They meet in her car again on Saturday afternoon, parked on the street outside the Moreau family home in Laval, with forty minutes to spare before they're expected inside. The house is a beige semi-detached on a quiet residential street, and the kitchen light is already on, and Jade can see the shadow of her mother moving past the window without needing to look directly.
"Quick run-through," she says. She has a list on her phone.
Nolan is in the passenger seat. He dressed for this dark slacks, a clean navy shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled to the forearm. She noticed this when he got in the car and immediately decided not to think about it. It's a dinner. People dress for dinners. This is not a data point.
"We met two years ago when I joined the team," she begins.
"You were assigned to me as primary physio."
"Yes. Professional for the first year and a half." She glances at her notes. "The shift happened approximately eight weeks ago. Late evening, home game, almost empty building. You came back for something you'd forgotten."
"My watch," he says. "I leave it in my stall during games."
She pauses. He's added a detail she didn't give him. She writes it in. "Your watch. I was still in my office. We talked."
"You were annotating game footage," he says. "You had three different colored pens."
She looks at him.
"That's the kind of detail that makes it real," he says, without any particular expression. "You need to be able to picture it yourself when you're telling it or it won't sound right."
She stares at him for a moment. She had not expected him to be good at this. She had prepared for someone who would need coaching, who would give answers that were technically correct but somehow hollow. She hadn't prepared for someone who understood narrative.
"Fine," she says. "Three pens. Green, black, red."
"What were you annotating?"
"Marcus's defensive positioning on corner plays. He has a tendency to drift left under pressure and I wanted to flag it for the physio notes it puts extra load on his right hip."
Nolan nods. "That's accurate."
"I know. It's from my actual notes." She scrolls down her list. "My sister will ask whether you've met my friends. You haven't. Camille and Priya." She pauses. "Camille Osei, physiotherapist. Priya Nair, emergency medicine. They're my closest friends. You've heard their names."
"Camille is going through a breakup," he says.
She stops scrolling. "How do you know that?"
"Baptiste ran into her at a sports medicine conference in October. He mentioned it." He looks at her expression. "Bap talks. I listen."
She decides to set this aside and continue. "Camille is going through a breakup. Don't bring it up unless she does. Priya" She considers. "Don't try to charm Priya. She'll see it and it'll work against you."
"How do I handle Priya?"
"Be direct. Give her real answers. She values precision over politeness."
He seems to file this away seriously, like it's game information.
"My mother will ask about your family," she continues. "You told me your parents are separated. Mom in Québec City, dad in Toronto. You're not close. I have not told my mother this I'd prefer you to, when she asks. It'll feel more authentic if she hears it from you."
"Okay."
"Théo," she says. "He's the one person in your life my mother might actually ask follow-up questions about, because brothers are something she understands. Tell her he's two years younger, he plays defense, you've been playing together since minor hockey. Tell her you're close. My mother loves brothers who are close."
"We are close."
"Good. Tell her that."
She scrolls to the bottom of her list. She's covered the meeting story, the timeline, the relevant people in both their lives, the family context.
There is one item she's been putting off.
"Physical contact," she says.
He doesn't react. He just waits.
"At the dinner, my mother and my sister will be watching. If we sit across from each other and barely interact physically it won't read as a new relationship it'll read as a bad one." She keeps her voice clinical, which is where she is most comfortable. "A new couple still reaches for each other. It's unconscious behavior. We need to replicate it selectively."
"So we touch each other."
"We perform the behavior, yes. Hand on the back when we move past each other. Sitting close at the table. If you say something funny, I might put my hand on your arm." She looks at her phone. "Normal new-relationship contact patterns."
He is quiet for a moment.
"You've thought about this carefully," he says.
"I've thought about everything carefully. It's what I do."
He looks out the windshield at her mother's house. The kitchen light is still on. A second shadow has joined the first one Léa, moving fast, which she always does.
"My turn," he says.
She looks at him.
"You talk to your mother every Sunday. Not every day, but Sundays specifically you mentioned it once, last month, you were still at the Arena when she called and you told me you had to take it." She notes his expression, which is still neutral. "You have a scar on your left index finger, cooking accident when you were sixteen. You drink your coffee black, you don't eat breakfast before workouts, you run every morning except Mondays. You have a cat named Cortex who I have never met but who has apparently claimed several of your patient files as sleeping territory based on the orange cat hair I've found on your desk twice."
Jade stares at him.
"You're good at your job because you pay attention," he says. "And you actually care, which a lot of people in your role don't. Jordie one of the junior players told me last year that you're the only medical staff he's ever worked with who remembered what he told you the week before. That's not nothing." He pauses. "That's what I'd say if someone asked me what I noticed first."
The street is quiet outside. A neighbor is raking leaves, the sound reaching them faintly through the car windows.
Jade is not sure what to do with most of what he just said. So she does what she always does, which is locate the practical element and focus on it.
"Jordie told you that?"
"Two winters ago. After his ankle."
"I didn't know that."
"Now you do."
She puts her phone in her bag. She checks the time. Twelve minutes to six.
"My sister is going to ask, at some point tonight, if you're serious about me," she says. "I told you to deflect. But she's going to push, so have something ready. Something that sounds real without being a promise."
He thinks about this.
"I'll tell her I'm still figuring out how to be good at this," he says. "That's true enough."
She looks at him. There is something in the way he said it not performed, not calculated that she doesn't entirely know what to do with.
"That'll work," she says.
"Ready?"
She looks at the house. The kitchen light. Her mother's shadow, still moving.
"No," she says.
"Me neither." He opens the passenger door. The cold November air comes in. He looks back at her. "Moreau."
She gets out of the car.
The front door opens before they reach the porch. Isabelle Moreau fills the doorway in a patterned apron, both arms already extended, and behind her Léa is craning to see around their mother's shoulder with an expression of unrestrained curiosity that makes Jade's chest tighten with something she doesn't have time to name.
"You're here," her mother says, and takes Jade's face in both hands first, then turns to Nolan. "And you."
"Bonsoir," Nolan says. He holds out the wine he brought — a good one, Jade notices, not the kind you grab on the way. He must have chosen it earlier. Her mother takes it with both hands like an offering and smiles up at him with the specific warmth she reserves for people who walk through her door and make her feel like arriving was the right choice.
"Come in, come in," she says. "Léa, take the wine. Jade, your coat. Come"
The door closes behind them, warm air and the smell of cooking and something baking, and Léa is already looking at Jade with a raised eyebrow and a small, sharp smile that says: We are going to talk. Later. Extensively.
Jade gives her a look that says: Not if I can help it.
Léa's smile widens.