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Dick.I think he studies history or something.
For Stassie’s sake, I temporarily put our differences aside and be polite. “Can you take her to the hospital?”
Nodding and mumbling an uninterestedmhmm, he doesn’t bother to look at me as he reaches into her bag again, pulling out a UCMH sweatshirt for her. “Don’t let her fall asleep before the hospital and you need to tell Sabrina to check on her when she’s sleeping later.”
“I’ll check on her,” he says nonchalantly, throwing her skates into the bag and zipping it shut.
“No, I mean at night when she goes to bed.”
“Yeah,” he says, drawing out the word like I’m not understanding him. “I’ll check on her. You know we live together, right? My bedroom is just as close to hers as Brin’s is.”
What the fucking fuck?
“Okay.” I try to keep any sign of shock out of my voice. “Feel better, Stas. Good luck tomorrow, guys.”
“You too,” Shithead says back.
Weird.
Anastasia looks over her shoulder and takes me in one last time before she leaves. When I’ve cleaned up the room and headed out to where the guys are waiting, they’ve clearly heard what happened and are all giving me fake-sympathetic looks.
“Poor girl would rather give herself a concussion than speak to you, Hawkins. That’s rough, buddy,” Robbie says, earning a chorus of snickers from the rest of the team.
“Hey, funny guy,” I bite back. “Did you know your girl has seven older brothers?”
His face pales. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t joke about something as funny as this.”
ELEVEN | ANASTASIA
If there’sone day I’m exceptionally grateful for Aaron, it’s competition days.
In contrast to my fidgeting, panicking self, Aaron is calm and relaxed, gently reassuring me that it will be okay. Meanwhile, I’m throwing up from anxiety.
Unsurprisingly, according to him, it was okay, and we’re going to sectionals. Brady even joked that I skated better than usual, crediting my serious head injury.
Go figure.
I’m like this every time; the older I get, the more there is at stake, and the worse the anxiety becomes. Aaron is as calm as, if not calmer than, he was when we started skating together freshman year. I think the difference is Aaron hasn’t not qualified before, he’s never fallen and gone flying across a rink, and thankfully, he’s never dropped me.
He’s never given himself a reason not to be confident.
We got through today, but the pressure is on even more for sectionals next month. If we get through that, we’re off to nationals in January.
Brady has been annoyed with me from day one for not going further in my younger years. She says I have the talent, and she doesn’t understand why I haven’t been to international competitions before. The honest answer is that my partner at the time, James, wasn’t up to it, and I didn’t want to find someone new because I loved him.
Absurdis her favorite way to describe it.
“You were amazing today,” Aaron says, looking at me from the driver’s seat. We usually travel with Aubrey, but Aaron drove today since the competition was close. “I can’t wait for Brin to see the video.”
After something like this, Sabrina is always subjected to a play-by-play of our routines. She’d previously said she would watch us in action, since it was so close by, but Robbie asked her to watch the Titans play their first home game of the season.
I was expecting Aaron to be a bitch about it when she floated the idea this morning, but he was surprisingly positive and said she could always come to the next one.
“You too. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“We’re a good team, Stas. We argue sometimes, but we can’t do what we do with other people. It wouldn’t be the same.”
