Page 10 of Payback On The Ice

N: lol

N: how bad

Me: scale of 1-10?

Me: 6

Me: they have a table for me at team dinner

Me: it's a card table

Me: it says SIN BIN on it

N: NO

N: oh my god the lantern?? by the kitchen door??

Me: you KNOW about it

N: it's for guys who miss curfew!!! it's for 1 dinner!!!

N: gunnar sat there freshman year for puking in the bus

Me: well I'm a lifer now

Me: marcy likes me though

Me: she gave me 2 bread baskets

N: marcy is a legend

N: marcy is the only reason I survived freshman year

A video comes through. It's thirty seconds long and badly lit. Nico's in what looks like a kitchen, in sweatpants and a Duluth Physio T-shirt, standing on a foam pad on one leg with his arms out like a kid on a balance beam. He's wobbling. He's grinning. Off to the side, somebody is counting out loud.

"—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen⁠—"

"Don't count at me, Priya, it's distracting⁠—"

"—you said to count! Seventeen⁠—"

At twenty-two seconds he puts his foot down, and somebody off-camera cheers, and the phone jerks around and for a second it's just a girl's face too close to the lens, dark hair up in a clip, laughing.

"Hi, Theo! He was so mad you weren't answering!"

"Priya, give it⁠—"

The video ends.

I watch it three times. Then I type.

Me: 22 seconds?? you were at 15 last week

Me: look at you

N: physio says I might be able to skate in jan

N: like public skate. like a 9 year old at a birthday party