Carolina is the same division. Carolina means the name is nolonger abstract. The name is in the Eastern Conference. The name will be on the ice. The name will be in the building.
I put the protein bar down. I pick up my phone. I put my phone down. I pick it up.
The cycle is the model running. The model is processing the new data. The new data does not fit the current framework because the current framework was built on the assumption that the past would remain in the past and the past has just signed a two-year contract with the Carolina Hurricanes.
I pick up my phone. I open the message thread. I type Eli's name three times and delete it three times. The old model has fast hands. Faster than honesty.
The not-telling is the first lie I have told Eli since the corridor.
At the apartment that evening, I cook. The cooking is the routine, the routine is the model. Eli is on the couch doing something on his phone that involves laughing at videos Bennett sent him. The laughing is the Eli sound, warm and filling, and the sound reaches the kitchen and the kitchen absorbs it and the absorption is the ordinary.
The ordinary is the thing I am about to damage.
"Hey," Eli says from the couch. "You're quiet tonight."
"I am always quiet."
"You're a different quiet. The jaw is doing the thing."
The jaw. Eli reads my jaw the way I read his grin. The jaw is the tell. The jaw is doing the thing because the jaw knows about Alexei and the jaw cannot hide what the jaw knows.
"Long day," I say.
The sentence is the second lie. The day was not long. The day was normal until 3:12 PM and then the day was the name and the name was the past and the past is now in the Eastern Conference.
