Page 92 of On His Team

He takes out a bottle of water, shuts the fridge, and watches me crack an egg into the pan. I can feel him staring before I look over.

“What?”

“I was going to ask if you’re making enough for me.”

“I can.”

He pipes up. “Seriously?”

I turn back to the stove and crack another egg.

Stanley drinks his water in silence for maybe ten seconds before saying, “I have incredible self-control.”

That gets me. I laugh before I can stop myself.

Stanley immediately points at me like he’s won something. “See? I knew that was funny.”

“Gianna was funnier.”

His eyebrows go up.

I stare down at the eggs.

“Interesting,” he says.

“It’s not interesting.”

“I was talking about breakfast.” He laughs under his breath, and Benson comes downstairs before Stanley can get anything else out.

“Why are you wearing one slipper?” Benson asks.

Stanley turns toward him. “Jesus Christ. Everybody leave me alone.”

“Did you lose the other one?”

“It’s temporarily displaced.”

Benson nods. “Lost.”

Stanley walks out of the kitchen muttering about living with assholes, and I finish making breakfast without anybody asking me about Gianna.

That’s good because I don’t have anything to tell them. She likes me. That’s hers. I don’t know what mine is yet.

Practice is at one. Coach doesn’t mention Michigan State once. He has the board full when we walk into video, and everything on it is Ohio State. Their forecheck. Their entries. Their first unit. Their weak-side winger cheating high when the puck changes sides.

The message is obvious. Whatever happened last weekend is already useless unless we do something different with the next one.

We’re on the ice for an hour and forty minutes. My retrievals are better. Not perfect, but better. The second look is starting to happen before I remind myself to do it, which is the first time the whole thing has felt less like an assignment and more like hockey again.

After practice I shower, change, and come out of the room with my phone already in my hand.

There isn’t a message from Gianna. I notice immediately, which annoys me. Not her. Me. She doesn’t owe me a message because she told me she likes me. That would be insane.

I put the phone in my pocket and make it almost all the way down the hall before I take it back out.

Nothing.

Mackey walks beside me and glances over. “You lose something?”