Page 85 of The Grumpy Defenseman
He looked away from me then.
Not far. Just to the blank edge of the monitor, as if giving his eyesone neutral surface for a second might keep the rest of himself from reacting too fast.
When he spoke, his voice was even quieter.
“You kept it.”
Not an accusation this time.
A fact he was trying on for fit and not liking.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
There are questions that invite self-defense.
That one did not.
Instead, I said the only thing that would matter.
“Because it was the best frame I’ve taken in three years, and I let that matter more than consent for too long.”
The room went very still again.
The rest came anyway.
“And because I knew that,” I said. “I knew exactly what it was the second I saw it, and I still couldn’t delete it.”
He did not say anything.
I kept going because stopping now would have turned honesty into choreography, and I was already too far in to make the lie prettier.
“It was real and too much of you, and I knew it,” I said. “And some part of me wanted it anyway. Not for the team. For me. For what it meant.”
I laughed once under my breath.
It sounded terrible.
“Amazing, right? Really elegant moral collapse on my part.”
That finally made him look back at me.
Not softened.
Just present.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m trying not to throw up.”
That almost did something to the corner of his mouth.
Almost.
Then it was gone again.
“Did you show anyone?”
