Here, the noise has a purpose.
Skates carving ice. Pucks snapping. A whistle cutting through everything like a clean line.
It’s the kind of chaos my body understands.
That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.
I’m nervous in the way you’re nervous when you step back into a version of yourself you haven’t seen in a while—like it might not be there anymore. Like it’ll be replaced by the person everyone’s been treating you like since the worst year of your life.
Fragile. Watched. A problem to manage.
Kai walks half a step in front of me as we cut across campus toward the rink, shoulders squared like he’s escorting a VIP through enemy territory.
Which, in his mind, he probably is.
“Are you staying for the skate or ditching once we get there?”
“I’m walking you,” he says, “but I don’t think I’m staying.”
“So you’re hovering.”
Kai glances at me, and the look on his face is pure older-brother menace. “I’m making sure you get there.”
My teeth clench, even though I know he means well. “I’m almost twenty-one.”
Kai’s mouth tightens. “I know.”
“You act like you don’t.”
He exhales through his nose like he’s trying to stay calm on purpose. “Weston invited you.”
“Weston invited me,” I repeat, dryly. “Which is not exactly a safety guarantee.”
Kai’s mouth twitches—barely. “Exactly.”
We walk in silence for a minute, my tote bumping my hip, my fingers tightening around the strap every time a group of students passes too close.
I’m still learning the rhythm of being here in person. Still learning how to exist without the buffer of a screen. Still learning that bodies and voices and space all come with their own rules.
Kai clears his throat. “If you feel overwhelmed?—”
“I will tell you,” I cut in quickly before he can finish. Before he can say we can leave, like my life is a series of exits.
Kai’s jaw ticks. He nods once. “Okay.”
Then, quieter, like it costs him, “I’m proud of you for trying.”
My throat tightens.
I hate that my first instinct is to deflect.
“Don’t make it a thing,” I mutter.
Kai’s mouth twitches. “I wasn’t.”
“You were,” I say automatically, because my brain refuses to accept kindness without trying to neutralize it. Kai doesn’t argue. He just opens the rink door and holds it for me like a normal person. It’s such a small thing. It shouldn’t matter.
But it does.
