Page 96 of The Grumpy Defenseman
I did not know whether that made me want to smile or put my head through the glass.
She stopped at the open gate to the bench.
“You saidearly.”
“I did.”
“This is aggressively early.”
“You came.”
“I said okay.”
That sounded like us. Spare. Too much underneath.
She stepped onto the bench but did not sit beside me. Instead, she set the camera bag down at her feet, like she wanted it visible. Hiding it would make the wrong point.
I respected that.
I hated it a little.
“I didn’t sleep,” she said.
“Me neither.”
“I figured.”
We stood with the boards between us and the ice, both of us looking forward because looking at each other would have started the conversation before either of us had found the right shape for it.
I had spent all night trying to find the first sentence.
Every version sounded wrong. Too soft or too sharp. Too much like punishment.
In the end, the only sentence that worked was the one I had been avoiding.
“You hurt me,” I said.
She went still.
Not defensive.
Ready.
“I know.”
“I need to say it without making it easier for either of us.”
“Okay.”
I looked down at my hands. The same hands that had held a stick since I was small enough to need both of them to carry it. The same hands she had read like history three nights ago.
“It wasn’t just the file,” I said. “It wasn’t even Walsh. He saw something useful and reached for it. That is what men like him do.”
Her mouth tightened.
“It was that you knew what it was before anyone else did,” I said. “You knew it was too much of me, and you kept it anyway.”
She closed her eyes forone second.
