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Phoenix dragged Asher away from the table and waved back to us.
Beckett said something calming to Jordan and then the big guy nodded and lifted his hands in surrender. “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” Jordan said. I wasn’t sure how true that was.
When a yawn crept up on me from nowhere, I pushed my chair back. “I’m heading to the house, too. I hope I don’t lose my head along the way before I get to my bed.”
Guys protested briefly but released me from the group. Without Sebastian around, I could be involved for only so long. We were all friends, but even so, most of us had a smaller number of very strong relationships within the bigger group. Beckett and Caden were the power couple taking us to new heights, while Beckett and Jordan were childhood friends. Sawyer and Avery had clicked together on the day they’d met. And there was Sebastian and me, having been born a couple of weeks apart and growing up together ever since.
He was the closest thing to a brother that I had ever had. And he was as much my family as my father when my father wasn’t fighting his demons. On the flip side, I was nothing like a brother to Sebastian, who had know-it-all brothers with plenty of opinions on how Sebastian was wasting his life chasing a rubber disk. And that was precisely what Sebastian needed me to be.
I made my way back to the team house through the streets of Northwood’s huge campus. The tavern was in its very heart with student facilities surrounding it. There were faculty buildings, specialty areas, and dormitories, as well as a score of facilities for athletes studying at Northwood. Our incredibly modern rink, a huge football field, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a baseball field, and one defunct lacrosse field that was waiting to be converted into something less obnoxiously rich all formed the outer circle of the campus.
Not far from the larger structures that were made into dormitories for the majority of students living on campus, there was an entire lane of houses. Fraternities, sororities, and team houses were in a colonial revival style with spacious front yards and plenty of rooms housing students from all over the country and the world.
Steam rose from my mouth as I sighed at the vibration in my pocket. Courtney. Shit, I’d forgotten to text back. I picked up and pressed the phone against my ear. “Hey babe,” I said cheerfully.
“Where are you?” Courtney asked.
“Walking to the Titanic,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes and explained that Sebastian and I called our team house the Titanic, then held back from saying that I had already explained this before. I was smart like that, picking my battles and all.
“Oh. Right.” Courtney’s voice was distant for a moment. “Anyway, are you coming over?”
“Not tonight, babe,” I said. “I stayed late with the boys.”
“Sure,” Courtney said, her voice a little colder.
“Aw, I’m sorry, Court. I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said. “I had a few drinks. I should sleep it off.”
Her silence lingered for a while, then she sighed. “You were with the boys. What if I needed you when I texted?”
“You didn’t, babe,” I said. Had she needed me, I would have been there. This hypothetical scenario was starting to confuse me. “Did you?”
“Never mind,” she said with disappointment dripping from her tone.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong. It was fair to say that I hadn’t paid enough attention to her since we returned to Northwood. But it was only temporary.
“I’ll see you when I see you,” Courtney said matter-of-factly and waited for a heartbeat before hanging up.
I was left bewildered but not too upset. We would work it out. Courtney and I had been dating for almost two years. It had started fun, then continued as a long-distance relationship over a summer break, and we had gotten closer during my junior year. This year was rough on us. Courtney wanted to pursue a master’s and I was hell-bent on getting drafted.
It seemed fine to me. We had both known that this day would come. We would go back to long-distance for some time until things settled a little. Why Courtney couldn’t rid herself of this sense of doom, I didn’t know.
I made a mental note to fix tonight’s hiccup. Perhaps a surprise visit after I dropped my things off at the house? She would like that. I would take her down to that new bar at the end of her street. We could have a round of drinks and she could tell me about her day. My brain was slowing down, but I could listen.
As I reached the house, I was committed to my new plan. I could make things right. Besides, who needed sleep, anyway? I could take a catnap in the library tomorrow. All I had to do was get ready to graduate, right?
I entered the house a short while after Phoenix and Asher. The two were still making noises as they went down to the basement, where our true common room was. In the official common area on the ground floor, there was no one. I passed it without another glance and climbed upstairs to the room I shared with Sebastian.
Our room was the largest in the house. It had the same dark hardwood floor as all the other rooms, deep red carpet covering most of it, and heavy wooden desks with the usual clutter on them. The desks on the far side of the room were connected and facing each other, so when both of us sat at our desks, we could toss crumpled notes at each other. Sebastian’s bed ran along the left wall with a nightstand between it and his desk chair. Mine was up against the front wall, under the windows, so that my feet faced the two desks. On the wall to my right, next to the entrance door, there was a flat screen TV, and in front of it, between me and my bed, was a small couch that seated the two of us easily. A large closet was to my left and a door that led to our shared bathroom was by the foot of Sebastian’s bed.
We had lucked out with this room. It had belonged to the then-captain of the team and his right-hand guy. They’d graduated the same summer that Sebastian and I had enrolled.
I dropped my duffel by my bed and sat in my desk chair, wondering what to do next. If I wanted to surprise Courtney before she put her pajamas on, I needed to hurry. But my bed was so inviting. My head weighed a thousand pounds and my muscles were sore from all the conditioning and drills.
You can do this, I pumped myself up. Go get that girl. Make her night. Be nice.
