Page 20 of Grief & Glitter

I shoved him. He laughed. Bob caught me around the neck from behind and dragged me into the pile.

We won. I scored. Nobody was hurt. Bob had punched Kessler in the face. The crowd was happy, Coach was happy, and I was tired in the good way, muscles heavy, sweat cooling under my gear, my head finally quiet after a day I’d thought quiet might never come. Ethan was still gone. Tomorrow that would still hurt. But tonight I had my team around me, a win on the board, and somewhere inside this building was a redheaded man who agreed to go on a date with me.

It was all good.

A week passed.

Ryan and I didn’t go on another date, not officially. The fundraiser was still a week away, and that was our date. We’d said the word and agreed on it, and I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time turning over the fact that I had a date with a man. With Ryan. Everything between now and then just got filed under friendship, and apparently friendship ran almost entirely on food.

We had coffee after practice on Monday, sitting in a quiet corner near the loading dock because Ryan only had twenty minutes before his dad needed him back. He brought me half a turkey sandwich on Tuesday because he’d bought two by mistake, which I didn’t believe for a second. On Wednesday, we shared a box of fries in the equipment room while he worked on a pair of skates.

There were texts as well. I was shit at texting. Ryan sent complete conversations through his phone: thoughts, observations, photographs, links, questions, complaints about customers who somehow thought skate sharpening could be done in thirty seconds, and I answered with things like yeah, lol, okay. One night he sent a photo of two shirts and asked which one I liked better.

GIDEON: left

RYAN: Your ability to communicate is breathtaking.

I stared at that for a full minute before typing back.

GIDEON: Thanks

The three dots appeared, disappeared, then reappeared.

RYAN: That wasn’t a compliment, Taft. LOL.

GIDEON: Oh

He sent back a laughing emoji and a skull. I’m not sure what that meant, but I found it cute. Yep. Cute.

I was getting better at messaging, though slowly. I started asking questions back instead of waiting for him to carry the whole conversation. Yesterday morning, I sent him a picture of the sunrise from the rink parking lot because it was orange and pink and I thought he’d like it.

He sent back six red hearts, then:

RYAN: Those colors would make a GORGEOUS eyeshadow palette.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I sent him a thumbs-up, and he sent me a crying-laughing face.

RYAN: You are actually cracking me up right now.

By Thursday afternoon, we were back at The Shared Bowl because Ryan said he’d been thinking about the shio ramen all week. I had too. The ramen, mostly. And Ryan, if I was honest. We shared the same ramen we’d had the first time, and we ordered extra chicken because neither of us wanted to go hunting around the bottom of the bowl for the last piece again. Ryan insisted on both strawberry and chocolate mochi because choosing one flavor was, according to him, a crime against dessert.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about?” he asked.

I picked up some noodles. “Uhm, no?”

He rolled his eyes. There was a thin line of coppery eyeliner around them today, subtle enough that I probably wouldn’t have noticed it a month ago. Now I noticed every time he wore something different.

“Your nickname.”

“What about it?”

“It’s terrible.”

“Taft?”

“Exactly.”

I was confused, which was easy enough. “That’s my name.”