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“Sit your ass down and stop being weird,” he said, cracking his can open.

“I’m not being weird,” I mumbled, taking the far corner. I angled toward him, resting one foot on the decking, my other knee propped on the cushion. I fished the bottle opener out of the front pocket of my sweatshirt and popped the top off my bottle.

“You’re being so weird,” he said, taking a long drink.

I turned my head away, looking out over the water, spinning my beer in my hands. “I … just.” I blew out a breath. “I guess I don’t know how to act now that you know.”

“You act how you’ve always acted,” he said. “Shy and slightly awkward, and so fucking literal sometimes that I wonder if you’re messing with me.”

I huffed out an unexpected laugh. “I swear I’m not. That’s just how my brain works. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s kind of broken.” I brought the bottle to my mouth and tipped it back, watching him over the neck.

“There’s nothing wrong with your brain.”

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better. I know who I am.”

Mikey leaned forward, setting his can on the table. He rested his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped together, and turned to look at me. “Do you, though?”

I closed my eyes and leaned back, tilting my face up to the sky. In the distance, something tapped against metal, a tinny ding, ding, ding sounding over and over again.

“I just mean I’m not like you. I’m not … I just can’t … You’re so good with people—with the other guys on the team—and I’m just … not.”

I could be, maybe, if I ever got comfortable with them. But it was hard when you were scared as fuck you’d slip up and they’d learn something about you that could ruin your goddamn life.

Better to just keep myself separate.

I opened my eyes and rolled my head along the sofa back to look at him.

“There’s no rule that says just because you play hockey with someone, you have to be friends with them,” Mikey said, his voice low.

“You are,” I pointed out. “You’re friends with everyone.”

It was one of the things I admired most about him—the easy, confident way he moved through the world. I wished I could be more like him.

He shrugged. “Most of the guys are all right I suppose, but we’re not friends. No one I’d call in a crisis, or anything—not like you or my boys back home.”

“Well, it looks like you are,” I said, picturing the crowd that always gathered around his stall in the locker room. He might not consider guys like Dawes, Koffee, or Corbin close friends, but I’d bet they considered him their friend.

“Eh.” He shrugged again.

I picked at the peeling label on my bottle as Mikey grabbed his can and settled back into his corner of the couch.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” he said. “You claim you can’t be personable or whatever, but you can. You do it with me.”

While that was true now, those first few days had been awkward as fuck between us. It definitely took some time for us to find our footing. I still came off like a rude asshole sometimes when I was only trying to be clear, but because Mikey knew me, he let it slide. Mostly.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only person who gets me,” I thought.

“I don’t know,” I said instead. “It just is.”

He studied me for a long beat, as if deciding whether to push the way he sometimes did when he thought I was being willfully obtuse. But then he tipped his head back and finished his beer, letting it go.

A cold wind swept off the water, cutting right through my sweatshirt. Mikey stood, crushed his empty can, and shoved it into his front hoodie pocket before tucking his hands under his arms. “It’s fucking freezing up here.”

“You’re from Minnesota.”