Dartmouth

Dartmouth matters as the place where Mike Baye and Mo became hockey teammates and lifelong friends, and where Mike first met Tia Baye. The college’s home opener against Yale supplies the decisive origin scene: Mo spots Tia in the stands, then engineers an encounter that helps bring her and Mike together.

College and Hockey

Mike Baye and Mo were Dartmouth juniors and members of its hockey team. Mike played left wing and led the team in scoring; Mo played defense as its tough enforcer. Their positions on the ice also capture the contrasting roles they continued to occupy in friendship: Mike the dependable scorer, Mo the hard-edged protector.

Nearly a quarter century after graduating, those roles remained recognizable. Mike had become a transplant surgeon, while Mo did murky work for the Central Intelligence Agency, yet they still played hockey together. In the changing-room conversation, Mo treated their game as sacred time even when Mike received a text from Tia, teasing him for being so devoted to her.

The Meeting with Tia

Dartmouth is also the setting for the beginning of Mike and Tia’s relationship. On a cold winter day during the home opener against Yale, Mo noticed Tia in the stands before Mike did. During warm-ups, he pointed her out to Mike, then acted on his theory that women would choose either the bad boy or the man who suggested a settled future.

With Dartmouth comfortably ahead in the third period, Mo picked a fight with a Yale player, beat him, and winked at Tia as he gauged her reaction. After the referees broke it up and Mo skated to the penalty box, he told Mike that Tia was his. The staged display of toughness was Mo’s way of clearing space for his friend, not competing with him.

From Campus to Courtship

Mike and Tia met again at a party after the game. Tia had arrived with a senior but was not interested in him; she and Mike instead talked about their pasts and his wish to become a doctor. When she pressed him on when he had first known, Mike surprised himself by explaining that he had been a sickly child and that doctors had become his heroes. Tia listened with an attention he felt he had not received from anyone else.

Their relationship developed through ordinary campus routines: they ate in the cafeteria, studied together at night, and Mike brought wine and candles to the library. Dartmouth thus frames more than the first glance between them. It is where Mike’s professional ambition and childhood history become part of their early intimacy, while Mo’s brief intervention links the couple’s beginning to the friendship that endures long after college.