Page 37 of Cross Ice

“Yes.”

“And he’s still there.”

“He left at… I don’t know, ten? I fell asleep. I woke at two with a blanket tucked around me.”

“Evan.” Danny’s voice softened. “He stayed for dinner. He stayed until you fell asleep. He covered you up and let himself out so he wouldn’t wake you. And now you’re sitting on your couch at three in the morning reading Instagram comments from strangers instead of sleeping.” A beat. “Does that sound like the right use of your time?”

“No,” I admitted.

“The comments aren’t about you. They’re about a public figure those people have never met. You know the actual person. You have information they don’t have.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because it sounds like you’re letting strangers on the internet tell you what your relationship is.”

I closed my eyes. He wasn’t wrong. He was infuriatingly, completely right.

“I’m scared,” I said. It came out simpler than I’d intended.

“I know.” No judgment in it. “You’re scared because you’ve been here before and it went badly. That’s not the same as this going badly. Those are two different things.”

I thought about Nico’s hand resting palm up on the couch cushion. Not reaching for me but just leaving it there, giving me the choice. I thought about one life to live, one life to love, and what it had cost him to finally mean it. I thought about him covering me with a blanket and letting himself out without a word.

“You’re right,” I said.

“Then go to sleep,” Danny said. “And tomorrow, when you’ve had some rest and some coffee, it’s going to look different.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you. Go to sleep, Evan.”

I did… eventually. I lay on the couch under the blanket Nico had pulled over me and stared at the ceiling until somewhere around four, when my body finally gave up and let me go under.

I woke up at seven to gray morning light and the exhaustion of three hours’ sleep after an emotionally significant night. I made coffee, took it to my desk, and opened my laptop to the work I needed to finish—a brand audit for a client whose deadline was not going to care about my personal life.

I lasted forty minutes before I picked up my phone.

He’d have practice this morning. I figured that much. I didn’t know what time it started or when he’d be done, didn’t know what his mornings looked like before practice. There was so much I didn’t know about the practical shape of his life, and that was part of what the night had clarified: the vagueness was over, but it had left behind a lot of empty space where real information needed to go.

I typed a text and looked at it for a moment before sending it.

Evan

I hope practice goes well. I looked you up in the middle of the night. I don’t understand most of what I was looking at, but you seem very good at it.

I put the phone face down on my desk and went back to the brand audit.

Three minutes later, it buzzed.

Nico

Just got to the rink. You were up late.

Nico

How are you doing?

I looked at those three words for a moment. Not “What did you think?” or “Are we okay?” just “How are you doing?” Asking about me first, the same way he always did.