He held out the empty teacup. "Where do I put this."
"Anywhere. I'll wash it."
"I can wash it."
"It's a cup, not a quest. Just leave it on the bench."
He set it down. Then he stood there. Still in the doorframe. His hands were at his sides, flexing slightly, the unconscious rhythm I'd noticed him doing when his brain was working faster than his mouth was willing to move.
"The biscotti," he said.
"Yeah?"
"They were good."
Three words. Delivered with the gravity of a man confessing to a crime. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling too wide, because I understood instinctively that smiling too wide at Wes Chen's vulnerability would send him back behind the wall, and I wanted him on this side of it.
"I'm glad," I said. "My nonna would be thrilled."
"You bake."
"I cook. Baking is a subset. Italian families don't really distinguish. If it happens in a kitchen, it's cooking."
"I bake," he said.
I blinked. Of all the things I had expected to come out of Wes Chen's mouth, "I bake" was not on the list. It was not adjacent to the list. It was in a different building from the list.
"You bake?"
"Bread mostly. Sourdough. Some pastries." He said this the way someone might admit to a secret vice. Quietly. Without eye contact. As if the information was dangerous and he was testing whether I could be trusted with it.
"Wes Chen. NHL enforcer. Bakes bread."
"If you tell anyone, I will end you."
"That's the most words you've ever said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
But he was still standing in the doorframe. He had not left. He had come to return a teacup and had instead told me something that I was fairly certain he hadn't told anyone on the team, and the weight of that trust, unexpected and fragile, settled into me like flour into dough.
"I won't tell anyone," I said. "But only if you bring me a sample. Professional assessment. Baker to baker."
Something happened at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The memory of a smile. The fossil record of an expression that had once existed and had been buried under years of granite.
"Maybe," he said.
He left. I stood in the equipment room surrounded by hockey sticks and the ghost of a conversation that had contained more vulnerability than I suspected Wes Chen had shown anyone in a very long time.
I pulled out my phone and texted Sofia.
I'm in trouble.
Her response was immediate: What kind of trouble?
The warm thing kind.
A pause. Then: Oh Luca. Is he at least cute?