Crack In The Ice - Chapter 6: Chapter 6

There is something strange about coming back home for the first time, after leaving to make a home somewhere else.
I can't really put a name to it, but I can feel it lodged in my chest.
Brunson hasn't changed, of course it hasn't. A year means nothing in this type of town.
But we have changed.
Dean and I moved into an apartment in Calgary that could fit either one of our one-story childhood homes with still some room to spare. We got to know a new city - a bigger city - in a whole new country. We learned our place in a new team and bonded with new teammates.
And we have slowly gotten used to the different rhythm of a life of independence - physical, legal, financial. A life of private jets and team buses. Lunches with the team in decently priced restaurants, and ordering dinner in, and not having to pick between a new jacket or new jeans each winter. A life with press meetings and an agent to manage our time.
And while all of that was happening, Brunson has remained. As have all the faces that come with it.
The Millers receive us at the airport when we arrive - Dean's dad, his mom, and his brother Devin. They have wide grins and long embraces ready to welcome us back home.
Dean's dad drives us all into town in a cramped car and the Holmes family is waiting for us on their porch - Olie, Owen fresh off his own plane, and their parents. We all gather in the Holmes too-small living room to catch up.
Elliott said he'd be working, but I text him to let him know we landed.
The guys pick us up at Owen's parents' place after dinner, so we can go to The Lodge together.
Unlike what wiuld have happened a yewr ago, Olie tags along. At The Lodge, Trey sits with his arm around her, making jokes all night - loud, and unapologetically unchanged. Connor sits opposite him, interrupting every story with quippy comments to balance off Olie's wittier ones. Dean and James laugh. Owen mostly observes with a half-smile that looks secretly tired. And the whole thing transports me back to high school.
But this isn't the Brunson High cafeteria at lunch time. And we are not kids anymore.
Olie is graduating high school. Connor has his part-time at the resort's gift shop to help carry his own weight as his parents do their best to pay for school. Owen is juggling a part-time, a hockey scholarship, and a major in Business Analytics in a much bigger city nearly three thousand miles away from home.
James still has his parents to cushion his path, but he's in college too. And Trey is neither in school nor working, and he still has access to limitless funds from his parents, but he has moved out of his family home into an apartment in the nice building complexes in Lake City.
And then there's me and Dean. We are now rent-payers, pro athletes, bank account-owners. We clean our dishes, and iron our clothes, and vacuum our apartment. It doesn't feel exactly like the kind of adulthood our parents promised, but it's not high school either.
Back home, though, it feel all disconnected. Away from the press meetings, and our agent, and the older teammates, the image of independence we conquered feels less real. Like we were just playing pretend. And I'm not sure if I can still pretend surrounded by the people who were brought up with me.
Watching Dean come up from a sip of hot chocolate with a familiar foam-tache tells me he's not even trying.
Seeing Liam across the room makes the whole issue fade into a hiccup in my head.
He's wearing a well-fitten navy shirt, loose jeans and still-damp hair, like he's straight out of a shower. And his eyes meet mine almost as soon as he steps into the room.
My chest swells a little at the thought that he can instinctively find me in a room. It might have been just a struck of luck that he happened to glance my way. But a little corner of my mind discards that idea with a bubbling eagerness that feels dangerously like hope.
I slide out of our booth while everyone's laughing at another story Trey was telling.
Liam takes a seat on a tall stool by the counter, watching me come to him.
He smiles. "Hey."
"Hey."
We haven't seen each other in a year. Not since we said goodbye before I left.
Whenever the image of his face spontaneously conjured up in my head over this past year, I would tell myself I was exaggerating the deep shade of blue in his eyes. Pumping it up to something more intense than the real thing. But having those pools of dark ocean-blue staring up at me, attached to real flesh and bone for the first time after so long, makes my brain go for a reboot.
"I heard something about you being back," Liam says.
"Just for a week," I say. "In the off-season."
"That's good." He nods. "Staying with your brother?"
"Yeah. I guess. You still with your parents?"
He tilts his head. "Not really. Kinda moved out. To like..." He moves his eyes around the room. "Here."
"Here?"
"The room upstairs."
"Oh."
I remember that room all too well.
Liam doesn't try to fill the short silence that follows. His little smirk makes me wonder if the same thoughts are running through his head. The same images.
Do fragments of that night still flash through his head? Does he ever go back to the memories of our senior year at all? It's been a while. With no contact at all. Sometimes, when I can't keep my mind from going back, I do wonder if he had an easier time forgetting it. Moving on.
I clear my throat. "It's still your dad's resort. So I guess you're technically still living under his roof."
Liam smiles. "I might have to move out of Lake City completely to find a room he doesn't own."
"Do you at least pay for your own room now?"
"Kind of."
I arch my eyebrows.
"I mean, I do." He purses his lips around a smile. "But I still get an allowance from my parents."
I snort.
Liam grins. "Look, I'm all for building financial independence, but figure skating is expensive. And not exactly as profitable as pro hockey."
I shake my head. "No judgement."
He rolls his eyes. "I could swear I heard at least some judgement."
"Not at all. Especially now that you're a national championship medalist."
Liam's smile gets brighter. "It was just bronze. And we'll need to do better overall if we want to make it to the next Winter Olympics."
"You have four years."
He nods. "Yeah. And Chloe and I are focused on making sure we'll be on Team USA in 2026."
"You will be."
He smiles again, and I realize I'm doing the same. An untamed instinct urges me to glance quickly back to where my friends are. When my gaze returns to Liam, he has straightened up in his seat, leaning slightly away from me. Back into his own personal space box.
Like being right back in high school.
"I heard you've had a great first season. Apparently you and Dean make quite the wonder duo," he says conversationally. Like we're just two guys who went to high school together and never really got along until the final year, joining for a random reunion. Which, in a way, we kind of are.
"It's mostly marketing." I shrug.
He hums. "It's working. People are obsessed with you two. And it's not just about the hockey from what I hear."
His look makes my face burn a little. I've seen a couple of the gossipy headlines and the shameless memes, and I read a few of the thirsty tweets. Most of them because Connor sends them to the group chat to taunt us with our newly found popularity among fans. Some of them because Zoey, our agent, likes us to know that's part of the deal too. It's good for our career, in fact, she says.
But that's not what makes me blush. It's that look on his face. It's disarming. The weight of that ocean-blue gaze, so unapolagetically suggestive.
Liam leans in and lowers his voice. "Can't really blame them."
Something stirs inside my stomach and I inwardly yell at my whole body that it's getting ahead of itself. I shift in my seat, glancing around the room.
My friends are all focused in their own conversation, neither bothers to look for me. Except Owen. His eyes glance over in my direction and I quickly look away as soon as our eyes meet. It was a nervous, stupid reaction. One Owen is too smart not to find weird. I mentally kick myself in the head.
Like being back in my stupid high school self's shoes.
"It's just kinda weird having my little sister fawning over my high school fling, you know" Liam says offhandedly.
My eyes widen. "What?"
He laughs. "Leah and her friends are super into hockey this year. Like most of the town, honestly. Everyone's in love with our local-raised talent. Think every soul in the Brunson-Lake City area is a supporter of the Calgary Flames these days. But Leah put up a whole ass poster of you in her room."
I raise my eyebrows. "Me?"
Liam shrugs. "The whole team."
A hand clasps my shoulder as I'm mid-eye roll. I jump a little, looking up at Trey. He's not looking at me though. Even though he's hand's on my shoulder, he's looking at Liam.
"What's up, Astor? Stealing Blake all for yourself?" He gives my shoulder a little shake.
I avert my gaze and it lands on Owen, who was already looking at me. Those dark, tired eyes have a way to make me feel guilty without a reason, so I look away.
"We should sneak a bottle from the bar and go to the lake, like old times," Connor says, arm around James.
"I'm actually pretty tired from my flight. Kinda want to go home," Owen says, finally moving his eyes from me to James.
"Me too, to be honest," Dean admits.
Owen gives him a look. "You had a four-hour flight, man."
"I don't like flying," Dean complains.
"I can drive you guys home," James says. "We can hang out at the lake after you've had time to rest."
"You coming with us, or you waiting for Elliott?" Owen asks me, already moving slowly toward the door.
As though set in motion by his cue, the others start moving toward the exit too. Like they're following their leader. Their captain.
Just like high school.
I look at Liam. "No, yeah. I'm gonna wait for Elliott."
"Your stuff is in my car," James says.
"I can take it to my parents' and you can pick it up in the morning," Owen offers.
Ininly let myself be surprised for half a second. "Thanks, man," I say.
Then, they're out. And there's no one left in the room except for a young couple from Lake City and a waiter I don't remember from my days working here.
"Are you gonna go look for your brother?" Liam asks.
I shrug, looking at a swirl on the wood of the counter top. "Elliott's in his office. I can just wait for him."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
There's a tension in the silence that follows.
I don't even know what I'm doing. What did I expect? That I could come back home and just pretend? Pretend that I didn't leave a year ago? That I don't have a life in another country? That I can be anything different from the tense, repressed boy I was in high school? The person I still am, hidden behind press meetings, and ordered take-out dinners, and an agent?
I don't know how long it goes without either of us speaking a word. But I can see the moment the decision sets in Liam's eyes. Which decision, I will never know, though. Because just as he's opening his mouth to voice it, someone comes in from behind me.
"Hey," a pleasant female voice greets, making me turn around.
I recognize the girl with the heart-shaped face, and the brown hair, and the dark eyes framed by thick lashes. I can place her at a get-together by the lake in my sophomore year with Dean's arms around her, or at Owen's house sitting on Olie's bed while they paint each other's nails.
What I can't place is her arm sliding around Liam's shoulders just before her lips come down to meet his cheek in a sweet, painfully familiar kiss. That image bounces right off my brain, rejected, and crashes on the floor. I can even hear the grating sound of something shattering with the impact.
"Hey, Eli." She smiles at me. Her arm is still around Liam. "I didn't know you were back home."
"Yeah, uhm... Just for- Just for the week."
"I don't know if you remember me. Rachel. I'm-"
"Olie's friend," I finish tersely. "You, uh..." I clear my throat. "I didn't know you guys were friends."
Rachel and Liam look at each other. "Yeah, well, we, uh... Yeah." Rachel finishes off with a pretty, half-giddy, half-sheepish smile.
Liam isn't smiling, though. Nor looking at me.
I feel so stupid. It takes me right back to that day I tried to kiss him on the rink and he pulled back. The freezing horror of realizing how I slipped up, the embarrassment of exposing myself like that, the crushing weight of rejection.
It's inevitable. I should have known this is what coming back home would be like.
I came for Dean, because he asked, but maybe I should have let him come alone.
"I should go see my brother." I stand.
"Wait-" Liam stands too.
I wait.
He stays quiet.
I turn around and leave.