My knee kept bouncing.
Jake grabbed another fistful of cheese puffs. "Okay, but consider—I once hid a parking ticket from Evan for three weeks because I was scared he'd make me create a vehicle violation tracking spreadsheet."
I blinked. "What?"
"A parking ticket. From the meter on Fifth Street. The one outside the bakery with the broken timer that everyone knows is broken, but the city refuses to fix."
"Jake—"
"I shoved it in my hockey bag. Under my shin guards. Figured if I didn't acknowledge its existence, it would simply cease to be real."
Evan didn't look up. "That's not how tickets work."
"I found that out when the city sent a follow-up notice threatening to boot my car, and I had to confess like a parking-adjacent war criminal."
"You cried," Evan said.
"I did not cry."
"You cried, then asked if I still loved you, then cried more when I said the spreadsheet was non-negotiable."
"The spreadsheet was excessive, Evan. It had color-coded categories and a column for emotional state at the time of violation."
Evan dug in. "It had accountability structures."
"It had a PIE CHART."
I laughed. Jake grinned triumphantly. Even Evan's mouth twitched.
"See?" Jake pointed at me with an orange finger. "Fear makes people do dumb things. Doesn't mean they don't love you. Sometimes it means they love you so much they'd rather suffocate under their own shin guards than admit they fucked up."
"That's weirdly poetic."
"I'm a poet. I contain multitudes." He settled back into the cushions. "Hiding something doesn't automatically make someone a villain. Sometimes it makes them a dumbass who's scared of pie charts."
The warmth in my chest cooled.
"It's not the same thing," I said quietly.
They both stopped.
"The parking ticket," I clarified. "That's different. You were scared of the spreadsheet. You weren't asked directly and then lied to."
The room was silent.
"I looked at him. Multiple times. I saidIs there something you're not telling mein actual words. And he said he was handling it. He looked me in the eyes and chose not to answer."
Jake's hand hovered over the bag, frozen.
"That's what hurts. Not that he has a secret. Everyone has secrets." I paused. "It hurts because he left me out. The play was already in motion, and I was still on the bench, wondering why the puck never came my way. That’s what everyone does. They decide who I am—and how much of me they can take—and then they set my position for me."
Evan blinked.
"I'm too much. I've always been too much." My voice came out rough. "And people decide that means I can't be real. Not serious enough to hear the truth. Not steady enough to handle it."
"That's a lot more than a parking ticket," Jake said.
"Yeah." I brushed cheese dust off my fingers onto my jeans. "It really is."
