Chapter 6 Théo
The drive to IKEA was long and mostly quiet in the way long drives get when there’s something neither person wants to say first.
Avery tried anyway. He waited until we were on the expressway, Chicago sprawling flat and grey around us, before he cleared his throat in that particular way that meant he’d been rehearsing something.
“Mom’s worried about you.”
“Mom’s always worried about me.”
“Théo—”
“I texted her.”
“You texted her ‘I’m not dead.’”
“That’s the information she needed.”
Avery’s jaw tightened. He merged lanes, eyes deliberately focused on the traffic ahead. “She just wants to hear your voice. Five minutes.”
I chewed on my thumbnail, watching the glow of brake lights up ahead. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Avery.”
He let out a breath through his nose. Dropped it. Picked up the next thing. “Sabrina’s been texting me too.”
The traitor. “She shouldn’t have done that.”
“She did it because she cares about you. You edit too much. Have you called that coach she found?”
I said nothing. Outside the window, the city slowly thinned into suburbs.
“He’s good, Théo. She sent me those Reddit—”
“I know who he is.”
“Then why haven’t you called him?”
“I will when I’m ready.”
Avery glanced at me sideways. He had the same eyes as me—dark and almond shaped—but where mine defaulted to guarded, his just looked tired. Tired and trying.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Fine.”
We didn’t talk for the rest of the drive. Our first stop was at the IKEA restaurant so Avery could load up on Swedish meatballs dipped in lingonberry jam. I sipped on the lemon water I always carried with me and watched him hoover down his plate like someone was about to take it from him.
“You’re not eating?” He gestured with his fork, a meatball speared on the end.
“I had something earlier.”
He gave me a look but didn’t push.
The IKEA boxes barely fit in the Jeep. I had to shove my seat all the way forward to accommodate the flat pack dresser and my legs were cramping from the morning treadmill workout by the time we pulled back into Avery’s building.
Luckily, the conversation on our way home stayed in neutral territory—mostly his plans with Hana and whether I wanted to join them for drinks with his teammates.
It was going to be my first time meeting Avery’s friend Hana, who was his teammate’s younger sister.
Avery and I had grown up splitting time between Montréal, where our dad’s French Canadian family lived, and Toronto, where our mom’s Chinese Canadian family lived.
From what Avery had told me, Hana had a similarly split upbringing—half Russian, half Japanese and Black—and they’d bonded over the particular experience of growing up multicultural and being relatively new to Chicago.
Hana was already at the apartment when we got back, leaning against the doorframe with a cordless drill in one hand and a canvas bag filled with groceries in the other.
She straightened when we came down the hall.
She was pretty in a way that was immediately obvious and then kept revealing new details—good bone structure, warm brown skin, dark hair pulled back with a pencil still tucked into it. She had the kind of energy that took up exactly the right amount of space. Present without being overwhelming.
“You must be Théo,” she said, like she’d been looking forward to it. “I’m Hana. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“But not like… too much,” Avery said, dropping a box to unlock the door. He gave me a meaningful look.
“But not in a stalker way. Way to be awkward, Avery,” Hana said easily. She turned back to me. “He said you’re a figure skater. I skated for a bit. I was terrible at it.”
It wasn’t the usual reaction—no overcompensating enthusiasm, no careful neutrality, no Olympic interrogation. She’d offered me something instead. An exchange.
“How long did you skate?”
“Six months?” She shrugged. “I was mostly in it for the cute dresses but I didn’t make it that far.”
She started organizing boxes while Avery and I finished unloading the car. She picked up the instruction sheets and studied them with cheerful seriousness. “Bed frame first or dresser?”
“Bed. My back’s killing me.”
She was good at assembly. Better than Avery, who approached the diagrams with the baffled confidence of a man who had never once been defeated by anything and therefore assumed this would be no different. Hana redirected him twice without making him feel stupid, which might’ve been its own talent.
I found the correct bolts without being asked.
Hana had a way of talking that didn’t demand anything back. She kept her hands busy, let the questions land lightly.
“Okay,” she said, squinting at the instructions. “Serious question. Window seat or aisle seat?”
“Window.”
“We would be perfect travel buddies. I’m aisle because I get claustrophobic. Sweet or savoury?”
“Savoury.”
“Nice. I’m a much better chef than baker.” She slid a bag of bolts toward Avery. “Avery’s sweet. Don’t let the tattoos fool you.”
Avery scoffed. “That’s slander.”
“You’re just jealous you’re losing your top spot as my favourite Beaubien brother.” She turned back to me. “What do you do when you’re not skating?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I like taking photos, I guess.”
Her eyes brightened. “Like—film? Digital? Are we talking landscapes or portraits?”
“All of the above.” I hesitated. “I left my film camera back in Toronto. Too much baggage.”
The joke landed awkwardly but she didn’t push.
“Fair,” she said lightly and tapped the instructions with her screwdriver before pivoting with seamless grace. “Did Avery invite you to come out for drinks with the team tomorrow? I think my brother might actually emerge from his cave for once.”
It was such a deliberate subject change that I almost smiled. Avery could learn a thing or two from her.
“He did,” I said. Well, technically his teammate had. “It’s a lot of new people at once.”
“They’re a great group.” She started rattling off names—Morrison, the captain, Petrov, loud enough to take up a whole room—but I was only half listening.
I was thinking about one person.
Derek Sullivan.
I’d filed him away in the parking garage with the same automatic precision I filed most things—catalogued, assessed, set aside. But standing there with a bag of bolts in my hand and nowhere particular to look, the details surfaced with more clarity than I would have preferred.
Tall. Broad shoulders stretching his t-shirt in a way that was objectively noticeable. Dark hair a little disheveled from practice, the kind you wanted to push back from his forehead. Warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
Which I wasn’t noticing. Obviously.
He had an easy smile—the sort that arrived without effort and probably never caused him a moment of trouble in his life. Wholesome. Like he helped little old ladies cross the street. Like he’d never had an ulterior motive in his entire life.
He’d looked at me with genuine, uncomplicated friendliness, which I found instinctively suspicious.
People who smiled like that either wanted something or had never been sufficiently disappointed by the world yet.
Either way, I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust the way my pulse had done something inconvenient when he’d said my name.
I didn’t trust that I could still picture the exact shade of brown his eyes were under the parking garage fluorescents.
I especially didn’t trust that I was still thinking about him now, hours later, while sorting IKEA hardware.
I shoved the thought aside and focused on the right bolts.
“Théo?” Hana was looking at me expectantly.
“Sorry. What?”
“I asked if you had any food allergies. I was going to make dinner.”
“No allergies. You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” She was already heading toward the kitchen, pulling the pencil from her hair and tossing it onto the counter. “Consider it a welcome-to-Chicago gift. Avery’s been surviving on protein shakes and takeout. It’s honestly tragic.”
“Hey,” Avery protested weakly but he didn’t argue.
Hana made dinner while Avery and I finished the dresser—herb crusted roast chicken, the smell of it moving through the apartment in a way that was almost aggressive, warm and savoury and insistent.
Mashed sweet potatoes with a hint of something spiced.
Roasted vegetables that actually had colour and texture instead of the sad, limp things that came in takeout containers.
The kind of meal that suggested she cooked not out of obligation but because she genuinely wanted to. Because feeding people was its own form of care.
We ate at Avery’s table, which technically seated four but was usually covered in gear and unopened mail.
I took a few slices of breast meat and a small spoonful of sweet potato, arranging it on my plate with the particular precision I’d gotten very good at making look casual.
Avery was watching me. I could feel it—the peripheral awareness of his gaze tracking what I’d taken, doing the math, deciding whether to say something. Would it always be like this now that my secret was out in the open?
I kept my eyes on my plate.
“This is incredible,” Avery told Hana and for the moment his attention shifted.
“I learned this technique in culinary school,” Hana said. “Makes the breasts extra juicy.” She waggled her eyebrows as Avery choked on his bite of chicken. Then she glanced at me—not at my plate, just at me. “How are you finding the apartment? Avery’s decorating choices notwithstanding.”
“It’s fine. Better now that the room has actual furniture.”
“That bar was on the floor,” she said. “Literally.”
“It had a mattress,” Avery said. “That’s furniture.”
“A mattress on the floor is a life choice, not furniture.” She looked back at me. “Do you cook?”
The question caught me slightly off guard. “A little.”
“I can teach you how to make the chicken. Avery mostly uses the kitchen to store protein powder and make toast.”
“That’s not—” Avery started.
“There are four containers of protein powder in the pantry,” she said. “I counted.”
Something in my chest shifted. Small and barely perceptible, like a hinge that had been stuck and was now, reluctantly, beginning to move.
“Five,” I said. “There’s one behind the blender.”
Hana pointed at me like I’d confirmed something important. Avery looked briefly betrayed.
I ate my chicken. Outside, Chicago moved in its indifferent way—big and loud and completely unbothered by any of us.
It wasn’t terrible.