"About what?"
"Live podcast taping. Friday night. She wants me and some TikTok golden boy to talk about being queer in hockey." I tried to keep my voice light and casual.
Evan looked up from his mug with an eyebrow raised. "Nik Vanko?"
"You know him?"
"Everybody knows him. Kid's got like two million followers." Evan paused. "That could be good. Juno's got real reach. The community respects her. You'd be framing your own story for once."
I sipped again, buying time. "Yeah, maybe."
"I'm serious, Jake. This could change things for you. Show people you're more than the memes."
My gut clenched. "Right. More than the memes."
"That's not—" Evan caught himself and set his mug down. "I just meant you deserve to have people see who you actually are."
"And who is that?" I didn't mean to ask the question harshly.
Evan blinked. "Someone who cares about the game. Someone who shows up for his teammates. Someone who's been through hell and still has the guts to keep trying."
He was attempting a compliment. It was a compliment, but all I heard was how he'd been thinking about my image problem for a while. I heard that I was damaged goods.
"Sounds like you've got my whole redemption arc planned out."
"That's not what I'm doing."
"Isn't it?" I set my mug down harder than necessary, and the ceramic clanked against the counter. "You want to fix my image. Like rehabilitation with better lighting."
"That's not what I—"
"No, that is what you meant." I detected a panicky edge in my voice. "Poor Jake needs to clean up his act. Poor Jake needs better PR. Poor Jake needs someone to hold his hand while he figures out how to represent queer hockey properly."
Evan's jaw tightened. "No, I only meant if you want people to see the real you, this might be a start."
"Maybe I'm not interested in being your project."
It was a verbal slap. Evan flinched, and something cold settled in my stomach. I couldn't stop the self-destructive spiral that always kicked in when things were too good and too much like something I wanted to earn.
"You think you're helping," My voice increased in volume with each word, "but it's more like appointing yourself my manager. More labels on the fridge. More ways to organize me into something that makes sense in your perfectly controlled world."
Evan turned away from me, moving to the sink. He rinsed his mug under the tap, scrubbing at it, and when he spoke, his words were quiet and clipped.
"I believed in you before anyone else around here did."
His statement plowed into me like a freight train. It was true—damn, it was so fucking true. Evan had seen something in me when everyone else only saw the memes and the viral disasters. He'd given me that unmarked game puck and stood up for me in a dozen small ways.
And here I was, throwing it back in his face because I was too scared to accept that someone might actually care.
The corners of my eyes burned. "Yeah, and maybe that was a mistake."
Evan was quiet. The only sound was the refrigerator's steady hum.
"Maybe it was."
He set the clean mug in the drying rack and walked past me toward the hallway. He didn't slam the door to his room when he left. Evan never slammed doors. Somehow, the soft click of the latch was worse than any amount of shouting could have been.
I stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the evidence of his care for me—a labeled cookie container in the fridge and the tea he'd had waiting. He always tried to show me I mattered, and I'd just told him it was a mistake to believe in me.