i’m almost certainly never going to go any further with these, so here they are. feel free to add on.

The press of warm bodies, and the scent of beer and cloying sweet coolers surrounding him, and the music so loud it’s almost as if his heart has adjusted to its beat, should be enough to send him up to the Reading Room for some air or even to bed. But instead Jack’s here, in the living room, condensation from a can of beer running down his hand, talking to Bittle. Somehow the rest feels far enough away that it doesn’t matter.

“Why did you take so long to come to college?” he asks. 

Jack knows all about Wicks’ favourite songs and about Ollie’s brief foray into cheerleading back in the tenth grade, and any number of other things but Bittle -- well. He would be the first to admit he didn’t take as much an interest as he should have into Bittle, last year and in the months since. Maybe they had too much in common, what with Bittle being the oldest in his group of frogs by nearly four years, and then of course gay thing, which no one at all but Jack’s therapist knows about...

“Well,” Bittle says, eyes unfocused and staring ahead, “Mama got sick a few months before I was supposed to move away and then we needed me to work. And then when eventually she got better I suppose I just got comfortable.”

Bittle’s mouth is blooming red where he’s bitten it. 

“What made you decide to leave, then?”

“I got a message,” Bittle says, “from someone I’d met at an NCAA prospect camp my last year of high school. Asking me what I had been up to, what I was doing. And I thought, you know, what am I doing?”

“I’m,” Jack says. He looks down into brown eyes and smiles. “I’m. I’m glad you came here.”

“Yeah, Jack,” Bittle says, and he smiles back, “I am too.”

“Hey Bits,” someone says, close enough to be heard above the music. 

“Oh,” Bittle says.

Jack looks up to see, though he can’t quite believe it -- 

“Didja miss me?”

how the fuck did you know that this was exactly what i was thinking about. so here’s a sequel of sorts to this, in a situation where kent gets traded to toronto, doesn’t play in the world cup, and goes to camp in halifax.

“i’ve always loved the ocean,” kent says. he should be with his team, but google maps said that it would take him forty two minutes to make it from the bmo centre in bedford to peggy’s point lighthouse, so instead he got in his rental and drove away from them after practice. it took him an hour because he got lost twice, but he made it. it feels like stepping into a postcard. and anyway, he figures it’ll be a while before they start feeling like his team yet. the blue jersey his jersey.

he doesn’t know who the woman standing next to him is, but he knows it’s not mutual since he’s seen the flicker of recognition and the sweep of appraisal in her eyes. she’s old, maybe, but that’s something he’s noticed: people who live by the sea look both old and young depending on which angle you look at them, what you ask them, what time of day it is. like the salt air has cracked their faces but made them sturdier, stronger, nimbler. she walks along the rocks with more grace than he does, anyway. he wonders what she’d be like on a pair of skates.

“why’s that?” she says. she stops when he does and turns to look out to the glittering atlantic, the wind whipping strands of grey hair into her face. other tourists dot the rocks and the lighthouse towers over them like a sentinel, seagulls screeching overhead.

“oh, i don’t know,” he says. “it’s like – limitless, you know? like you’ll never know everything that goes on beyond the surface, but you wish you did.”

“hm, vast,” she says.

“right. i guess, i guess the desert was like that too, but there’s something about the sea, right? it makes you feel small. not weak, just. like it’s so much bigger than you’ll ever be. and it’s really fucking beautiful, you know? even in storms it’s like, you can’t look away. there’s more power in it than a desert.”

“you didn’t grow up by the water, did you?” she asks. behind them somewhere a child laughs.

“no, more inland new york,” he says. “but back when i was a teenager i swear i was the only one on the team excited to fly out to newfoundland for games.”

she smiles at him but – he’s seen smiles like that before.

fuck it i’m writing it. just so you don’t get too sad, kent’s cleaning out his room because he bought his mom a new house after his first year in the nhl. what a cutie pie

he finds it when he’s cleaning out his childhood bookshelf that has more dust on it than any other part of the room – he never could sit still long enough to read. it’s tucked into a book – a wrinkle in time with a spine never cracked – just the top corner poking out, enough for him to spot it. strange, how things work out. if it hadn’t been for that the book would have gotten into the box with all the others, destined for the public library tomorrow, the treasure found within it too.

no. not a treasure. it’s – it’s ripped, is what it is. well, ripped on purpose. zimms had taken the bottom two photos from the strip and left kent with the top two. he can’t remember what the others looked like – or he could, if he tried hard enough, but he doesn’t want to. in ten months he’s shoved away as much as he can and dares to from that whole era and it won’t take much to make the growing pile labelled things not to touch in the back of his mind to crumble.

ten months. these photos, hastily snapped in a booth somewhere in new brunswick, are only just over a year old, then.

the first has kent kissing zimms’ cheek, jack’s hand on kent’s backwards baseball cap keeping it in place. the hat is gone in the second, and jack’s smiling so wide at the camera his eyes are just tiny slits. kent’s forehead is leaning against jack’s but he’s turned toward the flash too, and his cheeks are red and his hair wild.

not a fucking treasure. he doesn’t know what it is, but. but.

“kent?”

when he hears his mom’s voice followed by her knock on the door he’s already moved on to the details of the photo, filling in the spaces he’d missed the first three times. a pimple about to crest on his cheek. the way zimms’ teeth are biting into his lip, blooming pink, in the first. the tag sticking out from the back of kent’s sweatshirt. imperfections.

“kent, hon, do you want to just go out for supper? the kitchen’s a mess and – oh,” she says, walking into his room and seeing him standing in front of the bookshelf, helpless. hopeless? just less. “what’s that?” she asks.

“nothing important,” he says, folding the half-strip over in his palm so she can’t see. “restaurant’s good. you pick, and i’ll be out in a sec.”

when she leaves he looks down to see a note on the back, scrawled in the sharpie he never went anywhere without back then. now he needs more than one. 

NO MATTER WHAT, it says, jack’s blocky handwriting achingly familiar, REMEMBER WE WERE HAPPY.

he puts it back in the book, and puts the book in his suitcase. maybe this summer he’ll find the time to read.