Unsteady

Seeing him this way hurts.

I’ve experienced a panic attack before, but the worst weren’t mine—they were Oliver’s. To the point I could barely help him function before medication. Now, the attacks are fewer and far between, but the sight of Rhys curled in on himself, huffing for breaths like he can’t quite catch them, brings back memories of laying a frozen bag of peas on my brother’s chest so he could settle his nervous system.

Only, I don’t have frozen peas right now.

“Is this helping?” I ask, as Jose Gonzalez’s gentle strums echo in our ears.

He nods, his eyes flickering in a little pattern across me—eyes, mouth, the grasp of my hand in his.

Eyes. Mouth. Hands.

“You’re helping,” he blurts, cheeks red whether from embarrassment or exertion.

I nod. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

We sit back, like every movement is just as in sync, connected by the headphone cord between us.

Music plays, until he slows his breath and I slow my heart. I lose track of how long we’ve been here.

“Music helps me.” And Oliver, though I don’t add that even as I see him for a moment in my head, slamming headphones over his ears as his principal and I verbally spar over his “unbecoming” behavior at school and “lack of parenting” outside of it.

There’s a tickle to my skin, and I look down, seeing Rhys’ hand absentmindedly playing with my fingers in a too-familiar way.

I stand, stepping back.

“Did you skate?” I ask, suddenly desperate to fill the charged silence.

He smiles in that sleepy way, as he continues to climb down from the high. “Didn’t even make it on the ice.”

“Do you want to skate with me?”

This time it’s a cocky grin. “That’s a line. Now I know you’re flirting with me.”

“Am not.”

“Whatever you say, Sadie,” he snorts out.

“I’m offering to…” What am I offering? His smiles and taunts are making me lightheaded. “To split the ice.”

“Okay.” He nods, standing over me in his now-laced skates, turning from a ball of anxiety into a tower of a man. “And your music.”

“What?”

“I want your music.” He shrugs. “It feels good. Helps me focus, I guess.”

Something about his words makes me want to hug him, a light burn behind my eyes.

“Okay,” I agree.

Seeing Rhys heading towards me, I realize maybe I wasn’t as sly as I thought in attempting to sneak off the ice while his back was turned.

For a moment, I contemplate slamming the metal door down on the window so I can scream, “We’re closed!” when he approaches.

Unfortunately, that would mean crushing the fingers of the unsuspecting mother who looks close to falling asleep atop my counter space as I slide her coffee to her.

“Thanks,” she offers, taking the second cup of hot chocolate and sheep-dogs two hyperactive hockey kids away.

“Didn’t know you worked here too.” He smiles, pushing a hand through his hair that’s a little wet like he might’ve dunked his head under the sink after finishing his morning skate. A few tendrils keep brushing into his face, too short for him to shove around the curve of his ears.

I clench my hands, because some stupid part of my brain wants to push those hairs back myself.

“That’s how I have a key.” I shrug. It’s not how I have a key, at all—I don’t think working at the concession stand usually reserved for high schoolers warrants an entrance key to the ice plex.

I only have it because that’s part of my compromise for every summer with Coach Kelley. He won’t hover and drag me across the country when I have my brothers out of school, if I continue to practice at the local rink and send him updated footage of my routines weekly.

“Can I get a coffee?”

I smile, but heat crawls my spine. “All out.”

“Out of coffee at seven-thirty in the morning?”

“Unfortunately,” I say, stirring creamer into the cup in front of me.

“Not even a little bit left for your favorite customer?”

He smiles and it makes me pause, two matching dimple imprints to his otherwise chiseled cheeks, a little bit of light bleeding into his usually saddened brown eyes. I want to stand in that smile like a flower preening in the sun.

“Rhys, you’re not even in my top ten. Besides, I highly doubt your prep-schooled ass has ever purchased anything from a public ice complex concession stand.”

His hand thumps on his chest, like what I’ve said was deeply hurtful. “Consider me a card-holding member of the concession stand loyalty club now.”

“Well, in that case.” I grab a Styrofoam cup before sliding it towards him.

“What do I owe you?” His eyes glimmer at me.

“A break from your continuous presence at my place of work.”

“That’s a high price.”

“I’m expensive.”

He takes a sip of the coffee black and curses.

“Maxwell House,” I say, taking another gulp of my own.

Rhys shakes his head. “That’s shitty coffee.”

“Very,” I agree.

“I think I was just hustled.”

I can’t help but smile. “Hustle my favorite customer? I would never.”

His laugh bursts, beautiful and tinged with the boyish vulnerability of a kid talking to his school crush. It makes me want to bat my eyelashes and preen—which only makes me sick when I realize his presence is turning me to mush.

“Favorite, huh?”

I shrug, “You tip the best.”

He laughs again and takes out a high bill and slides it my way, before leaning towards me on his elbows. “I guess I do.”

It would be so easy to kiss him. The boy is a hazard to my personal boundaries and health.

“Like I said, I’m expensive.”

His mouth opens for a second, before snapping shut as he shoots upright and shoving away.

“Sorry—I’ll uh, see you.”

He’s gone so fast it gives me whiplash.

I look around for a moment, cheeks heating at how close I’d leaned into him. My eyes flicker over a tall, handsome middle-aged man and a group of players decked in Waterfell hockey t-shirts and hats, and my face flushes with the clear implication.

Good enough for a quick morning flirt, but embarrassing in the face of his friends.

Forget him.

“Rhys Waterfell hockey” sits in the search bar of my browser, indicator blinking, waiting for me to make a decision when Rora pops up beside me.

“What’s that?”

“Jesus Christ, Rora,” I seethe, hand on my chest to stop my now-racing heart. “We need to get you a bell.”

She giggles, pulling a cherry lollipop—my favorite—from her waist apron and handing it to me. “I wouldn’t need one if you weren’t so distracted by”—she starts, drawing out the y and leaning across me with her long-limbed form and slamming the enter button on the search bar— “Rhys Maximillian Koteskiy. Sheesh, that’s a mouthful.”

I can only nod, my tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of my mouth at the image of him displayed across my screen.

Rhys Maximillian Koteskiy: 6’3” 210 lbs. C. Shoots Right.

“You have that look on your face like you’re thinking about how much you wanna eat him.”

“I’m only thinking about how obnoxious it is to spell ‘Reece’ like that. God, could he be more cliché?” My finger taps at the screen beneath his stats, at the prep school background I’d been joking about. “Berkshire School? That’s a private hockey academy, Rora. And look, his dad is an NHL hall-of-fame player. He’s been raised like a perfect little prodigy.”

The words feel heavy, but I spit them anyway, ignoring the image of him panting and terror-struck, laying on the ice. The image of him flushed, panicked that he couldn’t breathe sits in such deep contrast to the headshot across my screen.

He looks younger, decked in a navy hockey sweater, the Waterfell University wolf howling across his chest, looking larger than life with a smile meant to be in front of the world. Dimples. Shorter, well-kept hair and clear eyes.

“Sadie?”

I shake my head, exiting the screen as fast as I can, before looking back up at Aurora.

The girl is gorgeous, and it isn’t just her lean, athletic figure and mess of ringlet curls that somehow always seem perfectly styled into a thousand new, different ways; it’s something deeper, like sun is shining from within her bright, tawny skin, stretching out and over everything she sees.

“Yeah?”

“Gonna tell me why you’re looking him up?”

“Because I didn’t know who he was, and he’s been… bothering me lately.”

“We’ll get to the second part, but let’s start here: How in the world do you go to Waterfell and not recognize that guy! Even I know who he is, and I’ve never been to a game.”

I try to roll my eyes, because while that’s true, Rora is more aware than me. The little wallflower knows so much because she listens, she watches everything.

“You’re in that arena all the time, where I’m sure life-size cutouts of him are lining the tunnels and hallways, if the massive posters of his face on campus are anything to go by.”

God, had I been that bad last semester?

Yes. I can hear Coach Kelley’s voice invading my thoughts, telling me exactly how absent I’d been, how much of a letdown both my programs had been at the finals.

“I hadn’t noticed, I guess,” I reply, only half-heartedly, because I won’t talk about it. I’ll be better this year, for my team, for Oliver and Liam—but I won’t talk about last year anymore.

Rora has that look on her face now, the arched perfect eyebrows over her sparkling green eyes, pursed lips. She wears her every emotion on her face, and this is her concern.

“Alright, well, you said he’s been bothering you,” she reminds me, letting whatever she was going to say die before reaching for the multicolored mugs soaking in the sink. I take the waffled wash cloth from her outstretched hand and help her dry. “Gonna tell me about that?”

“I’ve just run into him a few times lately, in my early practices. He has a tendency to beat me to my pre-skate.” I shrug again, feeling ridiculous as I turn towards her.

Rora’s squeal is immediate and I have the urge to cover her mouth, despite the closed, empty cafe around us. Whatever sharp look I give her seems to be enough as she settles.

“That’s adorable,” she offers, nodding excessively as she starts again on some home-made sunflower shaped mug that’s started to lose its color. “I mean, hockey boy and figure—”

“Nope,” I snap, cutting her off and reaching in to drain the water in the big sink. “Stop it, you cannot go around romanticizing everything—how many times do we have to have this talk?”

She looks at me like I’ve kicked a puppy, but Rora is a hopeless romantic, and she’s been my friend for three years now—my only friend, really. But it doesn’t matter how many guys she watches me take into a bathroom or sneak out of our dorm in the morning, she’s convinced that my love story is out there.

“Understood?” I ask while washing my hands. She nods almost aggressively, moving to the side to take off her apron and allowing me room.

Rora waits only a minute for me to put my apron in the little cubby next to hers and grab my backpack before the dam bursts from her pressed-closed lips.

“So… Can we go to a hockey game?”

This time, I can’t help the smile and slight roll of my eyes. But, the flutter of laughter that etches out of me and the feel of her arm looping over my shoulder as we exit together, giggling over some inside joke, it makes me feel normal and good. Like a regular twenty-one-year-old college student, if only for a moment.