The Wolves' annual media evening is held in the club level of the Arena, which is transformed once a year into something that resembles an actual event space: the corporate tables pushed back, a temporary bar installed along the east wall, lighting brought in from somewhere that makes the exposed industrial ceiling look intentional rather than unfinished. The players are expected in business casual. The media is expected to ask questions that won't embarrass anyone. Everyone performs.
Jade has been to one of these before, in her first year, and spent most of it standing near the medical staff table explaining concussion protocol to a journalist who was more interested than she expected. She dressed for the job that time professional, contained, the clothes of someone who wanted to be taken seriously.
This time she dresses differently.
She is not entirely sure when she made this decision. She is aware that she made it, because she stands in front of her open wardrobe on Thursday evening and bypasses the navy blazer and reaches instead for the dark burgundy dress that Camille made her buy last spring and that she has worn once, to a wedding, because it is not a dress for ordinary occasions.
It is, according to Camille, a dress for occasions you want to be remembered for.
Jade puts it on. She lets her hair down. She looks at herself in the mirror with the slightly removed assessment of a person examining something that belongs to them but that they do not often examine.
She puts her coat on over it and goes.
He sees her before she sees him.
She knows this because by the time she spots him across the room near the bar, with Baptiste and two people from the media relations team he has already adjusted his posture slightly, the almost-imperceptible shift of someone who has registered something and is choosing a response to it. She has learned to see this. She catalogs it and walks toward him.
He breaks from the group when she's close. His expression does its usual thing neutral surface, something moving underneath.
"You're here," he says.
"I was invited."
"You were. You look " He stops. He starts again. "The dress is different."
"It's burgundy."
"I know what color it is." Something in his voice has the very slight change that happens when he is editing what he was going to say. "It's good."
She looks at him. Dark suit, white shirt, collar open by one button the same general approach he took at the sponsor event, with the same result, which is that he looks like someone who understood the assignment and decided he didn't need to try very hard. The cicatrice above his left eyebrow catches the light.
"Shall we?" she says.
They move through the room together.
This is different from the sponsor event. The sponsor event was corporate the interactions had the specific texture of professional performance, everyone saying things that were designed to be reported as impressions. This is more fluid. The media present are the sports journalists who cover the Wolves regularly; they know the players, they have context, the conversations carry actual content.
She meets three journalists she's read and one she's spoken to before, briefly, after a game. Nolan moves through it all with the quality she's observed in him in high-stakes situations fully present, giving each person exactly what the conversation requires, never performing more than he feels.
At one point he puts a hand at her waist. Not her back her waist, slightly lower, more definite. They are being greeted by the Wolves' general manager and his wife, and the placement of his hand is context-appropriate and has a legitimate explanation within the terms of their agreement, and she understands all of this and it doesn't change anything about the way she becomes immediately and precisely aware of each of his four fingers against the fabric of the burgundy dress.
She shakes the GM's hand. She says something appropriate. She has no memory afterward of what it was.
Later, near the end of the evening, they find a brief window of actual stillness near the floor-to-ceiling windows on the north side of the room. The city is lit below them in the particular way of late November the darkness coming early and the lights compensating for it, the St. Lawrence a dark ribbon between the island and the south shore.
"You're good at this," she says.
"At what?"
"At being in rooms. At making people feel like you're happy to be talking to them specifically."
He looks out the window. "It's easier when it's true."
She considers this. "Is it always true?"
"No." A pause. "More often than the reputation would suggest." He turns and looks at her. "You're good at it too."
"I'm adequate at it. I find it tiring."
"That's not what I saw."
"You weren't watching me the whole time."
He says nothing to this. Which is, she notes, itself a kind of answer.
The room is warm and loud behind them. Out here by the windows it is quieter the glass absorbs some of the sound, and the view provides an alternative point of focus, and they are standing close enough that they could be having a private conversation or simply looking at the city, which is the particular ambiguity of standing near someone at a crowded event.
He turns to face her. He is close. Close enough that she has to look up slightly, which she does not usually have to do.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"You can ask."
"The first time in the corridor. With Marc Olivier." He watches her. "Was it the first time you thought about it?"
She holds his gaze. The question is specific and requires a specific answer.
"No," she says.
He nods. Slowly. Like this is information being placed correctly rather than news arriving unexpectedly.
"Me neither," he says.
The city below them doesn't change. The room behind them continues at its own pace. Nothing is different and something is completely different, and they stand at the window together for another minute before Baptiste appears at Nolan's shoulder with the cheerful obliviousness of someone who has excellent timing and no idea he has it.
"There you are. Morency wants a photo with the medical staff for the website, Jade, he's looking for you "
She steps back. She nods at Nolan. She follows Baptiste.
Three steps away, she glances back.
He hasn't moved from the window. He's still looking at where she was standing, not at her retreating across the room.
She turns back around.
Her heart is doing something specific and she is categorizing it as a cardiovascular response to atmospheric pressure, which is not a real diagnosis, but it is the best available option right now.
She finds the team photographer. She smiles for the photo. She is professional and composed and entirely capable of functioning.
She thinks about me neither for the rest of the evening and all the way home and for a significant portion of the night after.
Cortex sleeps on her feet.
She lies awake.
She thinks: No. And: Me neither. And: what do you do with two people who have been thinking about the same thing without saying it, and have now said it, and have not done anything about it yet.
She thinks: yet.
She closes her eyes.
She does not sleep for a while.
She gets home at eleven-fifteen.
She feeds Cortex on autopilot, drops her coat on the chair by the door, and sits on the edge of her bed with her shoes still on. Her phone has three messages Camille asking how it went, Léa asking what she wore, her mother asking whether Nolan looked nice in a suit.
She answers none of them.
She puts her phone on the nightstand face-down.
She lies back on the bed without getting under the covers, staring at the ceiling with the focused attention of someone trying to think clearly about something that resists clarity. The ceiling offers no useful information. Cortex jumps up and settles against her side.
She has been careful. This is important to her — she has been careful since the beginning, she built the carefulness into the structure, she wrote the rules. No attachment. No personal information beyond what the story needs. Nothing that requires regret.
She said no and he said me neither and she has been careful and it doesn't appear to have made any difference.
She sits up.
She goes to the bathroom, removes her makeup, changes into pajamas. She goes through the motions of the end of a normal day. She brushes her teeth. She turns off the lights.
She lies in the dark.
She thinks about his hand at her waist. Not at her back — waist. The distinction matters. She knows it matters because she noticed it in real time, catalogued it in real time, and has been not-thinking about it for three hours.
She turns over.
She thinks about what she said to Priya two weeks ago: it might be manageable.
She thinks: it is becoming less manageable.
She thinks: I need to decide something before something decides itself.
She does not decide anything.
She falls asleep eventually, the city quiet outside her window, Cortex a warm weight against her feet, and the word yet somewhere in the dark at the back of her mind, patient and unhurried, waiting for her to catch up to it.