Page 300 of On His Team

Benson is teary-eyed, grabbing Rowan again. And I realize that all these moments we’ve had together are now just moments of the past. It’s a funny thing to be living through it and not realize that once it’s in the past, it’s gone, and there’s no getting it back. My brother is moving on, and it breaks my heart in a way I didn’t know was possible.

He hugs me last. He’s literally my brother, and I’m crying the hardest. This is the hardest goodbye. Whenever I pictured him in college, this house was part of that vision. Whenever I pictured him playing hockey, it was in a Camden jersey.

“I’m going to miss you,” he says, kissing the top of my head.

I almost laugh. “Now you know why I came here.”

He pulls back and pats my cheek dry. “I know, G. I’m glad you did.”

And hearing those words makes me cry even more.

I nod and shake my head at the same time. “Of course. You’re not getting rid of me.”

He pushes me. “Stop pretending this is goodbye. I don’t drive until tomorrow, and I’m staying at your place.”

“Yeah, but this is your goodbye to Hawthorne.”

He looks around and nods. “One last picture, everybody. Come on!”

I don’t care where Rowan is. I stay next to my brother with tears in my eyes. Stanley makes some stupid joke about these pictures coming back to haunt us because we’re all crying, and my mom takes a dozen anyway. She tells us to squeeze closer, so we do. Arms go around shoulders and waists. Benson pulls me tighter against his side. Somebody behind me is still crying. Stanley says something that makes half of us laugh right as my mom takes more pictures.

And I think maybe this is what Hawthorne House was always supposed to be.

Not five guys or five rules or a hockey season. Not the parties, the fights, the girlfriends, or even the national championship they somehow managed to bring home.

It was a place we all walked into at different times for different reasons and somehow found each other inside.

Next year, there will be different people in some of these rooms. Someday, none of us will live here at all. The couch will be replaced. The walls will be painted.

But there will always be a version of Hawthorne House that belongs only to us.

The one where Benson was captain and Stanley never shut up. Where Percy found a family, Blue found somewhere to belong, and Rowan stayed. Where we fell in love and grew up and showed up for each other over and over again.

I don’t know if any of us understood we were building a life while we were living it.

I think we thought we were just having one.

My mom takes the picture while we’re all still laughing and crying, and for once, I don’t ask to see it.

I already know what it looks like.

It looks like home.

Later, the house is finally quiet by the time I go back inside.

Not normal Hawthorne quiet. Empty quiet.

There are cups still sitting on the kitchen counter, a roll of packing tape by the stairs, and one of Stanley’s shoes under the coffee table that I have no intention of touching. Rowan is outside with Blue, Benson already left with my parents, and I don’t actually need anything from the house.

I just wasn’t ready to leave yet.

I walk through the kitchen and push open the garage door.

The light is still on.

The whiteboard is leaning against the wall. The rules from January are wiped away.

In their place, Stanley has written across the top: