“Wild. That’s wild. Good for you.”
“Thank you.”
Stanley turns around and grabs my mug. I told him not to give me his coffee, but apparently, he’s forgotten that. He pours coffee into my mug and then passes it back to me.
“Thank you, babe,” I say lightly.
Gavin stiffens like he just remembered what this is. Stanley’s mouth lifts a little, and then it’s covered by the mug as he takes a sip.
Gavin tries to recover. “Hey, you ever go back to Tony’s?”
Tony’s was an Italian place fifteen minutes off campus. We went every other week. He ordered the same thing every time. So did I.
“Not in a while, no.”
“We should go.”
The room doesn’t move.
Stanley sets his mug down and then glares at him. “Gav,” he says in a deep tone.
Gavin looks at him. “Relax, brother. I meant you too. Bring the boys. The four of us. Five. Whoever.”
“We’ve got plans,” Stanley says and then takes another sip.
And Gavin reads the room — reads it, finally, accurately. He laughs once, soft, mostly at himself. “All right. All right. Some other time, then.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Some other time.” I pick up the coffee Stanley poured me, and I drink from it.
Percy walks into the kitchen and stops when he sees me. His eyes dart to Gavin then to Stanley.
He says nothing and walks out the front door.
Stanley says, “Percy doesn’t really do guests.”
I don’t blame Percy for his awkwardness. I don’t know if I’m coming around enough myself.
Stanley’s phone buzzes on the counter. He picks it up, looks at it, mutters something about his dad –– my heart jumps becausenow his dad is calling him,shit–– and disappears down the hall toward the back of the house.
The kitchen is left with just me and Gavin and my racing pulse. I watch Stanley put the phone to his ear, stalking off with his left arm swinging. I want to follow him to hear what his dad’s going to say, but I know I should give him privacy. My stomach clenches when I look at Gavin who’s watching me.
He sets his mug down. “Aspen.”
I swallow. “Yeah?”
He’s looking at the counter now. “I want to apologize for how I left things.”
I don’t say anything because all I can think about is the mess of our fathers thanks to this man in front of me.
“What I did wasn’t right, and I’m sorry.”
The kitchen has gone very still. I’m back in my bathroom freshman year, sitting on the closed lid of my toilet with a test in both hands and a man on the other side of the door asking me, through it, if I was sure it was his. I’m there for a moment. The week ahead of that moment — the week I was late, the week I was alone with it, the week he didn’t text to check, didn’t ask, didn’t, in fact, treat it like a thing that was happening because I had broken up with him. He saw the negative and took it as the end. I knew that I wasn’t let off the hook until I got my period. It was an antagonizing week. When I finally got my period, I cried for days because he didn’t care. The school year ended in his favor, and he left for the draft, and that was that.
“You can’t take it back, Gavin,” I say because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being Coach Linwood’s daughter, it’s making sure I’m heard. My father once told me that there’s no relationship without being heard.
Gavin agrees, “No.”
“Did you know that I was alone with it for a week?”
