Page 75 of On His Team

Same face.

Me: What’s wrong with my face?

Her answer takes less than ten seconds.

Gianna: We don’t have time to unpack that tonight.

I laugh and put my phone down.

It isn’t until the next road trip that I realize we’ve been doing this every day. Not long conversations. Sometimes it’s one text. Sometimes she asks me something. Sometimes she sends something that has nothing to do with anything and apparently expects me to understand why I’m seeing it. I usually do.

We’re in the hotel at Notre Dame when I’m sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for Stanley to finish arguing with the room-service menu when my phone buzzes.

Gianna: Good luck tonight.

There are eleven days of messages above it without a break.

I scroll once. Dog. Event question. Stanley sleeping. Something Mara said. A picture of the Hawthorne whiteboard.

I stare at it longer than necessary.

Then Stanley says my name from across the room, and I lock the phone.

“Are you ordering or not?”

“I am,” he says. “I’m comparing value.”

“You’ve been comparing value for fifteen minutes.”

“This hotel wants twenty-seven dollars for pasta.”

I shrug. “Then don’t order pasta.”

I get up. My phone buzzes again in my hand.

Gianna: Rowan, if you lose I’m blaming you specifically.

I answer before putting it in my pocket.

Me: Seems fair.

We lose.

Not because of me specifically.

Percy has the worst game I’ve seen him play in a Camden jersey.

The first goal isn’t his. The second one probably is. The third definitely is.

Coach pulls him before the second period is over.

Percy doesn’t slam anything when he comes off. That would almost be easier to watch. He sits at the end of the bench, puts a towel over his head, and stays there until the horn.

We lose four-two.

Nobody talks much afterward.

Stanley orders an obscene amount of food to the hotel, which is what he does whenever he doesn’t know how to fix something. Blue turns the TV on without sound. Benson sits at the end of the other bed and scrolls on his phone.