Icebound Hearts

Chapter 8

The bonfire happened every year on the Saturday after the first real snowfall stuck for good — an unofficial Pine Ridge tradition that had started, as far as anyone could tell, sometime in the eighties out at the old Kowalski gravel pit, and had simply never stopped happening since, migrating eventually to the flat stretch of field behind the Icehouse once the gravel pit got fenced off for liability reasons nobody wanted to think too hard about.

By the time Maya and Ellie got there, the fire was already going strong, throwing orange light up against a sky gone fully dark, sparks spiraling up into air cold enough to bite. Someone had a truck backed in with the tailgate down and a speaker running off a battery pack, and most of the team was clustered near the flames in various states of teenage-boy weather denial — hoodies instead of coats, like the cold was something you could out-tough if you just refused to acknowledge it.

"There's a whole sociological study in why hockey players think jackets are optional," Ellie said, tugging her own coat tighter.

"It's a whole personality," Maya agreed.

They found a spot on one of the log rounds someone had dragged in as seating, close enough to the fire to actually feel it, and Maya had her camera out before she'd even fully sat down — old habit, the bonfire practically begging to be shot, firelight and breath-fog and a couple dozen kids she'd known her whole life laughing at something on somebody's phone.

Cooper found them within about four minutes, dropping onto the log next to Ellie with the specific unearned confidence of someone who had decided, apparently unilaterally, that this was where he was sitting for the night.

"Ladies," he said.

"Cooper," Ellie said, in a tone that suggested she'd long ago stopped being impressed by whatever he thought that greeting accomplished.

"You wound me, Vance."

"I barely tried."

Maya smiled behind her camera, catching the exchange on film without either of them noticing, and it was maybe ninety seconds later — she'd swear to this part later, if anyone ever asked — that Jake showed up on the other side of the fire, laughing at something Nate had said, firelight doing something genuinely unfair to the line of his jaw, and her camera drifted his direction before her brain had fully authorized the movement.

She caught it. The shot. Him mid-laugh, unguarded, looking like exactly the kid she'd known her whole life and also, somehow, someone she'd never quite seen before.

She lowered the camera fast when he looked up, like she'd been caught at something.

"Smooth," Ellie murmured, not even looking at her.

"I was photographing the fire."

"You were photographing Jake Thompson's jaw, and honestly, fair, but let's not pretend otherwise."

Jake made his way around the fire a few minutes later — not obviously, not in any way that would've read as deliberate to anyone not already watching for it, but Maya noticed the path he took anyway, weaving between clusters of people in a way that put him, eventually, on the log round directly across the fire from her, close enough to talk over the crackle and the music without having to shout.

"Carter."

"Thompson."

"Car running yet?"

"Cooper's uncle's got it. Says it's the battery, like you called it. Very smug about it, by the way."

"I'm always smug when I'm right." He settled in, elbows on his knees, firelight flickering across his face. "Good turnout this year."

"Same turnout as every year. You just say that every year."

"Maybe I like saying true things repeatedly."

"That's either a virtue or the most annoying personality trait a person can have, and I haven't fully decided which."

He laughed — really laughed, head tipping back slightly, and across the fire Cooper's eyebrows went up so fast and so obviously that Ellie had to physically elbow him to keep him from saying something. Maya didn't see it. Jake did, and shot Cooper a look sharp enough that Cooper immediately turned the eyebrow-raise into an exaggerated cough, which fooled absolutely nobody.

"Your friend's not subtle," Maya said, catching the tail end of it anyway.

"Cooper's never been subtle a day in his life. It's part of his charm, allegedly."

"Allegedly."

The fire popped, sending up a spray of sparks that scattered against the dark, and for a second neither of them said anything, just watched the flames the way you do at a bonfire, comfortable in the kind of silence that had nothing anxious in it at all — until, gradually, it did, the silence stretching just slightly past comfortable into something with weight to it.

"You apply yet?" Jake asked, quieter now, the question clearly not really about anything as simple as it sounded.

"Not yet. Deadline's not till spring."

"But you're going to."

"I'm leaning that way." She poked at the fire with a stick she'd picked up without really deciding to, mostly to have something to do with her hands. "You call that program back?"

"Not yet." He said it a little sheepishly, like he'd caught himself in the same hesitation he'd just called her out on. "I know. Hypocrite."

"Little bit."

"In my defense, my dad's already planned out the entire visit itinerary like it's a military operation, so it's not like I'm getting to sit with the decision quietly."

"Sounds exhausting."

"You have no idea." He looked at her across the fire, something steadier in his expression now, less joking. "It's nice, actually. Talking to someone who gets it. Everyone else just tells me how lucky I am."

"You are lucky."

"I know. That's not — that's not the same as it being simple." He held her gaze a beat too long across the flames, and Maya felt that same lift-and-drop feeling from Reyes's office, from the truck in the snow, arriving again now with the fire crackling between them and half the town close enough to notice if either of them let it show too plainly on their face.

Across the circle, Ellie caught Cooper's eye. Neither of them said a word. They didn't have to — the exchange happened entirely in eyebrows, the universal language of best friends watching two oblivious people fail to hide something in plain sight.

"So," Cooper said loudly, breaking whatever moment had been building, tossing a marshmallow bag in Jake's general direction with more force than strictly necessary, "anybody gonna cook these, or are we just gonna sit around being weird all night?"

"We weren't being weird," Jake said, a half-second too fast.

"Sure," Cooper said, in a tone that matched Ellie's earlier one almost exactly, and Maya caught Ellie's eye across the fire and had to look away fast, because if she held that look for even one more second she was fairly sure she'd start laughing in a way that would give away far more than she meant to.

The night wore on. Somebody produced a guitar that mostly didn't get played correctly. Nate got into an argument with one of the defensemen about the playoffs that hadn't happened yet. The fire burned down slow, and Maya took more pictures than she needed for any assignment, more than half of them, if she was honest with herself later while sorting through the memory card, somehow ending up with Jake somewhere in the frame.

She didn't delete any of them.