"Rhys." He skates toward the boards. "I won't even say anything anymore. Just gonna record myself on my phone and play it back for you when you're late. Save us both the trouble." Normally I'd bite back immediately. Rare jokey Jamie is a gift and I take every one gladly. But I can't fix my face right now and he clocks it before I'm even through the gate.
"Hey." Softer. Right up to the boards. Green eyes on mine, sincere and steady. "You okay?"
"Bad mood," I grumble.
"Yeah, I can see that. Eldridge?"
I look up. "Word travels fast."
"Fitch told me yesterday morning." He holds my gaze. "Is that what's going on?"
Beat.
"Yeah."
He nods once. Doesn't push. Doesn't try to fix it or say something useful or turn it into a moment. Just takes it and lets it sit before he moves on. That's the thing about Jamie that keeps catching me off guard. He knows when something doesn't need words. Most people can't do that. Most people get uncomfortable with silence and fill it with something useless. Not Jamie.
"Okay," he says. "Come on."
He spends the whole practice trying to cheer me up without making it too obvious he's trying. Keeps the drills light. Stays extra close. At one point deliberately fumbles an easy pass and looks at me with the most aggressively innocent expression. He’s being… cute.
I laugh. Just once.
He catches it and holds it tight. His face does that almost private thing — like I just handed him something he's been waiting for. By the end I'm not fixed. But feel less like I'm drowning.
We skate to the boards and I reach for my water bottle and he says without looking at me:
"Ditch with me."
"Sorry?"
"Whatever you have today." He pulls his helmet off. Runs a hand through his blonde hair, damp at the ends, falling forward across his forehead. "Ditch it."
I gawk at him. "Jamie Nash is telling me to skip class?"
"I'm telling you to come hang out with me." He glances sideways and there's a lightness in it I haven't fully gotten used to yet. "My room. Right around the corner. No funny business, I promise."
"Boo. Boring."
"Not what you need right now." He refuses to look away. "I mean it."
I look at him. This impossible, infuriating, quietly devastating man standing at the boards in full hockey gear asking me to come hang out in his room because I look like I've been hit by a truck. I pick up my bag.
"Lead the way."
His room is exactly what I expected and somehow still manages to surprise me. Clean in a way that borders on aggressive. Everything in its place, bed made tight, nothing on the floor, nothing out of order. The kind of room that tells you everything about a person without them saying a word. Small desk. TV he definitely only uses for film. A single photo on the desk I don't look at long enough to make out.
Bare. Like someone who never let themselves take up spacehere or set down roots anywhere. I want to go around and move everything two inches just to see what he does. He’d probably explode.
"Bed," he says, pointing to it. Like it's obvious what he wants.
"Excuse me—"
"You look terrible. Lie down." He's already at the little kitchen space filling a glass of water. "Go."
I go and drop face down onto his bed and turn my head into the pillow and let out the longest breath I've taken in hours. His mattress is firm. His pillow smells like him — clean mixed with detergent and just him. He appears with water and a protein bar with a suspicious crack down the middle and a bag of pretzels.
"This is what you have?"
