An Ice-Cold Bet

Chapter 4: Front Row Seats

Sasha had one non-negotiable ritual every Wednesday afternoon. It's to spend two hours at the campus coffee shop... She would sit with her laptop open and headphones in, working through whatever lab report or stress simulation was due that week while the hiss of the espresso machine provided a steady layer of background noise.

Dominique Jacobs, her roommate and the only person on campus who could convince Sasha to leave the equipment annex before dark, usually tagged along. Dominique brought her own laptop with the vague goal of "studying," which typically lasted about eleven minutes before she got bored and started narrating everything happening in the room instead.

"Okay, don't look now," Dominique said, exactly four minutes into today's session. She kept her eyes on her screen while angling her whole body slightly toward the entrance. "Colt Marek just walked in, and he looks like a man who is about to have a very bad day."

"Who?"

"Colt Marek. Hockey captain. Big, athletic, with movie star-like cheekbones." Dominique lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper that was entirely too loud for actual privacy. "You've sharpened his skates, Sasha. How do you not know who he is?"

"I know who he is. I know his skate blade radius. I just don't keep track of his emotional state." Sasha kept typing, her eyes fixed on her simulation results. She half-listened the way she usually listened to Dominique's commentary... Nodding at the right moments, but absorbed enough in her own work not to actually get drawn in.

"Well, start tracking it now, because he just sat down at the corner table and ordered two coffees. He has the exact face of a guy who thinks he's either about to propose or get dumped. Honestly, the odds feel fifty-fifty."

Sasha glanced up despite herself, catching sight of him across the room. He saw his dark hair, his broad shoulders folded into a chair a little too small for his frame, absentmindedly spinning a coffee cup he wasn't drinking from. She recognized him the way she recognized most of the team, by his equipment specs rather than his personality. She knew his stick flex numbers and his skate maintenance schedule, along with the fact that he always thanked the equipment staff. But she had never actually spoken to him directly.

"He's probably just meeting a teammate," Sasha said, turning back to her screen.

"He ordered an oat milk latte with an extra shot. That's not a teammate order, Sasha... That's a girlfriend order." Dominique's eyes lit up as the door chimed again. "And... called it. Here she comes."

Sasha looked up again, this time properly, as Bree Calloway walked in wearing her student activities blazer. Her hair was pulled back with the sternness of someone dressed for a business meeting rather than a date. Sasha didn't know Bree personally, but everyone on campus knew her by reputation, just like they knew the star athletes.

"Oh, this is going to be dramatic," Dominique whispered, sliding her laptop an inch to the side to get a better view without turning her chair.

"We shouldn't be watching this," Sasha said.

"We're not watching it. We coincidentally sat near them. There's a difference." Dominique kept her voice low, but her attention was completely locked in now, her schoolwork forgotten. "Besides, as far as public spaces go, they picked the worst possible spot for privacy. We didn't do anything wrong."

Sasha tried, briefly and unsuccessfully, to focus back on the glowing numbers on her laptop screen. But the corner table wasn't subtle. Bree's posture had gone rigid the moment she sat down, and even from across the room, the tension between them was loud enough to compete with the coffee shop background noise.

"She's not even leaning back in her chair," Dominique reported like a narrator in a documentary. "That's a bad sign. That's someone looking for a fast exit."

"Dom, stop."

"I'm just saying, body language doesn't lie."

For a few minutes, Sasha and Dominique can clearly hear Colt Marek and Bree Colloway's conversation...

Bree kept her hands wrapped tightly around her cup, while Colt leaned back as if trying to create distance between himself and whatever she was saying. Then Bree's voice rose just enough for a couple of words to carry across the room, and they heard the words "someone else," and Priya's face lit up with shock and excitement.

"Did you hear that? Sash, did you hear that?"

"I heard a word. I don't know what it means."

"It means," Dominique said, practically vibrating with gossip, "that Bree Calloway is breaking up with Colt Marek in the middle of a coffee shop, in public, on a Wednesday afternoon. We are watching it happen live! This is the biggest thing to happen on campus all semester."

"You need to lower your voice."

"I am lowering my voice," Dominique insisted, though she definitely wasn't. "This is huge, though! Colt Marek doesn't get dumped. That doesn't happen to guys like him. People don't dump Colt Marek, he's the guy people dump other guys for!"

Sasha risked another glance and immediately regretted it. Colt's expression had changed over the last minute. It wasn't anger, but a slow, painful humiliation. It was the face of someone realizing a major secret had been kept from him for a very long time. She suddenly felt something. It was an unexpected wave of sympathy for a guy she didn't even know.

"We should really stop staring," Sasha said quietly, this time with genuine concern.

"I know, I know, it's rude," Dominique admitted, though she didn't look away. "But you have to admit this is the most dramatic thing that's happened all week. Usually we just sit here while you calculate skate blade angles and I pretend to read for my political science class."

"That's no excuse to stare at someone's painful moment."

"I'm not staring, I'm just observing." Dominique finally turned back around, though her eyes kept drifting back toward the corner table every few seconds. "Okay, but seriously... you know what I should do? I should post a video about this. No names, of course! Very subtle, very anonymous. Just a story about two campus celebrities! People would love it."

"Dom, absolutely not," Sasha said firmly, shutting her laptop halfway as if to physically block the idea. "That's not content... That's just being nosy online."

Dominique held up both hands in surrender, grinning. "Fine, fine! No video. I'll let the moment pass without posting about it, purely out of respect for you."

"Out of respect for them," Sasha corrected. "Not me."

"Sure, them." Dominique glanced back one last time toward the table, where Bree was standing up, gathering her bag, and saying her final words. "Still, you have to admit it's wild. I definitely didn't expect my Wednesday to go like this."

Sasha didn't answer right away. Against her better judgment, she watched as Bree walked across the shop and exited through the front door, the little bell above it chiming cheerfully and carelessly. Colt remained sitting at the table alone for a long moment, staring down at two untouched coffees.

There was something deeply uncomfortable about watching someone endure heartbreak in a crowded room with nowhere to hide. Sasha found herself hoping he had a quiet place to go once he finally left.

"Okay," Dominique said, turning back to her screen with visible reluctance. "I promise I won't post about it. But you know this story is going to spread all over campus by dinner time anyway."

"Probably," Sasha admitted, finally forcing her attention back to her engineering simulation, even though it took her a minute to focus on the numbers again. "Mainly because people can't mind their own business."

"True," Dominique agreed. "And campus gossip travels fast."

Across the room, Colt finally stood up. He left both coffees untouched on the table and walked out the door without looking at anyone and without, Sasha noticed, ever realizing she had been sitting there watching.