It took her two years. She did the cheap years at Marshall, and she did them well enough to transfer in, and now she’s six blocks from this house in an apartment, I assume, that costs more than she can afford because Penelope, whom I have met twice and who is fine, does not live cheap from what I hear. Melly Sorcha is living above her means. She’s also dating a guy who is two inches taller than her, and she is, against every odd I would have given her two years ago, not looking at me.She’s not looking at me.It’s been forty minutes since she’s been in this house, and she has not once looked at me.
I take a pull of the beer.
That’s good, I tell myself.That’s what you wanted.
The door bangs open behind me, and the thoughts have mostly scared off back to the depths of me. I don’t turn around, but I know the footsteps. Percy’s a goalie, and goalies walk like goalies, all weight, no urgency. He drags a chair over, sets itdown next to me, drops into it, and lifts his beer at the fire like he is toasting it.
We don’t say anything for a long minute.
Percy is the only guy in the house I can do this with. The other ones would talk. Percy doesn’t. He’s played goalie his whole life and knows how to live in silence.
He drinks. I drink. The fire eats the magazine page.
“Saw your matching blue-eyed girl in there,” he says.
I roll my eyes. They’ve been on this since she left the house last week. “She’s notmyanything.”
“You have the same eyes.”
“Hers are way lighter.”
“So you remember what they look like.”
I don’t answer that. I just rip a page out of the magazine, crumple it, and throw it on the fire. I watch it brown at the edges, curl, and go.
Percy chuckles into his beer. He’s been my friend for two years, and he knows when to stop.
He says, after a while, “Penalty box twice tonight.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Hot-headed.”
I stare at the fire.
He continues, “They didn’t play dirty.”
“They didn’t.”
“Two trips, Golding.”
“I know.”
He drinks. “That kid was a prick, though,” he says.
“He was a prick.”
“Still gotta be smarter.”
The fire pops. Somebody behind us laughs too loudly. Inside the house, the bass shifts to a song I have heard at every party in this town for two years.
“That save in the third,” Percy says, after another minute.
“Yeah.”
“Thought it was gone.”
“Me too.”
