One syllable each. Professional. Adequate. The distance between them was approximately eighteen inches of cold bench and an ocean of awkwardness.
Elise sat down. Her thigh settled close to Sienna's, close enough that heat radiated through the fabric of Sienna's trousers. She shifted away, fractionally, and then felt stupid for shifting, because shifting implied that the proximity bothered her, which implied that she was still thinking about last night, which she absolutely was but didn't want Sienna to know.
The game started. The puck dropped and the arena roared and the Valkyries came out fast, pressing Montreal into their own zone from the first shift. Mara was on her feet immediately, shouting adjustments, her voice carrying over the crowd noise and expecting to be obeyed. Helen watched from her seat with quiet, analytical focus, her pen moving across her clipboard in small, tight notes.
Sienna was still. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the ice and her body language so carefully neutral that it was screaming. She wasn't leaning toward Elise. She wasn't leaning away. She was occupying her exact allotment of bench space as if she'd calculated it to the centimetre.
They didn't speak. The crowd noise and Mara's shouting filled the space where conversation might have been, and Elise was grateful for it. She kept her gaze forward, on the ice, tracking the play, reading every system the Valkyries ran and reading the adjustments in real time. First line was pressing high. The forechecking pattern was aggressive, two players deep, one hanging at the blue line. It was working. Montreal's defence was under pressure and their transitions were sloppy.
The first period was tight. Montreal were organised and disciplined and their goaltender was sharp. Camille had two shots that went wide and Lou broke up three rushes with a physical authority that made the Montreal forwards visibly reconsider their life choices. Frankie was everywhere, all energy and aggression, throwing her body into checks with nothing left to prove.
And Lex. Lex was brilliant.
She was playing centre, Elise's position, and she was playing it with a speed and creativity that made the Montreal defence look slow. She won faceoffs. She made passes that split defenders. She drove to the net with a relentlessness that drew penalties, and on the power play she set up Camille for a one-timer from the left circle that rattled the crossbar and made the crowd gasp.
Elise watched all of it and tasted copper.
It wasn't jealousy. She respected Lex's talent and always had. But watching someone play your position better than you play it, while you sit on the bench in civilian clothes with your arm in a sling, was a specific kind of agony that no amount of respectcould soften. Every shift Lex played was a question: do they need Elise Moreno at all?
"She's having a good game," Sienna said quietly.
Elise looked at her. Sienna's eyes were on the ice, but the comment was directed at Elise, and there was a carefulness in her voice, an awareness that the observation might sting. She was acknowledging the difficulty without pretending it wasn't there. It was the same thing she'd done at Lavender's, and in the medical suite, and in every moment when Elise's fear surfaced and Sienna met it honestly instead of with platitudes.
"She is," Elise said. Her jaw was tight.
Their thighs were close again. Elise hadn't moved back and Sienna hadn't moved away and the heat between them was distracting. Every time Mara shouted and the bench shifted, their legs pressed together through the fabric, a brief, electric contact that sent heat up Elise's spine. She kept her eyes forward. On the ice. On the game. On anything other than the woman sitting eighteen inches to her left who smelled of clean perfume and who had rejected her less than twenty-four hours ago.
The second period, Lex scored. A beautiful goal, a deke around the Montreal centre and a wrist shot, top corner, glove side. The arena erupted. The bench erupted. Mara punched the air with both fists and then caught herself and smoothed her expression back to professional, but the grin leaked through anyway. Elise clapped with her good hand against her thigh and the sound was hollow.
Lex scored again in the third, on the power play, from the slot. Camille's cross-ice pass hit her tape and Lex one-timed it into the bottom corner before the goalie could set. Two goals and an assist. A dominant performance in the position Elise used to own.
The Valkyries won three to one. The third period was comfortable, the team controlling possession, Montreal chasing shadows. When the final buzzer sounded, the players poured off the ice in a wave of celebration, sticks raised, grins wide. Lou grabbed Camille around the waist and lifted her off the ice, and Camille shrieked, and Frankie jumped on both of them, and Dani stood in her crease with her arms folded and a small, satisfied smile.
Lex skated past the bench and banged her stick against the boards and caught Mara's eye, and the look between them was private and electric and brief, and Mara's face softened into an expression that was almost a smile.
"Good game," Elise said to no one in particular. She stood up and her legs were stiff from sitting and her shoulder ached from the cold.
"Are you okay?" Sienna's voice was quiet, just for her.
"I'm fine."
She wasn't fine. She was frustrated and sad and confused and her thigh still burned where Sienna's had pressed against it, and she needed to get out of this arena before the gap between the team she belonged to and the bench she was sitting on swallowed her whole.
In the locker room afterward, the players were jubilant. Camille had champagne from somewhere, which was technically not allowed in the facility, and Frankie was doing a terrible impression of the Montreal coach's reaction to Lex's goal, and the room was alive, a team that had won together and was about to celebrate.
"Lavender's tonight," Camille announced. "All of us. No excuses. It's lesbian night and I've already spoken to Lavender about reserving the back section."
"Lesbian night?" Rowan looked up from unlacing her skates. "Does that mean I have to dance?"
"It means you have to show up. Dancing is optional but recommended."
Elise was already reaching for her bag. She did not want to go to Lavender's. She wanted to go home and eat takeaway and sit on her sofa where Sienna had sat last night and feel sorry for herself in the luxurious way that only solitude could provide.
"Moreno." Frankie appeared at her side, freshly showered, her short hair spiked with water, smelling aggressively of mint shower gel. "You're coming."
"I don't think so. I'm tired."
Frankie snorted. "You sat on a bench for two hours. You're not tired, you're avoiding."