Page 287 of On His Team

Gianna turns and launches herself at him. Their mom gets there next. Their dad follows. Lucy hangs back just long enough to let the family have him first.

I step away and let them.

Gianna finds me again a few minutes later and slides under my arm while we watch Benson finally reach Lucy.

For once, neither of us says anything.

By the time I make it back to the locker room, it’s already destroyed.

Music is loud enough to rattle the stalls. Water is everywhere. Half the team has lost their championship hats already, and Stanley is somehow missing most of his clothes. I don’t ask.

Coach comes through the door and gets drenched immediately. He stands there with water running off his jacket and waits until enough people notice him to quiet down. Nobody really does. He says something anyway. I catch maybe three words.

Everybody cheers.

I make it to my stall and finally sit down. My thigh is throbbing hard enough now that I know tomorrow is going to be ugly. The championship hat is still on my head. The medal around my neck keeps knocking against my chest every time I move. My phone has been vibrating beside me for twenty minutes. I still don’t pick it up.

Above my stall, on the shelf, is the snow globe Gianna gave me yesterday. Las Vegas skyline. Green alligator with sunglasses. I stare at it for a second longer than I mean to.

Across the room, somebody finds a marker. Stanley takes it. He walks to the board by the door and writes in huge letters over whatever had been there before.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONS.

Everybody starts yelling again before he even finishes.

Stanley steps back, considers it, then adds another line underneath.

WE WON THE FUCKING THING.

Percy says something in French from across the room.

Nobody understands him.

Everybody cheers anyway.

Chapter 26

GIANNA

I wake up at eight on Sunday morning in a hotel room in Las Vegas with three hours of sleep in me, and for about five seconds, I’m so tired I’m disoriented. Then I see a hat on the floor. It’s on the carpet between the two beds, upside down, and it says NATIONAL CHAMPIONS across the front of it in white stitching, and I have absolutely no memory of how it got into this room or whose head it came off.

I sit straight up. “Lucy!”

She groans, still asleep. “What?”

“LUCY.” I feel like I could cry all over again. “THEY WON.”

She smiles with her eyes closed. “Yeah.”

I get out of my bed and into hers. She makes space for me.

“Rowan told me he loves me.”

Lucy opens one eye, grinning. “You told me a million times last night.”

I shrug my shoulders and smile. “He loves me.”

Vegas ends the way these things end, which is badly and slowly and with everybody’s phone at four percent. We have brunch at eleven with about nineteen people including both sets of parents and Stanley’s mother, who has cried twice before the food arrives and keeps his dad on FaceTime. Aspen has already looked at the box score. I’m telling the story of the third period to people who were at the third period.