Chapter Text
I ｜ Garrett · Training Day · Warrior Ice Arena
September in Boston. The air outside hadn't really cooled down. Didn't matter — the ice in the rink had been that cold all along.
A little past six, Garrett stood alone in his kitchen, doing the things that didn't ask his brain for anything. Open the fridge. Take out the milk. Shut the door. Boil the water. The coffee machine warmed up with a low, polite hum, like a noise that knew its manners. The counter was cold. The tile was cold. Only the mug, slowly, picked up a little heat from the steam.
Then the coffee smell hit, and his eyes caught the corner of the breakfast bar. Hannah, barefoot on the floor. Toes curling against the morning chill. Wearing his old Briar #44 hoodie, sleeves swallowing half her hands. Standing at the stove making him eggs while the toast burned on one side, then flipping the unburnt side up onto his plate and humming, swaying that perfect ass of hers. God, he loved that. The whole thing was natural enough to be a crime.
She'd steal sips from his mug too. Every time, one tiny sip. Then the nose wrinkle. Too bitter, Graham. You drinking coffee or punishing yourself. She'd say it while humming some tune she'd made up — soft, the kind of soft socks make against a floor. He'd heard it a lot. Too many times. Never asked what it was called.
The kitchen was empty now. The coffee machine clicked. One mug on the counter. No one had burned toast in this kitchen since. No one had stolen his coffee. It was a loss. He wasn't going to admit it. He grabbed his bag and left. Pulled the door shut maybe five percent harder than normal. He knew it was five percent. Which pissed him off more. Fuck.
Garrett Graham glanced at the old locker-room clock as he buckled his pads on. Seven forty-two. Eighteen minutes early. The coaching staff liked to call him a model pro. Garrett knew the truth: he couldn't sit still at home. He'd been running that play since he was twenty-four, since the breakup with Hannah, and it had never once failed him. Hannah wasn't in the apartment. What else was he gonna do — not train?
The ice was slicker than he'd expected. First warmup lap, his speed didn't quite come up — not obvious, just his head failing to catch up with his legs. From the other end, Marcus whistled. "Cap. You good?"
"Warming up."
Translation: I'm fine, drop it. Ask again and you'll get the same word back. Thanks for cooperating.
He pushed off again. The bite of blade on ice did the pep talk for him. One lap. Two. Three. By the fifth he finally admitted it: his head was not at Warrior Ice Arena today. He was thinking about someone. Someone he hadn't talked to in a long time.
Graham. Something wrong with you?
Coach blew the whistle. Group scrimmage. Marcus pulled his gloves on next to him, voice dropped low. "Heard she's back."
Hannah?
It took him a full second to recalibrate the "she" from Hannah back to Dr. Lopez, the team physician who'd rejoined last week — mid-thirties, married, connected to him only by exchanges like, "Cap, want the wrap tighter?"
...Fuck.
Graham, you're done. You've got a fully automatic Hannah association engine installed in your skull — every "she" gets translated to Hannah by default. Go file a patent. While you're at it, file for a psych eval.
Garrett didn't turn. "Who."
"Who are you talking about."
"Mm."
"Mm" is a beautiful word — especially right after your brain has short-circuited and auto-translated every "she" into Hannah. It doesn't confirm. It doesn't deny. It doesn't explain. It doesn't dig in. It dumps the entire follow-up onto the asker. Someone should give "Mm" a Pulitzer.
Marcus huffed a laugh and let it drop. Which was when Garrett realized his "Mm" had landed half a beat off. He could hear it. Marcus had definitely heard it too. Damn.
Halfway through the scrimmage, he was half a beat slow on a boards battle and got shoved off by a rookie. Coach from the bench: "Graham! Focus!" Garrett raised a hand. Didn't explain.
Explain what. "Sorry, Coach, I was wondering whether a certain person — who once wore my college hoodie to the airport — has bought enough laundry detergent."?
Second period, he dragged his head back where it belonged. Two assists in ten minutes. One takeaway. Coach nodded. Didn't say anything. In Coach Donnelly's vocabulary that was roughly equivalent to nice work. Garrett pretended not to care. Pretended he didn't need that nice work. Pretended he hadn't needed anyone's nice work since he was sixteen.
Practice ended. He was the last one off the ice. Marcus clapped his back on the way past. "Bar tonight?"
"Pass."
"Doing what at home?"
"…Organizing."
Organizing. Organizing what. The drawer that's been missing one sock? Or the brain that's been short-circuiting since this morning and refuses to be organized?
Marcus looked at him for a beat. Didn't push. Just said, "Cool. Take your time organizing."
There was something in that look. Garrett pretended he didn't see it.
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II ｜ Hannah · Same Day, Morning · Beacon Hill Apartment
Hannah Wells underestimated September sun in Boston. Fourteenth time, give or take.
It came in through the east-facing bay window and landed dead-center on the stack of sheet-music boxes she'd hauled up four flights in three trips. She was crouched on the floor cutting tape, and the blade caught her left index finger — the shallowest line — but she stared at it for a solid ten seconds, like she had to confirm she was really back in a city that could draw blood from her.
Wells. There you go with the dramatic narration again. Boston isn't injuring you. You just can't work a box cutter.
She tucked a strand behind her ear. It fell right back out, because it had figured out a long time ago that she wasn't actually focused on this. She sat down on the floor, back against an unopened box, and started mechanically sorting scores by key signature. Sharps. Flats. Neither.
The "neither" pile was the thickest. She let out a soundless laugh. Wow. I really am back in Boston.
Two-forty in the afternoon. She finally admitted she'd flipped her phone face-up and face-down six times.
She couldn't help thinking about him. Maybe she should give him a heads-up? In case they bumped into each other in the city — the social circles hadn't really moved on either of them. And she wanted to know — that one person in this city, the one whose jawline she used to be able to trace with her eyes closed, did he still have the same string of digits next to his name.
She scrolled to G. Garrett Graham. The note was three years old. Embarrassingly honest. Even she hated it now: Do not call.
How she'd gotten herself to save those three words back then, she couldn't really reconstruct now. What she could confirm: in the four years since the breakup, she really hadn't called. Not once. It had taken her a year to climb out of that relationship — and she knew, calmly, that if she contacted him, she'd never get to keep moving forward. Hannah stared at those three words for about a minute. Then she did something mischievous — she cleared the note. Blank. And huffed a laugh at herself.
Ha. We're calling this a data update.
She opened the thread. Untouched for three years. The last message was his — probably right after he found out she was leaving for the UK. Two words: Take care. She hadn't answered.
Was she going to answer it now? No. She was just going to send a new one. Something completely meaningless. Plausibly polite. Plausibly a thumb slip. Plausibly an oh sorry, wrong contact —
She typed Hi.
No period. No emoji. No context.
She stared at that one character for about forty seconds. Finally closed her eyes. Hannah. This is just contacting an old friend. The history between you two deserves at least a heads-up. Then she hit send.
The second the message left she flipped the phone face-down on the floor, like she was pinning down a bug that wanted to crawl away. She told the ceiling, "Wells. That, just now. Was that professional behavior."
The ceiling didn't answer. The ceiling had never once participated in her self-tribunals, and she respected it for that.
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III ｜ Garrett · Same Day, Afternoon · The Drive Home
After practice, Garrett didn't go straight home.
He took a detour and pulled into the coffee place he'd been going to since college. The barista was new. Didn't recognize him. Made it exactly the way he asked — nothing in it — which loosened something in his chest he couldn't quite justify. It meant at least one person today didn't need him to play along with any particular story.
He pushed back out with the coffee and clocked a poster taped to the window. Some local music festival. At the bottom of the lineup, in tiny type, a name he recognized: Special Guest, H Wells.
He stood in front of that line of tiny type for about four seconds.
Four seconds. Fuck, Graham. You just stood in front of a piece of glass for four entire seconds. Next time hold the coffee higher, cover your face. At least look like you're drinking it. Hannah's back?
He got in the car and didn't start the engine. Outside the windshield, the autumn sun was laying a warm gold across the driver's seat. He knew that light was a liar — two hours from now it would be gone and Boston would come back at him with real September. He took a sip of coffee. Hot. Didn't react in time, swallowed anyway, and yelped. "Fuck!"
Before he started the engine, he did one completely unnecessary thing: he took the phone out of his pocket and put it on the passenger seat. Face up.
Just in case. In case of what. Graham. You're twenty-eight.
He shoved the question back at himself. Shifted into reverse. Drove home.
---
IV ｜ Garrett · Same Day, Evening · Apartment · 21:47
The apartment was quiet.
He made a pasta so aggressively healthy that even he felt like he was performing for an audience. Ate it. Did the dishes. Wiped the kitchen down until the counter could reflect light. Only then did he let himself sit on the couch. No one was home anyway. No one around to prove the entire sequence had really been a stall on sitting down.
He sat. And started staring at the phone.
The second the screen lit up, his muscles tensed before he could stop them. On the lock-screen notification, that one line:
Wellsy: Hi.
One character. No punctuation.
Garrett set the phone back down.
Then he sat on the couch for about fifteen seconds. Posture unchanged. Breathing unchanged. A stranger walking past would have assumed he was thinking hard about a forecheck. Anyone who actually knew him would have called Logan immediately and said, "Something just happened to Garrett."
One character. She sent one character. She took three years to send him one character.
No. Graham. You took three years getting ready to wait for that one character from her. There's a meaningful difference.
He picked the phone back up. Tapped in. The name at the top of the thread. Below it, his own Take care. from three years ago, with a tiny Read next to it. Below that, tonight's 嗨.
Over a thousand empty days in between? He hadn't counted.
He started typing.
Draft one: Hi. Back in Boston?
Delete. Too awkward.
Draft two: Wells.
Delete. Last-name greeting. Sounds like she owes you money.
Draft three: You back for work?
Delete. That's a press release.
Draft four — he typed a long paragraph. About being off on the ice this morning. About taking the long way for coffee in the afternoon. He got to the third line. Stopped. Looked at it. Then wiped the entire thing with one clean swipe.
Graham. You don't not know how to write it. You just don't know if, three years later, you still have the right to tell Hannah this much about your life.
He left the cursor parked in the input box. For a long time. Long enough the screen dimmed once on its own. He woke it. Stopped again. It dimmed again. He woke it again.
In the end, he sent nothing.
He laid the phone face up on the armrest. A small patch of his own face came back at him in the dark glass — gray, dimmed — a man about to hit twenty-eight, locked in a room with himself, who still hadn't figured out how to reply to a single-character hi.
The screen lit for three seconds. Went dark.
He didn't wake it again.
He just watched it — under the dim yellow of the floor lamp in the living room — go quietly, obediently dark.
Tomorrow.
— Will tomorrow know how to answer this any better than today does?
No idea.
All he knows: the most important person in his life is back.