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Quinn:

Wyatt.

Quinn:

WYATT.

I don't answer. I lace my fingers behind my head and stare at Ohio and wait, feeling like a kid who just lit something on fire and is watching from a safe distance.

It's almost twenty minutes before the next text lands. Another photo, no words. My counter, the one with the chip in the granite, covered in white paper bags and a grilled cheese cut on the diagonal, one triangle already missing a bite.

Quinn:

How did you know?

Quinn:

Actually, don't tell me. I don't want to know how much of my life you and Riley discuss without me.

Me:

I plead the Fifth.

Quinn:

This is unfair. I can't even be mad at you right now. My mouth is full.

Me:

Good. Mission accomplished.

I read it twice. Then a third time, which is the point where a normal person would put the phone down and go to sleep. I don't put the phone down.

I don't know when I fell asleep, but I definitely feel the sleepless night when I wake up the next morning.

Warm-ups the next afternoon, and I get to the boards before the rest of the guys file out. I stand there a second, staring down at the ice the way you do when you're not really looking at anything, just letting the cold come up through my skates.

Somebody skates past, I don't even pay attention enough to identify him. He says something about growing up on frozen ponds, real hockey, none of that LA sunshine stuff.

It's nothing. A throwaway line. Guys say some version of it in every rink in every city, usually followed by a joke about how nobody up north has a tan past October.

I go quiet a beat too long anyway.

The ice under my blades isn't a rink for a second. It's flat and gray and it goes on forever, and there's a sound in my head that isn't a sound, more like the absence of one, and then I catch myself and shake it off on purpose, roll my shoulders, plaster the grin back on before anyone clocks it.

Nobody notices it because I did my job.

We win, 4-2. I get a helper on the second goal, a saucer pass through the neutral zone that makes the highlight reel. Good night, on paper.

We're still in the locker room after, half the guys not even out of their gear, when Camden's phone goes off with the tone he's set for the team chat, the one I've learned means absolutely nothing important ninety percent of the time.

Cole reacts first, snorting at his phone two stalls down.

"Yo. Did you hear Coach set Quinn up with some 'nice guy'? Adam somebody. Family friend's kid."

The chat lights up fast after that. Laughing emoji from somebody. Good for her honestly from somebody else. Dmitri's contributed nothing but a single unimpressed period, which is somehow the most Dmitri response available.

I keep my head down, working a knot out of my skate lace that doesn't actually exist.