Page 59 of Crash Out
Nathan still wasn't at the boards.
Dylan found me after. He fell into step beside me the way he always did, quiet and inevitable.
"Cross wasn't at practice," he said.
"I noticed," I said.
"First time in two years."
I kept walking.
"I'm not saying it's your fault," Dylan said, in the tone of a man saying exactly that.
"Why are you even telling me this?”
"You were with him last night." Not a question. Statement, delivered sideways, the Dylan way. "I saw you leave together."
I didn't say anything.
"Wes." He said it flat. Not angry. Something more tired than angry. "He's the team doctor."
"I know what he is."
"Do you?" A pause. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like—" He stopped. Started differently. "Cross doesn't do this. Whatever you think this is. He doesn't."
"You don't know that."
Dylan looked at me then. Really looked, the way he rarely did, the way that meant he'd decided something and was going to say it regardless.
"He missed practice," Dylan said. "Cross. Who has never missed practice. Who came in with a stomach bug last February and ran assessments anyway." A pause. "Whatever happened last night, it got to him."
I kept walking.
"I'm just saying watch yourself," he called after me. "Both of you."
He went into the locker room.
I stood in the corridor.
Nathan’s office was at the end of the medical wing, past the training room, past the equipment room, past the stretch of corridor that smelled like athletic tape and something chemical that I'd never identified. The door was closed.
I stood outside it.
The light under it was off, which meant he wasn't in there. That meant he'd closed it before he left, and I didn't know why that mattered but it did. The closed door sat in my chest in a way I couldn't explain.
I stood there for a while.
Then I went home.
The next day the door was open.
I stood in the doorway.
Nathan was at his desk, fountain pen in hand, notes open in front of him, and he looked up when I appeared and then looked back down, which was the professional version of acknowledging me, which I had a whole catalogue of by now.
"Your door was closed yesterday," I said.
"I know," he said.
