Chapter Four Sadie
Seeing him this way hurts.
I’ve experienced panic attacks before, but the worst weren’t mine—they were Oliver’s.
I could barely help him function before we got him medication.
Now, the attacks are fewer and far between, but the sight of Rhys curled in on himself, huffing for breaths like he can’t quite catch them, brings back memories of laying a bag of frozen peas on my brother’s chest so he could settle his nervous system.
Only I don’t have frozen peas right now.
“Is this helping?” I ask as José González’s gentle strums echo in our ears.
Rhys nods, his eyes flickering over me in a little pattern—eyes, mouth, the grasp of my hand in his.
Eyes. Mouth. Hands .
“You’re helping,” he blurts, cheeks red from embarrassment or exertion.
I nod. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
We sit back, like every movement is just as in sync, connected by the headphone cord between us.
Music plays while he slows his breath and I slow my heart. I lose track of how long we’ve been here.
“Music helps me,” I say. And Oliver, though I don’t add that even as I remember slamming headphones over my brother’s ears as his principal and I verbally sparred over his “unbecoming” behavior at school and “lack of parenting” outside of it.
There’s a tickle on my skin and I look down to see Rhys’s hand absentmindedly playing with my fingers in a too-familiar way.
I stand, stepping back.
“Did you skate?” I ask, suddenly desperate to fill the charged silence between us.
He smiles in that sad, sleepy way as he continues to climb down from the high. “Didn’t even make it on the ice.”
“Do you want to skate with me?”
This time it’s a cocky grin. “That’s a line. Now I know you’re flirting with me.”
“Am not.”
“Whatever you say, Sadie,” he snorts out.
“I’m offering to…” What am I offering? His smiles and taunts are making me lightheaded. “To split the ice.”
“Okay.” He nods, standing over me in his now-laced skates, turning from a ball of anxiety into a tower of a man. “And your music.”
“What?”
“I want your music.” He shrugs. “It feels good. Helps me focus, I guess.”
Something about his words makes me want to hug him, a light burn behind my eyes.
“Okay,” I agree.
Seeing Rhys heading toward me, I realize maybe I wasn’t as sly as I thought in attempting to sneak off the ice while his back was turned.
For a moment, I contemplate slamming the metal door down over the concessions window so I can scream, “We’re closed!” when he approaches.
Unfortunately, that would mean crushing the fingers of the unsuspecting mother who looks close to falling asleep atop my counter space as I slide her coffee to her.
“Thanks,” she offers. She picks up a second cup of hot chocolate and sheepdogs two hyperactive hockey kids away.
“Didn’t know you worked here too.” Rhys smiles, pushing a hand through hair that’s a little wet, like he might’ve dunked his head under the sink after finishing his morning skate. A few tendrils keep falling into his face, too short for him to shove around the curves of his ears.
I clench my hands, because some stupid part of my brain wants to push those hairs back myself.
“That’s how I have a key.” I shrug.
It’s not how I have a key at all—I don’t think working a concession-stand job usually reserved for high schoolers warrants an entrance key to the ice plex.
I only have it because that’s part of my summer compromise with Coach Kelley.
He won’t hover and drag me across the country when I have my brothers out of school if I continue to practice here at the community rink and send him updated footage of my routines weekly.
“Can I get a coffee?”
I smile, but heat crawls up my spine. “All out.”
“Out of coffee at seven thirty in the morning?”
“Unfortunately,” I say, stirring creamer into the cup in front of me.
“Not even a little bit left for your favorite customer?”
He smiles and it makes me pause. Two matching dimple imprints form in his otherwise chiseled cheeks, a little bit of light bleeding into his usually saddened brown eyes. I want to stand in that smile like a flower preening in the sun.
“Rhys, you’re not even in my top ten. Besides, I highly doubt your prep-schooled ass has ever purchased anything from a public ice complex concession stand.”
His hand thumps on his chest like what I said was deeply hurtful. “Consider me a card-carrying member of the concession-stand loyalty club now.”
“Well, in that case.” I grab a half-full Styrofoam cup before sliding it toward him.
“What do I owe you?” His eyes glimmer at me.
“A break from your continual presence at my place of work.”
“That’s a high price.”
“I’m expensive.”
He takes a sip of the coffee black and curses.
“Maxwell House,” I say, taking another gulp of my own.
Rhys shakes his head. “That’s shitty coffee.”
“Very,” I agree.
“I think I was just hustled.”
I can’t help but smile. “Hustle my favorite customer? I would never.”
His laugh bursts out, beautiful and tinged with the boyish vulnerability of a kid talking to his school crush. It makes me want to bat my eyelashes and preen—which only makes me sick when I realize his presence is turning me to mush.
“Favorite, huh?”
I shrug, “You tip the best.”
He laughs again and takes out a high bill, sliding it my way before leaning toward me on his elbows. “I guess I do.”
It would be so easy to kiss him. The boy is a hazard to my personal boundaries and health.
“Like I said, I’m expensive.”
Rhys’s mouth opens for a second before snapping shut as he shoots upright and shoves away from the counter.
“Sorry—I’ll uh, see you.”
He’s gone so fast it gives me whiplash.
I look around for a moment, cheeks heating at how closely I’d leaned into him. My eyes flicker over a tall, handsome, middle-aged man and a group of players decked out in Waterfell hockey T-shirts and hats, and my face flushes with the clear implication.
Good enough for a quick morning flirt, but embarrassing in the face of his friends.
Forget him.
“Rhys Waterfell hockey” sits in the search bar of my browser; the cursor blinks, waiting for me to make a decision. I glance around the empty interior of Brew Haven, before hovering over his name.
“What’s that?” Ro pops up beside me.
“Jesus Christ, Ro,” I seethe, hand on my chest to stop my now-racing heart. “We need to get you a bell.”
She giggles, pulling a cherry lollipop—my favorite—from her waist apron and handing it to me.
“I wouldn’t need one if you weren’t so distracted by”—she draws out the Y and leans across me with her long-limbed form, slamming the ENTER button on the search bar—“Rhys Maximillian Koteskiy. Sheesh, that’s a mouthful. ”
I can only nod, my tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of my mouth at the image of him displayed across my screen.
Rhys Maximillian Koteskiy : 6′3″. 210 lbs. C. Shoots Right.
“You have that look on your face like you’re thinking about how much you wanna eat him.”
“I’m only thinking about how obnoxious it is to spell ‘Reece’ like that.
God, could he be more cliché?” My finger taps at the screen beneath his stats, at the prep school background I’d been joking about.
“Berkshire School? That’s a private hockey academy, Ro.
And look, his dad is an NHL Hall of Famer.
He’s been raised like a perfect little prodigy. ”
The words feel heavy, but I spit them anyway, ignoring the memory of Rhys panting and terror-struck, lying on the ice. The mental image of him flushed, panicked that he couldn’t breathe, sits in such deep contrast to the headshot across my screen.
He looks younger, decked in a navy hockey sweater with the Waterfell University wolf howling across his chest, seeming larger than life with a smile meant to be in front of the world. Dimples. Shorter, well-kept hair and clear eyes.
“Sadie?”
I shake my head, exiting the screen as fast as I can before looking back up at Ro.
The girl is gorgeous, and it isn’t just her lean, athletic figure and mess of ringlet curls that somehow always seem perfectly styled in a thousand new, different ways; it’s something deeper, like sun is shining from within her bright, tawny skin, stretching out and over everything she sees.
“Yeah?”
“Gonna tell me why you’re looking him up?”
“Because I didn’t know who he was, and he’s been… bothering me lately.”
“We’ll get to the second part, but let’s start here: How in the world do you go to Waterfell and not recognize that guy? Even I know who he is, and I’ve never been to a game.”
I try not to roll my eyes, because while that’s true, Ro is more aware than I am. The little wallflower knows so much because she listens, she watches everything.
“You’re in that arena all the time, where I’m sure life-size cutouts of him are lining the tunnels and hallways, if the massive posters of his face on campus are anything to go by.”
God, had I been that far gone last semester?
Yes . I can hear Coach Kelley’s voice invading my thoughts, telling me exactly how absent I’d been, how much of a letdown both my programs had been at the finals.
“I hadn’t noticed, I guess,” I reply half-heartedly, because I won’t talk about it. I’ll be better this year, for my team, for Oliver and Liam—but I won’t talk about last year anymore.
Ro has that look on her face now, arched perfect eyebrows over her sparkling green eyes, pursed lips. She wears her every emotion on her face, and this is her concern.
“All right, well, you said he’s been bothering you,” she reminds me, letting whatever she was going to say die before reaching for the multicolored mugs soaking in the sink. I take the waffled washcloth from her outstretched hand and help her dry. “Gonna tell me about that?”
“I’ve just run into him a few times lately at my early practices. He has a tendency to beat me to my pre-skate.” I shrug again, feeling ridiculous as I turn toward her.
Ro’s squeal is immediate, and I have the urge to cover her mouth despite the closed, empty café around us. Whatever sharp look I give her seems to be enough as she settles.
“That’s adorable,” she offers, nodding excessively as she starts again on a homemade sunflower shaped mug that’s started to lose its color. “I mean, hockey boy and figure—”
“Nope,” I snap, cutting her off and reaching in to drain the water from the big sink. “Stop it, you cannot go around romanticizing everything—how many times do we have to have this talk?”
She looks at me like I’ve kicked a puppy, but Ro is a hopeless romantic, and she’s been my friend for three years now—my only friend, really.
But it doesn’t matter how many guys she watches me take into a bathroom or sneak out of our dorm in the morning, she’s convinced that my love story is out there.
“Understood?” I ask while washing my hands. She nods almost aggressively, moving to the side to take off her apron and allowing me room.
Ro waits only a minute for me to put my apron in the little cubby next to hers and grab my backpack before the dam bursts.
“So… can we go to a hockey game?”
This time, I can’t help the smile and slight roll of my eyes.
But the flutter of laughter that escapes me and the feel of her arm looping over my shoulder as we exit together, giggling over some inside joke, makes me feel normal and good.
Like a regular twenty-one-year-old college student, if only for a moment.