Chapter 9
Jamie
Two more weeks pass where I see Rhys alone for our morning sessions, whenever we can fit them into his schedule.
Four minutes past six. Late again.
I hear him before I see him — footsteps in the tunnel, stomping down the hallway, the precise rhythm of him. Whatever he’s carrying knocking loudly against the wall once before he mutters something under his breath, and something in my body registers him before my brain does.
I keep running the drill. Eyes forward. Puck on my blade.
"It's so cold in here." His voice carries in the empty rink, bouncing off the boards. Talking to nobody, the way he always does, like every thought in his head automatically becomes public information. “Every single time. You’d think I’d remember.”
“It’s a rink,” I call back without looking at him. “It’s literally made of ice.”
“Thank you, Nash. Truly.” I can hear the grin in his voice already. “The clarity you bring to my mornings is unmatched.”
He steps onto the ice and I watch him in my peripheral vision do the thing he always does — one full lap, loose, getting his legs under him, the warm up that looks like nothing and is actually deliberate.
I've noticed that about him lately. Most of what looks casual is actually very intentional and calculated.
I finish the drill and loop back toward center ice.
“Your outside edge looks cleaner,” he says as he skates around me.
“It’s better.”
His mouth twitches. “Humble.”
“Accurate.”
He grins at the ice.
We fall into the morning sequence — the back and forth of it, him taking a puck and working through something while I watch, me running a sequence while he watches, both of us calling small things and adjusting.
It's gotten easy in a way I don't have an explanation for. In a way I didn’t expect. That’s still strange to me.
How the friction just left. Like we both decided to give it a try and now there’s nothing left in the space that all that anger used to live in.
"So," he says, after almost an hour of work.
I glance over. "So."
"I have a question."
"You always have a question."
"I'm a curious person." He collects a loose puck with the toe of his blade, rolling it back and forth against the ice.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
"What do you actually do? When you're not here."
I look at him sideways. He's skating backward, watching me, the cold air moving around him. Completely at ease going in reverse.
"I'm always here."
"Obviously. But like. When you're not." He passes me the puck. "Do you have hobbies? A friend? A sad TV show you watch alone in your room?"
"I watch film."
"That's not a hobby, that's homework."
"I like it." I shrugged.
"Okay then, what else?"
I catch the pass and redirect it without thinking about it and narrow my eyes at him. "Why?"
"Because I've known you for months and I know your stats and that you have no life, but I don't know one single thing about you as a person.” He holds my stare from across the distance between us. “I don’t know if anyone does."
I look at the ice and decide to reveal a tiny bit of myself.
"Soccer," I say, honestly.
He blinks. Stops skating like someone slammed on the brakes. "What?"
“I play sometimes when I have time.” I shrug one shoulder. “I’m bad at it.”
He stares at me in disbelief. "You're bad at a sport."
"One single sport."
"Jamie Nash is bad at something." He looks like I've handed him a gift. The grin is spreading, slow, starting at the corner of his mouth. "This is the best thing that's happened to me all week."
"I’m captain of the hockey team. I’m literally above you. One bad sport is not embarrassing." I reply, monotone.
"Still." He's grinning now — the real one, the crooked one that makes his eyes twinkle. "How bad?"
"I understand it, but that’s about it."
"Why do you play then?"
"Because I'm bad at it," I say. My voice lowers along with my eyes. "It's the only thing I can do where being bad is fine."
He goes quiet and I hear the words again the way you only do after they’re already out in the air and there’s no pulling them back now. Too honest. Too much. More of myself than I meant to hand him.
"That's—" He stops. Starts again. "That's actually kind of sad." He hooks the side of his mouth down and looks away, like he doesn’t know how to respond to me, as if he’s being careful.
"It's not sad."
"It's a little sad."
"Callahan—"
"I'm not judging, I'm just saying." He falls back into stride beside me. "You do one thing where you're allowed to be bad at it and it's a sport you play alone, probably?"
"I didn't say alone."
"Do you play with other people?"
Pause.
"Sometimes Kowalski comes.”
"Is Kowalski also bad?"
"Kowalski is somehow worse."
Rhys actually laughs at that. Proper laugh, head back slightly, and something unknots in my chest at the sound of it. And where I had felt tight a second ago, the tension immediately dissipates. Like hearing him laugh is enough to fix it.
"Okay," he says, when he comes back down. "Okay, your turn."
"My turn what?"
"Ask me something."
I look at him sternly. "I don't—"
He cuts me off. "Nash. Ask me something. One thing. I told you stuff about me all morning."
"That was all against my will, I tried to get you to stop," I mutter.
"Ok, fine, something personal, then. My high school coach used to call me a fuck up and he would text me after every game I won at Eldridge, which I found deeply satisfying. Like he’s trying to stay good with me in case I go pro or something.
” He holds his arms out, spreading them wide, the gesture expansive and ridiculous. "Like I said, open book. Go."
"Fine," I say.
He waits.
"How did you end up here at Harlow?”
The tendon in his throat jumps. Gone fast.
Nobody knows why he transferred. That’s the thing about Rhys nobody says out loud even though everyone thinks it.
You don't just leave Eldridge. You don't walk away from the best collegiate hockey program in the state right before the start of your senior year — when you were probably next in line for captain — unless something went very wrong.
We give him space because that's what you do. But we all wonder. I can’t help but be curious about it, too. What could he have possibly run away from? What could be that bad? I just can’t imagine giving up an opportunity like that.
"Program fit," he says. Easy. Practiced. Like I expected. Like he’s said a hundred times. He looks at the ice instead of me this time.
"Okay," I say, casually, and skate past him.
He glances over like he was expecting me to push and I didn't and he doesn't know what to do with that. We skate a full lap in silence. The ice beneath us. The hum of the lights above. The cold air flowing between our bodies as we go.
"It's got a really good chemistry program," he says eventually. His voice barely a whisper. "After Eldridge I needed — somewhere better. For both things."
I nod. Again, I don't push.
He looks at me sideways like he's trying to figure out why I'm still not trying to get more out of him. "You're really not going to ask," he says.
"Nope."
"Why?"
"Because you said what you wanted to say."
He's quiet for a long moment. "Huh," he muses.
"What?"
"Nothing." He shakes his head slightly. "Nothing, you're just — never mind."
He passes me a puck and I take it. We run a sequence. Then another. The timing between us clicking into place the way it has been lately, easy and almost involuntary, like our bodies have figured out how to play together even while the rest of us is still working on it.
"Ask me something else," he repeats.
"I just asked you something." I shoot him an exasperated look.
"So ask another one. I’m serious." He holds his arms out. "We’re supposed to be bonding, right? Ask me anything."
I think about the thing I've been looking at since September.
“Why do you have puck face on your knuckles? Is it a joke, like fuck face?” He looks at me like I've said something unexpected and chuckles.
"My uncle used to say it," he says. His voice shifts.
Settles into something more honest, more genuine.
"When I was little. Every time I stepped on the ice.
Like — put your puck face on. Means get serious.
Get in it." He drops his hand. "He died when I was fifteen. And he’s the one who got me into all of this, so. "
I look at him, but he’s still looking at the ice. Jaw set in that way he has that means something is real and he's deciding how real to let it be. I can see it happening. The instinct to pull back. To close the door before I accidentally see too much.
So again, I don't push.
"Good man?" I ask instead.
He looks up so fast I know I got it right.
"Yeah," he says, relieved. "Really good man."
We skate another lap in silence. Shoulder to shoulder. Closer than before. The cold between us doing nothing to remove the pull of the warmth of Rhys’ body so close to mine.
"My mom used to say something too," I say, eventually.
He looks at me immediately.
"Before games." I pause. "Every time." The words come out before I've decided to say them, words I’ve never told anyone else before. "Just — you're ready. Not good luck. Not be careful. Just that.”
"Were you, ready?"
"Mostly." The corner of my mouth moves. "Mostly I was."
Rhys is still. When I glance over he's looking at me with an expression I've started recognizing. The one that appears when his guard is dropped, where he softens around the edges, eyes fixed on me like he’s trying to hold onto the small pieces of me I hand over.
I recognize it because I keep my walls up every second of every day.
So I know what it looks like when someone lets theirs down, even an inch.
"That's a good thing to say to a kid," he says.
"Yeah. It was. It helped."
We finish practice. Drills, sequences, the last twenty minutes running a play we've been building toward that finally clicks into something clean and sharp and both of us know it landed right.
We step off the ice and I reach for my water bottle at the same time he reaches for his, eyes locked.
The cold boards at our backs, both of us breathing, the heat of the hour still on our skin.
"Nash," he says, pulling me out of whatever that was.
He's right there.
Close the way we've been getting close lately without deciding to — close enough that I can see the cold flushing his cheeks pink, the rink lights catching in his dark eyes, the faint sheen of sweat along his neck. Then I notice the curve of his mouth that means he’s about to say something specifically designed to piss me off.
"You're ready," he says in this low, mock-serious voice that immediately makes me regret telling him that story.
"Don't," I warn, trying my best to stifle my laugh.
"I'm being sincere."
"You're absolutely not, dick."
"I am. I'm a very sincere person." He's fighting the grin too. He puts his hand on my shoulder — warm, solid, the weight of it landing through my jacket — and looks at me with those dark glittering eyes, still completely straight-faced.
"You're ready, Jamie."
"Callahan, I swear to god—"
He loses the fight. The grin breaks through completely, wide and real and directed entirely at me, and before I can stop it — before I have time to catch it or redirect it or put it somewhere safe — I smile back. Real. Brief.
Fucking asshole.
Gone in about two seconds when I realize what's happened.
But he saw it.
"There it is again," he says, softly.
"Fuck you.” But I'm looking at my water bottle when I say it and I'm not quite fast enough to be sure my voice comes out as flat as I wanted. I grab my bag.
“Same time Tuesday,” he calls behind me.
“You’ll be late,” I say, glancing back over my shoulder.
"Four minutes. Five max."
"That's still late."
"It's barely late. It's on time for me. Learn to accept it, Captain,” he says with a salute.
I walk toward the tunnel. And I don't let myself smile again until I'm through the door and he can't see it.