I’m home by nine, and I’m immediately unpacking, folding, and sorting. The toiletries are back in the drawer, conference lanyard into the trash, the good blazer back on its hanger, everything returning to its home. This is who I am. Competent and contained and alone in my quiet house.
The person I was last night feels like someone else entirely. I don’t think I can be her while I’m here in this house on this street, back in my life. I was bold last night, daring and willing to take control. But surely, he signed papers and is going to be out of here.
I keep checking my phone, waiting to hear it from him. Waiting to hear that he signed, that he’s going pro, that he’s leaving the rest of us behind because that’s what he’s worked his whole life for, and it’s what he deserves. He deserves that success. I just got to him a few weeks too early, and some small, stupid part of me is already bracing to find out that I’m not anything more than a fake date that got out of hand.
He hasn’t texted me all day. The silence is starting to sound exactly like a silence I already survived once, the seven-day kind, and I fold my last sweater and place it in my dresser. I’m being insane, but that doesn’t stop me from checking my phone again.
Nothing.
Here it comes, says the part of me that has been right about this before. Here’s the drop.
I put my bag in the back of my closet when I think I hear knocking. It must be Kirra.
“Hold on!” I call out, deep in my closet. I jump to reach the top shelf. I shut the closet door, and then something raps against my window.
I stop midway to my bedroom door and look at the window. The curtains are pulled shut. My heart does something violent before my brain has caught up to what’s happening. I cross the room and pull back the curtain.
Stanley Ermington is standing outside my window in the dark, grinning at me through the glass.
And the happiness comes up out of me before I can even think. There’s no managing it, no contained version of me anywhere in sight, just a flood of relief and want so big it embarrasses me, because he’s here.
I basically run to the side door, but I pretend like I didn’t. He’s already waiting on the other side, grinning that wide grin that’s just for me.
“Hi,” I say.
“Linwood.”
I smile wider. “Ermington.”
“Can I come in?”
I hold the door open, he steps past me, and I walk down the hall. He follows. When we get to my bedroom, I close the door.
“So, how was your flight?” he asks.
“Boring,” I answer, trying not to seem as excited as I feel.
“Yeah,” he says. “Mine too.”
We’re watching each other, aware of the current running between us. I don’t think either of us has stopped smiling. This is easier than I thought it was going to be. All the doubt I had earlier slips away, and there’s a comfort between us that wasn’t there before.
“How did it go?” I ask, dying to know. “The meeting with Halifax.”
“They offered me now,” he says.
My stomach drops.
“They’re banged up, they’re making a playoff push, they wanted me to sign and come down for the rest of the season. Leave Camden in February. Be a pro this spring.” He says it plainly, no performance anywhere on it, watching my face the whole time. “It’s a real offer. The money’s real, the spot’s real. My agent nearly proposed to the assistant GM in the room.”
My smile has officially left my face. I don’t say anything. I can’t. I’m waiting for the rest, waiting for the I said yes.
“I said no.”
My stomach drops for a whole new reason.What?
“I told them I’m finishing my season. I’ll sign the normal way.” He shrugs like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just reach into my chest and unclench a fist that’s been closed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The relief that moves through me is so total it folds me down onto the edge of the bed. He’s not leaving. Not in February, not now, not yet. The drop I’ve been braced for all night doesn’t come. Instead, there’s this, the opposite of the drop, the floor staying right where it is under my feet. I have to take a breath before I trust my voice.
