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“So you had the campus and geese portraits and then this guy?”
“I believe Simone and Kris are saying he seems to be the subject of your second set of photos.”
“But see what I’m saying–it’s like you’re implicitly saying HE’S an important part of your team. Least that’s what I see.”
Casey sits at the back of the classroom, eyes going back and forth between Jack’s face and the photos on screen. She watches his face drop into a frown as their classmates insist that Bitty is the subject, not simply the hockey team. It seems genuine.
And see, Kris, and Simone, and Greg are all right. Bitty is in every single photo. Bitty is lit up in every single photo.
She thinks it’s obvious to everyone in class that Jack cares about Bitty. Casey hopes it’s only obvious to her, that Jack is in love with Bitty.
Well, it would probably be nice if it were obvious to Jack too, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t know.
The thing is, Casey is not friends with Jack Zimmermann. But they were in the same food history seminar with Atley, and he’s the same major as her girlfriend Emma, and they’re both on the volleyball team. The volleyball team has always had crossovers with the hockey team, but ever since Caitlin started dating Chris and March and April started their thing with Adam and Justin, the social circle venn diagram has gotten closer and closer to a single circle.
The point is, they aren’t close, but they’ve spent enough time together that she can tell when he’s totally missing the point. And she’s pretty confident that if he knew all his photos painted a very clear picture of the photographer being in love with one Eric Bittle, he would never have shown them to the class.
But it is a clear picture. A picture reinforced by every time she’s watched them play like they’re one person in two bodies, by every time she watched Jack roll up to Atley’s seminar, teasing Bitty hard enough to make him blush, by every time she watched Jack come down to a Kegster just long enough to drink a cup of cranberry juice, talk to Bitty, and take a bunch of photos with his camera.
She never bothered to put the pieces together before, but now, seeing Bitty through Jack’s eyes, it’s impossible not to. The problem she’s left with, is whether she’s supposed to do something about it or not.
Casey is still pondering the problem as class ends and she packs up her stuff to leave. If Jack were anyone else, she would say something. But Jack is a hockey boy, who might still think he’s straight, and who might feel like he can’t act on those feelings even if he doesn’t. He’ll be playing in the NHL after this, and she knows what kind of reputation they have surrounding stuff like that. She should probably mind her own business this time.
“Hey Casey?”
She turns, and there is Jack himself, walking towards her. She slows her pace so he can catch up, curious what this is about.
“Hey,” he says when he catches up.
“Hey.”
They walk in silence for a minute before Jack speaks.
“Do you think everyone in class was right when they thought the subject of my second series was Bittle instead of the whole team?”
“I mean…” she shrugs. “He definitely was the subject of it. But like, I know you guys hang out a lot, so it kind of makes sense.”
Jack’s frown deepens.
“And what they were saying about the… light?”
“Um well like, the assignment was to make them a series, so you probably like subconsciously chose the photos that seemed to go together, right?”
That’s a good response. Hopefully? Honest but with plenty of room for interpretation?
Jack seems to consider this for a moment before nodding firmly. Then he sees someone across the way and waves. Casey follows his sightline and… It’s Bitty. Of course, it’s Bitty.
“Hey good luck tomorrow,” Jack says as he heads in Bitty’s direction, “I think some of the boys are trying to put together a group of us to go to your game.”
“Thanks!” Casey calls back, but Jack is already focused on someone else.
She watches incredulous, as he walks away, leaps over a fucking snowbank, and then says something to Bitty that has his face turning increasingly red.
She sighs.
Clueless. Absolutely clueless.
The boys do indeed put together a group to go to the game.
Chris shows up with a glittery sign for Caitlin, and Jack, Bitty, Ransom and Holster in tow.
They all tease Caitlin about the sign until she’s bright red, but it must be good luck since they win the game.
High off the win, a group of them end up at Jerry’s. They’re waiting for the big table to clear out when Casey notices that Jack’s got his camera out. Bitty is talking animatedly to Chowder and Caitlin about the game, so Jack gets a couple of shots in before Bitty realizes what’s happening. He sticks his tongue out and Jack laughs, snapping another shot.
“How many pictures of me are you planning to take this semester?” Bitty asks, smacking at the camera, a blush rising on his cheeks.
“It’s for class,” Jack says, lifting the camera out of Bitty’s reach.
Casey bites her lip. He's lying. She doesn't think he's lying intentionally, but... the syllabus was very clear— you can't use the same subject for more than one assignment. None of these photos can be used for their class. She keeps her mouth shut.
Jack snaps a photo of Chris then, as if to make a point, before taking another one of Bitty. If Casey saw the photo, she bets she’d see Bitty, haloed by the dim light on the wall behind him, cheeks pink, and an unbearably fond look directed just past the lens.
It only gets worse at dinner. Jack and Bitty are the only ones at the table who aren’t a couple, but as far as Casey’s concerned, they act the most like one. Sure, Chris and Caitlin are splitting their dishes, and Sara is holding hands with her boyfriend Max, and she’s got her arm around Emma. But Jack keeps stealing food off Bitty’s plate, and Bitty keeps smacking his hand away, and they keep leaning their heads in close to loudly whisper to each other about Chris and Caitlin and something about “the sin bin” and “massive fines”.
Casey spends the entire meal biting her tongue about all the comments she wants to make. It really isn’t her place to say anything. Is it?
A couple hours later, she’s at her apartment, head in Emma’s lap, still thinking about Jack, while Emma searches for something to watch.
“Hey,” Emma says after a few minutes of silence. She taps the shaved side of Casey’s head. “What’s going on in there? You’ve been thinking really hard about something all night, I can tell.”
Casey sighs, and tries to figure out how to say it without revealing too much.
“If you were pretty sure that two people were in love with each other, but that one of those people didn’t know they were in love, would you say something?”
Emma looks down at her.
“I mean, I guess it depends on the situation? Like, how well do I know these people?”
“Uh, not that well?”
“But you know they’re in love with each other?”
“Like 98% sure.”
Emma frowns, but her eyes are curious.
“Please don’t try and guess who it is,” Casey says suddenly. “I think things are pretty complicated and I don’t think they’d want either of us to know.”
Emma nods.
“Ok yeah. I won’t.” She hums. “I guess… I guess I would think about consequences then, yeah? Like if you might make the person uncomfortable or make things weird between them and the other person, then probably don’t?”
Casey sighs. That’s pretty much where she was at already.
Emma laughs.
“I know, I know, you’re a romantic and you love getting people together, but sometimes people have to figure it out on their own.”
“Would you ever have figured it out on your own?”
“Hey—”
“I mean I bought you frozen yogurt like 15 times, and complimented your boots, and offered you my cool leather jacket when you were cold, and you still didn’t realize I had a crush on you too.”
“Ok but wasn’t cutting your hair super short after I admitted I liked girls with short hair a bit extreme?”
Casey grins.
“I mean I was planning to do it anyways, and it worked, didn’t it?”
Emma’s face softens then, as she runs her hand through the longer hair on the top of her head.
“Yeah, it did.”
Casey pretty much manages to let go of the whole Jack and Bitty situation. It’s not like she can forget, when Jack shows his action shots to the class and all of them are photos of Bitty playing hockey and doing figure skating jumps. And it’s hard to forget when she goes to another Kegster and finds Jack sitting in the kitchen, handing Bitty ingredients while he bakes cookies. But she is an adult who can mind her own business.
Casey doesn’t watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. She’s excited for Jack, and happy that his career is going well, but they were never that close, and she doesn’t like hockey enough to watch it on tv. She doesn’t watch the game which is why she’s totally confused when she gets a series of incomprehensible texts from Emma.
Emma: AHHHHHHHHH
WHAT ?????????????
OMG OMG OMG OMG
IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT
JACK AND BITTY????????
Casey looks at the texts and then hits the call button while she searches Jack’s name on Twitter. She’s staring at a video of Jack and Bitty kissing on the ice with blue and white confetti around them when Emma picks up.
“Last spring when you told me you thought two people were in love with each other, but one of them didn’t know, and it was complicated, were you talking about Jack and Bitty?”
Casey laughs in disbelief.
“Yeah, I was.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“You know how I took that photography class with Jack? Yeah well, for his midterm project one of his series was supposed to be of his team, except Bitty was the focus of every single picture. Like, I didn’t know for sure, but…”
“You also kind of did.”
“Hey, you were right though, sometimes people have to figure it out on their own. It looks like they did.”