Chapter 13
Fact Check
Austen
Going to a bar on a Thursday night violated at least three of my personal operating protocols:
Academic rigor requires sleep.
Crowds introduce uncontrollable variables.
I don’t fit in with people who wear jerseys as formal wear.
Yet, at 7:45 p.m., I was standing in front of the mirror in Room 317, adjusting the collar of a button-down shirt I hoped said “casual but competent.”
Luke was leaning against his dresser, arms crossed, watching me. He wore a gray henley that fit arguably too well and a beanie pulled low, his navy wool peacoat in his arms.
“You look like you’re heading to a court date,” he observed.
“I am attempting to blend in,” I corrected, smoothing a wrinkle. “Social camouflage is vital in high-density environments.”
“It’s Buckman Grill, Austen. Not a jungle.” He pushed off the dresser, grinning. “Lose the top button. You’ll suffocate.”
I undid the button. He was right; the air intake improved by four percent.
“Ryan says there’s a category on 80s rock,” Luke said, grabbing his keys. “He’s convinced he’s going to sweep it. I need you to fact-check him, so he doesn’t embarrass the program.”
“I am not a repository of hair-band trivia.”
“No, but you’re a walking encyclopedia for everything else. Consider yourself the special teams unit.” He opened the door, bowing slightly to gesture me through. “After you, Professor.”
I rolled my eyes but walked through. The hallway smelled of popcorn and floor wax. “If we lose, I’m giving you more financial accounting problems.”
“Fair stakes.” He joked as he casually slung an arm across my shoulder.
We walked across campus in the crisp November dark. The wind had teeth, but I barely felt it. Walking next to Luke made me feel safe. We fell into step effortlessly, his long stride matching my quicker pace.
“Shoulder holding up?” I asked, glancing at his left side.
“Dalton says I’m cleared for contact tomorrow. Pain’s a two.”
“Keep it a two. If you spike to a five because you tried to lift a pitcher of beer, I’m resigning as your tutor.”
“Understood.” He bumped my shoulder with his—gentle, controlled. “You’re bossy when you’re right.”
“I’m always right. It saves time.”
He laughed, a warm sound that heated the air between us.
The Buckman Grill was a sensory assault.
The noise hit first—a wall of bass, shouting, and clinking glass. Then the smell: fryer grease, stale hops, and too much cologne.
I hesitated in the doorway. This was a mistake. I should be in Ridgeway, grading quizzes. I felt the rise of a panic attack welling from inside me.
Luke’s hand settled on the small of my back. Light, barely there, but it anchored me instantly, all sense of anxiety fleeting with his touch.
“Table’s in the back,” he said, his voice low near my ear. I could feel his warm breath. “Follow me.”
He moved forward, using his size to carve a path through the mob. I tucked into his wake, drafting like a goose.
We emerged at a large booth in the corner.
Ryan O’Connell was standing on the bench, waving a basket of onion rings like a scepter.
Javier Morales sat opposite him, looking bored but intense.
Two other guys I recognized from the roster—Decker and a freshman defenseman—were cramming into the far side.
“The brain trust has arrived!” Ryan yelled, jumping down. He pointed a finger at me. “Math! Tell me you know state capitals.”
“I know all of them,” I said, sliding into the booth.
“Yes!” Ryan slammed the table. “We’re winning the pitcher. Carter, sit. You’re blocked by the fry basket.”
Luke slid in next to me. The booth was designed for four; with six hockey players and me, it was tight. Luke’s thigh pressed against mine from hip to knee. Heat radiated through the denim.
“Also,” Ryan announced to the table, pouring cheap lager into a plastic cup, “we are celebrating the fact that we beat Merrimack 7–6 last night, even though Carter tried to give me a heart attack in the third period.”
Luke’s jaw tightened. He didn’t reach for the pitcher. “It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a collapse. Three soft goals in ten minutes.”
“We won, didn’t we?” Ryan grinned, foam spilling over his hand. “Offense carried you. You’re welcome. That’s how teams work. You can’t be the golden boy every game.”
“I shouldn’t need carrying,” Luke muttered, staring at the scarred laminate table. “My job is to stop pucks. I can’t be giving up three soft goals in the third period.”
“Define ‘soft,’“ I said.
The table went quiet. Ryan lowered his pitcher. Javier blinked, looking at me like I’d spoken in binary.
Luke turned to me. “Soft. Easy. Shots I should have had.”
“I watched the game feed,” I said, adjusting my glasses. I pulled my phone out, tapping the screen. “Goal number four was a rebound from the low slot. Statistical shooting percentage on rebounds is over twenty percent higher than a direct shot.”
I scrolled down.
“Goal number five was a cross-ice pass. It crossed the Royal Road—the line dividing the offensive zone.” I turned the phone so Luke could see the heat map.
“When the puck moves laterally across that line, the goaltender has to reset his angle. Save percentage on Royal Road shots drops by almost thirty percent.”
“So?” Ryan asked, looking confused.
“So,” I continued, my voice gaining edge, “they weren’t soft. They were high-danger chances. The defense allowed the pass; Luke was dealing with the mathematical fallout.”
I looked at Luke.
“I calculated your GSAx—Goals Saved Above Expected. Based on the shot quality Merrimack generated, an average goalie would have let in eight goals. You let in six.”
I set my phone down on the table with a click.
“You didn’t collapse, Luke. You were a plus-two. You stole a game the defense tried to give away.”
Luke stared at me. Something shifted in his expression—the tightness around his jaw eased, his shoulders dropped an inch. Not reassurance. Proof.
Ryan whistled low. “Damn, Monk. You brought a human calculator to a knife fight.”
Javier laughed, shaking his head. “I like him. He makes me feel better about my blown coverage.”
“For those of you who haven’t met him, this is Austen, my roommate,” Luke said, looking around the circle. “He’s fixing my GPA. And as you can see, he knows more about our team stats than anyone. Treat him like a starter.”
“Nice to meet you,” Decker said around a mouthful of burger.
Javier looked me up and down, his gaze sharp. “Luke says you understand angles.”
“Geometry is universal,” I said, meeting his stare. “Pucks follow physics, mostly.”
Javier smirked. “Mostly. Wait until you see O’Connell skate. He defies physics.”
“Hey!” Ryan threw an onion ring at him.
Javier caught it midair, not even looking. He chewed it slowly, watching me. “So, Austen. You play?”
“Musical instruments? No.”
“Sports,” Javier clarified. “Anything with a ball or a puck?”
“I ran cross-country in high school,” I said. “It requires zero hand-eye coordination, only the willingness to suffer.”
Ryan laughed. “Respect. Running sucks.”
“Why math?” Decker asked, leaning over the table. “Like, you do it for fun? Or because you hate yourself?”
“Math is predictable,” I said, taking a sip of the club soda Luke had slid toward me. “Unlike humanities, the answer doesn’t depend on how the professor is feeling that day. X is always X.”
“Unless X is O’Connell,” Javier muttered. “Then X is usually in the penalty box.”
“I have a ninety-percent pass completion rate!” Ryan protested.
“Eighty-two,” I corrected automatically.
The table went silent.
Ryan blinked. “What?”
“Your pass completion rate,” I said. “It’s eighty-two percent. I updated your stats after the Caribou game. Your faceoff win percentage is fifty-eight, which is elite, but your pass completion drops to sixty-four in the third period. Likely fatigue-related.”
Ryan stared at me, mouth open. Javier looked from me to Luke, eyebrows raised, and busted out laughing.
“Damn!” Javier said. “He just put you in your place, O’Connell.”
“He did the math,” Luke said, grinning into his water glass.
“You memorized my stats?” Ryan asked, sounding awed.
“I analyzed the dataset,” I said, shrugging. “Patterns are easy to spot. Morales shoots blocker side seventy percent of the time on breakaway attempts. Decker drifts left on the backcheck.”
Decker dropped his burger. “Dude. Is he a spy?”
“He’s my secret weapon,” Luke said, nudging my shoulder with his.
Javier leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist. The boredom was gone from his eyes. “Okay, Math. What’s Carter’s tell?”
I hesitated. Luke went still beside me.
“He doesn’t have one,” I lied. “His save percentage is purely reactive. He waits for the shooter to commit.”
It wasn’t true. Luke dropped his left shoulder a fraction of an inch before he went into the butterfly. But I wasn’t about to tell Javier Morales that.
Luke looked at me, surprise and gratitude flashing in his eyes.
“Damn,” Ryan said. “We really are winning this pitcher.”
The trivia thing was chaos, but somehow slightly organized.
Ryan dominated the Sitcoms category, writing answers before the emcee finished reading the questions. Javier surprised everyone by sweeping Geography, naming the capital of Burkina Faso—Ouagadougou—without blinking.
Then came Quantum Mechanics.
“Question four,” the emcee droned. “What is the principle that states you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle with perfect accuracy?”
The table went silent. Ryan looked at his beer. Decker looked at the ceiling.
I picked up the answer slip.
“Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” I wrote in block letters.
“Wait,” Ryan said. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s the… Schrodinger thing? The cat?”
“The cat is a thought experiment about superposition,” I said, not looking up. “Uncertainty is position and momentum. Trust me.”
I handed the slip to Luke. He looked at it, then at me, grinning.
“Running it to the judge,” Luke said.
We swept the category.
By Round 3, the dynamic had shifted. I wasn’t the outsider; I was the asset. Ryan was high-fiving me after every correct answer. Even Javier nodded approvingly when I calculated the conversion of kilometers to miles in my head for a travel question.
I was sipping my club soda, feeling a strange, warm buzz that had nothing to do with alcohol, when a shadow fell over the table.
Three guys stood there. They wore polos with popped collars—lacrosse team, if I recalled the campus hierarchy correctly.
“Carter,” the lead guy sneered. He was holding a pitcher of cheap beer. “Didn’t know the hockey team allowed tutors at the varsity table.”
The noise at our table died instantly.
“Beat it, Kyle,” Ryan said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Just asking,” Kyle said, eyes sliding to me. “Heard you needed help counting to ten, Carter. Brought the babysitter?”
My stomach twisted. I gripped my glass. This was the variable I hated—the one where I became a prop in someone else’s status game.
I started to slide out of the booth. “I should go get a refill.”
Luke’s hand clamped onto my thigh under the table. Firm. Immovable.
“Stay,” he said.
He didn’t look at me. He looked at Kyle. His expression hadn’t changed much—he still looked calm—but the air around him dropped ten degrees. The same look he had in the crease right before a penalty kill.
“Austen isn’t the tutor,” Luke said, his voice carrying over the bar noise. “He’s my roommate and probably the smartest guy in the room. Which puts him about one-hundred IQ points north of you, Kyle.”
The table went dead silent.
Kyle flushed. “Whatever, man. Just saying it looks weird.”
“What looks weird,” Luke continued, standing up slowly, “is you interrupting my team’s dinner. We’re celebrating. You’re blocking the view.”
Javier stood up too. Then Ryan. The booth became a wall of Frost Demons.
Kyle looked at the three of them, did the math, and realized his probability of winning was zero.
“Whatever,” Kyle muttered. He turned and shoved his way back into the crowd.
Luke sat down. He didn’t make a big deal of it. He looked at me.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, though my pulse was hammering. “He wasn’t entirely wrong. I am a tutor.”
“You’re the MVP of Round 3,” Ryan declared, slamming his drink down. “To Austen!”
“To Austen!” the table roared.
Luke raised his glass, clinking it against my soda. “To constants,” he murmured, for me alone.
I looked at him—the way the bar lights caught his eyes, the set of his jaw, the protective weight of his hand resting on my thigh.
We won second place—a twenty-dollar gift card and a pitcher of lukewarm beer that Ryan claimed as a “moral victory.” The team that won first place was a group of graduate students, so they had the deck stacked in their favor.
Returning to the dorms, the group dwindled to just Luke and me. The wind had died down, leaving the campus silent and frozen.
“Thanks,” I said after we crossed the quad.
“For what?”
“For sticking up for me when that Kyle asshole came to the table.”
Luke shrugged, hands deep in his pockets. “Defensemen protect the goalie. Goalies protect the house. You’re in the house, Austen.”
You’re in the house.
It was a hockey metaphor. It meant territory. It meant team.
But the way he said it made it sound like something else.
“I had fun,” I admitted. “Javier is… a lot. But fun. And Ryan seems like a genuinely nice person.”
“Both of them like you. Ryan agreed that you’re a highly underutilized ‘weapon.’” Luke chuckled. “High praise.”
We reached the door of Stony Creek Hall. Luke held it open, and as I brushed past him, the smell of cold air and him filled my lungs.
“We iterate,” I said softly.
Luke smiled, tired but easy. “Yeah. We iterate.”
We walked up the stairs to the third floor, shoulder to shoulder.