Page 119 of Cross Ice

I heard it as I said it. That wasn’t honest.

“But you didn’t have to be alone this year.” He pulled back slightly to look at me. “You could have brought me. Except you couldn’t. Because I can’t handle a public event right now without falling apart.”

I didn’t say anything. Because he was right. I understood why he couldn’t go, but that didn’t make it feel any less like we were already losing things I’d only just gotten.

“It’s one event,” I said. It came out the way fine came out. Technically true, emotionally nowhere near the whole story.

“It’s not just one event. It’s everything. I can’t go to your games. I can’t go to team dinners. A woman recognized me at the grocery store and I ran to my car.” He looked at me. “How am I supposed to stand next to you in public? What kind of relationship is that?”

“The kind we’re figuring out.”

“Are we? Because it feels like we’re just surviving. Barely.”

I held him tighter, but I didn’t say we’ll figure it out. I’d said that too many times already, and we both knew it wasn’t landing as a promise anymore. It was landing as a way of ending the conversation.

We sat there for a moment in the quiet.

“Have you thought any more about Wesley?” I asked. Not pushing, just asking.

“Yeah.” He nodded against my chest. “I looked him up. Read some interviews he did after Griffin came out. About what the first few months were like for him.” A pause. “He’s not Ryan’s team.”

“No.”

“I know that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not ready yet. But I’m getting closer.”

I nodded and let it sit. Didn’t tell him it was a good idea, didn’t ask when. Just let it be what it was… Evan moving toward something in his own time, which was the only way he ever moved toward anything.

So instead, I just held him, and he let me. We stayed like that while neither one of us said the thing we were both thinking—that we were losing ground faster than we were gaining it and neither of us knew what to do about that.

We moved to his bedroom eventually. We tried. Kissed, touched, went through the familiar motions. But we couldn’t get there. Not really. We made each other come, but it felt empty. When it was over, we lay in the dark, and neither of us spoke.

There wasn’t anything to say that we hadn’t already been not-saying for almost two weeks.

I don’t know when I fell asleep. When my alarm went off at seven, Evan was still beside me, breathing slow and even. I lay there for a moment, just looking at him before I got up. I kissed him goodbye while he was still asleep and quietly let myself out.

Driving to the rink, I kept coming back to the same thing—not what we’d said or hadn’t said, but what had been missing when we’d reached for each other. The feeling of being in the same bed as someone you were losing and not knowing how to stop it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Evan

Thursday night I’d watched San Jose play St. Louis from my couch. Nico had played angry and undisciplined—I could see it even without fully understanding the game—and nearly been ejected for a hit that the broadcast kept replaying. They’d lost 3–1. He’d texted after.

Nico

Tough night.

Evan

I saw. You okay?

Nico

Getting there. Talk tomorrow.

I’d put my phone down and sat in my quiet apartment, thinking about how we were both having a hard time and neither of us knew how to reach the other through it anymore.

Friday morning, I got another email.