Page 63 of Breakaway
"Okay." The word is out before the meaning behind why he is calling me hits.
"They selected you. Atlanta took you off the Tempest's unprotected list."
The sentence is in the air between us and I am waiting for my brain to do what it does, to rate the sentence, to build a category for it, to find a column where it fits. There is no column. The sentence does not fit in any column I have ever built or planned for.
Wes straightens off the railing. I see it from somewhere outside myself. His forearms come up, his hands go flat on therail, and he is standing fully upright with his jaw set and his shoulders squared.
"Kyle." Wes's voice. Not mine. "What happened? You didn’t think either of us would be drafted."
"The Tempest's list came in different than what we projected. Atlanta wanted a young forward with upside and his contract value was right for them. I'm sorry, Wes. I'm telling you what they told me."
"When is this effective?"
"It's done. The selection is official. Atlanta's GM is going to call Luca in the next few minutes. His name is Alex Grayson. He's going to welcome him to the franchise." A pause. "Luca needs to take the call."
"Kyle." My voice. The only word I can find. "I know." His voice is careful and steady. "I'll call you both tomorrow. We'll work through the logistics. But I wanted you to hear it from me first."
The call ends. The screen goes dark. Wes takes the phone from my hand and sets it on the table. I did not feel him take it. I did not feel my fingers open.
I am standing on a balcony I have stood on a thousand times. The ocean sounds the way the ocean always sounds, the low steady push of water against the seawall fourteen floors below, and I am hearing it like I have never heard it before. Like it belongs to a different building.
Wes is next to me. His breathing is steady. His hands are flat on the railing. He is upright and I am aware of the fact that he is upright because I am not sure my legs are doing the same thing.
I don't know how long we stand there. The light shifts on the water. A bird crosses the balcony line and keeps going and I watch it the way you watch anything when your brain has stopped processing and your eyes are just open.
Wes turns his head. He looks at me. I see him looking at me and I see him take in whatever is on my face. "Sit down if you need to," he says.
"I'm fine." I am not fine. I am standing on this balcony and the word fine is a word that belongs to the person I was ten minutes ago and I am using it because it is the only word I can find.
The phone rings on the table.
A number I don't recognize. Atlanta area code. The screen is lit and the number is just numbers and I do not move.
"That's Grayson," Wes says. His voice is even. The voice he uses with coaches, with trainers. "You need to answer, Luca."
I pick up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Luca Berger? This is Alex Grayson, general manager of the Atlanta Firebirds. I wanted to call personally to welcome you to our organization."
His voice is warm. He is happy. He is a man building a franchise from nothing and calling to invite me into it, and the voice that answers him is mine except it is running without me. The performance has turned itself on. I can hear it in my own mouth, the polite, the grateful, the professional, and somewhere behind it I am standing on a balcony watching a bird I already forgot cross a sky that used to be mine.
"Thank you," I say. "That means a lot."
"We've had our eye on you for a while. Your skating, your anticipation, the way you read the ice. You're exactly who we want building this thing with us. Training camp is September. My office will be in touch with your agent on the logistics, but I wanted you to hear it from me."
"I appreciate that, Alex."
"We're going to do something special in Atlanta. I'm glad you're part of it."
"Thank you."
The call ends. The phone is in my hand. Wes reaches over and takes it from me again, gently, and sets it face down on the table.
"Come inside," he says.
"Not yet."
