Page 10 of Fractured Ice

"Okay, okay." He holds up both hands. "Not Rory. So who?"

I look at the floor. “It’s a girl I’ve known for a long time. Someone I’ve never quite gotten over.”

Knox goes quiet, which is unusual enough that I actually notice it. He's thinking, which I can tell because he looks like he's running back through things. I watch him do it and I can almost see the exact moment it lands.

"Wait," he says.

I don't say anything.

"Ethan?"

Still nothing.

"It's Sienna Park." He says it like he's just solved something that's been sitting unsolved for a long time. "Oh my God. It's Sienna."

I look at him.

"It's been Sienna this whole time, hasn't it," he says. Not a question.

I lean back against the locker behind me and exhale. "Yeah."

"How long?"

"A while."

"How long is a while?"

I think about it. Sienna at fourteen, telling me my attempt at being funny was painfully unsuccessful, which was both accurate and devastating. Sienna at sixteen at one of our families' summer dinners, talking about some article she'd read with the kind of focus that made me forget what I was supposed to be doing. Sienna at every point in between and since, always a little out of reach, always five steps ahead of whatever I was trying to do.

"Long enough that it's a problem," I say.

Knox stares at me. Then he starts laughing again, not the teasing kind this time but the genuinely caught-off-guard kind. "Everyone thinks you've been out here just absolutely living your best life in college. Running around. Having a great time."

"I mean, I've had a fine time."

"But this whole time there's been a Sienna situation."

"There's been a Sienna situation," I confirm.

"Why didn't you just go after her?"

And that's the question, isn't it? I've thought about it enough times that I've got a pretty clear answer, even if saying it out loud makes me sound like an idiot. "Because with everyone else it's easy. Right? You meet someone, you hang out, it's casual, no big deal. With Sienna it's not going to be casual. The second I go after her for real, that's it. There's no easy exit. No keeping it light." I look at Knox. "She'd be it. And if I mess it up I lose her for good, and I just… I just can’t fuck this up."

Knox is quiet for a second. Then, "That might be the most emotionally intelligent thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't tell anyone."

"Your secret's safe." He pauses. "Okay but why is she a problem right now specifically? What happened?"

I tell him about this morning. The kickball game, running into her on the sidewalk, soaking her shirt and making it see-through, which gave a damn nice view to her little pink bra underneath, which I don’t tell him, but was a whole disaster. Knox listens with the expression of a man who is working very hard not to laugh and mostly failing.

"You soaked her."

"It was an accident."

"You literally ran her over."

"The ball went wide."