Page 58 of Fractured Ice

"You know her?"

"I know of her. SAB, right? She organized the homecoming thing in the fall for the Student Activities Board." He leans forward. "She's funny."

"She's a lot."

"I meant that as a compliment." He's smiling. "What does she drag you to?"

"Anything with a clipboard and a signup sheet. Right now it's the Spring Festival."

"I heard about that." He tilts his head. "Are you running a booth?"

"Apparently."

"I might come check it out."

"She'd appreciate more warm bodies."

He laughs, and it's a good laugh, easy and genuine. I'm sitting across from a man who is saying everything right and I'm having a perfectly good time. There's nothing wrong with any of it, and I can't locate a single thing that's specifically missing, just a general sense of the absence of something I couldn't name if I tried.

The door opens.

I glance up the way you do in restaurants when the door opens, just reflex, and my entire body temperature changes in about half a second.

Ethan walks in with Knox and Noah. All three of them are fresh from a game, hair still damp, jackets on, already scanning the room. Knox is saying something. Noah's nodding. Ethan is looking around the restaurant with the focused efficiency of someone searching for a specific thing.

His eyes land on me.

The scan stops. He goes completely still for just a second, and then something releases in his shoulders, and he exhales. The expression that replaces the searching one is something I don't have the right word for, just something that looked very much like relief he spotted me.

It goes straight through my chest and I don't know what to do with it so I look back at my food.

"Everything okay?" Dylan asks.

"Fine." I pick up my fork. "Sorry."

They take a table. Not the far side of the restaurant, not somewhere tucked away. Three tables over, in my direct sightline, which is either a coincidence or it isn't.

After that, Ethan barely looks away.

I know because I'm aware of it constantly, this low-grade awareness of being watched, the way you feel someone's attention before you verify it. Every time I glance over, there he is, not even attempting to disguise it, and Knox is the one doing most of the talking at their table while Ethan sits there with his drink and his eyes in my direction. Noah keeps glancing between them like he's watching something he wasn't expecting to have a front row seat for.

Dylan notices about ten minutes later.

The shift is subtle enough that I might not have caught it if I hadn't been paying attention to everything. His posture changes. He settles back into the booth a little differently, and then his arm comes up along the back of the seat behind me, not touching, just there, and he leans in slightly when he makes his next point.

"You know what I think the difference is between football and hockey?" he says, and his voice has taken on a particular register, still easy, still warm, but with something additional underneath it. "Football's the game everyone watches. Highest viewership in the country by a margin. Every Sunday. Every stadium packed."

"Hockey's got a strong following," I say.

"Regional," he says. "It's regional. You can't sell out an NFL stadium in Alabama the way you can sell out one in⁠—"

"You're doing that thing where you make a point that sounds like a fact but is mostly just confidence."

He grins. "Is it working?"

"A little."

His hand lands on my arm when he laughs, easy and warm, and then it stays there a moment longer than necessary before he picks up his glass. I'm watching his face and also very aware of Ethan thirty feet away. The two awarenesses are doing something annoying in the same space, so I set down my fork and remind myself I'm on a date, and the person I'm on a date with is the one sitting across from me.