Somewhere Only We Know - 3. Cracks in the Cold

Fall slid into Lakehurst in small, patient shifts. The air turned sharp in the mornings, the grass glittered with thin frost, and somewhere in the neighborhood, someone started burning wood in their fireplace. Leaves crunched under tires on the way to school, and the sky lost the heavy blue of summer, trading it for something paler, quieter.

Matt and Kitt fell into a rhythm they never bothered naming. They met at their lockers most mornings. Sometimes they talked the whole walk to class—about homework, football, swim practice, the weird kid who kept eating plain lettuce at lunch. Other days, they walked in silence, shoulders almost touching, letting the noise of the hallway rush around them while they moved through it like their own small current. They didn’t need to fill every space with words anymore. Silence had become something they shared, not something they had to fix.

Football season picked up as the warmth disappeared. Practices stretched later into the evening, the sky going dark before the last whistle blew. Matt came home sore most nights, grass stains on his uniform, sweat drying in his hair, legs heavy but heart loud with the thrill of it all. He complained about drills and sprints and endless laps around the field, but he loved it—you could see it in the way he lit up when he talked about plays and positions, about someday, maybe, really being the one who led the team.

Kitt watched him juggle it all from a slight distance—school, practice, new people, the sudden attention that seemed to follow Matt everywhere. He didn’t say much about it. Kitt rarely said those kinds of things out loud. But he came to games whenever he could, sitting high in the bleachers with a blanket over his knees, hoodie pulled tight, eyes tracking Matt’s number across the field even when the rest of the game blurred into helmets and collisions and whistles.

By October, Matt didn’t have to scan the crowd to know if Kitt was there. He felt it. A steady point on his personal map, like a direction he could always turn toward.

Freshman year, though, wasn’t just summer plus homework. It was louder, messier. Lunch tables filled and shifted. Groups formed and dissolved. People tried on new versions of themselves and dropped them just as quickly. Everyone wanted a place to belong.

Matt fit easily. He didn’t do it on purpose. He just… slid in. Teammates. Classmates. Kids who liked his jokes. Girls who liked his smile. Teachers who praised his effort even when he wasn’t perfect. He could sit anywhere and have someone to talk to.

Kitt did not.

He wasn’t disliked; he just occupied quieter spaces. Corners of lunch tables. Edges of group projects. Benches in the hallway with a book in his hands. He didn’t exactly disappear, but he didn’t stand out either, unless someone looked closely. Most people didn’t.

Matt did.

He noticed when Kitt was late to homeroom. He noticed when Kitt looked tired in the morning. He noticed when Kitt’s eyes went distant in the middle of class, like his brain had slipped underwater for a moment. And he also noticed, one afternoon in October, something small that stuck with him long after it passed.

They were in the hallway between classes when Sadie from biology waved at Matt.

“Hey, Matt!” she called.

He waved back, casual, barely thinking about it.

“Hey!”

That was all. Just a wave. A greeting. Nothing more.

But in the quick moment afterward, Matt’s gaze flicked toward Kitt and caught the tiny shift in his expression. Kitt’s eyebrows pinched together, his mouth tugged down the slightest bit, then everything smoothed out again too quickly, like someone erasing something before it could be read.

Matt didn’t understand why that moment stayed with him, but it did. It hovered in the back of his mind like a question he kept forgetting to ask.

By November, the cold came in hard. Frost clung to the ground in the mornings. Their breath turned to white clouds in the air. The trail behind their street turned muddy and slick, and the lake froze in milky sheets around the edges, the once-glassy surface now dulled and unfamiliar. Football season wound down, practices thinned out, and then it was over—just like that. No more late practices. No more bruises disguised as badges. No more Friday-night adrenaline.

Suddenly, Matt had time again. And without thinking, he filled most of it the way he always had—finding Kitt after school, walking home beside him, suggesting the lake even when the wind bit at their ears.

But some things weren’t exactly the same.

A few guys from the team started staying after school on Fridays even when season ended—tossing a football around, racing each other across the field, shoving and laughing louder than the cold warranted. They invited Matt without hesitation. They didn’t invite Kitt—not because they disliked him, just because they didn’t think to.

The first time it happened, Matt barely noticed.

“I’ll see you later,” he said easily, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“Sure,” Kitt said. “Go.”

He said it simply. No resentment. No complaint.

Matt assumed it was fine. Until the next afternoon, when he left the field with his cheeks stinging from wind and his throat raw from laughing, and he saw Kitt walking home alone along Willow Creek Drive. Jacket zipped to his chin. Shoulders a little hunched. Hands buried in his pockets like he was trying to keep the rest of himself from shrinking.

Matt jogged to catch up, breath puffing white in the air.

“Hey,” he called. “Why didn’t you come to the field?”

Kitt didn’t look at him right away.

“You were with your friends.”

“You’re my friend,” Matt said without thinking.

“I know.” The response was so soft it almost disappeared into the air. “I just didn’t… want to intrude.”

Matt stopped walking. “Intrude on what?”

Kitt finally met his eyes. His gaze wasn’t angry, just honest.

“They’re your teammates,” he said. “You fit with them. I don’t.”

Matt opened his mouth, ready to argue, to insist, to say that of course Kitt fit, that he didn’t need permission. But Kitt shook his head once—a small, decisive movement—and turned back toward the sidewalk.

The conversation ended there, but something else started.

That was the first time Matt realized that Kitt wasn’t untouched by things. That quiet didn’t mean unbothered. That even someone who stayed on the edges could feel left behind.

The knowledge sat in Matt’s chest like a stone. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like that he had done something—by omission, maybe, not intention—that made Kitt feel alone.

He didn’t know how to fix it. So he did the only thing he could think of in the moment: he moved closer, shortening the space between them as they walked, letting their sleeves brush every few steps in the cold. He didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t know how to yet. But the apology lived in the space between them.

Winter changed the lake more sharply than it changed anything else. Where it had once been blue and open, it was now a muted, milky surface under a pale sky. Thin ice formed along the edges. The trees around it stood bare, branches like dark lines against the washed-out afternoon light.

They went anyway.

Bundled in jackets, scarves, and gloves, they sat at the edge of the dock, their legs swinging in the space above the frozen water. Their breath fogged as they spoke, drifting up and away like short-lived ghosts.

“You ever think about the future?” Matt asked one late afternoon in early December.

Kitt glanced sideways. “You mean like… jobs and stuff?”

“Yeah. That. Or college. Or, I don’t know. What happens after all this.”

Kitt took a moment before answering. “My dad wants me to go somewhere good,” he said. “Strong academics. Good reputation.”

“And what do you want?” Matt pushed, leaning back on his hands.

Kitt looked down at the ice. Matt noticed that he always looked away when he didn’t know if his answer would be the right one.

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “I think I’d like to keep swimming.”

“You will,” Matt said immediately. “You’re already one of the best on the team.”

Kitt’s mouth twitched. “You’re biased.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “But I’m also right.”

Kitt didn’t argue, but the slow breath he let out came easier than before.

“What about you?” Kitt asked after a moment. “What do you want?”

Matt didn’t need time to think.

“I want to play quarterback,” he said. “For real. Varsity. Maybe more someday. I don’t know if I’m good enough yet, but… I want it.”

“You will,” Kitt said simply.

The words landed heavier than Matt expected.

“You think so?” he asked, looking over.

“Yes,” Kitt said, and there was no doubt in his voice at all.

Matt swallowed, suddenly aware of the cold air scraping his throat. Somehow, hearing it from Kitt made it feel less like a dream and more like something possible.

As winter break approached, school felt heavier. Teachers rushed to cram in tests and projects. Kitt’s evenings filled with textbooks and notes and the tense quiet of his father’s expectations hovering in the background.

Study harder.
Stay focused.
Don’t waste time.

Not shouted. Just repeated. Again and again until they lodged inside him.

Matt started noticing small things: how Kitt’s shoulders stiffened every time his phone buzzed; how he checked the screen quickly, jaw tightening before he slid it away; how his face pinched with a kind of quiet fatigue that had nothing to do with sleep.

“Everything okay?” Matt asked one afternoon as they walked home.

“Yeah,” Kitt said quickly. Too quickly. “Just school.”

Matt wanted to push, to say, No, not just school, I know there’s more than that. But he didn’t know how to cross that line without sounding like he was prying into something Kitt had learned to keep hidden. So he let it go. For the moment.

Still, the cracks were there—hairline fractures in something he’d thought was solid. A quick shadow crossing Kitt’s face when Matt laughed with someone else. A fraction of a second where Kitt seemed to fold into himself before smoothing everything out. A feeling in Matt’s chest that something was shifting between them, even if nothing dramatic had happened.

Whenever things felt too close to breaking, Matt always did the same thing.

“Lake?” he would ask.

And no matter how tired Kitt was, no matter how tightly his day had wound him up, he always said yes.

Because the lake wasn’t just a place anymore. It was a tether. A neutral ground. The one spot that still felt entirely theirs.

Winter was only just beginning. So were the cracks.

The cold didn’t just settle over Lakehurst; it threaded between people too. Not all at once, not like a slammed door. More like a draft under a window that you only notice once it’s been there a while.

Matt’s popularity didn’t explode so much as spread—gradually, inevitably. The varsity players started acknowledging him in the halls, clapping him on the shoulder, telling him he had “real potential.” Sophomores invited him to sit with them sometimes. People talked to him more. Laughed with him more. Looked at him differently.

Girls too.

Especially Sadie from biology.

She seemed to always find her way over to him—asking about lab notes, smiling a little longer than strictly necessary, laughing even when he said something that wasn’t really a joke. Matt noticed. He just didn’t spend much time thinking about it. Dating and crushes felt like something other people were doing, a chapter he hadn’t flipped to yet. He liked football. He liked hanging out. He liked—

He liked walking home with Kitt. He liked knowing Kitt would be at his locker. He liked hearing the soft, dry way Kitt commented on his day.

He didn’t think too hard about why he liked it so much.

Kitt, quietly, felt the distance more than he understood it. His father’s expectations tightened like a belt around his days—midterms, grades, planning for the future, being “serious” about his time. Kitt’s world narrowed to school, home, water, and the few pockets of freedom he carved out with Matt.

His body tired from swim practices, but his mind tired more from never really feeling like he was enough—never perfectly ahead, never allowed to rest too long. Even at the lake, the pressure clung to him like chill air.

He didn’t tell Matt any of this. He didn’t know how. All he felt was that the space beside him—where Matt lived in his day—felt unsettled. Like Matt was both right there and a little farther away at the same time.

The moment something clicked—quietly, painfully—came on a gray afternoon in early December.

Kitt waited by Matt’s locker after school, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while the hallway buzzed with students grabbing their stuff and rushing for the exit. He checked the clock. He didn’t want to seem like he was waiting, even though he was.

Then he saw Matt.

Leaning casually against the lockers. Laughing. Sadie standing in front of him, pink scarf looped around her neck, hair falling in a way that looked like it took time to make it look like it didn’t. She said something that made Matt grin—his real grin, the one that reached his eyes and pushed his cheeks up.

Sadie tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and said, “Text me, okay?”

“Yeah,” Matt said easily. “Sure.”

Kitt didn’t stay long enough to hear anything else.

He turned away, slipping toward the exit as quietly as he could, backpack strap clutched too tightly in his hand. He stepped outside into the cold with his face carefully blank, the kind of blankness you use when you’re not sure what you’re allowed to feel.

He wasn’t angry. He couldn’t be jealous. He wasn’t allowed that.

But something inside him pulled tight anyway.

By the time Matt made it to the front doors, Kitt was gone.

Matt frowned, confused. He checked the sidewalk outside, scanned the bike racks, looked toward the usual corner where Kitt sometimes waited. Nothing.

A knot formed in his stomach.

Did I miss him? Did he have to leave early? Did I do something?

He ended up jogging part of the way home before he spotted him—halfway down Willow Creek Drive, walking alone, head down.

“Hey!” Matt called, breath puffing in the cold as he caught up. “You didn’t wait.”

“You were busy,” Kitt said.

“With what?”

“Talking.”

“With Sadie?” Matt blinked. “We were just… I mean, she asked about homework. That’s all.”

Kitt made a small sound in his throat that Matt couldn’t quite read. Not agreement. Not exactly disbelief. Just… something.

“You okay?” Matt asked.

“Yes,” Kitt said quickly. “Just cold.”

He tucked his chin into his jacket. Matt walked beside him, each of them quiet in a way that felt less like peace and more like caution.

The unsettled feeling stayed with Matt all the way home.

Winter break showed up on their calendars like it was supposed to mean rest. For Matt, it meant later mornings, more time with his family, and the chance to be constantly told by his dad that this would be “his decade” if he kept working. For Kitt, it meant more time at home under his father’s watchful expectations, more studying, more pressure disguised as structure.

Still, they tried to hold onto the part that was theirs.

Matt invited Kitt over for a holiday sleepover—movies, junk food, the same kind of lazy comfort they’d had in the summer. He expected it to feel easy. Automatic.

Kitt came, but he came quieter. He sat a little straighter on the couch, laughed a little less easily, and watched Matt with a kind of carefulness that hadn’t been there before. Matt, feeling something was off and hating not knowing why, talked even more than usual. He cracked jokes he’d normally let die. He rambled about the team, about his sister, about the weird Christmas decorations their neighbor put up. He tried to fill every gap with noise.

At one point, from the kitchen, Matt’s sister called out,

“So, are you inviting Sadie to the New Year’s thing?”

Matt rolled his eyes, yelling back, “No!”

Kitt went very still beside him.

Matt didn’t notice. He just shook his head and laughed, muttering something under his breath about his sister being nosy.

Later, when the house was dim and the TV played some old movie on low volume, Matt shifted on the blanket and turned to Kitt.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked. “You’ve been… off. Lately.”

Kitt’s fingers curled slightly into the blanket. He stared at the flickering screen.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Matt didn’t buy it. But he’d never been good at the deeper questions, the ones he didn’t know how to ask without feeling like he might break the thing he was trying to protect. So he swallowed the follow-up words and lay back down.

They fell quiet. The air between them felt heavier than it used to, but neither of them reached across it. Neither of them knew how.

Kitt lay awake longer than Matt did.

He listened to the soft hum of the heater, the muffled sounds of Matt’s family moving in another room, the steady rhythm of Matt’s breathing as he drifted off beside him. His own thoughts circled in slow, unsure loops: the image of Matt laughing by his locker, Sadie’s pink scarf, the way it hurt even though it shouldn’t.

Jealousy felt too dramatic for what he felt. But something like it lingered anyway—a small, sharp thing he didn’t want to look at too directly.

He was scared. That part he recognized.

Scared of being replaced.
Scared of caring more than he was supposed to.
Scared of losing the one place, the one person, that made his life feel wide instead of narrow.

He curled deeper under his blanket and stole a glance at Matt’s face in the flickering light—softer in sleep, unguarded in a way he never was during the day. And for a brief, fragile second, Kitt wondered if maybe Matt felt just as lost, just as unsure, in ways he never showed.

He didn’t know it, but this was the first time both of them hovered at the border of wanting something more than friendship—whatever “more” meant—without having a name for it, without having language, without any idea what to do.

So they did nothing.

Just lay there.
Just breathed.
Just let the winter settle around them.

Things weren’t the same. And neither of them had any idea what came next.

Matt didn’t sleep well that night, even when it looked like he did.

His dreams blurred together—football fields and crowds and muffled whistles, Kitt turning away from him in a busy hallway, Kitt’s voice vanishing under other people’s laughter. Every time he drifted near waking, the room felt too quiet. The distance felt too real.

The only image that stayed soft in his mind was Kitt lying beside him, curled slightly toward the back of the couch, eyes closed, the line of his shoulders finally relaxed. For some reason, that stayed. The sense of responsibility did, too—this quiet conviction that Kitt should never feel alone if Matt could help it.

Morning came with pale winter light and the smell of pancakes from the kitchen. When Matt sat up, Kitt was already on the couch with his backpack in his lap, shoes on, coat zipped. Too ready to leave.

“You’re heading out?” Matt asked, rubbing his eyes.

“I told my dad I’d be home early,” Kitt said. “He wants help with stuff.”

“Right,” Matt said. “Okay.”

It sounded like a lie. Not a big one. Just one of those soft lies people tell when the truth feels too messy.

Matt stood and stretched, forcing a smile. “We can hang out later, if you want.”

Kitt hesitated, just long enough for Matt to feel it.

“We’ll see,” he said.

Those two words sat heavier than an outright no.

Matt walked him home anyway. Their breath fogged the air, their steps crunching over the thin layer of frost on the sidewalk. They passed neighbors scraping windshields and kids throwing half-formed snowballs at each other. Normally, Matt would comment on it. Normally, he’d narrate something dumb just to make Kitt huff a laugh. This time, he didn’t.

At the driveway, Kitt lifted a hand.

“See you Monday,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Matt answered. “Monday.”

Kitt turned toward the front door. His shoulders tightened the closer he got, like he was already bracing for the atmosphere inside. Matt waited until the door closed behind him before he let out a long breath that clouded the cold air.

He hated this. The not-knowing. The distance. The fear that he was losing something he didn’t know how to name but knew he needed.

Monday came too slowly. When it finally did, Matt found Kitt at his locker, hood up, hair still damp from the snow. He looked tired. Not in the sleepy way—tired in the way eyes get when someone’s been carrying more than they want to admit.

“Hey,” Matt said.

“Morning,” Kitt replied.

Just that.

“You wanna walk to class?” Matt asked, trying to sound casual.

“I have to talk to my English teacher before first period,” Kitt said, adjusting his books. “About the essay.”

“Oh,” Matt nodded. “Okay. Lunch, then?”

Kitt hesitated again. A tiny pause. A small inhale.

“I already told Brandon I’d sit with him,” he said. “We’re in the same science group.”

Brandon.

A boy they barely talked to outside of labs.

“Oh,” Matt said again. He made himself smile. “Cool. Yeah. Sure.”

Kitt closed his locker more carefully than usual, like the act itself needed precision.

“See you after school?” Matt asked.

“Maybe,” Kitt said.

He stepped into the river of students before Matt could think of anything else to say.

Frustration and confusion churned in Matt’s chest. He wasn’t used to feeling this off-balance with Kitt. He wasn’t used to being on the outside of whatever storm was moving through him.

So he did what he could. He tried.

He waited for him more often. He changed his route between classes to cross paths with him. He sent dumb assignment reminders. He asked to study together. Sometimes Kitt said yes. Sometimes no. Even the yeses felt cautious, like he was holding something back.

Matt lay awake one night, staring at the ceiling, whispering into the dark like it might carry the words somewhere they needed to go.

“I miss you,” he said.

He didn’t specify what he missed. The old ease. The certainty. The way Kitt’s presence settled him without effort. The way his day always felt clearer when Kitt was in it.

He just knew the feeling was real.

By January, with snow piled on lawns and icicles hanging from gutters, the space between them felt colder than the air outside. The more Matt tried to tiptoe around it, the worse it felt. Subtle wasn’t working. Waiting wasn’t working.

So he stopped being subtle.

After school one bitter Thursday, he spotted Kitt by the bike rack, adjusting his helmet, head ducked against the wind.

“KITT WELLINGTON!” Matt yelled.

Half the students still outside turned. Kitt froze like someone had just shone a spotlight on him.

Matt stomped across the snow, slipping once, flailing his arms before regaining balance.

“Dude,” Kitt hissed when he reached him. “Why are you yelling?”

“Because you’re ignoring me!” Matt shot back.

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You’ve been weird and quiet and distant and—” He slipped again on a patch of ice, windmilling his arms. “And I miss you, okay?”

A few kids nearby snickered before wandering away, losing interest.

Kitt’s eyes widened. “Matt—”

“I do,” Matt insisted, his voice lowering now that it was just for them. “I miss you. And I don’t know what I did, but I hate this.”

Kitt looked away, jaw tightening. “You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why does it feel like you’re a million miles away even when you’re right here?”

Silence pressed between them, heavier than the gray sky.

“I’m sorry,” Kitt said quietly.

“I’m sorry too,” Matt replied.

They blinked, realizing they’d spoken almost at the same time.

Kitt let out a disbelieving puff of air, the ghost of a laugh. Matt’s mouth twitched, then he gave in and laughed properly—loud and bright in the icy air.

“This is so stupid,” Matt said, still laughing. “We sound like some dramatic TV show.”

“You’re the dramatic one,” Kitt muttered, but his lips curved at the edges.

“And you’re impossible,” Matt shot back.

The tension didn’t vanish instantly, but it loosened. The ice between them cracked just enough to let something warmer through.

Matt exhaled and stepped closer. “Can we not do this again?” he asked, softer. “The weird distance thing. I hate it.”

Kitt studied his face for a long breath, then nodded, the movement small but solid.

“I hate it too,” he admitted. “I just… didn’t know how to say things. So I didn’t say anything.”

Matt’s voice gentled even more. “Then promise me something?”

“What?”

“No more hiding stuff. If something feels bad, or weird, or confusing—if one of us is being stupid—we say it. Even if it’s awkward. Even if it sucks.”

Kitt hesitated. Old instincts told him to keep things quiet, under control, inside. But something about the way Matt looked at him—open, unguarded, stubborn in that specific way that meant he cared—made the hesitation shorter than it might have been before.

“Okay,” Kitt said. “I promise.”

Matt held out his gloved hand like it was some solemn oath.

Kitt rolled his eyes but took it. Their hands squeezed together through layers of fabric, and it was clumsy and quick and lingered just a second too long.

“Good,” Matt said. “Because I swear I was about to start yelling your name across the whole town if I had to.”

“You already yelled it across the school,” Kitt pointed out.

“And I’ll do it again.”

“Please don’t.”

“I totally will.”

“Matt.”

“Kitt.”

This time, the silence that followed felt like it used to—full, not empty.

They started walking, their footsteps crunching over packed snow. The wind stung their cheeks, but between them, something felt warmer again—not perfect, not fixed forever, but mended enough to breathe.

As they turned onto Willow Creek Drive, their shoulders brushed, and neither of them moved away. The neighborhood lay quiet under its blanket of white. The lake was frozen solid. Branches were bare. Winter still held everything in its cold grip.

But inside the small, shared space between two boys walking home side by side, laughing under their breath at how ridiculous they were, it didn’t feel quite so cold anymore.