“Well, you thought wrong,” she relays, throwing her water bottle in the trash. “I should really go and find my friends.”
This time I let her leave and watch her as she walks over to two dark haired girls who embrace her as if they haven’t seen each other in years. I’m still watching when I feel Xavier stand beside me. I can’t figure out why I am so drawn to her. How easy it was to talk about why I’m struggling. Her pretending like she hates me is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Watching her try to fight it was the best part of our conversation. Xavier holds a beer to offer me, but I shake my head.
“Were you just talking to Wren Hackerly?” he asks, taking a long gulp.
“Yeah. Well, I think so?” I reply, only half paying attention as I try to keep my eyes on her in the crowd.
“What do you mean you think?” he asks, nudging me with his shoulder.
“I don’t think she likes me, dude. Like, even as a human,” I say, trying to fight off a smile. I smother it with my hand and pretend to cough. If Xavier gets a whiff of this, he’s never going to let me live it down.
“Don’t take it personally. I don’t think she likes anyone other than those girls she hangs out with. She’s pretty hard core,” Xavier explains with ease.
“What do you mean? And how do you know?” I quiz, taking my eyes off her to meet his. He holds his hands up in fake surrender.
“Chill. It’s just the gossip I hear from Michelle.” He and Michelle have been dating for forever. Since one infamous food fight in high school and some heroic tray shielding, Michelle has not left his side. “Anyway, you know what happened last semester with that Augustus guy?”
I shrug in response.
“Right. Well. She dated him since high school and at regionals he completely ruined their routine, supposedly on purpose, and broke up with her on the ice. If someone fucked up my gameplay, I don’t think I’d be that nice. I guess everyone’s frightened that she’s just gonna go ham on him one day without warning.”
I conjure up a picture of Augustus in my head and I instantly hate him. He must have been the tall foreign guy who I always saw shouting at her from across the ice. I always thought he was her personal coach or something.
“Oh yeah, I think she was just telling me about that. I don’t think I was fully there. She’s, like, fucking mesmerising,” I sigh, ignoring every flag that is going off in my brain.
“No, no, no. You can’t do that. Not now,” Xavier shouts, coming right in front of me, blocking her from my view. I take in his dark expression, his brown eyes pinning me.
“Do what?”
“This,” he says, wafting his hand across my face. “Using big words that you don’t even use in your essays. You can’t go following her around like a lost puppy. You can’t get attached. I need you back on the team. We can’t have you on the bench all season.”
“I don’t get attached,” I mumble. He laughs again. Louder. As if I just told him the funniest joke ever.
“Yes, you do. If Emily didn’t go to Drayton, you would have been attached the hip. If you weren’t playing, you were either with her or talking about her.”
I don’t retort. What could I say to that with how true it is.
Emily Fraser and I met through Carter a few years ago but we never spoke at first. Carter had met her on a holiday in Florida and I was not prepared to do the long-distance thing. He always pushed me to date her but there was always something in the way. When we started at NU, she started at Drayton, only a twenty-minute drive away. We made it work for a few months but there was something still missing that I couldn’t place. Before everything happened with my mom and with Carter, we called it quits.
“Fine, I’m not going to argue with that but it’s not going to happen. I barely know her. If I’m not playing anymore, I won’t see her at the rink,” I say, mostly trying to convince myself.
He downs the rest of his beer, flashing me a sceptical look over his glass. “Women are fucking crazy. The second you say shit like that, they end up everywhere. It’s, like, manifestation or some shit. I thought the same thing would happen with Michelle but here we are. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, dude.”
CHAPTER 4
WREN
After a week of barely seeing each other, other than a disgruntled grunt in the morning, Scarlett, Kennedy, and I are finally sat watching a movie together. I lock my phone after ordering a pizza from Nero’s when the title credits of 'Matilda' flash across the flatscreen. Kennedy pauses the TV and turns around from her seat at the floor, just beneath Scarlett and me. She whips her curly hair into a bun before pointing at the both of us with an accusatory expression.
“Two updates. Go!” she shouts. I give Scarlett a concerned glance and she shakes her head with a laugh.
Our first semester at NU was complete bliss. All of our schedules somehow matched perfectly, and we were able to meet up all the time outside the apartment instead of just in the morning or at night. Unfortunately, there was a miscalculation with mine and Kennedy’s schedule so by the second semester we were a mess.
We managed to salvage a steady routine and when we finally had time for the three of us, Ken suggested that we each give three updates on our treacherous lives apart to fill each other in. As workloads piled up, the three updates quickly became two; avoiding having to say the same thing twice.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” Scarlett starts. We turn to look at her and she’s only half smiling, always trying to avoid being either too serious or too immature. “One, I no longer have a UTI and two, I finally beat Evan in the class Kahoot.”
We all burst out laughing at the absurdity. “Two, very disconnected but still clap-worthy updates. I wish we could do Kahoot’s in art. It’s sooo boring,” Kennedy says, rolling her eyes.
