Fee seemed to pick up on my car troubles without me having to say anything, so they always pretended to shuffle around in the back of their car, giving me time to deal with myself before they sat down in the driver’s seat and started the engine. They thought they were being sneaky, but I knew what they were up to. I wanted to be bothered by the soft handling, but I knew I needed it if I wanted to get anywhere in a car. Not that I’d ever admit that out loud.

Belt properly buckled and palm bruise activated, I settled back into my seat feeling pleasurably sore and exhausted.

We didn’t speak for a few minutes—me zoning out in my post-skate stupor, Fee humming along to some Mika on the stereo.

After a while, Fee said, “You know why I loved playing ice hockey so much?”

“Yeah, ’cause you like bashing the shit out of stuff, like me,” I replied, facing the window and smirking.

They laughed. “Yeah, that too. But also ’cause there was just something about the way I could use my body and strength—I didn’t have to hide it. And other players would give whatever they had back to me. It was like there was an understood agreement that we were just going to trade hits. But not just like, hits and hurt, you know? More like energy. Man, I miss that.”

I turned to look at them. They stared ahead, a slight curve to their lips. Fee had a tendency to get philosophical from time to time. But not in a pretentious way. I liked how thoughtful they could be without making me feel like a five-year-old. “Don’t you get that feeling in ball hockey?”

Fee nodded slowly for a few seconds. “Yeah, sort of. I mean, I can be physical and stuff, I guess. But there’s something about being on ice—skating is more fluid, you know? Ice hockey can be brutal, but also kind of smooth… elegant, even. Ball hockey’s more lurchy and jarring. I love a good hit as much as the next person”—they glanced at me—“but there’s gotta be more to the game than just that. For me, at least.”

Fee continued to gaze straight out the windshield into the distance, but I sensed they were trying to hint at something. Like I said, Fee had never pushed me to talk—about my parents or my proclivity for “hits and hurt”—but they’d listened without judgment to my minimal complaints about school, Priam and Vicki, the jerks I hung out with or hooked up with—and I knew I could share almost anything with them without having to worry about them trying to fix me or whatever.