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On Friday, I’m putting on my second boot when Tessa looks up from her desk.

“Where’s he taking you?”

“I don’t know yet. He said it’s a surprise.”

She considers that, then pulls a Post-it off the pad on her desk, writes something on it, and holds it out. It’s her phone number, which I already have, and under it, in her neat square handwriting: text “laundry” if you want an out.

I look at her. “Laundry?”

“Nobody questions laundry.”

I fold the Post-it into my back pocket, and I’m smiling about it the whole way down the stairs.

Declan picks me up in the Corvin Hall lobby at six. He comes inside and waits by the mailboxes in a jacket with his hands in his pockets. When I come down the stairs, he looks up and smiles like the whole evening just got better.

“Kylie.”

“Hi.”

“You look nice.”

“Thank you.”

The split at the corner of his lip has almost healed. There’s a thin, darker line where it was that you’d only see if you were looking, and I’m looking.

“So I have to warn you,” he says, holding the door. “This is going to be the worst date you’ve ever been on. I can’t drink this week. Coach thing. And everything in this town closes at nine, which you’ll learn.”

I laugh. “That’s a strong opening. So what are we doing?”

“I’m taking you to the rink.”

“What?”

He grins. “You’ve never seen it.”

I shake my head.

He’s pleased with himself. “I’m going to show you the rink, and you’re going to pretend it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, and then I’m going to buy you something fried. Sound good?”

I nod.

The rink is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t have to pretend. We come in through a side door, down a concrete hallway that smells like cold and rubber and faintly like a locker room, and then he pushes through another door and the whole building opens up in front of me. The ice is enormous, white and lit from above, with the boards going all the way around it. Behind the glass, the seats climb up into the dark in rows and rows, thousands of them, and every sound comes back at you off the ceiling. It’s freezing. My breath is right there in front of my face.

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah. It seats four thousand. It’s loud when it’s full.” He tips his chin at the far end, where six or seven guys are skating in a group. “Skills session. That’s all they can do with the staff right now, a couple hours a week until October. Come on. The good seats are up here.”

He takes me ten rows up at the middle. It’s the best view in the building, and for a long time, it’s genuinely nice. He’s good at explaining things, which surprises me. He tells me what the drill is and why they keep restarting it and what the guy in charge is yelling about, and it doesn’t turn into a show of how much he knows. When I ask what the red circles are for, he answers like it’s a normal question. When a guy goes down hard on a turn, Declan laughs from his chest.

“That’s Mathers,” he says.

“Mathers.”

“His last name.” He grins at the ice. “Everybody goes by last names.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Kennebeck’s not out there either,” he says after a while. “Same as me. We’re both in the box.”