Power Play

Chapter 4 - The Pasta

They established a rhythm within a week, the type of rhythm that develops between individuals, whether intentionally or not, simply due to proximity and the convergence of two schedules within a two-bedroom apartment.

She was awake before him on most mornings; he would hear the sound of the shower at five-thirty, followed by her quiet and efficient movements in the kitchen, utilizing a bowl, a spoon, and the refrigerator door, with her departure occurring by six o'clock.

He respected that about her before he respected almost anything else: she didn't make noise for the sake of being noticed. If anything, she diminished her presence in that apartment, as though she were still anticipating his assertion that she occupied excessive space.

He observed that and found this displeasing. He recognized it in a manner akin to noticing a splinter—small, specific, and impossible to disregard once it has been identified.

The rule he had laid out that first night — closed doors, separate lives, three months and done — lasted about ten days. It fell apart over something as stupid as pasta.

He came home from a Thursday lift session to find her at the stove. The smell hit him before he got his shoes off, garlic and something else. His stomach experienced an involuntary reaction that was unrelated to attraction and entirely attributable to the fact that he had eaten a protein bar for lunch and a rather unappetizing turkey sandwich the previous day.

"That smells like actual food," he said, before he had even decided to say anything at all.

She looked up from the pan, surprised — he believed he had startled himself as well — and a look of caution crossed her face before she concealed it.

"My grandmother's sauce. There's plenty if you want some. I always make too much for one person."

He should have said no. He had a whole plan built around not doing things like sitting down to a meal with his temporary, complicated, entirely-off-limits roommate. But he was hungry and it smelled like someone's grandmother had actually made it. Some traitor part of his brain reasoned that dining in the same room as another individual was not equivalent to any other interaction, and he responded, " Yeah. Okay. Thanks."

They dined at the kitchen counter, as neither party appeared to possess a dining table of notable quality. For the initial four minutes, silence prevailed between them, and contrary to his expectations upon arrival, the atmosphere was surprisingly comfortable.

"Your grandmother is from Duluth too?" He asked, because he didn't know what else to ask, and because he had apparently decided silence was worse than risk.

"Sicily, originally. She used to say that the sauce was the one thing that made every kitchen feel like home." Reese turned over her fork in her hand. "I make it when I'm homesick. Guess that's not subtle."

"You're homesick."

"I moved into an apartment with a guy who told me on day one that I was his problem now," she said, dry, not quite looking at him. "Yeah, Ashford. I'm a little homesick."

It landed precisely as intended, a clean and accurate impact, and he warranted it. Furthermore, the fact that she communicated this directly to him, rather than allowing it to remain unaddressed, resulted in an increase in his respect for her rather than a decrease.

"That was a d**k thing to say," he said.

She looked up, genuinely surprised, as an apology was the last response she anticipated from him, which, to be fair, was likely justified.

"I have generally exhibited unprofessional behavior," he stated, before he could reconsider his words. "Since the camp, I am aware of my actions. I will not feign ignorance regarding my conduct."

"Why?" She wasn't letting him off with a vague admission. She wanted the actual answer, and he could see her deciding, in real time, whether she was going to make him give it to her.

He contemplated the possibility of deception. He possessed a certain proficiency in this regard—sufficiently adept, in fact—having navigated his father's expectations, his coach's timelines, and the limitations of his own physical capabilities for four years. Engaging in deception, even of the minor strategic variety that prevents a situation from deteriorating, had effectively become a secondary role he assumed.

But something about the kitchen, the low light, the smell of her grandmother's sauce, made the lie feel like too much effort.

"Because I have one season to secure a draft position," he stated. "Every additional aspect that this program must manage represents another potential complication, and I concluded in August that you constituted an additional factor. This is not — I am not asserting that it is equitable. I am merely articulating what I conveyed to myself in order to alleviate my concerns regarding the matter."

"I'm not an extra thing," she said. Not sharp. Just certain, in the way people are certain about the ground under their own feet. "I'm a defenseman with a better plus-minus than three of your top-six forwards. I'd have thought the captain would have run those numbers before deciding I was a liability."

He had run the numbers. That was the part he didn't say — that he had watched game tape of her junior season more times than he had admitted to anyone, that he knew exactly how good her gap control was, that some nights in August he'd lain awake doing the actual math on what she added to their blue line and coming up with an answer that made his August self furious, because it meant the only real problem in that locker room had never been her hockey. It had been everyone else's ability to deal with it. His included.

"I know your plus-minus," he said. "I've known it since August."

Something shifted in her face — not triumph, not quite, but something close to it, the specific satisfaction of being seen correctly after weeks of being looked at and mislabeled. "Then what exactly have we been doing?"

"I don't know," he said, and it was the most honest thing he'd said to another human being in longer than he wanted to think about. "Figuring it out, I guess."

She maintained eye contact for a moment longer than appropriate across the kitchen counter, and he sensed its impact to descend to a region below his chest, a place where such feelings should not reside. Subsequently, she diverted her gaze back to her plate, and the moment concluded itself like a door closing, with both parties opting not to pursue it further.

But something had fractured. He could perceive it, akin to the sensation of a stress fracture prior to its manifestation on an X-ray — an anomaly, a yielding, within a structural framework, a location that would prove significant later, irrespective of his desires.