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“I’m not undressing him no matter how hot he feels,” Sebastian said.
“So hot,” Asher said in an overly sad tone.
“Let’s get them upstairs,” I suggested.
Sebastian crossed the room to Phoenix and examined the freshman briefly, then decided Phoenix could stand and didn’t need to be carried upstairs. He lifted him out of the armchair and wrapped one arm under the guy’s armpits, then pulled him across the basement to the stairs. Which left me with the rambling mess on the sofa.
I sighed to myself and shook my head slowly as I dragged Asher to stand up.
“…don’t see me…” Asher’s words faded sadly. “…can’t see me…years.”
I wasn’t listening to him very carefully until now. Something about his tone made me frown harder. “Dude, are you…?” I snapped my mouth shut. It was none of my business, especially since the guy was wasted. “You need to shut up,” I said gently. “You shouldn’t be telling me this.”
“Can’t say,” Asher murmured. As we crossed the basement, he leaned his head on my shoulder and hummed. He was basically falling asleep on his feet. “Can’t tell anyone.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “It’s gonna be alright. You need to sleep.” He was going to have a terrible day tomorrow. Then again, that was what college was for.
Sebastian and I put our drunk teammates on the two sofas in the living room, then walked into their room freely to get pillows and blankets and emergency buckets for them. We tucked the fools in and headed to our room, pausing at the foot of the stairs to look at them one more time. “They grow up so fast,” I said in a fatherly tone.
Sebastian laughed and wrapped his arm around my waist. He kissed my cheek and we moved on.
FIFTEEN
Sebastian
Since kissing Tyler on the street corner and heading in the opposite direction, my life was a blur of conversation and frustration. It had only been a few hours, but the mandatory stress injections were handed out on my first evening home. We’d gone through the underwhelming report card, the rainbow-themed hockey team, and my terrible life choices regarding my future. And the dinner hadn’t even been served yet.
My brothers were both present, as was my sister, Eryn, when Dad sat down at the head of the table and folded his arms on its edge. His thinning hair was paler than the dark brown I remembered from my childhood, but his bushy eyebrows were just as intimidating as ever.
I hated that fear was so clearly present in all I was feeling. Fear of awkward silences, fear of intimate questions, and fear of slipping in front of them.
This was as traditional a household as it could be. Dad looked at Eryn with a gentle smile. “Why don’t you help your mother in the kitchen, darling?” he suggested, his voice deep but rounded at the edges for his little girl.
Eryn, who was far from little, being a high school senior this year, nodded. “Of course, Dad.”
The first wave of probing comments about hockey and its purpose in the world had only been an overture.
Dad wore his little smile as the silence wrapped itself around all our throats. I wondered how my brothers managed to have dinner here every week in these conditions. Then I remembered that they were the same as my parents. They liked it when it was quiet. They sat stiffly in their chairs, their faces hard.
I wondered if Michael was as somber with his patients. He looked like he was about to deliver some bad news. “It’s a shame,” he said. “About your grades.”
My stomach felt hollow and my throat strangled. Here we go again. “They’re not terrible.”
Silence.
Dad drew a deep breath slowly and held it, pondering. “‘Not terrible’ is not the golden standard.”
Becoming a general practitioner isn’t the golden standard, either, I thought. Instead, I shrugged. “That report card is the last thing my potential agents will look at.”
Michael scoffed. I wasn’t surprised. “See, the keyword there is ‘potential.’”
I swallowed a sigh. “There’s still time,” I said. “Sure, some players get their agents sooner, others get them later. We’re headed into the final stretch. We have games across the tri-state area lined up.”
Michael shook his head slowly.
Dad poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. He lifted the glass, looked at the rim for a short while, then pressed it against his lips. He drank slowly, set the glass on the table, and observed me. “Who gets their agents sooner? Good Christian kids or those…” His teeth clamped together with anger.
You are obsessed, I thought. Even so, my guts tied into knots. “That’s irrelevant.”
