"I'm asking why you didn't take the opportunity to?—"
"To what? Flirt with someone in front of my brother's teammates?" I lean back. "Bernard, that's literally why I’m a forty-year-old virgin.” He opens his mouth to argue about my age, but I hold up a palm. “Every guy I ever talk to gets scared off by Jason or his teammates. I can't go looking for a man in the same circles where my brother has already posted a 'don't touch my sister' sign."
He opens his mouth again, but closes it this time. I can see him processing, the closed loop of my brother's world, the way it shrinks my options to zero.
“So what’s your plan to meet your man?” he asks.
"When? Between my twelve-hour shifts and my studying? When exactly am I meeting this mythical right guy?"
Bernard snorts. “Not at clown college, that’s for sure." He shifts on the couch, wincing as his knee protests while his words sting me. "I still don't get why you didn't just try a normal sport."
The words land differently than he intends them. I can tell by the casual way he says it — the same way Jason would say it, the same way my dad would say it. Like it's a joke.
"When would I have learned a sport, Bernard?"
His face changes.
"My entire childhood was hockey. Jason's hockey. His practices, his games, his tournaments, his showcases. Every weekend. Every summer. Every family vacation was actually a hockey camp disguised as a trip." I keep my voice level because this isn't anger, it's just fact. "I did my homework in the back of the car. I ate dinner in arena parking lots. My dad spent every spare dollar on ice time, private coaching, and travel fees, and my mom spent every spare hour driving us to his development activities. There wasn't time for me to do a sport. There wasn't money for me to do a sport. I was an accessory.”
Bernard stares at me. I watch the realization move across his face like fog off the Allegheny River. He was IN that car. He was one of the hockey boys who took up the space. He just never looked at it from my side of the backseat.
"The silks are the first hobby I have ever chosen for myself," I say. "The first activity I have done because I wanted to, not because someone else's schedule required me to be somewhere adjacent to it. So no, I didn't try a normal sport. I was too busy being a passenger in someone else's life."
He's quiet for a long time. His jaw works. I can see him re-processing — every childhood memory, every carpool, every tournament where I sat in the stands with a textbook while he and Jason played the game that mattered.
"I'm sorry," he says.
“Don’t worry about it."
The silence between us is heavy but not hostile. It's the stillness of something settling into place, a joint clicking back into alignment.
I look at his knee. My hand is still resting on the ice pack, holding it against the joint. My fingers curve over the edge of the wrap, touching the bare skin of his thigh beneath the hem of his shorts.
I don't move my hand. Neither does he.
“So anyway, I still need to learn the arts of love,” I say.
His eyes drop to my hand on his leg. "Ella…"
I slide my hand an inch higher on his thigh. His quad tenses under my palm. “If you’re not in pain, this seems like a good time for extra credit.” The leg muscles quiver beneath my hand. I hold his gaze. "Teach me how to make you feel good, Bernard."
His throat moves. I watch him swallow, watch his hands grip the couch cushion, watch the war play out across his features — the part of him that wants to keep giving and never receive versus the part of him that's been turning this down since our first lesson.
"You don't have to…"
"I know I don't have to. I want to." I move my hand higher. His breath stutters. "You've been taking care of me since I got to Pittsburgh. Driving me. Feeding me. Teaching me. Let me take care of you."
He looks at me. I look at him. The apartment is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant horn of a barge on the river.
He exhales long and shaky, accepting. "Come here."
I move from the coffee table to the couch, settling beside him on his uninjured side. He angles toward me, one hand coming up to cup my face, and kisses me. Slow at first, then deeper, his thumb tracing my jaw, and I taste the meatball sauce on his lip and feel the familiar rush of heat that Bernard's mouth generates in my bloodstream.
"Okay," he says against my lips. "Lesson."
"Lesson."
“You ever touch a wiener before?”
