The Panthers are the ones that do, another loss to add to the Islanders’ tally, though at least they wrung a point out of it. No one’s particularly proud of themselves, but no one’s particularly upset either, the mood in the locker room feeling like a collective shrug, a team that’s given up. David doesn’t want to give up, it’s too early still, but the feeling’s starting to overtake him too.

He’s still dripping from his shower, trying to avoid the small crowd of reporters who seem no more interested in talking to him than he is in talking to them, when his phone buzzes in his suit pocket, and he snatches at it.

u busy? he reads, and he bites his lip hard against an involuntary smile, just writes back No., slipping his phone back in his pocket and getting dressed.

Jake’s leaning against the far wall when David walks out, which is something that David’s almost gotten used to seeing. He smiles when he sees David, smaller than the big, beaming grin he usually aims at him — at everyone, really — but a smile. David tentatively smiles back.

“You hungry?” Jake asks, shoving off the wall.

“I just had a protein bar,” David says honestly, and then when Jake’s face drops, just a little, “But we could get drinks or something.”

“Coffee,” Jake says.

David doesn’t point out that it’s way too late to be drinking caffeine. He thinks that might not be the point. He doesn’t really want to stick around either, in case Benson wanders out and tries to invite Jake somewhere.

He’s right about it not being the point. After an awkward cab ride where David tries to think of something, anything he can say that will stop Jake from drumming his fingers against his knees like he never did in Toronto — tries and fails — they end up at a coffee shop.

Jake doesn’t actually order coffee, getting some sort of complicated smoothie that the girl behind the counter seems to have memorised. He says something while she’s blending it for him, something that isn’t funny but makes her laugh anyway, smiling at him wide and unfeigned. David wouldn’t be surprised if Jake ended up with her number on his cup. If he didn’t already have it.

David buys an overpriced bottle of water just so he won’t have empty hands. Jake glances at it, but doesn’t say anything, not even to tease him like he did sometimes in Toronto when David got something Jake considered boring or overly healthy, which was all the time.

David clutches it self-consciously, the bottle sweating in his hand as he follows Jake to two arm chairs in the back, the place mostly empty around them. It closes in less than thirty minutes — David saw the hours when they walked in — and David isn’t really sure what that means.

Jake sinks into the far seat, leaving David to sit across from him, elbows on his knees, twisting the cap off the bottle of water for something to do instead of stare at him.