Page 113 of Knottingley Ever After
Oh.
Oh, Defenseman D, you cannot say it in that voice, and that tone, in this register, in front of three coaches. We are going to have a problem.
My hands come up before any conscious part of me has authorized the motion. The pads at the wrists of my goalie gloves come up to roughly shoulder height in the small universal surrender gesture, and I do not, in fact, contest the order. I do not negotiate with it. I do not, in any of the small habitual ways I would, with anyone else in this building, ask for the underlying reasoning.
Manhandled by the defenseman. One hundred percent hot. Filed.
Filing. Filing the file. The folder is going to need a subfolder at this rate.
I leave my net. I skate toward the home tunnel without looking at Coach Declan, without looking at Matteo, without looking at any of the sector-one row of bodies who are, I can tell from the small drop in the rink temperature, watching the exactway the goalie does not negotiate with the defenseman who told her to shower.
I clip the gate behind me. I pull my mask off as I hit the rubber-matted tunnel. The cool of the corridor air hits my sweat-wet face in a small clean blow.
Rémi follows. One stride behind. Quiet.
I push through the door of the converted-utility-closet girls’ locker room. The little space smells of bleach and the residue of the cleaner Jimmy passed over the bench at six this morning. The single safety bulb in the corner is the only thing on. I drop my mask on the bench. I peel off my left glove. I sit down and pull at the laces of my left skate, the side with the sore hip.
Rémi closes the door behind us.
Three quiet steps and he is in front of me.
He drops to a crouch. The pine-and-snow of him fills the small radius of the locker room in the gentle even way it always does, and his hand, gloved still in the worn black leather of his training mitt, comes up to my forehead and presses the back of his bare wrist there with the steady careful authority of a man who has done this gesture many times in his life on many people.
“Iris,” he says, very quietly. “Are you about to go into Heat.”
I blink up at him.
Oh. Oh, that is the question.
“I —” I have to take a beat to actually consult the small inner gauge of my own body, which is, frankly, embarrassing for a twenty-four-year-old career Omega to have to do. “No? I do not think so. My blockers are still working, as far as I can tell. I do not feel — I do not feel any of the standard signs. Not really. No fever I can register. No nausea. No skin sensitivity. No, ah — desire-spike.”
Rémi watches my face. He keeps the back of his wrist there for one more careful beat.
“Your scent is up,” he says. “For the record. Not by an alarming margin. But it is up.”
“Okay.” My voice has gone small. “Okay. I — I have an appointment with the Omega specialist at the campus clinic today at four anyway. I could go in early. Have them check.”
“Good.” He lets his wrist drop. Settles back on his heels. “Before that. Have you been sleeping.”
I close my eyes.
“No,” I admit, very quietly. “I have bouts of insomnia. Always have. The last three nights have not been good. I lie down. I close my eyes. The brain decides it is time for a comprehensive audit of every embarrassing thing I have said since I was nine. I get maybe an hour before Rémi’s six-a.m. alarm.”
He nods. Slow.
“Right,” he says. “Go. Shower. Take your time. We will pass by the Omega specialist together and have them do bloodwork, just so we have data on the blockers. Probably the insomnia is the upstream issue, and the goalie performance is a downstream metric. But we will get a professional to confirm.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
I open my eyes.
Rémi is still crouched, his weight balanced on the toes of his skates with the small unspectacular grace of a defenseman who has spent fifteen years living on his blades, and his pale eyes are on mine.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “For — out there. For defending me. I do not want to play badly. I genuinely do not. Today was just. Off.”
He does not answer immediately.
