Page 51 of Unsteady

Coach’s office is lit up, the only room with lights still on, the door half open. I pay no mind to it at first, but the conversation is loud enough it makes me pause against the wall before crossing.

“You swore that it wasn’t on the schedule,” a deep voice growls. “You said it was a home game.”

“It was,” Coach sighs. “Look, if you really aren’t going to play—”

“What’s the consequence of not playing?”

My brows dip. A player then, but I don’t recognize the voice. It isn’t that surprising though, considering how absent I’ve been.

A slam like a hand to the desk, and then, “I won’t be in that damn arena with even the possibility that she—”

“Okay, Tor. Okay.”

I don’t recognize the name, an inkling of familiarity that I can’t really follow, but he sounds insane. And I trust Coach enough not to have someone like that messing with our team mojo.

I leave, quiet and quick, back to my car before driving to my new favorite coffee shop, hoping for even the slightest chance at spotting her.

* * *

It’s Rora I find inside the cozy, well-named Brew Haven, standing at the counter chatting with a well-dressed guy.

I stand behind him for only a moment before Rora catches my eye and the strange reserved expression for the enthusiastic girl I only recently met melts from her face. Maybe she is more reserved when not off her ass, drunk and screaming Taylor Swift into the night air.

“Rhys Koteskiy.” She smiles, but her eyes track to the guy still next to us, leaning against the counter. “Here for a coffee or for a girl?”

“You two know each other?” the guy asks, eyebrow ticking up as he settles his question to me instead of her.

I reach my hand out with my captain’s smile. “Rhys,” I offer, reaching my hand out to him. He takes it, a hard quick shake before letting me go.

“Tyler. Aurora’s boyfriend.”

Got it. I keep the smile plastered across my face as I look back to Aurora, her nervous expression making me feel a little nauseous. So, I lean in and pointedly ask, “Is Sadie not working today?”

Tyler laughs, nodding at me with a renewed twinkle in his eye. “Sadie really does have a type, huh? Surprised she isn’t the one thirsting after—”

“Tyler, stop. Please,” Rora quietly begs, before looking up at me. “She’s not, but she is at the dorms—at least, I think.” She clicks the side of her phone where it rests on the counter. “Yeah, she’s still there, but she’ll go home for the weekend so…”

She trails off with a little shrug.

“So I should text her instead of showing up unannounced and sending her into a spiral?”

Rora smiles again, somehow broader, like the thought of me understanding some of the complexities of her dear friend makes her ecstatic. “Exactly.”

“Gotcha.” I nod, sticking a five in the overly decorated yellow top jar with multicolored flowers drawn all over it. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”

“I hope so. She deserves something good.”

It warms something in me that this enigmatic girl, Sadie’s best—and I honestly think only—friend approves of me. Even if Sadie herself doesn’t.

I do text her, later that night after gorging myself on the meal prep marked with my name that Bennett labored over at the beginning of the week. Laying back on my sloppily made bed, staring at the ceiling with a movie playing off my PS4 on the mounted TV, I can’t get her out of my head. I’ve listened to the playlist until I can pull it up in my head like a file, playing my favorites and trying to imagine what she was thinking when she added them.

“Barely Breathing” —the way she unlaced my skates for me when my hands were shaking.

“Don’t Look Back In Anger”—the raging look in her eyes when she does her long program.

“Sleep Alone”—her smile, her laugh.

My current favorite, Beck and Bat for Lashes’ “Let’s Get Lost,” plays over my speakeras my fingers pull up her contact and shoot off the text before I can think twice about it.

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