Afew days after my date with Kyle, I wake up to find my phone is a small bomb. It rattles on the nightstand, buzz after buzz, until I flip it over and the lock screen becomes a waterfall of mentions. Clips. Cropped photos. Circles and arrows drawn by strangers. The kind of viral detritus that says a story broke while I was sleeping and the ocean decided to throw me around for fun.
I don’t open anything at first. I just lie there on my back, staring at the ceiling, counting the seconds between pings. Three seconds. Two. Four. My chest tightens with each one.
Finally, I unlock the phone.
The first thing I see is a feed post from a hockey gossip account, the kind that always knows which winger unfollowed which fitness model. “Ice Prince + Thorn? Silver City’s Steadiest Pair Seen Out Late at Diner.”
There are three photos: me and Kyle in the neon glow, heads leaning in over milkshakes; a second of him with his arm around my shoulders, our faces out of frame; and one shotthat’s basically the back of my head as I’m getting into his truck. The caption is all winks and rhetorical questions:Bro night or something more? Comment below.
I scroll. Another account has it too, this time brightened to make the colors pop like a comic book. The comments are a storm—half people shipping us, half people arguing about the wordfriends.Someone posts a four-photo collage of us on the bench in previous games, heads bent together, a frame-by-frame of a laugh I didn’t know looked that soft. Someone else comments that the Titans’ defense pair finally makes sense. I try to laugh and can’t.
A team email lands in my inbox.SUBJECT: Statement Regarding Hale & Thorn Photo.I skim even though I could recite the shape from memory.Two teammates grabbing dinner, nothing more to add, please respect the players’ privacy.It’s polite, firm, and useless. The fans aren’t a court; they don’t need evidence beyond a feeling.
I toss the phone face down and sit up too fast. My head swims. The scent of last night’s rain blows in through the cracked window, cool and clean, and I breathe it in like medicine. Practice is in an hour.
I take the world’s fastest shower, scrub my teeth like I’m fighting a stain, and put on the plainest hoodie I own. In the mirror, my face is its usual calm mask, but under the skin I feel like a power line fraying in the wind. I jam a beanie over my hair and tell myself three things, the same way I count before a faceoff: skate, listen, don’t react.
Downstairs, the lobby TV is tuned to a morning sports show. I angle my body away from it, but the anchors’ voices still follow me out through the revolving door: “…photos of Hale and Thorn… Titans say just friends… a lot of chemistry on the ice…”
I walk faster.
By the time I hit the rink, the gossip is already ambient, the way cold is ambient in these buildings. The guys are loud—louder than usual, which means they’re anxious and covering it. Someone wolf-whistles when I step into the room. Someone else sings a romance song from a kid’s movie. I roll my eyes, lift a hand, and walk through it like weather.
Kyle’s at his stall, tying his skates. He looks up the second he senses me, the way he always does, shoulders relaxing. He’s smiling, but there’s worry threaded like fishing line behind his eyes. He nods at the empty space next to him. “You good to lace up here?”
I drop my bag and sit. “Sure.”
He leans in, voice low. “Coach wants us to ignore it. Media guy put out a thing, you saw? ‘Just dinner.’ He said he’ll run interference if anyone tries to make it a press scrum after practice.”
“Great,” I say. It sounds ungrateful because my mouth can’t find neutral. He squeezes my shoulder under the guise of adjusting my shoulder pad strap, then lets go.
“Al,” he says, lower still. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not being more careful.” He glances around. Most of the guys are pretending not to listen. “I should’ve parked in the back. I didn’t think. I just—” He huffs a tiny rueful breath. “I wanted to show you a good time.”
“You did,” I say, and I mean it. “I had fun.”
That pulls a genuine grin from him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I add, because I can’t help rewarding him when he’s this open, “The milkshakes were objectively excellent, and your taste in 80s rock is objectively terrible.”
He laughs, which unclenches a muscle in my back I hadn’t noticed. He watches me a beat longer. “So… you good?”
“I’m fine.”
He hesitates, then leans closer, his whisper barely audible under the scrape of skates and the thud of gear. “Let me make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I want to.” He swallows, suddenly shy. “Come over Saturday? Movies at my place. I’ll cook. We can lock the door, turn off our phones, pretend the world’s just us for a night.”
Something in my chest tugs hard.Just us.It’s a soft promise, and I want to crawl into it because it sounds like sleep. It sounds like quiet. It sounds like not being a trending tag.
“Okay,” I say, before I can overthink it. “Saturday.”
His whole face lights. It’s small and startling, like watching a stadium turn its lights on just for you. He nods once, sharp, like he just won a faceoff. “Saturday,” he echoes, and taps my shin pad with his stick, our little ritual. “Let’s go make practice hate us.”
