He groaned and dragged both hands down his face. “Organic chemistry is going to bury me alive.”
“You passed last semester. Shame I’m not there to fail it for you.”
Karter snorted. “Yeah, you really brought your A-game to biology. I pretty much carried your ass.”
“You got an A in that class too, so technically I helped.”
“That’s not how my tutoring you works.”
“It worked for me,” I winked at him, “But don’t worry, you’ll pass this year as well. I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah, right.” Karter’s grin flickered. “Elliot said I shouldn’t worry about it so much, too. He’s been hovering lately. Somelegacy freshmen wouldn’t shut up at lifts today, kept asking why I wasn’t at the parties, and Elliot made them run extra laps.”
A short breath pushed out of me. “Four states away, and I’m still the one who wants to put them through the glass.”
“You’re not even on the team anymore.”
“Doesn’t mean I forgot how to throw a hit.”
Karter chuckled, but it came out softer than his usual deflection. “Elliot handled it. He’s trying.”
“I know.” I shifted the phone to my other hand. “Still, don’t have to like it.”
The surrounding apartment still felt too quiet. No thin walls letting me hear Karter moving on the other side. Only the refrigerator’s low thrumming sound from the kitchen.
On the screen, Karter shifted, and his hand came into frame, fingers curled around the edge of his phone. I knew exactly how his palm would feel, the callus worn smooth at the base of his thumb from playing hockey. Those hands had pressed flat against my bare chest, back in the attic, more times than I could count. The memory forced my gaze off the screen and up to the ceiling.
“Hey, you okay?” Karter asked.
“Yeah,” I dragged my gaze back to the screen. “Just missing you.”
A grin pulled at his mouth. “You’re not getting sappy on me already.”
“Shut up.”
We kept talking. Stupid things, mostly. The dining hall had switched coffee suppliers, and Karter swore the new stuff tasted like dirt. I told him about the frozen dinner I’d eaten over the sink, and he made me describe it in detail just so he could tell me it sounded disgusting. The street outside his window was quiet. The street outside mine wasn’t. Still, we filled the silence anyway.
Around eleven, Karter rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I should crash. I’ve got six AM lifts tomorrow.”
“Go to sleep then.”
He didn’t hang up, though. The phone stayed propped, and he stared at me through the lens with that look he got when he was working up to something.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
He leaned forward, his face filling the screen. “Don’t forget that when it gets hard up there.”
Karter was getting to know me too well.
“I won’t forget.” I waited a beat. “I love you too. See you on Friday.”
A real smile broke through. “Friday.”
He hung up first, and the screen went dark. I set my phone on the floor beside my bed and lay back in the quiet, letting the sound of Karter’s voice settle somewhere in the back of my mind.
My last thought before I dropped off to sleep was the sound of him sayingFriday, and I held onto it through every morning skate and conditioning drill that week, every night ending the same: a text from Karter, a reply from me, one day closer.
