“Bed. My back’s killing me.”
She was good at assembly. Better than Avery, who approached the diagrams with the baffled confidence of a man who had never once been defeated by anything and therefore assumed this would be no different. Hana redirected him twicewithout making him feel stupid, which might’ve been its own talent.
I found the correct bolts without being asked.
Hana had a way of talking that didn’t demand anything back. She kept her hands busy, let the questions land lightly.
“Okay,” she said, squinting at the instructions. “Serious question. Window seat or aisle seat?”
“Window.”
“We would be perfect travel buddies. I’m aisle because I get claustrophobic. Sweet or savoury?”
“Savoury.”
“Nice. I’m a much better chef than baker.” She slid a bag of bolts toward Avery. “Avery’s sweet. Don’t let the tattoos fool you.”
Avery scoffed. “That’s slander.”
“You’re just jealous you’re losing your top spot as my favourite Beaubien brother.” She turned back to me. “What do you do when you’re not skating?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like taking photos, I guess.”
Her eyes brightened. “Like—film? Digital? Are we talking landscapes or portraits?”
“All of the above.” I hesitated. “I left my film camera back in Toronto. Too much baggage.”
The joke landed awkwardly but she didn’t push.
“Fair,” she said lightly and tapped the instructions with her screwdriver before pivoting with seamless grace. “Did Avery invite you to come out for drinks with the team tomorrow? I think my brother might actually emerge from his cave for once.”
It was such a deliberate subject change that I almost smiled. Avery could learn a thing or two from her.
“He did,” I said. Well, technically his teammate had. “It’s a lot of new people at once.”
“They’re a great group.” She started rattling off names—Morrison, the captain, Petrov, loud enough to take up a whole room—but I was only half listening.
I was thinking about one person.
Derek Sullivan.
I’d filed him away in the parking garage with the same automatic precision I filed most things—catalogued, assessed, set aside. But standing there with a bag of bolts in my hand and nowhere particular to look, the details surfaced with more clarity than I would have preferred.
Tall. Broad shoulders stretching his t-shirt in a way that was objectively noticeable. Dark hair a little disheveled from practice, the kind you wanted to push back from his forehead. Warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
Which I wasn’t noticing. Obviously.
He had an easy smile—the sort that arrived without effort and probably never caused him a moment of trouble in his life. Wholesome. Like he helped little old ladies cross the street. Like he’d never had an ulterior motive in his entire life.
He’d looked at me with genuine, uncomplicated friendliness, which I found instinctively suspicious.
People who smiled like that either wanted something or had never been sufficiently disappointed by the world yet. Either way, I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust the way my pulse had done something inconvenient when he’d said my name. I didn’t trust that I could still picture the exact shade of brown his eyes were under the parking garage fluorescents.
I especially didn’t trust that I was still thinking about him now, hours later, while sorting IKEA hardware.
I shoved the thought aside and focused on the right bolts.
“Théo?” Hana was looking at me expectantly.
