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It starts over winter break. Jack is at home (and he doesn’t really envisage a time when he won’t mean ‘Montreal’ when he says ‘home’, for all that he’ll end up living wherever his work takes him) and he’s in the kitchen with his mom.
“Can I help?” he asks, his voice careful and low. She glances at him and smiles, nods her head up and down twice.
“If you want to,” she says. Her voice sounds easy and free of worry, and Jack’s distressingly unused to hearing his mom speak to him without some concern. He smiles, though - feels it tug at the corners of his mouth until it turn upwards - and she reaches out to touch his hair, pushing it back from his face where it needs a trim. “What do you want to do?”
Jack isn’t sure, but he thinks of the breakfasts that Bittle laid on in the Haus kitchen as he tended the stove, and about how it had felt so easy to be in his orbit there. “Pancakes?” he offers, and wishes he sounded more certain, but he’s not certain of much outside of the rink, is still learning to fake his way through without shutting down.
His mom nods easily, though, like she has since he was little, coaxing him towards the right answers, and helps him gather what they need.
“Do you know how?” she asks, and he knows that she’s doesn’t doubt him so much as he’s always been ambivalent about cooking anything that he isn’t required to eat. Jack hasn’t survived solely on protein shakes and grilled chicken since he’s had to fend for himself, but it’s not far from the truth. He nods his head, though, and thinks he can always text Bittle if he has to, but he’s watched him do this for a long time now. He’ll be fine.
He doesn’t even realise it’s him humming the tune until he stops. His mom plants a mug of black coffee on the countertop next to him, touches his arm gently.
“You seem happier, Jack,” she says, and he stops stirring for a short for a second to evaluate. The tune whispers through his head again, a few lines stirring from somewhere deep, A song of you comes sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines. He frowns down at the pancake batter in his hands.
“I am,” he says, and it’s true, for all the trouble in his face. And that’s it. She doesn’t press, and he doesn’t volunteer anything further. The last year has been good, though. Better than ‘good’. Probably better than any other year he can remember, though he’ll own there are a few that he can’t recall with much clarity.
“I am,” he repeats, and hears the wonder in it himself.
*
It continues through each day. He’ll catch himself as he tightens his laces, the words soft on his lips as he pulls hard at the string in his hands.
“Something is certainly on your mind,” his dad chirps, and Jack’s blush creeps down his neck and burns hard in his chest. It’s silly, he thinks. He’s never even been to Georgia.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, finishes with his laces and pushes himself upright. He wishes there were some comeback, but he’s got nothing in the tank except the stubborn tuft of Bittle’s cowlick. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, counts out slowly for ten. His dad is still staring at him when he opens his eyes again.
“I’m just saying,” his dad ploughs on, tactless and direct, “This is like that time when you were 16 and you spent Christmas humming ‘New York State of Mind’, and you’d never been to New York either.”
Jack stops moving, his feet not even on the ice yet and the world is already slipping away beneath him. His dad’s hand on his shoulder is firm and heavy, and he feels sluggish when he turns his head.
“You knew?” he says, and Bob shakes his head slightly.
“No,” he breathes. “Not - not until, when he called. But your mother suspected.” He pauses, meets Jack’s flatlining stare second for second. “We both did, when you both came here.”
Jack looks away first. His head is full of Ray Charles, whom he doesn’t even really enjoy. He never really enjoyed Billy Joel either, he just knew the song and the title made him think of Kent, and now he’s got Georgia on his mind, and he doesn’t - not about Bittle.
He steps away from his dad’s hand, out into the rink. He pushes himself hard until his breath burns on the inhale, until his thighs start to protest louder than the thoughts jostling for space in his head, and then he slows down. It’s easier to think on the ice. Everything feels easier on the ice.
He’d have missed the cold in Las Vegas. He’s told himself that for a long time. He’d have adapted, but he’d miss the cold.
And he did spend a whole summer humming that song, between the years he spent in the Q. Kent Parson occupied a lot of brain space that summer.
The thing is, the things he felt (when he felt anything at all) for Kent don’t feel relevant now. And if that was what it was supposed to feel like, then the things he feels now are just getting in his way. It’s not the same thing. Kent was good at the things that mattered. Kent was an asset. Kent had a wicked mouth, and a strong backhand, and -
He rejects his dad’s insinuation. He’s happy. He has another meeting with George coming up, and he thinks he’s going to go for the Providence team because he’ll be near his friends, and -
Bob lets him skate for a while, and then, when Jack has slowed down enough, meets him in the middle of the ice. Jack is breathing hard, has never learned to take it easy, to be gentle with himself. Bob smiles at him.
“You know that no one expects anything of you,” he says. “Right?”
It’s not true, and Jack knows that. But he forces a tight smile, and firmly rejects the start of the tune in his head because it doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.
It can’t.
*
It’s still there though, through Christmas and New Year. When he works on his thesis, it’s there, buzzing incessantly, spilling out of his mouth occasionally. He forces the words back inside with lacklustre pie and unsweetened black coffee and realises that he’s counting down the days until he can head back down to Massachusetts.
His mother’s smile is knowing, and he realises he’s humming the song out loud again. She doesn’t say anything, though, and he almost wishes she would, just so that he can deny that it has anything to do with Bittle. Because of all the of the Georgia’s in his life, the more important one is the one with the contract that he may or may not sign. Right?
“Of course,” Alicia says, her voice slipping into a soothing mom rhythm. “You know your own mind best, Jack.”
He’s not sure if that’s entirely true. If if were, he wouldn’t need his therapist, or his anxiety medication. He and his mind are frequently in a fight for supremacy. He thinks, though, that since the coaching gig, and the decision to go to college, he’s been doing better. He’s certainly less confused, and less reliant on feeling nothing. He has friends, which is - different. Better. But he’s not sure he knows himself 100% of the time, and he’s sure, at 24, that he should know himself best. He nods hesitantly, and helps himself to a snack from the cupboard.
“Maybe,” he agrees, but he says it with a smile which seems to work for her.
It’s not until he gets back to Samwell, though, and the Haus, until he has his laptop on the kitchen table and his things back in his room, that the song whispers goodbye and he can settle. Bittle grins at him from across the room and replaces his mug with one that’s actually warm.
“I have something new for you to try,” he says, his accent broad and warm after the break. Jack suspects the same is true for him, and it'll be a few weeks before he can iron it back out again. Bittle doesn't seem to mind anyway.
“A new what?” he asks, and Bittle’s smile is tender.
And it whispers through his mind one last time, clear and bright as a bell. Still in peaceful dreams I see, the road leads back to you.