"Well, yeah. Because I haven't washed it yet." I flip the page of my analytics report, feigning a casualness that the cedarwood saturating the room's airspace thoroughly undermines. "Hockey men smell. That's a documented biological fact. And did he pay me to wash it and return it to him? No. He did not. So I will not. I lost the fucking bet and I am going to sulk about it on my own terms."
Jace leans against the kitchen counter, his juice glass resting against his lower lip.
"What bet?"
I sigh, dropping the report onto my chest and staring at the ceiling with the resignation of a woman who has been keeping a story contained for a week and has just been given permission to release it.
I explain.
The early morning rink session. His ghost-like appearance on the ice. The twelve-minute shooting drill where I fired every technique in my arsenal at a goaltender who turned out to be a ninety-eighth-percentile utility player hiding behind glasses and a self-deprecating monologue. The terms of the bet: I carry his gear if he blocks every shot; I pick his new glasses if I score. The fact that he blocked every single puck I launched except the last one, which I aimed with deliberate, surgical precision at the one target his equipment did not adequately protect.
Jace is grinning before I finish the sentence.
"You hit him in the balls on purpose."
"He pissed me off."
"People don't normally piss you off, Sage." His grin sharpens into something analytical, the expression of a man who has known me long enough to recognize the specific behavioral pattern I exhibit when I am attracted to someone and converting the attraction into aggression because I do not possess the emotional vocabulary to process it through healthier channels. "So, you marrying this nerd, or what?"
I groan, the sound reverberating through my inverted ribcage.
"He does NOT see me as attractive. At all." I gesture at myself, at the baggy sweatpants and the oversized hoodie and the athletic socks and the general presentation of a human being who has prioritized function over form for so long that form has packed its bags and emigrated to a country where it feels more appreciated. "Look at me. I'm practically a boy."
Jace rolls his eyes with a velocity that threatens the structural integrity of his optical nerves.
"I'm genetically a guy but look at me. An Omega hiding in the flesh." He spreads his arms, presenting himself with the theatrical flair of a man demonstrating that masculinity and Omega designation coexist in his body without requiring either one to apologize for the other's presence. "Gender expression and designation are different languages, Sage. You know this."
I groan louder, pulling my legs off the wall and rotating upright with the core strength of a woman who does two hundred crunches a day and uses them exclusively for dramatic furniture repositioning.
"It's not the same."
"It's exactly the same, and I actually think he likes you." He sets his juice glass down with a decisive clink that functions as punctuation. "You two would be good for one another."
"I'm too crazy to be with him!" The protest erupts with the frantic energy of someone whose defenses have been identified and is scrambling to reinforce them before the breach widens. "He's shy and quiet and doesn't talk to anyone. I would eat him alive. I would consume him with my chaos. He would file for emotional asylum within a week."
Jace takes a beat. The deliberate, measured pause he employs when he is about to dismantle an argument with the surgical precision of a chess player who has been patiently waiting for his opponent to make exactly this mistake.
"You're right. He doesn't talk to anyone."
I open my mouth to argue.
"And yet," Jace continues, lifting one finger, "you two bicker like cats and dogs. Every class. Every hallway. Every time you are within verbal range of each other, it's a full-contact debate that half the student body has started treating as free entertainment." The finger wags. "Which is apparently a rarity. Because your nerdy Alpha doesn't even answer teachers when they ask him direct questions. He sits in the back row, says nothing, submits perfect work, and treats verbal interaction with other humans as an optional feature of the university experience that he has elected to decline."
I frown.
The frown is genuine, not performative. The information Jace is presenting contradicts my operating assumption that Archie's bickering with me is simply an extension of a personality that engages with the world through provocation. If he does not engage with the world at all, if the silence I have witnessed in our shared classes is his actual default rather thana variation of his mood, then the fact that he talks to me is not a personality trait.
It is an exception.
"Really? What's so special about me, then?"
Jace shrugs, the motion carrying the calculated casualness of a man who knows exactly how special and is enjoying the process of letting me arrive at the conclusion independently.
"He's obviously the coach's son. But beyond that, he's a fucking prodigy. Smart as hell. Perfect grades. Literally everything. The academic staff treats him like a walking exhibition of intellectual potential. His professors reference his work in lectures. His test scores are the benchmark that other students are measured against."
I gawk, the expression arriving with the full force of new information colliding with existing assumptions and producing cognitive shrapnel.
I sit fully upright on the couch, my legs swinging to the floor, the analytics report sliding off my lap and landing on the carpet beside Archie's tank top in a juxtaposition that feels symbolic in ways I refuse to explore.
