Okay, so it goes like this:
Kent was 18 when he did contract negotiations for the first time. Really, it was mostly his agent who did the work because his brain was still halfway left in a hotel bathroom in Montréal, and he just sat and looked pretty and agreed that millions a year sounded good. There's things he's not allowed to ask for, and things he's not allowed to say, and he gets around that by not saying anything and not asking for anything.
He's pretty and living out the rest of his life in Vegas doesn't sound like hell. Probably, he's going to be with this franchise for the rest of his career- especially since the Aces are just starting to yank themselves up into some kind of decent team. He makes it five months (really 4 and a half, but five sounds better, makes him sound less pathetic for starting to build a home) after the start of the season. He's just starting to have a favorite diner, just starting to look for a house to live in that isn't owned by someone ten years older who's played for nearly every team on the West Coast, excluding the Schooners.
It's 7 in the morning on a Tuesday, and he almost doesn't pick up the phone because he's in the middle of trying to decide what mug he wants to use, and Maureen will call back.
He picks up, and it's maybe one of his worst decisions of the month, because Maureen is saying an awful lot of words, but Kent's only really heard four:
So he's leaving at some stupid hour of the morning and .
There is a moment where he is inordinately glad that he never really finished unpacking because he was waiting for when he got his own apartment.
There is a moment on the plane where he is glad that he had French Canadian teammates who wouldn't speak English past 9 at night if there wasn't a game.
There is a moment, standing in the airport and looking around at the gates, when he feels like he never left.
He cries in a bathroom on the other side of customs and then splashes water on his face, buys a coffee, and rolls himself, his suitcase, and his media smile to where the captain of Zimms'- Jack's- Zimmerman's favorite original six team is standing.
"Hi," he says, and hopes the roughness sounds like he got wasted his last night in Vegas and not like he spent the last 12 hours crying. "I'm Kent."
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