I see the PDFs and articles I pulled up in the middle of the night, the glow of my laptop. A house with its windows blackened. A list of charges that reads like a warning sticker: assault, arson, “incident under investigation.” An article that never quite says it outright but lines the words up close enough that anyone could read between them.
I see the kid he used to be in old junior clips, and I see the man at the end of my table now—changed, moving like he’s got something heavy chained to his back and he’s learned how to skate with the extra weight.
Whatever the reports say, whatever got sealed or wiped or spun for the public, that’s just the surface. What really went down that night. What he actually did. What he lost. What turned the boy I knew into this man with ice in his eyes and ghosts clinging to his shoulders, I don’t know that part.
One day he’s going to have to decide what to do with it. Whether he keeps letting it sit in the dark, rotting him from the inside, or drags it into the light and makes it submit like everything else in his orbit.
When he does, I’ll be there.
But that… that’s his story to tell.
THE END
