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I wasn't expecting anything. Quinn's on a date. Why the hell would she text me?

Jordan catches me checking, of course. His eyebrow goes up, but for once, he keeps his mouth shut.

Instead, he grabs the remote and puts a game on.

We don't have any stake in it, but Jordan starts talking shit about one of the defensemen before the first shift is over.

“Look at this guy. My grandmother could skate backward faster than that.”

“Your grandmother plays hockey?”

“No, which makes it even worse.”

I laugh and take a drink of my beer.

For a few minutes, I even manage to watch the game without thinking about Quinn.

Then my phone lights up on the couch, and I grab it before I can stop myself. But it’s just a message from Kai.

"You're doing the thing again," Jordan says, eyes still on the screen.

"What thing?"

"The phone thing. Same as Toronto."

"I don't have a thing."

"Sure. You keep telling yourself that."

Around ten, he starts gathering himself up, jacket off the arm of the couch, giving Pickles one last scratch behind the ears that the dog accepts like a toll he's willing to pay for the company.

"You gonna be okay?" he asks at the door, and for a second the joke drops out of his voice entirely.

"I'm fine."

"Yeah. You said that already."

He claps me on the shoulder once and lets himself out.

The apartment goes quiet again as soon as the door shuts. I end up with my guitar in my lap.

I notice I always seem to end up here, guitar in my lap, playing the same four chords whenever my head gets too loud. It's been my go-to on bad nights for longer than I care to remember.

My guitar is the one thing I brought from Minnesota that wasn't expensive or particularly useful, and somewhere along the way, it became the thing I reach for instead of actually dealing with whatever's bothering me.

I don't finish that thought. I just keep playing the same four chords over and over again.

The G string's gone slightly flat, but I don't bother fixing it. Being a little off feels about right tonight.

Pickles gives up trying to read my mood and parks himself under the kitchen table instead, watching my feet like they might do something interesting.

"Not tonight, buddy."

He sighs like he agrees with that assessment and rests his chin on his paws.

I run through the chords again. Same order, same tempo, until it's just my hand moving. There's a version of me that could probably write something real out of a night like this, some actual song instead of the same loop over and over, but that guy would have to sit still with the feeling long enough to shape it into words.

I'm not that guy. I'm the guy who plays the same four chords until his fingers hurt too much to keep going.