Page 35 of Puck You Both

Outside, cold air hits my face, and I make it to my car without running.

Barely.

The drive home takes forty-three minutes. I remember roughly six of them. The other thirty-seven belong to Patrick's voice, playing on a loop that no red light interrupts.

You can come now.

By the highway, my grip is hurting the wheel.

He planned it. All of it. The soda, the ear, the office, the door. And Theo held my eyes and got louder. There is no version of tonight where I stumbled into anything.

There's an invitation.

And there's me, climbing eleven stairs to accept it and then sprinting out on the bill.

My garage swallows the car. Engine off. One fluorescent tube buzzing by the elevator, concrete and silence everywhere else. I stay in the driver's seat, because the apartment upstairs contains a bed and I don't trust myself around it right now.

What am I doing?

The answer arrives in form of a phantom voice in my head. I want to watch them again.

I shove it away. In a dark, silent car it has nowhere to go, so it circles back and sits there, patient, like it knows something I'm still pretending not to.

My phone buzzes in the cup holder.

I stare at it until the screen starts to dim. Then I pick it up.

P.G.: You left before the numbers.

I stare at it for a long moment.

I'm still composing my seventh unsendable reply when the phone buzzes again.

Unknown: he's never going to admit he wanted you to stay so i will: come to milwaukee :smiling_face_with_horns_emoji:

I read it once. Then again.

The emoji makes direct eye contact with me.

Theo.

Patrick gave him my number—or, more likely, Theo stole it—and either way, the math changed while I wasn't looking: I now have both of theirs.

More to the point, they both have mine.

Chapter 7

WALL

THERE ARE TWO Milwaukee numbers in my phone, one sentence playing in my skull on a loop, and only one treatment that works for either: puck, arriving at full speed.

Practice, hour two. Nothing has beaten me all morning.

Kane winds up and rips one through a forest of legs, and somewhere between his release and my glove, my brain tries to start a thought that begins with you can come n— and the puck mercifully interrupts. Save number forty-something. I've stopped counting, because counting is a thought, and thoughts are how the trouble gets in.

Becker skates a slow, wounded circle in front of my crease. "That one was going in."

"It wasn't."