Chapter 6
RYAN
The Ice Queen’s blog post glows on my screen, each word a stab to my heart, showing me exactly what I didn’t want to see.
Jackson had mentioned something about the gossip blog being back in action, and my traitorous fingers navigated to the URL before my brain could intervene. Now, I’m sitting at my desk, reading about Oliver Jacoby’s sex life in excruciating detail.
Nine months of celibacy. Ended with “a monsoon of biblical proportions.”
Acid crawls up my throat. I swallow hard, tasting bitter coffee from breakfast. I scroll down, then immediately regret it.
Someone on the third floor was heard making noises—
I slam my laptop shut harder than necessary.
“Whoa.” Jackson, sprawled across his unmade bed like a starfish, gapes at me. “Did your laptop insult your telescope?”
“No.” The word snaps out of me. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Jackson sits up and runs a hand through his messy hair. “And I’m secretly a figure skater. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Ryan, your jaw is doing that clenchy thing.”
I swing my desk chair around to face Jackson. “I made the mistake of reading the Ice Queen’s new blog post.”
Jackson’s eyebrows lift, and his head tilts slightly to the side as he exhales through his nose. “Ah. The one about Oliver’s triumphant return to the land of the sexually active?”
“Must you phrase it like that?”
“I’m just quoting the source material.” The mattress dips as he swings his socked feet onto the floor with a soft thud. “Look, I know you and Oliver have history—”
“We don’t have history.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. “We were neighbors back in the day. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Jackson repeats flatly. “Which is why you turn into a startled deer every time he glances in your general direction.”
“I do not—”
“You sprinted away from him last week. In loafers.”
I have no defense for that. The loafers were a poor choice for a hasty retreat—I nearly twisted my ankle on the sidewalk. But Oliver had been strolling toward me with that smile that used to do things to me below the belt, and my fight-or-flight response chose flight with embarrassing enthusiasm.
“The point is, Oliver’s personal life is none of my concern. He can sleep with whomever he wants, where anyone could hear.”
Jackson’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline. “You’re spiraling.”
“I’m simply stating facts. He was heard getting ‘the ride of his life.’ I guess he’s unable to resist the power of the penis.”
Jackson’s eyes bug out of his head. “The power of the…Jesus, Ryan. Since when are those words even in your vocabulary?”
“I’m multi-faceted.”
Jackson unfolds himself from the bed and reaches toward the ceiling, arms extended. His BSU Football shirt creeps upward, exposing a thin line of skin above his waistband. “You know what you need?”
“To delete my browser history and never think about this again?”
“Twister.”
I blink at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Twister.” Jackson ransacks his closet, tossing out athletic gear and questionable fashion choices. “The game with the colored dots and spinner. It’s a scientifically proven method for getting out of your head.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He flashes the battered box with a triumphant grin. “My teammates back in high school would play it all the time when one of us was stressed.”
“I’m sure you did,” I mutter, thinking of the very different context in which Jackson and his teammates probably played Twister.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Abrams. This is gonna be therapeutic. I’ll even let you ‘accidentally’ elbow me in the balls, if it’ll twist your frown upside down.”
He unfolds the plastic mat with its cheerful array of colored circles, smoothing out the wrinkles with more care than he’s ever shown his bedsheets. “Come on. Left foot, red.”
“We haven’t even spun yet.”
“I’m improvising. Left foot, red. Let’s go.”
I don’t know why I comply. Maybe it’s the determination in Jackson’s voice, or the fact that he’s gone to all this trouble to distract me from my own misery. Or I’m just tired of sitting with the weight of the Ice Queen’s words pressing down on my chest.
I step onto the mat and place my left foot on a red circle.
“See? Easy peasy.” Jackson positions himself on the opposite end, his foot dwarfing the circle. “Now, right hand, yellow.”
“You’re supposed to spin.”
“The spinner is broken. Has been since my brother once tried to use it as a Frisbee.” He demonstrates by flicking the arrow, which spins weakly before falling off entirely. “We’re going freestyle.”
“This is blasphemy.”
“This is fun. Right hand, yellow.”
I bend down and place my palm on the yellow circle, feeling ridiculous. Jackson mirrors me, and suddenly, we’re both hunched over the mat like two very confused flamingos.
“Left hand, green,” he announces.
We contort ourselves accordingly. My shoulder protests the angle, but I manage.
“So,” Jackson says, wobbling slightly, “You want to talk about why reading about Oliver’s hookup made you forcefully slam your laptop?”
“No.”
Jackson’s voice drops to that annoyingly perceptive tone he gets. “You run the other way when you see him coming, but reading about his hookup has you Hulking out. Seems like there might be a connection there, don’t you think?”
“You’re overthinking it, Jackson. There’s nothing to connect. I don’t care who Oliver sleeps with.”
“Riiiiight. Left foot, yellow.”
I move my foot, and now we’re face-to-face and bent at angles that’ll require a week at the chiropractor to work out the kinks. Jackson’s brown eyes are warm, searching.
“You know,” he says quietly, “it’s okay to miss someone. Even if you’ve convinced yourself you shouldn’t.”
My throat constricts. “I don’t miss him.”
“For a guy you claim not to care about, you’ve spent an awful lot of energy dodging him.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it for me.” Jackson’s hand slides on the mat. He curls his fingers, bracing himself and scrunching the colored circle in the process. “Right hand, red.”
“Oliver and I were best friends when we were kids, before my family moved away.”
“I know that part.”
“What you don’t know is that I—” I stop, the confession lodging in my chest and metastasizing. “I had feelings for him back then. Stupid, childish feelings that I never told him about.”
Jackson doesn’t appear surprised. “And now?”
“Now nothing. We’re different people. He’s the captain of the hockey team, and I’m…” I gesture vaguely at myself, nearly losing my balance. “This.”
“What’s wrong with ‘this?’”
“Jackson, look at me. I dress as if I time-traveled from the 1950s. I spend my weekends watching documentaries about celestial bodies. I have a skincare routine that takes forty-five minutes.”
“So you’re stylish, intellectually curious, and have great skin. The horror.”
“You know what I mean.” My arms are shaking, but I ignore the pain. “Oliver is…he’s Oliver. Larger than life. Everyone loves him. He could have anyone he wants.”
“And, apparently, he did.” Jackson’s voice is gentle, not mocking. “But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t also want you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? The guy goes out of his way to acknowledge you every time he sees you. You said it yourself—he’s been trying to reconnect.”
“Because he’s being nice.”
“I think he wants to be your friend again. The question is, do you want him back in your life?”
I open my mouth to change the subject, the current topic becoming too heavy for my liking, but something in Jackson’s expression stops me.
Do I want Oliver back in my life? The answer rises from somewhere deep, a truth I’ve been burying under layers of avoidance and rationalization. “Yes,” I whisper. “I do.”
The words leave my mouth, and I’m free-falling, stomach dropping as the ground rushes away. But my shoulders feel lighter than they have in years.
Jackson’s eyes crinkle at the corners, his teeth flashing white as the corners of his mouth lift high enough to create that one dimple on his right cheek. “Was that so hard?”
“Yes. Incredibly.”
“Well, get used to it, because here’s what’s going to happen.
” He finally releases his position, sitting back on his heels and pulling me up with him.
The Twister mat lies forgotten beneath us.
“You’re going to stop running. You’re going to stop convincing yourself you don’t deserve good things.
And you’re going to take one tiny, manageable step toward reacquainting yourself with Oliver Jacoby. ”
“What kind of step?”
“Find him on Facebook and send him a friend request.”
I gape at Jackson as if he’s proposed we go skydiving without parachutes. “That’s your plan? A Facebook friend request?”
“It’s low stakes. Nonthreatening. You don’t even have to say anything—just click a button.” He pulls out his phone and waves it at me. “Come on. I’ll walk you through it.”
“I know how Facebook works, Jackson.”
“Then you know it’s easy. One click. That’s all.”
I look at the phone in his hand, then at my own laptop sitting innocently on my desk. One click. Such a small but terrifying act. I can’t keep running forever, though. Jackson is dating his teammate; we’ll be crossing paths even more now.
“Fine,” I say, the word escaping before I can second-guess myself. “I’ll do it.”
Each step toward my desk feels like walking the plank. My pulse thunders in my ears as I lift the laptop lid, wincing at the Ice Queen’s blog still glowing on the screen. One quick click banishes her words, and I find myself staring at Facebook’s familiar blue banner instead.
Jackson’s shadow falls over me, the smell of his pine-scented deodorant announcing his presence before his arms appear in my peripheral vision.
His palms make soft thuds as they land on either side of my laptop, boxing me in between his forearms. “Type his name,” he instructs. “Oliver Jacoby. J-A-C-O-B-Y.”
“I know how to spell his name, Jackson.”
“Just making sure you don’t ‘accidentally’ misspell it and give up.”
He knows me too well.
The cursor blinks in the search bar, patient and unassuming. Such a simple action. Type a name. Click a button. Change everything.
I type: O-L-I-V-E-R J-A-C-O-B-Y.
His profile appears immediately, because why wouldn’t it?
It’s not like there’s anyone else around these parts with that name.
It’s so…unique. The profile picture shows him in his Barracudas jersey, helmet tucked under one arm, with that devastating grin plastered across his face.
Even compressed into a square of pixels, his face hits me with the same impact as those glossy photos they plaster across newsstands.
“There he is,” Jackson says, entirely too cheerfully. “Now click on his profile.”
I do as I’m told, and we’re greeted with photos of hockey victories, team bonding moments, and one particularly adorable shot of him holding someone’s kitten. His “About” section lists his major (sports management), his hometown (Westbrook), and his relationship status (single).
Not that I’m noticing that last part.
“‘Add Friend’ button,” Jackson says, pointing at the screen with his index finger. “Right there. Big and blue. Can’t miss it.”
“I see it.”
“Then click it.”
“I’m going to.”
“You’re hesitating.”
“I’m mentally preparing.”
“You’re stalling.” Jackson’s hand lands on my shoulder, and the weight of it sends a ripple of calm through my chest. His fingers press into the knot of tension that’s been living between my neck and collarbone since freshman year.
“Ryan, buddy. You’ve faced tougher things. You can handle a friend request.”
I don’t need Jackson to tell me that I’m being ridiculous. That a single, solitary button that millions of people click every day is giving me an existential crisis.
I move my cursor over the “Add Friend” button. My finger hovers over the trackpad.
Click! The button changes to “Friend Request Sent.”
I glance out the window and frown. The sky isn’t falling. A hellhole isn’t opening up in the middle of the quad. No dinosaur foot squashing all of us before we have time to run for the hills.
“See?” Jackson squeezes my shoulder again. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was terrifying,” I admit. “But also…not as difficult as I’d built it up to be.”
“That’s usually how these things go. We make them into these massive, insurmountable obstacles in our heads, and then we actually do them and realize—”
A notification pops up on my screen.
Oliver Jacoby accepted your friend request.
I make a sound that can only be described as an undignified squeak.
“Holy fucking shit!” Jackson’s reaction is the polar opposite of my stunned silence. He whoops loud enough to startle the entire dormitory. “He accepted! It’s only been thirty seconds!”
“He was online,” I croak out. “He must have been on his phone and—oh God, he saw it immediately. He knows I was thinking about him. He knows I—”
“He knows you want to be friends again,” Jackson interrupts firmly. “That’s all. And clearly, he wants the same thing, or he wouldn’t have accepted that fast.”
I stare at the screen, at Oliver’s profile now displaying the option to “Message” instead of “Add Friend.” We’re connected now. After two years of avoidance, of countless hasty escapes, we’re officially Facebook friends.
Jackson claps his hands together. “Step one: complete. Step two: the next time Oliver posts something, you like it.”
“Like it?”
“Yeah. Just a little thumbs-up. A tiny digital acknowledgment that you’re paying attention.”
“That sounds…manageable.”
“Because it is. You’re easing back into this friendship thing. No pressure, no expectations, just little breadcrumbs of connection until you’re ready for more.”
I nod slowly, still processing the fact that Oliver Jacoby accepted my friend request in under a minute.
What does that mean? Was he waiting for it? Or was it a coincidence that he happened to be scrolling through Facebook at that exact moment?