Two A.M.

You're still thinking about last night's texts when you come down for coffee, the way his messages arrived in little bursts, like he kept typing and deleting and typing again. You wonder if he slept. He's at the stove making eggs and he says "morning" without turning around, and the back of his neck goes pink, and you decide that's answer enough.

At two in the afternoon a white Tidewater van crunches up the gravel.

The guy who climbs out is twenty-four at most, handsome in a carefully messy way, with a ring light under one arm and a camera bag over each shoulder. Teal team jacket, white sneakers that have never seen rain.

"Tyce Stapleton! Social!" he announces, as if it's a rank. "We're doing Captain's Mornings tomorrow, J. Sunrise on the lake, you making your famous pancakes, the whole golden vibe. I'm putting a timelapse on the dock tonight so we catch the light coming up."

Joren is golden immediately. "Sure. Whatever you need, man."

Tyce's eyes slide to you, standing in the doorway with your mug. "Oh! The new goalie. Ethan, right? The roommate. That's cute. Can we get you in the pancake shot?"

"No," you say.

"Totally fine!" Tyce says, unbothered, and goes off down the dock with a tripod and a little black box that he straps to the last post, facing the water and the house.

Joren watches him go. "He's harmless," he says. "He just really wants to go viral."

That night you get the start against the Calgary Wranglers because Ossi's knee is still a balloon, and it's the worst twenty minutes of hockey you've played in a year.

The first goal goes off a defenseman's shin and in. Fine. Bad luck. The second is a rebound you should have smothered. The third, you go down too early and a Calgary center lifts it over you like he's flipping a pancake. The fourth, you don't even see.

Four goals. Nineteen minutes and forty seconds.

Gaston's face doesn't change when he waves you off. Ossi skates out with his bad knee and taps your pads as you pass. "Everyone has these," he says. You nod. You sit at the end of the bench with your mask pushed up and a towel around your neck and eighteen thousand people politely not booing you, which is somehow worse.

Portland loses 6-2. In the locker room nobody talks to you, because that's what you do for a goalie after a night like that. You leave them alone.

You drive home in the dark. Joren's truck is behind you the whole way, his headlights in your mirror, not passing.

You can't sleep. Of course you can't.

At 2 a.m. you give up and pull on a hoodie and go down to the porch, barefoot on the cold boards. The lake is flat and black. A thin moon. Frost on the railing. Down on the dock, the shape of Tyce's tripod. You sit on the top step and replay the third goal until it doesn't even look like hockey anymore.

The door opens behind you.

He's wrapped in a wool blanket like a cape, hair a mess, eyes puffy with sleep. He doesn't say anything. He just sits down next to you on the step, close enough that his shoulder touches yours, and holds out half the blanket.

You take it. It's warm from him.

"The third one was my fault," he says eventually. "I lost my guy at the blue line."

"The third one was mine. I went down early."

"You went down early because you were trying to cover for me losing my guy."

You laugh, a little, despite everything. "Are you going to take the blame for all four?"

"I'd take the blame for all six if it'd help." He tucks the blanket tighter around you both. "It won't, though. I know. I've had nights like that. You just have to sit in it."

So you sit in it. Together. The frost creaks on the railing. Somewhere across the lake, a loon makes a sound like somebody laughing underwater.

"Can I tell you something?" he says.

His voice has changed. It's so quiet you have to lean in.

"Yeah."

"I've never said it to anybody on a team." He's staring straight ahead at the water. His jaw is tight. You can feel him shaking, under the blanket, and it isn't the cold. "My sister knows. One friend. That's it. Not my parents. Not one guy I've ever played with. Not one."

You don't move. You barely breathe.

He takes a breath like he's about to go off a high board.

"I'm gay," Joren Radcliffe says to the lake.

And then he turns and says it to you. "I'm gay, Ethan."

There's nothing in your head for a second except the sound of the words in the cold.

"Okay," you say, very gently. "Thank you for telling me."

He lets out a breath that turns into a laugh and then into something wetter. He presses the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"That's it?" he says. "That's all it takes? Two words and somebody says thank you?"

"Sometimes it's more complicated."

"It's going to be more complicated." He drops his hand. His eyes are bright. "But right now it's just you and the lake, and you said thank you, and I think I might throw up again, but in a good way."

"Don't throw up on me. It's my only hoodie."

He laughs for real and leans into you. His forehead tips against your temple, then shifts, and somehow you've turned toward each other, and his forehead is resting against yours. His breath is warm. His hand comes up out of the blanket and settles on the side of your neck, his thumb just under your jaw, careful, like you're something that might startle.

You can feel your pulse jumping against his fingers. You know he can feel it too.

He's so close. Green eyes, half-closed. His lashes have frost on them. You could tilt your chin an inch.

"I want to," he whispers. "You should know that I want to."

"Me too."

His thumb moves along your jaw. Then he goes still.

"Not like this," he says, so quietly. "Not while I'm still hiding. You deserve somebody who can kiss you in daylight. I don't know if that's me yet."

He doesn't pull away. Neither do you. You stay like that, forehead to forehead under one blanket, while the cold moon slides behind the firs, until his breathing slows and matches yours.

Later, much later, he says "goodnight, 31," against your hair and goes inside.

You stay one more minute, wrapped in the warm blanket that smells like him, too wired to move.

Down at the end of the dock, something small blinks red. On, off. On, off.

You think it's a buoy light, and you go to bed.