Chapter Four: Practice Makes Perfect (Fake) Feelings

It was Maya's idea, technically.

"If you're going to be convincing," she'd said Tuesday morning, with the tone of someone who had been thinking about this for approximately forty-eight hours straight, "you should know things about each other. Real things. Couples know things."

"We're not a couple," Nora said.

"Fake couple. Same rules apply."

And that was how Nora found herself sitting on the bleachers above the ice rink on a Wednesday afternoon, watching Cole run drills with the rest of the Millbrook Wolves while her calc notes sat unread in her lap and she tried very hard to focus on integration by parts.

She had come because it made practical sense. She should know what his practice schedule looked like. She should be able to talk about hockey with some degree of competence. This was research.

This was definitely not because the ice rink was the only place she'd ever seen Cole Whitaker look completely at peace.

He was fast. She'd known that, abstractly — everyone in school knew Cole was the best player on the team, probably one of the best in the region — but knowing it and watching it were different things. On the ice he moved like he'd been built for it, all that restless energy that made him take up too much space in hallways suddenly making perfect, purposeful sense. He laughed at something his teammate said and it echoed up into the cold air and Nora looked firmly back down at her notebook.

Integration by parts. That was a thing that existed.

She was very interested in it.

---

He spotted her when practice ended, and jogged up to the boards with his helmet under his arm, hair damp and cheeks flushed from the cold.

"You came," he said, for the second time, with the second instance of that same relieved surprise.

"Research," she said. "I should know your schedule."

"Right." He nodded. Didn't say anything else. He seemed to do that a lot, accept what she offered without pushing for more, and she wasn't sure if it was considerate or just tactical. "Come on, there's a diner two blocks away. I need approximately ten thousand calories right now and you can quiz me on stuff."

"Quiz you on stuff?" she repeated.

"Couples know things about each other," he said, and then looked slightly caught. "Maya texted me."

"Of course she did."

The diner was the kind of place with red vinyl booths and laminated menus and a milkshake list that took up an entire page. Cole ordered like a man who had just survived something and was rewarding himself for it. Nora got coffee and the curly fries because they looked too good to ignore.

"Okay," she said. "Basic facts. Favorite color."

"Blue. Dark blue, specifically. Like—" He gestured vaguely. "Pre-game ice. Before they turn the main lights on."

She looked up from her notebook.

"What?" he said.

"That's not a color, that's a mood."

"Can't it be both?"

She wrote it down. "Mine is green. Simple. No poetry involved." She tapped her pen on the notepad. "Favorite food."

"Whatever Coach isn't actively banning. Currently it's my mom's pasta." He stole one of her fries. "You?"

"Those fries, apparently." She pulled the basket an inch closer to her. "Siblings?"

"None. You?"

"Older sister. She's in college, she's loud, I miss her constantly." She paused. "Biggest fear?"

Cole was quiet for a second, turning his straw in his glass. "Blowing it," he said. "Like — getting something and then losing it because you weren't careful enough. Missing the thing that mattered." He said it to the table, a little too honest for the bright fluorescent lights of the diner, and then seemed to realize it and glanced up. "You?"

Nora didn't answer immediately.

"Same," she said finally.

Something shifted between them. Not dramatic — no thunderclap, no sudden music — just a quiet recalibration, like two people discovering they'd been reading from the same page without knowing it.

Cole looked at her.

She looked at him.

"Okay," he said, softer. "What else do you need to know?"

*More than I expected,* she thought.

"What do you want to do after graduation?" she asked instead.

His whole face changed — lit up from the inside. "Play. If I can. There are scouts—" He stopped, like he was worried about jinxing it. "It's not certain."

"But you want it."

"More than anything," he said simply.

Nora filed that away next to *dark blue, pre-game ice* and *blowing it* and thought about how much of him she'd been completely wrong about.

She stole one of his onion rings in retaliation for the fry.

He grinned and let her.