Chapter 14 Green #3
The only sound is the whine of the skate dryer and a couple of the guys arguing over who gets to hit the shower first.
He drops his voice, drops the act. “I’d love to grab coffee, sometime. Not for a story. Just…” He glances over the top of the scrum, then back at Ash, holding him in place with the gravity of his stare. “I’d like to get to know you.”
Ash goes still. Not deer-in-headlights, but close. He glances, just for a second, in my direction.
I look away, fast, pretending to be absorbed in the tape on my stick. But I see it anyway, the moment where the world tries to reroute itself.
Ash recovers, smooth as ever. “I appreciate it, but I’m kinda busy right now. Playoffs and all.”
Vincent nods, slow, like he knew it was a long shot but took it anyway.
He holds Ash’s gaze another half-second, then steps back, slips out through the tangle of gear and people and noise.
When he’s gone, the world snaps back to normal. Raz calls Ash a “fucking celebrity,” and O’Doul starts a slow clap.
Ash ducks his head, laughs, but I can see the way his hand shakes just a little, the afterimage of being wanted by someone with nothing to lose.
I towel off, pack my shit, and tell myself I don’t care. I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about.
But the ache in my jaw, the death grip I have on my water bottle, says otherwise.
———
After, in the hall, I hang back, waiting for the chaos to settle. The rest of the team trickles out, hair still wet, faces already looking past the win to the next game, the next party, the next anything.
Ash walks slow, feet shuffling, hoodie half-zipped, bag slung over one shoulder. He doesn’t look up when he passes, but he knows I’m there.
I follow, a half-step behind, trying to think of something to say that isn’t, “What the fuck was that?”
Outside, the air is a brick wall of wet and cold. The parking garage is empty except for a couple of staffers and the line of rental SUVs.
We walk to his car, our footsteps echoing off the concrete like they’re the only honest sound left in the world.
He stops at the trunk, tosses his bag in, and turns to me.
“Vincent, huh?” I say, trying to play it cool, but my voice is thinner than I want.
He shrugs. “I guess.”
“Guy’s intense,” I say.
Ash snorts, “He’s a freak. Bet he’s already DM’d me.”
I want to ask if he’s going to answer. I want to ask if it matters. I want to ask if we’re still us, or if the rules just changed.
Instead, I just say, “You handled it.”
He laughs, but it’s hollow. “What’s to handle? He’s not the first guy to think I’m desperate.”
“You’re not.”
He looks at me. Really looks, and for a second the world goes quiet.
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
I nod, unsure if I believe it or just want to.
He pops the door, slides into the driver’s seat, and I watch the way he grips the wheel, the way his knuckles go white before he lets go, the way he sits there, for just a second, before turning the key.
I want to get in, I want to follow him home, I want to grab his face and tell him that he’s worth more than the entire fucking city.
But I don’t.
I just watch him drive away, taillights painting a red streak through the rain.
———
Back inside, the rink is dead, the lights half out, the air still heavy with the ghosts of sweat and violence and everything we left on the ice.
I sit in the quiet, tape unspooling from my hands, and think about what it means to want something. Really want it.
I think about Ash, about Vincent, about the way even now, even after everything, the thing that scares me the most isn’t losing the game or the job or the locker room.
It’s the idea that he could say yes to someone else, and mean it.
I think about calling my mom, about telling her that I’m in love with a guy who can’t stop apologizing for taking up space.
I think about what she’d say, how she’d tell me that the only thing worse than not being wanted is pretending you don’t want at all.
I sit there, locker room empty, the city outside collapsing under the weight of itself, and I wonder how the hell I’m supposed to play it cool when the only thing I want is sitting in a car somewhere, probably staring at his phone, probably already replaying the day in his head and wondering where he went wrong.
The night settles in, thick and endless. I close my eyes, press my forehead to the cool metal of my locker, and promise myself that tomorrow, I’ll say what I need to say.
But tonight, all I can do is hold on and wait for the world to give me another shot.
———
The tunnel between the rink and the garage is the loneliest place in the city.
Everything echoes, footsteps, voices, the hollow click of your own tongue against the roof of your mouth. Ash is halfway down, hoodie up, backpack bouncing with each stride, when I call his name.
He stops, but doesn’t turn.
For a second I want to let him keep walking, just to see how far he’d get before he realized I’m not coming after him. But I don’t. I never do.
I jog to catch up, shoes slapping on the wet concrete. The cold out here is surgical; it strips all the sweat from your skin and leaves you raw underneath. I can see his breath fogging in the space between us.
I stop three paces short. Too close is dangerous, not close enough is worse.
“Hey,” I say, like I haven’t been waiting all night to get him alone.
He looks over his shoulder, eyebrows up, face already blanked out. He’s a fast learner.
“You leaving?” I say, because my brain is a dead zone and that’s all I’ve got.
“Yeah,” he says. “You too?”
We stand there, two mannequins in a department store window, perfectly dressed but so obviously fake you’d laugh if you saw us from the street.
I try to remember what I came here to say. But all I can see is the way Vincent Chen looked at him, the way Ash let himself be seen. The way the world tilted, just for a second, in someone else’s direction.
“That reporter,” I say, and my voice cracks, “seemed pretty into you.”
Ash shrugs, plays with the strap of his bag. “I get that a lot,” he says, but there’s no flex in it, just a brittle edge.
“Are you going to meet up with him?” I try to say it like I don’t care, like it’s a curiosity, but the words come out warped, sour.
He gives me a look, somewhere between “are you high” and “are you kidding.”
“No,” he says, and he says it twice, softer: “No.”
I should believe him. I should feel relief, or victory, or at least a flicker of smugness that I’m the one he texts in the middle of the night, the one who gets his best, worst, only self.
But I don’t. I feel the opposite of relief, a rush of panic so sharp it splits my head open.
I say, “You should go.”
He freezes. “What?”
I swallow, feel the cold set in my bones. “You should. Go. With him. Or whoever. You don’t have to—” I shake my head, frustrated at the way the words twist in my mouth. “We’re not—”
He cuts in, voice flat. “Serious?”
“Yeah,” I say, even though it feels like tearing a muscle off the bone. “You should see what else is out there.”
He looks at me like I’ve just hit him, clean and hard across the face. He stares for a second, a long, angry second, then laughs, but there’s nothing funny in it.
“Is that what you want?” he says.
It’s not, but I nod anyway.
“Okay,” he says, and the word is a coffin lid slamming shut.
He turns and walks. I don’t move, don’t chase, don’t call out after him, even as the sound of his steps gets smaller, smaller, gone.
When I can’t hear him anymore, I double over, palms on my knees, and suck in air that feels like swallowing knives.
Eventually I stumble back inside, into the locker room, the real one, the one with the ugly fluorescent lights and the chemical stink and the rows of empty stalls.
I sit on the bench, helmet still in my lap, hands shaking.
I press my forehead to the cool metal of my locker and close my eyes.
There’s a hollow behind my ribs, a perfect Ash-sized void, and it echoes worse than any tunnel in the world.
I stay there, breathing, until the cold in my chest is the only thing keeping me upright.
I don’t know how long I sit, but when I finally stand, the world is the same, only quieter.
I walk home alone, no messages, no noise, nothing but my own heartbeat to remind me I’m still here.
And I know, absolutely, completely, that I just made the worst play of my life.