“Hey, Rossi! Try not to get benched in the first five minutes this time.”
A few heads turn automatically. This is familiar. This is me.
He keeps his eyes forward. His jaw flexes once, barely visible from here.
Clara’s knee bumps mine. Warning or check-in—I don’t look to confirm.
The puck drops.
Time fractures the way it always does—shifts blurring, whistles slicing noise, bodies slamming glass in sharp, violent bursts that only make sense once the score reflects them.
Gio explodes into motion, fast and vicious, absorbs the first hit and returns it harder. Boards rattle. The arena roars like volume is currency.
I grin despite myself. “Careful,” I yell when he clips a guy near center ice. “You’re already on thin ice with the refs.”
Genny snorts. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I always heckle him.”
“Yes,” she says. “But now the room catalogs it.”
That’s when I feel the shift. The noise doesn’t swallow my voice anymore. It channels it. Carries it. People glance over when I speak, then back to the ice like they’re mapping cause to effect. I’ve moved out of the background.
Another rush. Another change. Another reset.
Gio steals the puck mid-pass, pivots, drives hard. He should shoot. Instead, he lifts his gaze—once.
He finds me. The connection snaps fast. Sharp. Gone.
He adjusts. Widens the defense. Threads a pass that splits the lane clean.
The goal comes seconds later—messy, brutal, earned. The arena detonates.
I don’t cheer right away. I register it first—the recalibration, the visual math. The way he knew exactly where my attention sat and how it would read if he ignored it.
Maya leans in. “Did he just—”
“Don’t,” Talia says.
I stand anyway, clapping once, loud and unapologetic. “That’s what happens when you listen, Rossi!”
He skates past the boards, chest heaving, sweat darkening his collar. This time he looks up on purpose. No smile. Just a fractional lift of his chin. A marker placed.
The crowd misreads it instantly. A girl two rows down twists, staring at me like she just lost a wager she didn’t know she placed.
My pulse kicks harder—not with want, but with weight. This used to be chaos. Habit. Now it’s signal. And he answered.
The goal doesn’t just light the lamp—it lights me.
Sound crashes into my ribs. Bodies surge. Beer sloshes. The chaos stays familiar until I feel how it bends around us, directional and deliberate. Heads turn away from the ice. Toward my row.
Minutes bleed off the clock while attention holds. Play resets. Lines rotate. The score stays put. The story keeps advancing.
A guy in front twists halfway around, phone already raised. No subtlety. His lens isn’t on Gio—it’s on me, standing, clapping once like I’ve earned volume.
“Of course,” Maya mutters. “You’re the headline now.”
“Put it away,” Genny says softly, to no one and everyone. Final.
