I want to throw the spoon at him.
I want to kill him with my bare hands.
"We're cooking," I say. My eyes saygo back to your room rightfucking now and never come out.
"Right," Blake says slowly. His eyes sayyou are making a catastrophic mistake and also go fuck yourself."Because that's definitely what that looked like. If cooking is staring at each other."
"Do you want to eat or what?"
"I'm going." Hands up in surrender. He glances at Jamie. "Nice to meet you." And then he's gone.
Silence crashes back in. The moment is gone with it. Fully, completely, permanently gone. I look at Jamie, trying to gauge his reaction. He looks at me and he’s red at the collar. Grip on the spoon slightly too firm. Ears — and this is my favorite thing about him, this involuntary tell he absolutely hates — pink at the tips.
Yeah.
Same.
"Stir better this time," I say, trying not to laugh.
"Shut the fuck up," he responds.
I grin so wide it hurts.
We eat at the counter. I want to be close to him so I put us close together and Jamie notices but says nothing, which I'm choosing to read as informed consent.
It's quiet. The good kind.
"So what's up with the intensity?" I ask. Because it's been sitting in the back of my head since the first morning session. Since the first time I watched him on the ice at six AM, alone, like the only thing standing between him and something terrible was the rhythm of his own blades. "The hockey. Why so much of it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. It's everything. The way you talk about it, the way you train, the way you played through a shoulder injury for weeks and didn't say a word. It's like nothingelse is allowed."
He takes a drink of water and sets the glass down.
"My dad got me into it," he reveals. "Young. Like six."
"Okay," I say. I know better than to push. Jamie is a locked door and if you throw yourself at it, it just holds. You wait. You give him room. You let him decide whether he’s going to give more. "That's a long time."
"Yeah."
"Did you ever want anything else?" I question. "When you were a kid. Before it took over?"
"Not really." Then, quieter, "My dad made sure that’s all I had time for."
I don't push. I turn back to my food instead.
"Me and my brother used to play hockey together," I pivot. "Trying to keep me out of trouble. I was a nightmare as a kid — shocking, I know." I glance at him playfully. "He made it fun. That's the thing I keep thinking about with this team. Nobody's having fun. Like somewhere along the way we all forgot that's what it's supposed to feel like."
"Your brother still play?"
"AHL. Trying for the show." I stab a piece of pasta. "He's the real talent in the family. I got the mouth."
"Don’t do that. You have a lot of talent," Jamie says and keeps eating. Unbothered by the kind thing he just said like he says kind things all the time, which he absolutely does not.
"Thanks, Jamie."
He redirects so cleanly it almost impresses me. "What position does he play?"
