•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•✾•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•

He wasn’t doing anything special, just sitting there basking in his own delight, and I knew it with that kind of certainty you get when you’ve spent enough time around someone to pick up on their emotional states without trying.

I decided to sneak a glance.

Big mistake, a colossal mistake. The kind of mistake made by someone who knows better but looks anyway.

He was smirking. Not a big grin, Damien didn’t do big but it lingered at the corner of his mouth like it intended to stick around.

What irked me the most was the fact that he was completely unbothered, like he knew something I hadn’t figured out yet and was just waiting for me to catch up.

Which was ridiculous. If anyone ought to know what was going on in my head, it was me.

Unfortunately, I was starting to doubt my own judgment. Recent evidence suggested my personal insights had been pretty shaky for weeks now.

The game picked back up before I could continue arguing, which was the first good thing to happen in the last ten minutes.

Hockey, to its credit, really tried.

As the players returned to the ice, the energy in the arena surged again, and the crowd began to find its rhythm. The familiar pull of the game, that intense need for full attention...slowly pulled me away from my spiraling thoughts.

When my team scored midway through the period, I was on my feet before I even realized what I was doing.

"YES—" My fist shot into the air, and I turned to the nearest stranger to share the excitement, grinning with the pure joy that comes from forgetting everything complicated for just a moment.

Then it hit me that Damien was still next to me.

I sat back down instantly.

He was watching me, not the goal replay on the big screen or the surrounding celebrations, just me, with that look he gets when he thinks something is worth noticing, which lately seemed to include nearly everything I did. And I had no idea how to handle that.

"Don’t you have investments to manage mentally?" I shot at him. "A private island to ponder?"

"I’m thinking about the game."

"You’re looking at me."

"You’re more interesting than the game."

I faced forward, forcefully. "Watch the ice."

As far as I could tell, he did not watch the ice.

The game intensified as the clock ticked down, and despite my brain trying to sabotage me, I couldn’t fully disengage. Every near miss had me leaning forward.

Every save made me hold my breath, as if I actually had a stake in the outcome. Every big hit against the boards sent a ripple through the crowd that I felt before I even processed it.

For long stretches, I managed to forget. About Melanie. About the kiss cam. About that awkward kitchen conversation over cold coffee and the six words that had mixed things up in ways I didn’t even know were possible. About all of it.

Then my team scored the winning goal.

The arena erupted.

Everyone around me sprang to their feet as one, and the roar became something so unified it transformed into this physical wave of sound.

I was laughing, high-fiving a complete stranger in a rival jersey who also seemed thrilled, and for that one wonderfully uncomplicated moment, there was nothing but joy.

No confusion, no overthinking, no competing thoughts cluttering my mind. Just a hockey game that ended well and the pure happiness that came with it.

It felt amazing. Really, genuinely amazing. I’d forgotten how nice that feeling could be, in such a simple way.

Then I glanced to my side.

Damien was already staring at me.

Of course he was.

And just like that, my emotional crisis came rushing back, like it had never left, refreshed and ready, as if it had taken an intermission of its own.

Fantastic.

The crowd began to drift towards the exits, moving slowly like people who’d had their fill and weren’t in any rush to return to reality. I figured we’d join the throng right away.

Instead, Damien slowed down by one of the souvenir stands, where they had jerseys, pennants, and various trinkets displayed under bright lights.

I halted beside him. "What are you doing?"

"Shopping."

"Why?"

He shot me a look that suggested I was asking a delightfully unnecessary question. "People do that."

"Not you. You’re the kind of person who has things acquired for you. You have a whole support system."

Damien chuckled, the genuine kind... and returned to examining the display. I just stood there, watching him take a real interest in the stuff, and I felt something in my chest loosen slightly that I hadn’t realized was tense.

A few minutes later, he came back.

He held something out to me without a word or any preamble.

I looked at it, keychain. Simple and small, just the team mascot in metal, like the kind of thing you find in tourist shops everywhere, costing almost nothing and serving no real purpose except to get stuck on keys and seen every day.

He had the matching one in his other hand.

I stared for a moment, at the one he was offering me, at the one he was holding, at the utter simplicity of the gesture.

"Oh," I managed.

That was it. Twenty-one years of language skills, and all I could muster was oh.

He shrugged, the way he did when he’d done something he didn’t plan to make a big deal out of. "Something to remember tonight."

The words seemed effortless. They weren’t, really, there was a weight beneath them, something careful and genuine, wrapped in the ease of a shrug and given without expecting anything in return.

Nobody had bought me anything like this in ages. Not a birthday gift or a customary present, but just something small and random and specifically for tonight, simply because he wanted to.

The kind of thing that only holds meaning because someone thought of it, and that thoughtfulness is what counts.

Something inside my chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassment.

"Thanks," I said, quietly.

His expression shifted, just a tiny bit, just enough. "You’re welcome."

I wrapped my fingers around the keychain and tucked it into my pocket before my face could give away any more of my feelings.