The Ice King Regrets

For three weeks after Noah Kade told me not to call him again, I became an expert at surviving in public.

Heartbreak did not always look like screaming into pillows or collapsing in the rain. Sometimes, it looked like submitting assignments on time. Like smiling at customers who complained their coffee was not hot enough. Like sitting in lectures with your pen moving while your chest felt hollow. Like saying, “I’m fine,” so convincingly that people believed you and then hating them a little for it.

I did not call Noah again.

Not because I did not want to.

God, I wanted to.

I wanted to call him when I woke up and forgot, for half a second, that everything was ruined. I wanted to call him when I passed the corner deli where he used to buy me terrible sandwiches after late practices. I wanted to call him whenever I saw his face on sports channels and heard commentators praise his discipline, his focus and his maturity.

Maturity.

That word made me laugh the first time I heard it. It was a cold, ugly sound that startled the woman beside me on the subway.

Noah was being praised for handling pressure while I carried the weight of his silence like a second body.

But I did not call.

His number stopped going through anyway.

At first, it rang once and cut off. Then it went straight to voicemail. Then the voicemail changed to a generic message that did not even have his voice on it anymore.

The worst part was not that he disappeared.

The worst part was how efficiently he disappeared.

Like people had planned for it.

Like I had been a problem someone knew how to remove.

Simone tried to keep me from going crazy.

She came over with takeout I could not eat and sat cross-legged on my apartment floor, wearing gold hoops, red lipstick, and the expression of a woman ready to fight anyone who said Noah’s name in her hearing.

“He is trash,” she said one night, stabbing noodles with a plastic fork. “Forget him.”

I sat on my mattress with my laptop open, pretending to edit an article about college athletics funding.

“He wasn’t trash,” I said before I could stop myself.

Simone’s face softened which annoyed me more than her anger would have.

“Aria.”

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You did not need to.”

She put the noodles down and sighed. “Okay.”

Silence filled the room just then and against my will, my eyes strayed to the blue hoodie Noah had forgotten behind my bathroom door, which I had shoved into a trash bag but not thrown away because apparently I was pathetic.

Simone followed my gaze.

“You want me to get rid of it?”

“No.”

“Aria.”

“I said no.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“I just don’t want to touch it.”

Simone licked her lips nervously and did not say anything. I sighed. I hated how everyone became gentle around a girl after she was humiliated.

Gentleness made the humiliation more real.

And I hated it.

So I worked.

I went to my unpaid internship at the sports desk of a digital magazine where the senior editor still called me “the NYU girl” because learning names was apparently too much labor for him. I fact-checked articles written by men who thought quoting two anonymous sources made them Woodward and Bernstein. I transcribed interviews until my fingers stiffened. I pitched stories nobody bought. Then I left for the coffee shop, worked closing shifts, came home smelling like espresso, and studied until my eyes burned.

Every day, I made myself harder.

Every day, I told myself that if Noah could choose silence, I could choose success.

Then one Tuesday morning, it happened.

I threw up in the sink at the coffee shop.

It happened so quickly I barely made it to the back room.

One second I was steaming milk for a cappuccino. The next, the smell turned sharp and unbearable and my stomach rolled so violently that I dropped the metal pitcher.

Marco found me bent over the sink, one hand braced against the counter, my breathing ragged.

“Aria?”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to stop saying that when you are clearly not fine.”

I wiped my mouth. “It’s just stress.”

“Stress has been living in your body rent-free for weeks. Even stress needs limits.”

“I have class after this.”

“You have a doctor after this.”

“I don’t have doctor money.”

Marco’s expression changed and he reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty, and held it out.

“No,” I said to him, shaking my head. I may be broke but I had pride.

“Take it.”

“Marco, no.”

“It is not charity. It is me paying you for the shift I am sending you home from.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I own the place. I can do whatever I like.”

I finally took the twenty because I was too tired to argue.

On the subway home, I counted dates in my head.

Then counted them again.

Then told myself I was wrong.

Then counted a third time.

By the time I reached the pharmacy three blocks from my apartment, my hands had gone numb.

The woman at the counter barely looked at me when I placed the pregnancy test in front of her. She scanned it, asked if I wanted a bag and told me the total like this was normal.

Maybe it was.

Maybe for other women, it came with husbands waiting at home, soft towels, steady hands and someone outside the bathroom door asking, “Are you okay?”

For me, it came with coins from the bottom of my tote bag and rain soaking through my coat.

I took the test home. Then I stared at the box for forty-seven minutes. I know this because I watched the clock.

My apartment was painfully quiet as I sat on the bathroom floor with the box in my lap.

“No,” I whispered even though a part of me knew before the test. A part of me had known since the smell of coffee turned against me. Since my body began carrying a secret my heart was too broken to receive.

I wanted the answer to be no because no would be easier.

No would mean Noah had only left me.

No would mean there was no one else inside the ruins.

No would mean I did not have to decide whether to tell a man who had told me never to call him again that he had left more behind than a hoodie and a wound.

I took the test. Then I waited. Those minutes were the longest of my life.bWhen the result appeared, I did not cry. I did not move. I just stared at the ‘Positive’.

One word.

One tiny, quiet word.

And yet, it broke everything inside me.

My hand went to my stomach before I could stop it.

There was nothing to feel. Nothing visible. Nothing anyone else would notice.

But I knew.

I knew, and the knowledge moved through me with terror and wonder and a grief so sharp it felt almost like love.

“Noah,” I whispered.

His name came out before I gave it permission.

Then I hated myself for saying it.

Then I said it again.

Because he should have been here. Not because he deserved to be but because I did not know how to carry that moment alone.

I reached for my phone and called him.

The call failed. I tried again.

Failed.

Again.

Nothing.

I sent a message.

Noah, I need to talk to you. It’s important. Please.

The message did not deliver.

I stared at the screen until it dimmed.

Then I found Daniel Price’s number, the man from Noah’s management team who had warned me into silence.

My thumb hovered over it before I called.

He answered on the third ring. “Miss Vale.”

The way he said my name made my skin crawl.

“I need to speak to Noah.”

“As I have explained before, that is not possible.”

“This is personal.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” My voice shook and I hated that. “You don’t understand anything.”

A pause came and then he said, “Mr. Kade has made his position clear.”

My throat closed in response even as I asked, “Did he tell you that?”

“He does not wish to be contacted.”

The room blurred at the edges and I pressed my palm harder against my stomach.

“Please,” I said, and that single word cost me more than I knew how to explain. “Please just tell him Aria called. Tell him I need five minutes.”

Daniel sighed softly, as if I was inconveniencing him. “I will pass along the message.”

“You said that last time.”

“Then you already have your answer.”

The line went dead immediately.

I lowered the phone slowly, because the smallest part of me still believed Noah would call back.

That was the most humiliating thing hope did.

It lived too long. Too long.

That night, I did not sleep. I lay on my mattress with one hand on my stomach and my phone beside my pillow, waiting.

At two in the morning, Simone called.

I wanted to tell her that I was pregnant.

But I swallowed the words.

Maybe because saying it would make it real. Maybe because I wanted Noah to know first.

Maybe because some joys, even frightening ones, are shaped around the people we imagined sharing them with.

“Babe?” Simone murmured, sleepy and worried. “You okay?”

I looked at the ceiling. “I’m just tired.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

That made her wake up. “What happened?”

I closed my eyes. Everything. Everything happened. “I can’t talk about it yet.”

“Okay,” she said immediately. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

My eyes burned as I responded, “Yes.”

So she stayed. She talked about everything. Her annoying coworker. A woman on the train who had brought a full plate of rice in a shopping bag. A jacket she wanted but could not afford. Anything. Everything.

I listened and cried silently, one hand over my mouth so she would not know.

The next few days became unreal.

I moved through the city with a secret under my ribs.

Everywhere I went, Noah was there. On screens. In articles. On the lips of strangers.

His career exploded exactly when mine felt like it had collapsed inward. He scored twice in one game and the sports desk erupted around me. Someone yelled that Kade was “built for greatness.” My editor assigned a feature about his rise to another intern because they needed to cover him.

I sat at my desk and highlighted quotes from a college basketball coach while nausea came and went in waves.

At night, I searched for clinics that I could go to. I drafted messages to Noah. Deleted them. Drafted emails to Daniel. Deleted those too.

Once, I went to the Titans’ practice facility. I stood across the street in a gray coat, my hands trembling inside my pockets, watching people move through the glass doors like they belonged to a world I could no longer enter. Security stood at the entrance while fans waited near barricades.

A black SUV pulled up, and for one wild second, I thought it was him.

It wasn’t.

Still, I stood there for almost an hour. Then I went home.

A week later, I saw Noah on television after a game.

He looked tired and beautiful at the same time. A reporter asked how he was handling the sudden attention around his personal life.

Noah’s jaw tightened in response. Then he said, “I’m only focused on the game.”

Focused? Bulshit.

I turned off the TV. The silence that followed was so deep it felt alive.

That night, the pain started. At first, I thought it was stress. After all, I had been running on coffee, fear and cheap crackers for days. My body must be exhausted so I told myself to lie down.

I told myself to breathe.

I told myself everything was fine because that was the lie I knew best.

But the pain did not leave. It only grew enough to make fear sit up inside me.

I called Noah first.

That is the part I still hate.

Even after everything, even after the silence, even after Daniel, even after the message telling me not to call, my first instinct was still him.

The call failed.

Then I called Simone next. No answer.

I sat on the bathroom floor, my back against the tub, breathing through a pain I did not understand and a fear I understood too well.

“No,” I whispered again.

That word had become a prayer.

No, not this.

No, not alone.

No, not after losing him too.

I remember the cold tile. I remember gripping the edge of the sink. I remember calling a clinic number with shaking hands and barely understanding the woman who told me what to do, where to go, when to seek emergency help. I remember nodding even though she could not see me.

I remember saying, “I’m alone,” and hating how small my voice sounded.

Most of all, I remember the silence.

By morning, something in me knew before anyone confirmed it. I knew that the tiny, impossible future I had not yet known how to want was gone.

There are losses that arrive like storms. This one arrived like a door closing softly in a room no one else entered.

I sat on the edge of my bathtub as weak daylight pushed through the small window, waiting to feel one clear emotion.

Anger. Sadness. Shock. Anything.

Instead, I felt hollow.

Later, when I had enough strength to move, I cleaned the apartment because there was nothing else to do. The world did not pause to acknowledge what had ended inside me. The rent was still due. My internship still expected me by noon. The coffee shop still needed someone for the evening shift.

I showered, dressed and tied my curls back so tightly my scalp hurt. Then I stood in front of the mirror and looked at the girl staring back at me.

She looked young. Too young.

That made me very angry.

I wrapped Noah’s hoodie in a trash bag, carried it downstairs and threw it into the building dumpster.

“Fuck you!” I screamed.

Then I went to work.

Simone found out two days later. She came to my apartment, took one look at the untouched soup on my stove, the clinic papers half-hidden beneath a notebook and my face.

Her hand went to her mouth. “Aria.”

I turned away.

“No.”

She stepped closer.

“Baby—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Don’t.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I said don’t.”

But she came anyway. She wrapped her arms around me, and I stood stiff inside her embrace for almost ten seconds.

Then I broke. I folded into her like something whose strings had finally been cut.

Simmone held me on the floor while I cried with a grief too large for my body and too private for the world that had already taken so much from me.

“He didn’t know,” I sobbed.

“I know.”

“I tried to tell him.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t answer.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

“No,” I said, pulling back, furious through tears. “You don’t know. Nobody knows. Everybody thinks I’m just the stupid girl he left. Everybody thinks this is about photos and another woman and hockey gossip. But it was not just him.”

My hand pressed against my stomach. The emptiness there was unbearable.

“It was not just him,” I whispered.

Simone cried then too.

For a while, we stayed on the floor as we cried. Eventually, Simone wiped her face and said, “You don’t have to go back to work yet.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, Aria.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I looked at the laptop even as the answers swirled through me.

Because grief without movement would swallow me.

Because if I stopped, I would hear the silence again.

Because Noah had chosen his future and I had lost one I never got to name.

Because the world had watched me become a joke, and I needed to become something they would one day fear.

But I did not say all that.

I only said, “Because I need to write.”

So I wrote. Badly at first. Then better. Then obsessively.

I chased stories other interns ignored. I stayed late at the magazine until the night cleaners knew my name. I fact-checked until editors stopped questioning my work. I pitched harder. Asked sharper questions. Learned how money moved through sports programs, how reputation buried misconduct, how institutions protected golden boys and discarded inconvenient women.

Every headline with Noah’s name became fuel for me.

Every photo of him smiling beside men who had helped erase me became evidence of what fame could do.

I stopped waiting for closure.

Closure was a luxury people invented when they had answers.

I had none.

Only silence.

So I built a life loud enough to drown it.

Weeks after the loss, Professor Elian returned one of my investigative drafts with red notes covering half the page. At the bottom, he had written one sentence. You are brilliant. Keep being brillant.

I stared at the words for a long time. Then I opened a new document to work.

Outside my apartment, winter pressed against New York like a warning. Somewhere in the city, Noah Kade was becoming everything the world wanted him to be.

And I was becoming something else.

I was not healed. I was not whole.

But I was still here.

Despite everything, I was still here. That was what mattered.