The Tape Line

When you get back to Room 614, there's a strip of white hockey tape running down the middle of the carpet.

It starts at the door, splits the room exactly between the two beds, detours politely around the desk chair and ends at the radiator under the window. Kenna is kneeling at the far end of it with the roll in one hand, biting off the last piece with her teeth.

"What," you say, "is that."

"Border." She smooths the end down with her thumb. "My side. Your side. Like civilized nations."

"The bathroom is on your side."

"Then you'll need a visa." She sits back on her heels and looks up at you, and in the lamplight her eyes are almost silver. "Kidding. The bathroom is neutral territory. Like Switzerland. Or the penalty box."

"You'd know about the penalty box."

"I would," she agrees cheerfully. "I have a frequent flyer card."

You step over the tape, very deliberately, to put your toothbrush in the bathroom. When you come back she's on her bed with her laptop, earbuds in, watching game tape. Your game tape. You can see your own number on the screen, the Lynx's orange and black, a power play from December.

"Scouting?" you ask.

She pulls out one earbud. "Studying. You drop your left shoulder before you pass to the slot. Every time."

"I do not."

She turns the laptop around and hits play. On screen you drop your left shoulder and pass to the slot.

"Huh," you say.

"Mm-hm." She turns it back. "You're welcome."

Here is what you learn about Kenna Ryder in the first three hours of living with her.

She keeps the thermostat at sixty-four degrees and calls it "brisk." She does forty push-ups before bed without seeming to notice she's doing them. She sings in the shower, badly, mostly the bridges of songs, never the choruses. She calls her mom in Thunder Bay and says "yes, Mom" eleven times in four minutes, softer than you've ever heard her say anything. She sets an alarm for 5 a.m. "for mobility."

"What is mobility," you ask from your side of the tape.

"Stretching, but with a better publicist."

"It's ten forty. We have to be on the bus at six-fifteen."

"Then sleep, Ava." She clicks off her lamp. "Nobody's stopping you."

You click off yours. The room goes dark except for the orange glow of the city through the curtains and the little green standby light on the TV.

Green. Of course it's green.

You stare at the ceiling and you do not think about Montreal.

You think about Montreal.

Three years ago. The All-Star weekend. You were twenty-four and Kenna was twenty-four, and she still played for the Montreal Royales, in your division, six games a season against you, and every one of those games was a war. You hated her the way you hate weather: personally and for no reason she could control.

The All-Star party was in the ballroom of a hotel in Old Montreal, chandeliers and a terrible DJ and two hundred people in suits and dresses who all wanted to take a picture with somebody. You had one glass of champagne and a headache. You went looking for somewhere quiet.

The stairwell was quiet. Concrete steps, a cold metal railing, the hum of the ballroom through the fire door, and a green EXIT sign that buzzed above the landing and made everything look like it was underwater.

Kenna was already there. Sitting on the steps in a black suit with no shirt under the jacket, just a thin gold chain, her tie in her pocket and her shoes beside her.

"Oh, good," she said when she saw you. "My nemesis."

You should have left. You sat down two steps above her instead. You don't remember what you talked about at first. Rookie years. Bad coaches. Her mom's shortbread. Your dad's garage in Sudbury. Then she said something about your backhand that made you laugh so hard you had to put your head on your knees, and when you lifted it again she was looking at you.

Just looking. No smirk.

"You're really pretty when you're not trying to kill me," she said.

"I'm always trying to kill you."

"I know." She stood up, one step, so you were eye to eye. Her hand came up, cold from the railing, and rested along your jaw like a question. "Tell me to go back to the party, Ava."

You didn't.

You remember her mouth was warm and her hands were cold and she laughed, once, softly, against your lips, like she couldn't believe it either. You remember the buzz of the exit sign. You remember the exact second the fire door banged open two floors up and you jumped apart, breathless, and she pressed her forehead to yours for one more second before she picked up her shoes and went.

You remember the next morning, too, which is the part you try hardest not to.

Your phone, on the hotel nightstand, at 8:12 a.m.

Kenna: we good? last night didn't happen.

You read it maybe thirty times. You typed and deleted four different answers. Then you sent the one that felt like armor.

You: what didn't happen?

She never answered. A week later the Royales traded her to Boston, out of your division, out of your life except for the playoffs and a hundred headlines about the rivalry. Neither of you has said the word Montreal to the other since.

Until today.

Ask her. She's the one who forgot.

You haven't forgotten. That's the problem.

You roll onto your side, away from the window. Away from her. The radiator clanks. Across the room you can hear Kenna breathing, not the slow breathing of someone asleep, but the careful, too-even breathing of someone pretending to be. You've been listening to it for an hour. She shifts. The sheets rustle. She sighs, very quietly, the way people sigh when they've given up on something.

You check your phone. 1:37 a.m.

You close your eyes. You count the seconds between radiator clanks. You think about your left shoulder and passes to the slot and the exact weight of her glove when she held it out to you on the ice this morning and you didn't take it.

1:52.

1:58.

Across the room, a soft glow. Her phone screen, lighting up the ceiling for a second before she turns the brightness down. You lie very still and watch the ceiling and do not look.

2:04 a.m.

Your phone buzzes against the nightstand, loud as a goal horn in the dark.

You turn it over.

Kenna: can't sleep. you up, captain?

She's eight feet away. You can hear her breathing. You can hear her waiting.