“Don’t do that.” She huffs before scrunching her nose – the way she always did when she was overthinking or uncomfortable. It’s strange just how much I remember about this woman. I remember her. I remember how I’ve held this woman as she cried about her frustration and pain, and she has held me while I mourned a broken heart after a bad loss on the ice.

“Do what?” I ask with concern.

“Look at me with those stupid, beautiful bedroom eyes,” she snaps up at me. But it’s hard to not laugh at her obvious annoyance when she mentions bedroom eyes.

“Oh sorry, I’ll just pop them out.” I say deadpan down at her, stepping to the side to welcome her in.

“Don’t do that either,” she chastises.

“What did I do now?” I ask as my eyebrows fly to my hairline.

“You almost made me laugh and I don’t have it in me to laugh today,” she says, finally stepping through the door and stopping for a brief moment. For one small second I think she is going to hug me, but she doesn’t. She walks into the living room and sits down on the couch – only to stand again and start pacing a hole in my white shag rug.

This isn’t the woman I recognise. Ellis was always the one who was put together, even when things were bothering her. When finals season was coming up she had spreadsheets and flashcards, and I was the one last-minute cram studying in the library up until two a.m. every night. She didn’t even seem this stressed when she thought she was going to have to drop out because her mother kept calling her non-stop for the first time in years and she feared Eleanor was actually going to show up in Seattle.

I don’t have a lot of practice when it comes to being the rock in the room. On the ice that’s Anders job – and he tends to carry that role off the ice too. He is the best captain I could have asked for, and for the past two and a half years he has made it a point to include me in the team antics. It helps that Edge and I transferred here together from Vancouver, and it probably helps that I know all the best bars to drink after a game where we won’t be hounded by fans.

This though, I am not practised in. Being the steady person in a time of crisis is not my role in life. My role is the silent flirty type who makes things better by smirking and charming everyone in the room. But that never worked on El in college and judging by the look on her face, it sure as hell isn’t going to work now.