“Gavin’s coming this weekend,” I tell Benson. “You remember Gavin? He’s in the league now. Texted me he’ll be in town, wants to crash at the house for old times’ sake.”
Benson looks up at me.
“Told him he could crash.”
“Give him your bed,” Benson says.
“Fuck that. He can take the couch.”
Lucy grins. “Okay, so this paragraph…”
That night, I’m in the kitchen at midnight for a glass of water, and I don’t mean to look out the window over the sink. I do anyway.
From this exact spot — only this exact spot — you can see down the slope of the street, past the back fences, to the third house down.
Two of her lights are on.
Four days. That’s the math I’ve not been doing all week, and I do it now, standing here in the dark with the tap running cold over my hand. Four days, and she hasn’t answered a single text. She hasn’t returned the stick. She hasn’t sent one cutting word back, hasn’t knocked, hasn’t taped anything to my window, hasn’t so much as let me see her face. She is, as far as I can tell, choosing to behave as though none of it happened at all. Which is the one move I didn’t expect.
I know what to do with a fight. I know exactly what to do with a girl who hits back — I’ve got a hundred answers loaded for that, it’s the best game I play. But I don’t know what to do with a girl who simply opts out of the war mid-war. There’s no equation for it. The puck just never leaves the other end of the ice, and I’m standing here on my own blue line waiting for a play that isn’t coming.
I stand at the window longer than I mean to.
I want her to do something. Anything. I want the war back because the war was fun. It was a good time. Linwood, steal all my hockey gear if you must.Actually, no, that would be bad.But something –– give me something.
I drink my water, shut off the tap, and turn off the light.
I go upstairs and lie there for a long time. And then I hear something rhythmic, and then a soft moan.Shit.Lucy must be back. I cover my ears until I find my AirPods, and then I slide them in and blast music because Benson and Lucy have no consideration whatsoever.Jesus.
Friday’s an away game, and the ritual’s back, full and quiet.
The stick’s my magic stick now — broken in over a week of practice, no longer the new one, no longer anything to do withher, just a good piece that does what I tell it. I eat my two eggs. I walk. I listen to the one playlist, no skips.
By the time I step into the locker room, the boys are loud, and I’m louder.
Gavin arrives at the house when we’re already on the road. He’s staying the weekend, and since we’re gone, he’s having a few people over while we’re out — I told him fine, it’s his old house too, we’ll be back by eleven, and the real damage can start then.
“Who’s Gavin?” Walsh asks, taping his own stick.
I tell him the NHL team he plays for.
Rowan looks up. “Then why’s he not playing tonight?”
“I don’t know, Row.” I shrug into my shoulder pads. “I didn’t run him through twenty-one questions before I gave him a couch. Media thing. Community thing. Who cares. Shit—” I catch the time and start moving faster.
My phone’s still out of my bag when it lights up one last time before I have to kill it.
Gavin: Hey, does Aspen Linwood still live three doors down?
Something rolls through my chest, quick and ugly and gone before I can name it.
Then I think better of it, because I’m not an animal. Of course he knows Linwood. Everybody in hockey knows Linwood — her old man’s one of the most famous coaches alive, the girl’s been rink-adjacent her whole life, half the league’s met her at some banquet or other. It’s nothing. It’s a hockey guy asking a hockey question.
I don’t answer it.
I shut the phone off and drop it in my bag, and I go play my game.
Chapter 10
