Page 80 of On His Team

Across the room, Benson is still watching film with the sound off. Stanley is slouched into the chair beside Aspen. Blue has his head tipped back against the couch, eyes closed.

Nobody has really recovered.

Gianna finishes eating beside me, sets her plate on the coffee table, and leans back into the couch.

Her knee stays against mine.

So does mine.

For the first time since we got home, I stop replaying the game.

Chapter 9

GIANNA

Usually, these guys lose a hockey game and twenty minutes later somebody is making food, Stanley is yelling at a television, Blue is threatening to throw Stanley through something expensive, and Percy is pretending he doesn’t hear any of it from whichever corner he has claimed.

This time it takes a few days. That’s how I know Michigan State weekend was a bad one.

The music comes back first. Then Stanley starts making jokes people actually laugh at.

By the middle of the week, Benson is no longer replaying the same third period on his laptop every night, and Blue has stopped looking like he might fight the refrigerator if it opens incorrectly.

Rowan is harder to read.

He texts me normally. He answers when I send him things that have nothing to do with anything. Yesterday I sent him a video Mara took of a squirrel stealing half a bagel from somebody outside the student center, and he responded with, Deserved, which I thought was unnecessarily judgmental considering we had no information about who originally owned the bagel.

He also sent me a picture of Stanley asleep with one sock on.

So I think we’re fine.

I’m at work when Derek emails me.

I see his name while I’m standing behind the equipment counter checking a delivery against an order sheet, and I leave the box open long enough to read the first line twice.

The youth program is interested. Forty participants should be manageable. Let’s move forward with the facility hold once you have Athletics sign-off.

I grin.

Cole looks over from the skate machine. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You look creepy.”

“I am.” I give him my worst smile.

He minds his business while I read the email again.

It isn’t approval for the entire event. I know that. There are still people to talk to, things to price, forms that will probably reproduce overnight if I stop looking at them, but it’s a yes.

The first thing I do is take a screenshot. The second thing I do is send it to Rowan.

Me: LOOK!

He calls me.

I stare at his name on the screen. Then answer.