Page 60 of On His Team

She nods. “You absolutely did.” She laughs louder and leans back in the chair. “You were so embarrassed.”

“My mom enjoys it too much.”

Gianna smiles at that, then looks back toward the living room where Stanley is yelling at Blue about something.

“Your family still lives there?”

I nod. “My mom does.”

“Do you see her a lot?”

“Yeah.”

Gianna nods, rubbing her thumb along the edge of her laptop. “She seems cool.”

“She is.”

There’s an easy pause.

Then she asks, “Did you like growing up there?”

I think about it. “Yeah.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. Details.”

I lean back. “It was cold.”

She laughs. “No shit.”

“Snowed a lot.”

“Rowan,” she says with no patience.

I smile.

She shakes her head, but she’s smiling too. “You’re impossible.”

“I liked it. Hockey was everywhere. My mom knew everybody. I could walk to my friend’s house. Normal stuff.”

“See? Details.”

“That was three sentences.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

She goes back to typing.

I do the same.

She doesn’t ask if I want to move back. I’m glad she doesn’t. Not because I don’t want to answer. Mostly because I have no idea what I’d say.

By eight-thirty, the kitchen is darker than it was when we started. Nobody bothered turning on the overhead light, so most of what we have is the lamp over the stove and whatever spills in from the living room.