Sasquatch to the Moon

11: Box-Out

YETI 

We don't talk about it. I don't mention it. I don't touch upon the subject. I don't even go near it. 

He finds me at practice the next day and picks a joke, I go along with it, unable to look him in the eyes. That night he posts something easy, just a picture of him stretched out on his couch with almost no light in the room spare that of what's coming in the window and the light from his phone on his face. Steph must've taken it. Or someone else, someone I don't know. It has a time tag, ten at night, placed strategically in the corner, not covering an inch of his legs. Settled in with the white bricks in his apartment. 

There's a song that's nestled in the corner, when you click on the story it opens with hit me up anytime you want, I'm thinking like soon, I think I might slip away. And the voice sounds like his, just a little, just in the strain. I find it on Spotify after opening the story for the third time in one night. 

.getawayfortheweekend. by Dead Poet Society

I google them after the fourth time I open his story, I'm not sure why I keep doing it, maybe it's because it's such a good photo, maybe because of the quirk in his lip in the blue light of his phone, maybe it's that his hair is tied up, maybe its his shoulders nestled down into the couch arm rest, maybe it's the light from the city, maybe its his hips or his legs or the vein you can see on his forearm or maybe it's the clean dishes in the rack or the pile of sticks in the corner of his room or the coffee mug on the table next to him despite it being ten at night when he posted it, now 1am when I'm googling things because of him. 

Dead Poet Society, the band, not the movie, met in Boston at college and is now based there. 

I reopen his account and scroll, ending up skittering to a stop when I find a photo of him with eye black around his eyes and across his nose, flash photography making his pupils red and his irises so so green on their black backdrop that I wonder if he was wearing something, contacts, to make them like that. 

It's definitely a concert. 

He's younger, probably around his rookie season. When I check the date it confirms that he was only nineteen. He was thinner, his cheeks hadn't slimmed down yet but maybe that's a product of the smile he's giving or the light. 

Nobody's tagged and the caption is so inconclusive that I almost have to guess that's who he was seeing, or guess it wasn't, or guess anything. Maybe it was just the song he likes not the band. 

I listen to the song again, curious about what he likes about it, curious about what it means. 

I listen and I try not to listen to the similarities in their voices as the singer goes through the with your hands wrapped around my throat, feels right, and I know you're mine line again. 

The story is gone when I wake up. Oddly enough. Like it was a figment of a dream, but the google searches are still open on my phone and the song was stopped halfway through so I doubt it was fake. 

I don't know how I'm going to handle flying to Tampa next to him knowing how many times I opened his story last night. 

***

Nico has a basketball. Which is terrifying.

"So we're here a day early, welcome to Tampa, I hope you guys hate the heat as much as I do. It's almost December and it's literally 80 degrees. This is not supposed to be a hockey city." She throws the ball up and catches it again. "Instead of an on-ice practice today, we're doing some team-building stuff. How many of you have played basketball?"

Greenie raises his hand, I shake mine. I sort of played. 

"Just you two? Damn."

"Nico, basketball season is right smack in the middle of hockey season, nobody could play around their school teams." Fen offers, a sweet and stupid look on his face watching her.