I stayed by the door. “That’s the soft start?”
He ran his fingers over the pattern on the sofa, first with one hand, then the other. “The other version involves me guessing until I say something that makes you cry.”
“Kai…” I swallowed hard. “No.”
“No?” He put a hand over his heart and rubbed. “You’re my best friend, Nico. I love you. I’d rather hear it from you than TikTok.”
I could have lied and blamed how our season ended, the distance from Pack, the stress. But I was worn out, and I’d never been able to fool Kai about anything. I walked over and sat down next to him.
He handed me a soda, then held out the bag. “Chocolate chip macadamia.”
“Fuck you for bringing something I can’t resist.” I took a cookie and demolished it in three bites.
He had black cherry soda, of course. I drank too fast and burped.
“Glad that’s settled,” Kai said. “Okay. Start wherever it hurts.”
“Not helpful.”
He passed me another cookie. “Try the middle, then.”
I stared at the cookie until my vision blurred, then dropped it back in the bag. Kai drank soda while he waited.
“He asked for space,” I said. “Until after the playoffs. Said he didn’t want to rush anything.”
“Only until after the playoffs?”
“He didn’t… I’m afraid that was a nice way of saying forever.”
“Hm.” Kai started on another cookie. “Did he say he was done?”
“No.”
Kai rested a hand on my knee. “Did youaskif he was done?”
I hesitated, then shook my head.
“Did he say anything else?”
“That he didn’t want to break up, but the way he said it—” My chest cramped, and I had to push through the rest. “It was a decision he hadn’t made yet.”
Kai turned toward me. “Is that what he said, or is that what your brain heard after running it through old damage?”
“He wouldn’t look at me. Sat as far away as he could and kept asking for more time. He said it over and over.” My voice broke, and I had to take a deep breath. “All I could hear was, ‘You pushed too hard. Asked for too much.’”
Kai took another sip of soda. I did the same, mostly to have something to do.
“Did you?” he asked. “Push for too much?”
“Fuck.” I blinked hard, but the tears came anyway. “I asked him to talk to me, tell me what he wanted. Tell me if there was a future when we weren’t always living in different cities. Apparently, that was too much.”
We finished our sodas and set the empty bottles on the coffee table. Kai got up and stared out the window, then came back and sat down again.
“You love him,” he said.
Not a question. A plain statement of fact, like “We play hockey.”
I huffed out a breath. “You think? I’m so far gone, it’s pathetic.”
