Page 270 of On His Team

By six, everybody is tired.

Which feels unfair.

“How are the guys supposed to win tomorrow if we’re tired?” I ask.

Mara looks at me. “That’s an incredible question.”

“The time zone thing really sucks.”

“Yeah,” Mara says lazily.

Dinner is in a ballroom off the lobby. Staff is there too, including Donovan and Cole, and for once I am grateful I’m not working. Cole waves when I walk in. The whole team is already here. Naturally, the Hawthorne boys are together.

A woman with a clipboard stops us at the door. “Name?”

“Reeve.”

She checks. “Reeve family. Yes. You’re all together.”

I look across the room toward Rowan. “And Laurens girlfriend.”

My mom grabs my arm. “Gianna.”

I’m doing it specifically because it makes her uncomfortable.

Mara laughs because she knows exactly what I’m doing.

“I’m clarifying,” I tell her. “I have two reasons to be here.”

“She has a list,” my mom says. “You’re a Reeve. She doesn’t need—”

“I’m probably on there twice.”

The woman with the clipboard does not care nearly as much as my mother does.

We walk in, and I don’t walk over to Rowan. I sit with my parents and Lucy because he’s with his team and tonight feels like it belongs to them.

We eat an extremely normal chicken dinner in an extremely abnormal room.

Stanley is across the ballroom making somebody’s mom laugh hard enough that she has tears in her eyes. Penelope has managed to force a chair between Percy and the next table. Blue is watching Melly eat while pretending he is not watching Melly eat. And Rowan is talking to Trent. I keep looking at him anyway.

Coach Fuller eventually stands. The room quiets almost immediately. He thanks the families for being here. Then he says something about how half the people in this room have been driving these guys to rinks since they were four years old, and my mother presses a hand to her chest.

I look at Benson.

Then Rowan.

Percy.

Stanley.

Blue.

All of them.

For some reason, I think about the stupid snow globes under my chair.

Fuller says Michigan is a good hockey team.