Page 46 of The Longest Shot
He's looking for the table I promised to get us, and a second later our eyes meet across the room. For a fraction of a second, I see it all—the same want, and the same what-the-fuck-did-we-do that's been eating me alive—but then his face goes carefully neutral, and he heads to the counter.
I watch him order. The barista—a perky sophomore with a high ponytail—tries to flirt, leaning over the counter to give him a view that would require active effort to avoid. Three weeks ago, Rook would have leaned in, turned on that thousand-watt charm, and probably walked away with her number.
But today he gives her a polite but distant smile, his body angled away, and he doesn't take the invitation to look down her top. He's not performing anymore, and the sight shocks me, because it's perhaps the most unsettling thing I've seen since I got here.
When he has his coffee, James navigates through the tables carrying a cup that's definitely not just black coffee—there's whipped cream involved, possibly caramel, and definitely chocolate shavings—and it's clear to me the man orders beverages like a kindergartener let loose at Starbucks.
"Sit," I say, sharper than intended. "Before you spill that diabetes-bomb everywhere."
He sits, then pulls something from his jacket pocket, a paper bag already translucent with grease. "Got you something."
I eye it suspiciously. "What is it?"
"Glazed doughnut. Peace offering." He slides it across the wobbling table. "Or breakfast."
"Trying to fatten me up?" The joke escapes before I can stop it, an unnatural attempt at humor a reaction to thisveryunnatural situation.
His eyes go wide. "No! God, no. You look… I mean, you're perfect… not that I'm looking… I just meant?—"
"Rook." I tear off a piece of doughnut, the sugar coating my fingers. "Lighten up."
"Right. Yeah." He blinks, like he's recalibrating, and like he's not used tomemaking jokes, which is fair, because neither am I.
"Thank you." I take a bite. "Even if your coffee order suggests you have the palate of a five-year-old."
"It's called joy, Morgan," he flashes that million-watt grin. "You should try it sometime."
Once the table stabilizes—relatively speaking—the silence becomes suffocating. He studies his whipped cream monstrosity, while I finish off my doughnut and then stare at a scratch in the wood that looks vaguely like a lightning bolt.
"We need ground rules," I say, finally, putting on my team captain voice. "Our teams can't keep clashing in the shared facilities."
He looks up. "Ground rules. Right."
"Separate ice times. Minimal overlap. Maximum efficiency." I finish the doughnut and then lick my fingers, then I catch him watching and blush.
"Morgan," he says, his tone quiet and serious. He drags a hand through his hair. "Can we actually talk? Not dance around it with hockey speak?"
"This is talking."
"No, this is you pretending nothing happened and scheduling things to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Because nothing can happen," I say. "You know that."
"I know." His voice is rough. "But not because it was wrong."
"Of course it was wrong," I scoff. "We were emotional, and Galloway had just?—"
"Stop." He leans forward, the table wobbling. His knee brushes mine under the table, and even through denim, the contact burns. "You can handle it however you need to once I'm done talking, but I need you to hear something first. I need toexplain about three years ago… and why you were right to call me a jester…"
The look on his face is completely stripped of his usual masks. This is James without the performance. It's terrifying. And it's like the whole of Pine Barren Bagels stops, as well, the guitar and the espresso machine falling silent right at the exact time he drops the bomb on me.
"OK," I say, cautiously, wishing my walls were still up, when in reality he demolished them yesterday.
"My parents…" He stops, starts again. "They should've divorced after I was born. They go from screaming matches to days of silence and back again. Sometimes they hit each other, too. It's horrible, but growing up, the silence was worse. It was like living with a bomb, waiting for someone to light the fuse."
His hands wrap around his mug, and it's clear he's not done, so I keep quiet.
"I figured out I could defuse things. Make a joke, break something, cause chaos. Anything to interrupt the countdown. I became the family circus act, and it worked." He looks up, meeting my eyes. "They'd stop fighting to deal with whatever mess I'd created, and I kept the peace by being the disaster."
