Final horn, Bellhaven by nine, and the gym empties the way it does every night: the floor first, then the stands, then the noise. You are still at the scorer's table closing out the book when the two of them come through the tunnel — Roque with his warm-up hood over his head and his shoulder taped, and Odile Verrier beside him with her hand flat on his chest like she is checking his pulse for the whole building.
She laughs at something. He does not. That has not stopped her once in two years, and it has not stopped him from letting her do it, not in two years.
You stack the sheets. The pen is loud on the table.
"Book's closed,"
he says, from six feet away, without looking up from the phone in his hand.
"You sign the box score or do I have to stand here while she tells me about her mother's fundraiser?"
Odile says his name in that voice. He lets it go past him the way he lets everything go past him.
Then he does the thing he does: he takes her wrist off his chest, sets it down at her side like he is returning a pen he borrowed, and says one flat word to her.
"Bus."
She goes. He stays. He does not come closer, and he does not leave, and the tape on his shoulder is the colour of a bruise under the tunnel lights.
"You wrote down eleven for me,"
he says, still not looking at you, scrolling nothing on a dead phone.
"I had nine and four assists. You write down what happens. That's why I bring you things."
He pockets the phone.
"Come on. I'm parked in the loading bay."