She sighs, turns on the TV, flips through three shows before leaving it on a nature doc that neither of us cares about.
She sits down again, this time at the far end of the couch, her feet tucked under her, as far from me as she can get without falling off the cushions.
For a long time, we watch wolves hunting caribou in silence.
I think about saying something, something real, but every thought I have feels dangerous, like the words themselves would combust if I let them out.
Instead, I scroll through the rest of the team chat, pretend I’m invested in the meme war, and wonder how many more times we’ll do this before she finally gets sick of waiting.
She glances over, catches me staring at her, and holds my gaze for a second, eyes sharp and searching.
I know she wants me to crack, to give her the ugly, unedited truth. I want to, but I don’t even know where to start.
Eventually, she looks away.
We finish the episode in silence. When it’s over, she stands, tells me I can stay the night if I want, but she’s going to bed.
I say, “I’ll crash here,” and she nods like it doesn’t matter either way.
She disappears down the hall, closes her door soft.
I sit in the dark, alone with the wolves and my own reflection in the TV screen, and try to remember the last time I felt something I could name.
———
Sometimes, I can pinpoint the exact moment I started performing the rest of my life.
Sophomore year, winter break, first home game after the Christmas dead zone.
We’re running drills in a building so cold the water bottles freeze up, and the only fans in the stands are diehards, townies, and a pack of volleyball girls sitting together in matching sweats.
I remember because I notice her before the puck even drops, Nia Brooks, leaning over the railing, hair in braids, chin propped on her fist, smiling like she knows the punchline before the joke starts.
I don’t know her yet, but I feel the burn of her attention every time I skate toward the glass.
Game is tied, three minutes left, and some jackass from OSU fires a shot that should have gone top corner.
Instead, I catch it blind, one hand, full extension.
Best save of my college career, I can still feel the sting in my palm, the way the puck tried to rip straight through the leather, the split-second where my whole body committed before my brain caught up, and all I can think about is whether she saw it.
She did. After the game, I find her in the hallway, arms folded, eyebrows arched.
“You almost made it look easy,” she says, all challenge, zero flirt.
I say, “I do my best work under pressure,” which is corny but true.
She laughs, real and sharp, and from that point on it’s inevitable.
We start as friends, the kind you see at parties, the kind you text late at night when you’re stuck in the library and need a reason to keep going.
First time I walk her to class, she tells me about her little brother, about her parents splitting up, about growing up knowing she was always the tallest girl in the room.
She says, “People see me before they ever hear me,” and I say, “That’s not a bad thing,” and she shrugs, but I can tell it matters.
I go to her games.
Always front row, always the first to my feet when she aces a serve or blocks some fool’s spike.
