I risked a glance in his direction. He didn't look away immediately. For a second, we stared at each other across that three-foot gap.
And then, with maddening precision, he reached into his duffel and pulled out another container. Same shape. Same label. Friday.
He set it next to Thursday like it was a chess move. Then he looked away.
The message was clear.
He was watching.
And he expected me to be more than a meme.
Chapter two
Evan
The equipment room was still mine, for now.
Technically, it belonged to the trainers, but they'd long since learned to leave me alone when I had my laptop out and the label maker clutched in my hand like a holy relic. I was mid-spreadsheet—housing assignments, locker shifts, fridge rotation—when the radiator groaned behind me.
I didn't flinch.
This was my sanctuary. Four walls, a locked door, and the soft click of tabs populating everything with color-coded sanity. Yellow for rookies. Blue for veterans. Red for anyone who might explode before Christmas. Jake Riley's name was still gray—pending evaluation.
The label maker clicked once, then fed out a strip of black text on clear tape:Practice Jerseys - Clean - Thursday.
With my thumb, I peeled it from the backing and smoothed it onto a bin, pressing down each edge until the corners sealed flat. The equipment room smelled like sharpened skate blades and industrial disinfectant, with an undertone of something warmer—the leather conditioner I'd applied to my gloves that morning.
My laptop balanced on a stack of helmet boxes, cursor blinking in cell B47 of the spreadsheet I'd titled "Roommate Logistics - October." Utilities split down the middle. Shower schedule staggered by fifteen-minute intervals. Fridge territory mapped into quadrants with color-coded labels.
Pickle's voice drifted through the doorway, bright with rookie enthusiasm.
"No, bro, like iconic. The way he dropped that bow? I need that energy in my life."
The unmistakable cackle that followed had to be Hog. Either that or someone had smuggled a goat into the locker room. Not impossible.
"Kid's got a point. Takes 'nads to own your mess like that."
Jake's name surfaced in the conversation like a hockey puck everyone wanted to touch. Again. It had been three hours since practice ended, and somehow, he was still the main topic in every corner of the building.
I saved the spreadsheet and closed the laptop.
Jake Riley was already everywhere, and that was alarming. Not because of the reality TV nonsense or the viral rap—those were noise. It was because when he'd looked at me across that three-foot gap between our stalls, something in his expression had been too familiar—comforting even.
I knew that look. I'd perfected it.
The equipment room fell quiet except for the hum of fluorescent lights and the distant sound of Zamboni blades scraping ice clean. I picked up the label maker and pressed the button again.
Helmet Shields - Replacement - Friday.
The routine should have been calming. Organization was order. Order was control. Control meant I didn't get moved to another placement in the middle of the night with thirty minutes to pack everything I owned into two garbage bags.
Instead, my hands were unsteady, and the label came out crooked. I cursed under my breath and smoothed it with the side of my thumb. The tape caught on itself—cheap roll from the team supply drawer, not the good one I kept at home.
I walked to the storage cabinet and pulled out a fresh drawer of practice socks, still warm from the industrial dryer. The cotton was soft between my fingers, and I sorted them by size—small, medium, large—into neat stacks on the equipment bench.
The label maker felt familiar in my palm as I pressed the keys:Practice Socks - Washed - Thursday.
The backing peeled away with a soft ripping sound, and something about that noise—the adhesive separating from paper—pulled me almost a decade into the past.
