That’s the thing with her. She usually knows.
We sit with the phone between us like we already decided where to put our attention.
“He’s not going to stop,” she says.
“Probably not.”
“Then what?”
“Then we deal with it.”
She turns her head. “We.”
“Yeah. We.”
That should feel like too much.
It doesn’t.
Something flickers across her face. Not surprise exactly. Something steadier than that.
“He doesn’t get to have anything to do with what’s happening here,” I say. “He doesn’t get that.”
“No,” she says. “He doesn’t.”
She nods once.
I know I should go.
Six AM skate. Round 2 already under my skin. I’ve got a hundred reasons to be somewhere else right now, and I can’t make myself move toward any of them.
“Can I ask you something.”
“Yeah.”
“You turned the car around because you saw his number.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…”
“What.”
“A lot.”
I look at her.
She’s almost smiling now. The real one. Not the one she wears in scrums when she wants a player to forget she’s paying attention.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
She studies me for a second. “You really don’t do anything halfway, do you.”
“Apparently not.”
That lands between us and stays there.
“He’s going to keep trying.”