But a person? No. Humans disappoint. Bodies fail. People leave.
Except now there’s a line of text on my screen that saysGoodnight, Flint,and I can’t stop scrolling up to read it again, like if I do it enough times it will become something more.
Stay.Come over.Mine.
I can’t tell if the lie is that I’ve never been like this before, or the lie is that I’m telling myself I can control it. I stand, pace to the window. My building sits high enough that I can see the river, dark as a vein, bent like a sleeping animal in the city’s ribs. It’s beautiful and cold and indifferent—like him. I press my forehead to the glass and let it leech some heat.
Ask him out. The thought arrives not as a suggestion but as a dare. Notcome over,notsend more,notremember what I did to you,but something normal. Something human.Dinner.Tuesday.Seven.I can write it. I can send it. I can pretend that underneath the bite and the taunts and the blood in the water, I am a man who asks and waits and doesn’t flinch.
What happens if he says yes?
I snort softly. We sit in a restaurant under lighting that flatters him, and he pretends he doesn’t notice the way people look at us. The server asks if we’re celebrating anything special and I sayno, just hungryand he kicks me under the table for being an ass. We talk about books—his café photo wasn’t a prop—and I tell him the truth: I don’t read as much as I should, and what I read I read like I skate, fast and looking for breaks in the line. He talks about his sister. I ask about the dog. He softens when he saysButteragain. I watch it happen and file away the knowledge like a map of weak points and hidden doors.
What happens if he says no?
That answer I know. I go back to ice-level war. I skate inside his stride, I steal pucks, I whisper worse things in better moments until his body confesses what his mouth denies. Rivalry sharpens everything into sugar glass. You can cut yourself on it and not notice you’re bleeding until the third period.
The phone buzzes. I flinch like I’ve been tapped with a cattle prod.
It’s not him. It’s a group chat. Leander sending a cursed meme about Phoenix’s protein shakes. The kid’s relentless. I flick a smile back, send some skull emojis, and drop the phone onto the cushion like it burned me. The apartment falls quiet again, and my mind goes back to where it’s been circling all night.
Kyle. I respect him. I hate him for making me say it, but I do. He plays honest defense, quiet stick, smart angles. He likes Alaric in the way safe men show affection: patient, open-handed, no claws. I try to imagine becoming the kind of person who can tolerate that kind of love, receive it even. The image skews. I see myself scratching at the door, leaving marks in the paint.
Nice isn’t an answer, I’d sent him earlier, and he’d volleyed back withYou jealous?The question was a knife turned sideways, slid between ribs without malice. He wanted to see if I’d bleed. I did. I’m still bleeding.
I pick up the phone again and open our thread.
I type:Dinner. No cameras. No noise. Just us.
I don’t hit send. The bubble sits there, soft blue, like a small animal waiting to see if it can cross the road before the truck comes. My thumb hovers. My heart does something I hate: it changes tempo, goes fragile.
I add:I’ll behave.I delete it. The promise feels like a lie even before it exists.
I add instead:You pick the place.
I stare at the three lines for a long time. They look like a counterfeit version of me—a polite man wearing a suit he stole. But there’s strategy here too. Let him control the setting and he might stop bracing for the worst. Give him something to decide and I’ll learn how he decides. If he chooses a low-light place with velvet booths, he’s looking to disappear. If he chooses a loud bar near the rink, he’s testing how much noise we can take before we fracture. If he sayscoffee,he wants daylight and an escape route. If he saysno,then I know which weapon to bring to the next game.
I lock the phone without sending. My reflection stares back from the black glass again, and I try to recognize the man looking at me. The league calls me reckless like it’s a brand. The Wolves marketing team prints it on shirts and we all pretend it’s a joke. I’ve always thought of my recklessness as a controlled burn—hot enough to keep the enemy away, tidy enough not to burn the house down.
This doesn’t feel tidy. This is a field fire that jumps the road and runs into the trees.
I pace to the kitchen and wash the glass I’m not really using, spin it under the tap until the water runs cold enough to cool my wrists.
There are practicalities I haven’t let myself examine. Team politics. Cameras. Gossip. The part where the league doesn’t care who you sleep with until someone points a camera at it and makes it a story bigger than hockey. The part where my own locker room might decide I’m a distraction if I stop pretending I only want ice and blood and points. The part where Alaric carries not just his name but the dead weight of a family that likes to buy outcomes.
I dry my hands and go back to the couch. The bottle waits like a dare. I leave it there and grab water instead. If I’m going to send that message, I want to be sober enough to own it.
My phone lights with a different notification:Alaric Hale posted to stories.My thumb moves before the rest of me can object. It’s nothing revealing, just a quick pan across his balcony, the skyline blurred with rain. I recognize the area. The last frame catches a corner of his hand on the rail. Clean lines. Strong fingers. The story is seven seconds long, and somehow I feel like I’ve been standing next to him for an hour, shoulder to shoulder, watching the same rain.
I type under the story:Nice view.
And hit send.
? ? ?
The rink lights burn like judgment.
They always do, but this morning they’re particularly cruel—white-hot and endless, spearing right through the thin layer of sunglasses and Advil I call “coping.” My skull is still echoing with whiskey and bad decisions. Sleep didn’t happen. I don’t remember trying. I just lay there staring at my phone, waiting for Alaric to answer the message I sent at three a.m.
