“You’re welcome,” I said.
We sat there a little longer.
The dead plant. The throw blanket. The city outside. All the same details. All different now, because they were in a room where the word had been said and had not been taken back.
“You’re going to have to be loud sometimes,” Shay said again, more lightly this time, like it was already a bit between us. “Just so we’re clear.”
I looked at him.
He was watching me with that same steady, unperformed attention. The look from the dinner table. The bar. The balcony. The parking lot. Except this time, there was no question in it.
He knew the answer now.
“Then I’ll be loud,” I said.
It felt like an impossible promise.
It felt like the only one worth making.
He smiled.
Not the big, room,holding grin. Not the practiced, story,telling one. Something smaller. Quieter. The version he saved for two AM texts and Henry’s kitchen and, apparently, for me, in his living room.
“Okay,” he said again.
And this time, I believed him.
Chapter Nineteen
Shay
The thing about falling in love with your best friendand then actually doing something about itwas that the world didn’t change as much as you thought it would.
The ceiling in my apartment was still the same ceiling. The water stain in the corner still looked like nothing. The dead plant stubbornly remained dead. The team still had morning skate at ten. Coach Denny still had his clipboard and his permanent expression of a man who regretted his life choices.
And Felix Wren still unlaced his left skate before his right.
All of that was exactly the same.
The thing that was different was underneath everything else, the way stable ice looks exactly like regular ice until you’re the one skating on it.
The first morning after the conversation in my apartment, I woke up having slept.
Not performed sleep. Not three hours of ceiling time and two of accidentally passing out in self,defense. Actual sleep. A full night, all the way through, the deep, heavy kind that left my limbs pleasantly wrecked and my brain doing its slow, slightly confused reboot.
My phone said 7:12.
There was a text.
Felix:I told Callahan. He’s taking the trade off the table. They want the line for the push.
Underneath it, from thirty seconds later:
Felix:Also, you have film at 7:30. You’re late.
I stared at the screen. At the two messages, one on top of the other, like they belonged together.
I texted back:you’re very romantic.
