Page 32 of Fractured Ice

“I’m doing something about that shoulder.”

"You don't have to⁠—"

"I know." I sit behind him on the bench and find the muscle group above the injury and start working at it carefully, not the shoulder itself but the tension built up around it, and he goes still.

"Sienna—"

"I'm going to give you three options," I say. "I can do this and you can see the trainer tomorrow, or you can keep rolling it on the ice and make it worse. Pick one."

He doesn't pick one. He exhales instead, a long breath out, and his shoulders drop slightly. I keep working and don't say anything.

Then he makes a sound that is not something I was prepared for. A moan. It's low and involuntary and it comes from somewhere in his chest. My hands slow down for just a second before I tell them to keep moving, because I'm a professional and this is a muscle group and that's all this is.

We're very close. I'm aware of that in a way I usually have better management of, how much of him is right there, how warm he is even in the February cold, how every small sound he makes when I find a particularly tight spot is doing something I'm not going to document.

"I'm sure," I say, trying to get my voice somewhere normal, "that someone on your roster could have been doing this instead of me."

"My what?"

"Your roster. The lineup. Whatever the current rotation is."

He's quiet for a second. "No woman has ever given me a massage… you know, I’m more used to burly athletic trainers rubbing my injuries."

I pause. "That's not true."

"It is."

"Ethan, you've dated half the campus."

"I haven't." He says it without heat, just matter-of-fact. "And I didn't say I hadn't dated anyone. I said nobody's ever given me a massage." A pause. "Not everyone's as comfortable enough to do this to someone."

“Because sex is less intimate…”

“I guess the intimacy level depends on who’s touching you.”

I don't know what to say to that, so I go back to the shoulder.

The silence goes somewhere easier. I work out the worst of the tension and he lets me, and the February air is cold around us but I'm not particularly cold, and I don't question why.

"Thank you," I say. "For the party. For what you did."

He turns his head slightly. "Don't thank me for that."

"I'm thanking you."

"Sienna." His voice settles into something more serious. "I'll always look out for you. That's not something you need to thank me for. That's just—" He stops. "That's just how it is. How it will always be for us."

Something about the way he says it is too simple to argue with and too much to know what to do with. I sit there for a second with my hands going still on his shoulder, flustered in a way I don't have a good system for.

I stand up and start walking.

He falls into step beside me after half a second, like he expected it.

"Do you remember," I say, reaching for something, anything, to redirect, "the art fair in sixth grade?"

He makes a sound. "Which part of it?"

"The part where you knocked my project into the lake."