Practice ends with Briggs trying to convince Easton that whatever is happening between him and Aura counts as foreplay if both people are pissed off enough.
Easton looks like he is five seconds from drowning him in the showers.
Rider is encouraging it because Rider has never met a bad idea he didn’t want to sharpen and hand back to the room. Ryan walks beside me with his bag over one shoulder, quiet as always, but his mouth keeps twitching like he is pretending Briggs isn’t funny and losing the fight.
I should be tired. Season opens in five days, and Coach skated us like he personally hated our lungs. My legs feel heavy, my shoulder aches from Rider getting cute along the boards, and sweat is drying cold beneath my hoodie as we push through the back doors of The Furnace into the wet evening air.
But I’m not thinking about practice.
I’m thinking about Bliss.
I’m thinking about her in bed this morning, sleepy and warm and trying to call me a situationship warden like I hadn’t already made it clear I was off the market. I’m thinking about the way her mouth softened when she thought I didn’t notice. The way she said she hated me like it meant please don’t stop looking at me. The way she wore fear like armor and still somehow let me see underneath it.
I check my phone again, but there’s nothing since her last text.
It isn’t weird. She had class. Then Aura and Charm. Then whatever tornado of glitter, caffeine, and poor impulse controlthose three call a normal afternoon. She knows I’m finishing practice, and she said she would text when she headed over.
Still, something in my chest has been sitting wrong since I stepped on the ice.
“Mercer,” Briggs says, falling into step beside me, “you’re doing that thing again.”
I don’t look at him. “Walking?”
“No, that’s more of a controlled stalk. I meant the brooding.”
Rider swings his bag higher on his shoulder. “I like it. Makes him seem mysterious.”
“He’s not mysterious,” Briggs says. “He’s rich and emotionally unavailable. People confuse those all the time.”
Easton glances at me. “You staying at her apartment tonight?”
“Yeah.”
Briggs’s whole face changes. “The ABC apartment?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“It was weird before I got here. I’m just adding commentary.”
“You always add commentary,” Ryan says.
“Because silence is how cults start.”
Rider looks at me. “You have a drawer there yet?”
“No.”
Briggs narrows his eyes. “Toothbrush?”
“No.”
“Backup deodorant?”
I say nothing.
Briggs stops walking so abruptly Rider almost runs into him. “Holy shit.”
Rider points at me. “He has deodorant there.”
