Chapter 11 #2
The silence that follows should feel awkward.
Instead it settles around us comfortably.
Calder doesn't rush to fill it. Doesn't tell me I'm wrong.
Doesn't try to make the conversation lighter.
He just sits there beside me, one arm stretched along the couch behind us, looking at me like the admission matters.
For some reason, that lands harder than any attempt at comfort would have.
"I don't really know how to stop trying to do everything perfectly," I admit after a while.
Calder watches me for a second. Not evaluating. Not searching for the right response. Just listening.
"Takes a lot of energy to hold yourself together like that all the time," he says quietly.
The words settle somewhere unexpectedly deep. I look down at my coffee. Calder rubs tiredly at one eye.
"My entire life since I was fourteen has basically been hockey and airports."
"You regret it?"
"No." The answer comes immediately. Then, quieter: "I just don't really know who I am without it sometimes."
I understand that before I even think about it. The feeling of building your entire life around one thing. The fear that if you pull it away, there might not be much left underneath.
Neither of us reaches for a joke.
The apartment grows quieter around us while the city outside sinks further into darkness. At some point Calder shifts closer. Not deliberately. Not enough to draw attention to it. Just enough that our legs brush beneath the blanket.
Neither of us moves.
I curl deeper into the corner of the couch while Calder stretches one arm fully along the back cushions. The space between us disappears so gradually I can't identify when it happened. One minute he's on the other side of the couch. The next he's simply there.
Calder keeps talking, his voice low and rough with exhaustion as he tells me about some disastrous junior hockey road trip. I catch pieces of it. A broken bus. A coach threatening homicide. Somebody losing a skate.
The rest drifts past me. I'm too aware of the warmth beside me. The weight of his arm stretched along the couch. The occasional brush of fabric when one of us shifts. The slow, steady rhythm of his breathing. And the increasingly alarming fact that none of it feels unfamiliar anymore.
Then Calder's fingers catch lightly against the ends of my hair.
The movement is absentminded enough that I almost miss it. Almost. He catches a loose strand between his fingers and twists it once while continuing whatever story he's currently telling about junior hockey.
My entire body goes still, not because the touch is deliberate, but because it isn't.
Calder doesn't pause. Doesn't look at me. Doesn't seem remotely aware that he's doing it. The strand slips free, and a second later his fingers find another one, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
I glance sideways. His attention stays on the conversation, relaxed and comfortable, still talking, still half-lost in the story, as though playing with my hair requires no more thought than shifting position on the couch.
Something warm unfolds slowly beneath my ribs. Dangerous. Very dangerous.
"You're quiet," Calder murmurs eventually.
His fingers drift through another section of hair before settling lightly near the ends. I stare into my coffee.
"I'm thinking."
"About?"
I hesitate.
"Nothing useful."
Calder huffs out a tired laugh.
"Fair."
The conversation drifts on after that, pieces of stories and half-finished observations separated by long pauses neither of us rushes to fill.
Through all of it, Calder's hand stays there.
Not constantly. Not intentionally. Just returning every so often to another loose strand of hair whenever his attention wanders.
The apartment settles deeper into silence around us, and somewhere between one story and the next, I realize the part affecting me most isn't the touch itself.
It's how natural it seems to him, like the distance between us disappeared without either of us noticing, like this is already normal, like he's forgotten there was ever supposed to be space between us at all.
At some point the conversation fades without either of us meaning for it to.
Silence settles fully across the apartment.
The city outside stays dark beyond the windows while warm light pools softly across the couch.
I can hear Calder breathing beside me. Slow.
Tired. Steady. His leg rests lightly against mine beneath the blanket.
His arm stretches behind me along the cushions.
The warmth of him seems to occupy the entire side of the couch.
I glance up automatically.
Calder is already looking at me.
The eye contact lands hard enough to send my pulse uneven. Neither of us looks away. Something shifts across his expression, small enough that I couldn't explain it if asked. The apartment suddenly feels much smaller than it did five minutes ago. Quieter too.
His gaze drops briefly. Not far. Just enough. My breath catches before I can stop it. Calder's fingers still against the ends of my hair. The movement lasts less than a second. Long enough to notice. Long enough that the silence changes shape around us.
Neither of us says anything.
Calder shifts slightly. The movement is almost nothing. A change in balance. A fraction closer. Enough that I become aware of every inch of space separating us. Enough that the distance starts feeling temporary.
I stop hearing the city outside. Stop noticing the apartment. Stop paying attention to anything except Calder. The warmth of him. The steady rhythm of his breathing. The way neither of us seems willing to look away first.
The silence stretches.
Not awkward. Not uncertain. Just full. And for one suspended moment, it feels like the entire room is holding its breath with us.
The gap is still there. Not much of one. Enough. I could use it. Step back. Say something deflecting. Let the moment dissolve into tiredness and reasonable distance and tomorrow morning at the rink where everything makes sense again.
I don't.
"Calder," I whisper.
It isn't a question. It isn't really an invitation either.
Just his name. His eyes lift fully to mine.
For a second, neither of us moves. Something in his expression softens so completely it steals the breath from my lungs.
Not surprise. Not uncertainty. Something quieter.
Like he's standing on the edge of the same moment I am.
Like he's waiting.
Giving me every opportunity to change my mind.
The realization lands hard. Because the terrifying part isn't that Calder wants this.
It's that he's trying not to. No rink. No teasing.
No convenient distractions. Just Calder close enough that I can see the shift of his breathing.
Close enough that every inch of space between us suddenly feels fragile.
His gaze doesn't leave mine.
Neither of us pulls away.
Neither of us pretends not to understand what's happening. The silence stretches between us, full and heavy and impossible to ignore. And still neither of us moves. As though we're both waiting for the same thing. As though one more second might be enough to change everything.