OFFSIDE

Chapter 4

COLE

I got to the conference room eight minutes early.

Not because I'm the kind of person who needs to be first everywhere—Dom would argue otherwise but Dom is wrong about most things—but because I'd been briefed on the co-sponsorship structure two days ago by Farley and I'd had forty-eight hours to sit with it and I needed those eight minutes to finish sitting.

The brief had been straightforward. Joint committee. Shared sponsorship. Co-chair with the cheer captain.

Farley had said ‘cheer captain’ and I'd said ‘who's the cheer captain’ in a voice that came out completely normal, which I considered a personal achievement.

Farley had said Nadia Reeves.

I'd said ‘right’ and looked at the schedule in front of me and asked a clarifying question about the showcase date that I did not actually need clarified.

So I'd had two days. I'd used them. I was fine.

I sat down, put my water bottle on the table, opened my notebook to a blank page, and was entirely composed when the door opened and Callahan came in with Farley.

Then Nadia walked in behind them.

The notebook stayed open. I looked up, made eye contact for exactly the amount of time that was normal, and looked back down.

Fine. Completely fine.

Callahan ran through the structure and I listened even though I already knew it, because sitting in a meeting you've been pre-briefed on is useful—you can watch how other people receive the information instead of processing it yourself. Nadia received it the way I expected her to, which was with complete stillness and a very particular quality of attention that meant she was already three questions ahead.

When she started asking those questions I wrote nothing in my notebook because there was nothing to write and also because I was listening too hard to write.

She was good at this. The timeline question was the right first move, the co-chair rationale was the right second move, and the ‘whose idea specifically’ was the kind of precision that most people in these rooms never deploy because they don't want to seem difficult. Nadia seemed difficult without apology and made it look like the most reasonable thing in the room.

I'd forgotten that about her. Or put it somewhere I didn't want to think about.

Farley glanced at me once during her third question with an expression that said ‘you're going to have your hands full.’ I kept my face neutral. Farley didn't know what he was talking about.

When Callahan finally looked at me I said I had no questions, because I didn't, and because I'd rather let her finish than interrupt something that was going well for her.

She didn't look at me when I said it.

In the hallway afterward I fell into step beside her out of instinct—

same direction, same door—and she said *don't* before I'd opened my mouth.

I nearly said ‘I wasn't going to say anything’ and then immediately thought of three things I'd been about to say, so technically she was right. I went with the committee meeting because it was the most neutral opening I had and the most honest. We needed a first meeting, the sooner the better, logistics didn't care about personal history.

She negotiated the time like a trade agreement. Thursday. After five. Five thirty. Her terms, my room, confirmed. I filed it.

Then she gave me the speech.

Professional arrangement. Committee outcomes. Separate programs. That's all this is.

I stood in that hallway and I let every word land where it was aimed, which was squarely in the chest, and I said understood because it was the only word that wasn't too much or too little. She held eye contact the whole time she said it. Daring me to argue with her framing or flinch at the delivery.

I didn't do either.

When she walked away I stayed where I was for a moment.

The thing about what she said is that she said it like a closing statement. Like she'd won an argument. But you only need a closing statement if there's a case being made, and you only make a case if there's something worth arguing about.

I wasn't going to say that.

I went to practice.

Wolves had a two-hour session — conditioning first, then line drills, then a scrimmage that got competitive in the third rotation in a way I actually liked. The team was good this year. Better than last. Kowalski had fixed his crossover, Marcus was reading angles better in net, and the new freshman—Abdi, quick and annoying in the best way—had an instinct for open ice that you couldn't coach into someone.

I ran them hard and they responded and for two hours the only thing that existed was the ice and the work and the particular satisfaction of a team starting to find its shape.

Afterward in the locker room Dom sat down beside me.

"How was the meeting?"

"Fine."

"Fine meaning fine or fine meaning you're going to stare at the middle distance for twenty minutes and call it processing."

I pulled off my skates. "Fine meaning fine."

"She in the same program as you?"

"Co-chair structure. Joint committee."

Dom was quiet for three seconds, which for Dom was basically a full silence. "Whole semester?"

"Whole semester."

"Cole."

"It's fine, Dom."

"You keep saying that word."

"Because it keeps being true."

He looked at me with the expression he used when he thought I was lying to myself — not unkind, just completely unconvinced. Dom had been my best friend since sophomore year of high school and he had a memory like a tax document. He didn't forget things and he didn't let me forget things either, which was mostly a quality I valued.

Mostly.

"She give you a hard time in there?" he asked.

"She asked the right questions."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I answered."

Dom leaned back against the locker. "I'm just saying. Whole semester is a long time. Things come up. Conversations happen-"

"Dom." I looked at him. "I know what I did. I know what it cost. I'm not going in there thinking this fixes anything."

He held my gaze, nodded once, then dropped the topic.

I finished getting changed and drove home in the early dark of a September evening with the windows down and the radio on something I wasn't listening to. The folder from Callahan was on the passenger seat. The sponsorship brief, the event dates, the committee structure.

I'd read it twice already.

On the third page there was a section called Program Representatives with two lines.

Hockey: Cole Hartley.

Cheer: Nadia Reeves.

Our names in the same sentence on a document I hadn't asked for.

I thought about the hallway. Her voice when she said what she had said. The way she'd held eye contact like she was daring me.

I put the car in park and sat in my own driveway for a minute.

Then I went inside and called Jamie.