30 locker room noise
I know before I even open the door.
It's not quiet inside.
It's worse than that.
It's the kind of normal that feels staged, like everyone's already talked about something and is just waiting for the person it's about to show up.
Which... is me.
I push the locker room door open anyway, stepping inside like nothing's off, even though it is. Conversations continue, but not quite the same way. There's a delay to everything, like people are deciding how obvious they want to be.
I don't give them anything.
I walk to my stall, drop my bag, start pulling my stuff out with the same rhythm I always do. Tape. Gloves. Stick. Routine is easy. Routine doesn't ask questions.
"Nice weekend," someone says from the other side of the room.
There's a small ripple of laughter. Not loud, but not subtle either.
I don't look up. "We won."
"That's not what he meant," another voice adds.
"I figured."
A couple guys move closer, not crowding, just... drifting in that direction like they don't want to miss anything.
"So," one of them says, leaning against the bench across from me, "that whole thing still PR, or-"
I glance up just enough to meet his eyes. "Still none of your business."
That gets a reaction.
"Relax," he says, holding his hands up slightly. "Just asking."
"Don't."
He nods once, like that's fair, but the grin doesn't fully disappear.
It doesn't matter.
Because even when they back off, it's still there. The awareness. The looks. The fact that everyone already saw it before I even got here.
I focus on my gear again, tightening the tape on my stick a little more than necessary.
Across the room, someone pulls up the photo again.
I don't need to see it. I already know what it looks like.
That's the problem.
Because it doesn't look like anything we've been doing up until now. It looks... real.
I push that thought away before it settles.
Declan drops onto the bench next to me like he's been waiting for the exact moment to do it.
"Good morning," he says.
"It's not."
"Feels like it," he replies, glancing around the room. "You've got an audience."
"I noticed."
He leans back slightly, stretching his legs out in front of him, completely relaxed. "You handled that well."
"I said two sentences."
"Exactly," he says. "Growth."
I don't respond to that.
He doesn't need me to.
"You know what the funniest part is?" he continues.
"I don't."
"You didn't pull away."
I pause, just for a second. It's small enough that no one else would notice.
Declan does.
Of course he does.
"That's not-" I start, then stop. Because I don't have a clean way to finish that.
"That's not what?" he asks, like he's genuinely curious.
"It doesn't mean anything."
"Right," he says easily, too easily.
I glance at him. He's not pushing. He's just... waiting, like he already knows the answer and is giving me the chance to say it anyway.
I don't.
I go back to my gear instead, finishing up, standing up like that ends the conversation.
It doesn't.
"Sure," he says, getting up with me. "Totally nothing."
I ignore him, grabbing my stick and heading toward the ice.
?
School is worse. Not louder, just more obvious.
People don't say things directly, at least not at first. It's the looks, the way conversations shift when I walk past, the way phones tilt slightly like they're trying to be subtle about something they're not being subtle about at all.
Girls notice.
That part's immediate.
Different kind of attention. More pointed, less casual.
I walk past a group near the lockers and catch part of a sentence-
"-that's him, right-"
I keep walking. Because stopping would turn it into something. And I don't need it to be anything more than it already is.
Declan catches up next to me, hands in his pockets, completely unbothered by any of it.
"You're popular," he says.
"I was already popular."
"Not like this."
I glance at him. "You're enjoying this."
"I am," he says without hesitation. "This is great."
"It's not."
"It is," he insists. "You're just pretending it's not."
"I'm not pretending anything."
"Sure."
We reach our next class, and he stops at the door, leaning slightly against the frame.
"For the record," he adds, "if that was fake, you're a better actor than I thought."
"It is fake."
He tilts his head slightly. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He studies me for a second longer than necessary.
Then nods. But not in agreement, more like-
noted.
"Okay," he says. "Then you definitely didn't look like you meant it."
I don't answer. Because there's nothing to say that doesn't sound like an answer.
He smiles slightly, like that silence confirmed exactly what he expected.
"Thought so," he says, pushing off the doorframe and heading inside.
I follow a second later, the noise of the hallway fading behind me. But it doesn't actually go away.
Because even when everything goes back to normal... it doesn't feel like it.
And the worst part isn't the photo.
Or the attention.
Or the fact that everyone thinks they know what happened.
It's that one moment-
the one that wasn't supposed to exist anywhere but in that car-
doesn't feel like something I can just write off, not anymore.
And I don't say that out loud. But I don't need to.
Because the fact that I'm not saying it-
is already saying enough.