I breathe through my nose.
I watch him watch Rhys laugh at something Bennett says, the real laugh, the one I know, and I watch Marcus's jaw move like the sound of it hurts him.
Good.
I want it to hurt him. I want everything to hurt him.
I want to cross this bar and get in his face and tell him exactly what I know and watch him understand that someone knows. That Rhys wasn't as alone as Marcus made him feel. That the story Marcus told doesn't hold anymore.
That Rhys is loved.
I want to put him through the wall, but I stay where I am.
Because it's the night before a game and the scholarship and the future and my father's voice — always my father's voice — telling me this is not the place and this is not the time and you do not get to lose control here.
I stay where I am and I watch him and I hate him with everything I have. Marcus doesn't approach Rhys. He just watches.
All night.
And I continue to watch him.
Every time Rhys moves the eyes follow — patient, careful, unashamed. Like surveillance. Like someone who spent a year telling himself he had no choice and has spent the time since trying to reconcile the man he was with the choice he made and can't.
The fury in my chest gets quieter as the night goes on.
The specific cold quiet that has always been worse than heat. The kind that compresses into a single point behind my sternum and sits there waiting. Like I could make a diamond just from the pressure in my chest.
I watch Marcus watch Rhys and I think about Rhys on the phone telling me about Eldridge. About having nobody to call. About getting on the ice every single day and putting every piece of it into the game because the ice was the only place it couldn't reach him. And this man is standing here looking at him like a loss. With the audacity of grief. Like he gets to stand here and want him back.
Like he could take what’s mine.
My jaw aches.
Kowalski says something to me.
I don't hear it.
I notice the moment it starts. The Eldridge winger drifting toward our side. Cooper laughing because Cooper doesn't know yet. The gathering of bodies with that practiced easy energy ofpeople who've done this before and know exactly how it goes. Then Rhys's name in a mouth that has no right to it.
I turn. I take it in fast. The winger. The grin. The setup. Bennett going rigid. Cooper's laugh dying. Rhys standing there contained, alone, with the stillness of someone who has been in this exact moment before and knows how to absorb it. The winger opens his mouth again.
And the bar disappears.
I am nine years old.
I am nine years old in the kitchen doorway and my father is at the table and I have just come inside from playing with the boy from two streets over and my father is looking at me with that expression — not angry, never angry, just still — and he sayssit down, Jamiein the voice that means something has been observed and whatever I did was wrong and a decision has been made with a punishment at the end. I sit down. He doesn't look away from me.
Do you know what I see?he says.
I don't say anything.
I see a boy who doesn't understand what things cost.He picks up his drink. Sets it down.I see a boy who is going to cost himself everything if he doesn't learn to be more careful.
He stands up.
Go get your skates.
The stick.
