He turns his phone on the next morning, because not knowing may be worse than whatever Jake says, though David isn’t sure of that. His phone is silent as it starts up, and his stomach’s sunk into the floor before a message pops up a minute later, like Jake put off the answering as long as David did.

ur the only guy whos ever fucked me, it reads. idk if its the same.

It blindsides him. Maybe Jake wasn’t fucking every guy he calls ‘buddy’, but he was far from inexperienced, it was obvious, and David just assumed at the time, and after. Thinking about the way it was that night at the NHL Awards, his first time but apparently Jake’s too, David’s mouth acrid with defeat, taking it out on Jake — he’s ashamed for the first time in awhile. Ashamed enough that he sends, Sorry I was a dick about it. within the minute, not even caring if that makes it look like he was checking his texts constantly.

i like u ne way :), Jake sends back ten seconds later, and David smiles all the way to practice, only managing to school his face when Kurmazov starts giving him strange looks.

*

David’s getting ready for practice when his phone rings, and he looks at it askance. His parents should both be at work, and neither call him anyway. His teammates text, and Dave’s assistant always emails to arrange a convenient time for Dave to call him. He can’t think of anyone it would be.

He isn’t any less confused when he sees Jake’s name, because Jake’s never called him before.

“Hello?” he answers, cautious, because it could be a teammate of Jake’s prank-calling if Jake was dumb enough to use David’s full name as his contact information.

“Hey,” he hears.

It’s Jake, and David relaxes a little, but not much, trying to think back through the last series of texts, wondering if he said something he shouldn’t have. Their most recent texts were about the upcoming basketball playoffs, so David doesn’t think so, unless Jake’s passionate about the Pistons. He’s really intense about the Detroit Lions, considering how terrible they are, so David can’t discount that as a possibility.

“Okay, so I can’t do this by text,” Jake says, “and like, phone kind of sucks too, but you’re like, a thousand miles away, so.”

“So?” David asks.

“You know how we’re playing each other in a couple weeks?” Jake asks.

David thinks that might be a rhetorical question, but he answers, “Yes,” just in case he’s wrong.

“So that’s one of the Panthers’ last games,” Jake says. David bites back telling him he knows that. It seems like it’s revealing too much, though it’s not exactly hard to look at a team schedule.

“Okay,” he says instead.

“Can I take you out?” Jake asks.

“You want to get drinks or something?” David asks.

“I — well, yeah, but.” Jake says, exhales hard. “I’m screwing this up. Okay, what are you doing the day after we play?”