Her eyes glaze over as she looks at me. “I don’t care.”
“We’re not in high school anymore. This isn’t Madeline.”
“I do not care, Benson.”
“I’m trying to do this right. I am trying to talk to you about it instead of going around you.”
“Oh, you’re trying to do itright.That’s what we’re calling sneaking my best friend out of the apartment at midnight after I went to bed. You aredoing it right.”
“G.”
“Let me guess, Benson. You took her to your bedroom.”
Kev, at the pegboard, is no longer pretending to hang tape. Whoever is behind the stick rack has gone very still.
I lower my voice. “G. Can we keep it down?”
“No.”
“There are people in the room.”
“I do not care.”
“Please.”
She slams a jersey onto the stack. “I don’t care, Benson. I don’t care who hears me. I don’t care what people think. I have been telling you foryearswhat my one rule was, and you have, in the last month, broken it, lied about it, fought a guy in your house over it, and now slept with her and dropped her at her door at two-thirty in the morning so she could sneak back into the apartment where I live with her.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Jesus Christ. “I’m not — that’s not the point.”
“What is the point, Benson?”
“The point is I really fucking like her.”
“Benson.Focus on hockey.You are about to be a first-round draft pick. You have, by every account, the easiest senior year a captain has ever had ahead of him. All you have to do is play. And instead you are spending your time fucking my friends—”
“G.”
“What iswrongwith you?”
I look around. Kev is openly staring at the pegboard now without pretending to do anything else. The guy behind the stick rack has straightened up, and I can now see that it is one of the freshmen.
“G. Will you please just—”
“I don’t care what you do anymore, Benson.”
“And what about Lucy?” I ask.
She picks up an empty duffel and slams it into the stack of duffels behind her hard enough that one of them topples.
“Looks like I need to find a new roommate.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am extremely serious. I have been talking to Mara about it. Mara can move in within the week. Our rent is already cheap, and Mara has been wanting a cheaper place. It works for everyone.”
