Not Doing

Chapter 5: Miscellaneous

By the second week, Leo Moretti was only eleven minutes late.

Mr. Okafor had started keeping score on a sticky note under the broken clock, like a record nobody expected to fall. Twenty-six. Nineteen. Fourteen. Eleven. Leo pretended not to notice, but I saw him glance at it every time he walked in.

He got a 74 on his first chemistry quiz. He held it up like a trophy, then noticed he was grinning and shoved it into his bag. Mr. Hale returned his Macbeth draft with a single note in the margin: Where has this been all semester?

I said nothing. That was the promise. It sat between us at the table like a third person, and neither of us mentioned the black notebook, and every time his pen moved across a page, I kept my eyes on my highlighters and held my breath.

On Friday, Danny Reyes intercepted me outside the cafeteria, tray in hand.

"Home opener tomorrow. Lakeview. You should come."

"I have a study schedule."

"I bet it has a slot for fun."

"It has a slot labeled Miscellaneous."

"Perfect. Put us in Miscellaneous." He was already walking backward, grinning. "Leo won't admit it, but he plays better when someone's watching who isn't there to tell him he's great."

"I'm not there to tell him anything."

"Then you'll fit right in."

I told myself I was going as due diligence. A tutor should understand her student's obligations. That was the only reason I wore my good jeans.

The arena on game night was a different animal. The cold was the same, but now it was packed with noise, a wall of navy and gold in the student section, drums, a hundred voices chanting a name I'd heard all my life without ever knowing what it sounded like when it meant something.

Mo-ret-ti. Mo-ret-ti.

I found a seat near the top, half hidden by a pillar, and had barely settled in when a girl slid onto the bench beside me. Glossy dark hair, Warriors scarf, the sort of confidence that comes with never having been told no.

"You're the tutor," she said.

"Everyone keeps saying that like it's a diagnosis."

"Madison Pierce." She smiled with a great many teeth. "Everyone's talking about you, you know. Thirteen days."

"Thirteen days of what?"

"Since Leo's been in a fight. People are counting." She tilted her head. "The rumor is that you're the reason."

"I'm the reason he knows what a limiting reagent is. That's all."

"Sure." Madison's smile didn't shift. "We went out for two weeks last spring, actually. He's amazing. He's also gone by week three. I'm just saying, as a friend. Don't get attached."

I opened my mouth to say we weren't anything. Below us, the horn blew, and the Warriors poured onto the ice, and the words went out of my head.

Leo skated in last. Even from the top row I could see it, the calm falling over him as soon as his blades touched the ice, like someone walking into a house he'd built.

For two periods, I forgot Madison was there.

I forgot everything. Lakeview was big and dirty and quick, and they hit Leo every time he touched the puck, and every time, he got up and went right back. In the second period, a defender slammed him into the boards, then shoved him again after the whistle, hard, deliberately, and Leo's helmet snapped sideways.

The arena gasped.

Leo's gloves came off.

I was on my feet before I knew it. Gloves on the ice, fists up, the whole student section screaming. This was the Leo from the stories. This was the one the school had been waiting for.

His fist was already clenched. His shoulders were already set.

Then he looked up.

I don't know how he found me. There were nine hundred people in that building, and I was half hidden by a pillar. But his eyes went straight across the arena and landed on mine, gray and blazing and, for one strange second, uncertain.

He unclenched his hand.

He bent, picked up his gloves, and skated to the penalty box with two minutes for roughing and not a single punch thrown.

The arena roared, confused and disappointed and delighted all at once.

"Wow," Madison said slowly, sinking back onto the bench. "He never walks away."

I said nothing. I couldn't. My heart was going like I'd been the one on the ice.

Warriors 3, Lakeview 2. Leo scored the winner with four minutes left, a shot so quick I didn't see it leave his stick, only the net bulging behind the goalie, and the whole building coming apart around me. He didn't celebrate like the others. He skated past the mob, lifted his stick toward the top row for half a second, and then he was lost in a pile of navy jerseys.

Madison saw it. I felt her see it.

"Huh," she said.

I left before the handshakes. I told myself it was to beat the crowd.

Outside, the parking lot was cold enough to hurt. My breath smoked in the lamplight as I fished for my keys, and I was three steps from my car when I heard his voice behind me.

"You came."

Leo stood at the edge of the light, hair still damp, bag over his shoulder, jacket zipped to his chin. Without the gear, he looked younger. Less like a legend and more like a boy who hadn't slept properly in weeks.

"Due diligence," I said. "Tutors have a responsibility to understand their students."

"Uh-huh." His mouth twitched. "And what did you understand?"

"That you're a very good skater with an alarming tendency to get hit."

"Thirteen days." He said it quietly. "Fourteen, now. I didn't throw one."

"I noticed."

"You know why?"

My throat had gone dry. "Why?"

"You said once you'd rather see what I actually do than hear the stories." He shrugged, but it was stiff, not careless. "So I looked up, and I thought: I'd rather that be it."

The lot went very quiet. The floodlights hummed. Somewhere far off, a car door slammed.

He took a step closer. Then another. Close enough that I could see the pale scar through his eyebrow I'd never noticed, and the frost catching in his lashes, and how his eyes weren't flat now, not at all. They were the exact gray of the sky just before it snows, when you can feel it coming.

He lifted a hand and, very carefully, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

I stopped breathing. I distinctly remember deciding not to.

"Hart," he said, so low it was barely a word.

"MORETTI!"

We sprang apart like we'd been caught with a stolen exam. Danny was hanging out the door of the team bus, waving both arms over his head. "Team dinner! Coach says if you're not on this bus in ten seconds, he's leaving you here to walk!"

Leo shut his eyes. "I'm going to kill him."

"You'd better catch the bus first."

"Tuesday," he said, backing away, still looking at me. "Three-fifteen."

"You'll be late."

"Less late." A crooked smile, a little helpless. "Way less."

He jogged off across the lot. I stood alone in the cold until the bus rumbled away, one hand pressed to the spot beside my ear where his fingers had been.

At home, I opened my spreadsheet and stared at the Saturday column. Under Miscellaneous, in small letters, I typed: Hockey game.

Then I added a new row beneath it and couldn't think what to call it.

I didn't fall for Leo Moretti. I want that on the record.

I just stopped being able to fit him in the cells.