You slip out of bed. The floor is cold. The communal bathroom down the hall is empty at this hour and harshly lit, groaning pipes and one flickering bulb above the third sink.

Hot water, then the cold rinse. Coconut shampoo, the one your mum sent in a care package two months ago. Blow-dryer on low so it doesn't wake anyone. Waver, then flat-iron. A second pass. A third.

On the narrow desk under the window, the outfits are already laid out from the night before. Three of them, hung on the back of the desk chair like suspects in a line-up.

A denim skirt and a cropped cream knit. His eyes go to legs when he stands on the blue line, you've decided.

Strike one. The cream washes you out under the fluorescent hallway lights.

Black jeans and the soft grey cardigan that falls off one shoulder. He wore grey himself last Tuesday. That has to mean something. That has to mean something, right?

Strike two. The cardigan makes you look like you haven't slept, which, technically, is true.

You stand in front of the mirror in the third outfit with a mascara wand half-raised, and the clock on your desk says 5:12, and your hair is curling wrong on the left side, and none of it matters because at 5:45 the hallway outside the rink will fill with hockey bags and laughter and the specific low rumble of his voice.

You change the top. Again.

By 6:10 you are standing by the row of lockers at the end of the rink hallway, phone in hand, thumb scrolling a feed you are not reading. The smell of cold rubber and Zamboni exhaust rolls in from the practice doors. Fluorescent light, off-white walls, the squeak of sneakers from a few early runners passing through.

Down the hall, a vending machine hums. A yellow CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign lies tipped on its side.

Hannah comes around the corner first, gym bag over her shoulder, hair still damp from a shower, coffee in hand.

Dean comes through first, blond hair pushed back, olive jacket open over his T-shirt. He's saying something about Providence, gesturing with one hand. Logan shoves him mid-sentence. Tucker follows with a towel slung around his neck, shaking his head at both of them.

And then Garrett.

He's at the back of the group, tall and broad in a grey hoodie with the Briar crest on the chest, dark waves pushed back but a few curls escaping onto his forehead. His duffel hangs off one shoulder. He's on his phone, frowning slightly at the screen. Bag strap, jaw, hockey hair. Every part of him mapped out.

He's fifteen feet away. Ten. He looks up from the phone. He is looking at—past you. At the door at the end of the hall.

The hallway is quiet again. Allie's bangles have stopped moving.

Hannah is looking at you. She is not smirking. She's just looking at you, the way she does when she has already figured something out.