Our door was ajar—standard two-inch buffer.Light glowed.Inside, Luke sat at his desk, shoulders forward, textbook open but untouched.His phone lay screen-down on the keyboard.The rest of the room looked staged: bed made military-tight, gear bag zipped, even the stickhandling ball corralled in its pouch.I could see the shoulder taping under his tank top.
He glanced up.Relief crossed fast, like a flashcard flipped for half a second.“Hey.”
“Evening.”I closed the door, dropped my bag under the desk.Radiator check—valve perfect.Good.“How were weights?”
Luke spun the athletic-training ice cup in one hand, condensation dripping onto a towel he’d spread logically across his thigh.“Weights were fine.Coach didn’t kill us.”
“Pulse and respiration confirm survival.”I toed off my boots.“Food acquired?”
He nodded toward the fridge.Two blueberry bars waited on my shelf spot, aligned like stalagmites.“Supply chain secured.”
I peeled off my jacket and resisted the obvious stall.Ask.Just ask.
I opened the fridge instead, grabbed one bar, turned, and leaned against the door.“Phone quiet now?”
His gaze dropped to the device as if surprised to find it still there.“Sure.”
Too fast.I unwrapped the bar, broke it in half, ate the smaller piece.“Quiet is an interesting metric.Three alerts earlier, then radio silence.”
Luke’s shoulders stiffened.He picked at the training-room tape around the cup lid.“Was nothing.”
My turn to raise an eyebrow.“You ice your shoulder for nothing?”
“That’s for practice.”He forced a half-smile.The gesture carried the vibrancy of a wet firework.
“It wasn’t just practice,” he admitted, looking down at his knees.“We dropped the exhibition against Vermont last night.4-3.”
“I didn’t see a score alert.”
“Because we should have buried them.Instead, I lost the puck in traffic twice.Complete vision failure.”He crushed the paper cup in his hand.“Coach is making sure I feel it.”
“Statistical variance,” I offered.
“Garbage goaltending,” he corrected.
Silence chewed twenty seconds while the radiator ticked a metronome.Luke stared at the textbook page—statement of cash flows, bright blue heading.His finger traced the margin like reading Braille he didn’t understand.
“You really don’t have to help me,” Luke said.“I’ve dug the hole, I can figure a way out.”
I stepped away from the fridge, took the rolling chair opposite him.Kneecaps level.“Two data points.”I held up fingers.“One: numbers obey structure.Two: we have structure.”
“You’re not in this class.”
“Cash flow statements aren’t sorcery.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.“Austen—”
“I said I was available to help after nine.”I checked the watch he’d once teased me for polishing weekly.9:03.“Congratulations, it’s after nine.”
Relief flashed over his eyes, then vanished behind the same controlled mask he used in goal.The speed of it irritated me—like needing something for a fraction of a second was a crime.
I pulled his textbook closer, flipped to the quiz review.“Show me what tanked.”
He opened a loose-leaf folder, slid out the graded paper.Red ink bled across margins:Posting error, Wrong sign, Incomplete schedule.I scanned line totals—he’d flipped debits and credits in three places.Simple inversion, compounding mistakes.
“Okay,” I said.“These are sign errors.”
“No, these are me-not-getting-it errors.”
