Page 7 of Puck You Both

There is not someone at the end of the hall. There is a framed, wall-mounted Vipers team photo at the end of the hall, behind glass, in the dark. I know this because I've walked past my own reflection in it four hundred times.

"That's the team photo."

"It moved!"

"You moved."

Theo processes this, straightens up with all the dignity he has left, which rounds up to zero, and his shoulder catches the shelf by the door. Something drops, bounces once with a flat thock, and rolls a lazy arc across the floor before stopping against his foot.

A puck.

He picks it up. Turns it over. "Why is there a—" He looks at me. Whatever my face is doing, his slides from curious to lawyer in half a second. "Patrick. Whose puck is this?"

"Wallace's."

Silence.

"He must have left it behind," I add, evenly, because delaying the rest of this sentence isn't going to make it land softer, "when he walked in on us."

Theo does the five stages of grief in eleven seconds.

Denial. "No."

Anger, immediate and directed entirely at me. "No."

Bargaining. "Okay, but— Maybe he didn't see anything. Maybe he just, like, walked in, saw a coat rack, walked out—"

Depression, which for Theo looks exactly like sitting down hard on the desk he was just draped over. "Oh my god."

Finally, acceptance, which arrives as a full-body recoil and the loudest whisper-shout I've ever heard produced by a human: "Wallace? As in, Wall? The big red?"

"That's the one."

"Patrick." He's pacing now, puck in one hand, marker in the other, conducting his own panic. "Do you understand what this means? The Wolves are close. Criminally close. Bet every guy on that team is in four group chats minimum. And— Oh my God, Becker has a podcast. A podcast, Patrick! With listeners. You know what happens when something gets on a podcast? It becomes a fact. Podcast facts have a half-life of forever."

I should be the one pacing. The stakes are all mine. Theo’s out. Not headlines-out, but out enough not to care. Me? I’m out to my sister and one very discreet college ex.

But I’m not pacing. I'm standing very still, replaying two minutes of a very large man not leaving.

Theo notices. Under all the noise, he always notices.

"Why aren't you panicking?" He stops mid-lap and squints. "Patrick. Why are you making that face?"

"He didn't leave," I say.

Theo blinks. "What?"

I nod at the puck in his hand. "He just stood there. For two minutes. He had a clean exit the whole time."

I watch that land, the panic rerouting into something much, much worse. Theo's grin comes on slow. It’s the exact grin he wears three seconds before doing something that requires an apology.

"Patrick," he says with gravity, "your nemesis isn't scandalized. Your nemesis is thirsty."

I don't answer. Everything I've got is some version of I noticed, and I don't know what to do with it.

My phone buzzes somewhere deep in my pocket, breaking my train of thought.

I glance at the screen and whine.