And blinked again.
“You are?”
“Of course I am. Jesus, man, I’ve been waiting for this conversation for weeks—or years. I can’t tell time with you anymore. It’s definitely been years.”
“You . . . what?”
“I’m not blind, Sky. Or deaf. And no matter what Murph says, I’m not stupid either. The way you talk about him, the way you light up when he texts you, the way you’ve been walking around like a man trying to solve a puzzle he’s terrified of—I’ve seen it. I didn’t want to push. You needed to be ready to tell me. Shit like that’s too big to squeeze out of a guy.” He squeezed my knee. “But I’m glad you told me.”
“You’re not . . . this doesn’t change anything? For you? I mean . . . for us? Between us? Not that there’s an us or anything. Shit. You know what I mean.”
Tyler’s expression shifted, something fierce flickering behind his gentle demeanor. “You listen to me, asshole. You’re my captain and my best friend. You could tell me you’re in love with a fire hydrant and the only thing that would change is I’d start bringing water to practice.” He held my gaze. “This changes nothing, except that now I get to be happy for you out loud instead of suspecting it and keeping my mouth shut.”
My vision blurred as my stomach rolled.
I was suddenly terrified I might throw up all over Tyler and his pretty words.
I blinked hard and gulped back every emotion anyone’s ever felt. I tried to will the tears back, to frighten them away, but they came anyway, hot and fast and completely outside my control. I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to breathe through the tightness in my throat.
“Shit,” I managed. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m—”
“Because you’ve been carrying this alone for way too long, man, and you just put it down.” Tyler’s hand was still on my knee, steady and grounding. “You’re allowed to feel like it’s a lot.”
I choked on a laugh, the sound wet and broken. “Ty, it feels like everything, like so damn much.”
“Itiseverything, and you trusted me with it. That means more than you know.”
We sat there for a minute, Tyler’s hand on my knee, while I tried to pull myself together. The film room hummed with the quiet of empty spaces, while the whiteboard arrows pointed toward plays that suddenly seemed so unimportant.
When I finally lowered my hands, Tylerwas smiling.
“How long?” he asked.
“The feelings or the . . . Jacks?”
“Both.”
“Feelings since . . . God, I don’t know. Maybe since the first time I walked into Barbacks.” I rubbed my face. “Jacks? I think I knew that first night, but it’s taken a while to be alone with him. I mean, I went to see him at the bar, but that’s not the same as . . . it’s not like a date or anything. We’re doing that now. Dating, I mean. You know they call it that, too?”
“Do they?” Tyler snorted. “And you’re happy?”
“Terrified. But yeah. Really happy.”
“Good. You deserve it.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Now, have you told anyone else?”
“Just you. Jacks’s friends at the bar know. They figured it out because I have the poker face of a golden retriever.”
“That tracks.” Tyler chuckled. “Listen, I know this might suck, but I think you should talk to Erik.”
“Erik?”
“He already knows. Or suspects, at minimum.”
My stomach dropped. “How?”
“Sky, you pulled him aside after his engagement speech and asked him, ‘How did you know?’ with the intensity of a man having an existential crisis, then you went outside and stood alone in the freezingcold. You spent the rest of that road trip staring at your phone with a dopey grin. Erik’s stoic and frustrating and dumb as shit half the time, but he’s not stupid.”
“Has he said anything?”
