Page 74 of On His Team

I shrug. “They didn’t know.”

“And you did?”

I nod. “G.”

“Right.” Drew says, “I tried to hit that once. Couldn’t land it. Fucked Mara instead.”

Theo cackles when I give Drew a look.

I say, “Are we lifting or talking about girls?”

Drew grins. “You have a girl now?”

I walk away. That answer is apparently funnier than anything else I could have said.

The rest of the week moves fast. We win both games at home.

Friday is controlled. Saturday isn’t. Saturday is six-three and loud and stupid and the kind of game where every time somebody scores, somebody else seems to answer before the crowd has completely settled down. Benson has four points. Blue scores twice. Stanley has four of his own and spends the last five minutes of the third trying not to look at Aspen in the stands because he knows exactly what she’s going to say about one of his goals coming from outside again.

I get an assist. Nothing special. Puck through the middle, Mackey up the wall, Benson does most of the work after that. It’s my second point since break. Nobody says anything about it. The second-look thing is getting less annoying. It’s not natural yet. I still catch myself arriving at pucks with an answer already in my head, but now I notice when I do it. Sometimes noticing is early enough to change it. Sometimes it isn’t.

We win anyway.

By Sunday night, Hawthorne is full again, and sometime over the next week, Gianna starts showing up in my phone without needing a reason.

The first thing she sends me is a picture of a dog outside the library wearing four tiny boots. No caption. I stare at it for a second.

Me: Okay.

Gianna: Look at his feet.

I look again.

Me: I saw them.

Gianna: He hates them.

Me: I would too.

Gianna: Knew you’d understand.

After that, it keeps happening. Sometimes it’s something real. A sentence from her event project she wants another opinion on. A question about whether Percy always travels with the same headphones. Once, she sends me a picture of Stanley asleep at the rink with his mouth open, and I save it before I can think better of it. It’s hysterical.

Other times, she just appears at Hawthorne. She comes over with Lucy one night, steals two fries directly off my plate, and laughs when I look at her. Another night she texts me three words about something Mara said that make absolutely no sense without context.

I don’t think much about any of it until one night my phone stays quiet. Not all night. Just long enough that I notice. Then it lights up while I’m brushing my teeth, and before I even look at the screen, I already know who it is.

Gianna: Mara wants to know if you secretly hate her.

Me: No.

Gianna: I told her that.

Me: Why does she think I hate her?

Gianna: Your face.

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.