Page 14 of Line Change

Micah looks offended that she thinks he needs the reminder, but his phone stays facedown.

We’ve been tearing through the questions all night. Tessa answers music and anything involving television made after I was drafted. Micah knows politics, celebrity disasters, and the entire history of Eurovision. I get science, geography, books, and a disturbing number of questions about eighties music that neither of them believes I should know.

By the time I identify Hieronymus Bosch from a badly cropped section of The Garden of Earthly Delights, we’ve filled every line on the first-round sheet. The host calls pens down. Micah takes the paper to the scoring table while Tessa drops the pen.

“Ugh. You need to quit your job, and you’d clean up here.”

“Yes, because queer trivia nights pay so much better than the NHL.”

The woman at the table behind us laughs. She has a rainbow painted across one cheek and a Leviathans cap on backward. When I glance over, she raises her glass. I raise mine back.

Micah returns with a ten circled in red at the top of our sheet. He puts it in the middle of the table where Tessa and I can appreciate it, then checks his phone. “Your job is doing okay for you tonight.”

“We aren’t playing tonight.”

“That’s not what Instagram thinks.”

He turns the screen around. The video is paused on Pope in front of his locker after our last game, his hair still wet and a team towel around his neck. My shoulder is visible at the edge.

I know the clip. I was there.

Micah doesn’t watch hockey, but apparently he’ll watch an eight-second locker-room interview six times.

“No,” I say.

Micah hits play anyway.

The reporter behind the camera asks Pope what finally clicked between us. Pope says, “Fraser was where I expected him to be.”

My voice comes from offscreen. “You could try saying thank you.”

Pope turns toward me. In person, it had felt like his usual stare. On the video, his eyes drag over me before coming back to my face.

“Thank you, Fraser.”

I walk far enough into frame for the camera to catch my grin. “I like Nolan better.”

Pope looks at me for a long second. “I’m sure you do.”

The clip starts again. Micah pauses it on Pope looking at me.

“That has been reposted everywhere,” he says.

“People are bored.”

Tessa leans across the table to see. “Why is he looking at you like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that,” Micah says, which is useless because the screen is right there and Pope is only looking at me.

I reach for it. Micah pulls it away.

“Honestly, you two just need to kiss.” He holds the screen against his chest.

I hold out my hand. “Honestly, you need to give me your phone.”

“That’s not a no.” Micah keeps it pressed to his chest.