6. Wren
WREN
My interview outfit has been rejected by a six-year-old.
Twice.
“No,” Daisy says from my bed, sitting cross-legged in pajamas with a waffle in one hand and the tiny plastic cat in the other. “That shirt is too black.”
I look down at my cream sweater. “It’s an interview.”
“To get paid to do stinky boy laundry.”
“It’s an equipment assistant position.”
Lily, who invited herself into my room five minutes ago and has been silently judging me from the doorway ever since, tilts her head. “You need a jacket.”
“I don’t think I need a jacket today.”
“Adults wear jackets.”
“I am an adult.”
Daisy squints at me. “Sometimes.”
“Wow.” I point at the hallway. “Both of you out. I am no longer accepting notes.”
Lily doesn’t move. “Your hair is doing the weird thing.”
“My hair is always doing the weird thing, Lily. It’s called a slightly grown-out bob, and if I don’t treat it with the utmost respect, it sticks straight up sometimes.”
She giggles, instantly making me smile. Six years old and already brutally devastating with her lack of filter. Hey, at least she keeps it real. “I know.”
“Brush your teeth,” I tell them. “Shoes by the door in five.”
Daisy slides off my bed, still holding the waffle. “Do hockey players stink? Like a skunk?”
“Yes,” I say.
She wrinkles her nose. “Then you shouldn’t wear the jacket. It might start to stink.”
They leave before I can answer, and I turn back to the mirror above my dresser.
Cream sweater. Black jeans. Sneakers that are clean enough if no one inspects the sides. Hair is waved with an insane amount of dry shampoo covering the fact that I never got a chance to wash it last night.
Good enough.
Professional enough for a work-study interview where the job description includes laundry, inventory, and possibly handling equipment that has absorbed years of male confidence and sweat.
My phone buzzes on the dresser.
8:02 — INTERVIEW TODAY. DON’T OVERTHINK. LOL GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
Past Me is rude.
Accurate, but rude.
I silence the reminder and check the email again, even though I already memorized the time.
2:30 p.m. Athletics building. Ask for Donnelly Pierce.
I can do that.
I can walk into an athletic department office, shake a man’s hand, explain that I am semi-competent, available, hardworking, and not at all emotionally compromised by the fact that this job exists directly beside the person I would rather avoid more often than not.
No problem.
Behind me, Holden appears in the doorway.
He’s wearing a hoodie and shorts, his tall frame taking up most of the doorway.
“Interview today?” he asks.
I grab my bag from the chair. “Yes.”
“For the hockey team.”
Not a question, but I respond anyway. “Yes.”
“The hockey team that Kai plays on.”
Again, not a question. “Yes.”
His jaw shifts. “You don’t have to do it.”
I zip my bag closed. “Actually, I kind of do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Holden.”
“There are other jobs.”
Not ones with hours I can maybe make work.
I don’t say that out loud. The last thing I want to do is make him feel more guilty than he already does for how little he’s able to help our situation, but the silence bothers me more than arguing would.
I soften my voice. “It’s an interview. Not a prison sentence.”
“With your ex.”
I point at him. “You were not supposed to have a good memory during that time.”
His mouth moves like he might smile, but it doesn’t last. “I’m serious.”
I sigh. “I know.” But knowing and doing are two very different things. I know that I need to pay for my classes this term and make sure I have the flexibility to help here when I need to.
“If it’s going to make you uncomfortable or sad, don’t take it.”
That would be nice, if only it were an option.
My feelings sadly don’t pay tuition. They don’t put gas in my car, or care that Mom received an unexpected bill from a doctor’s visit for the twins a few months ago at the table last night and went pale for ten full seconds before pretending like she had enough money in her account to cover that and groceries for the next week or two.
She’s working her ass off, yet with each unexpected bill, that hard work is diminished to basically nothing.
I sling my bag over my shoulder. “If it’s awful, I won’t.”
That’s the closest I can get to the truth.
Holden knows it, too, which is why he nods and steps aside. “Your hair looks good.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Lies. I have a mirror, and Lily also said it was doing ‘the weird thing,’ also known as sticking straight up on one side.”
He gives me a sheepish grin. “It is, but just a little.”
By the time I get everyone where they need to be, I am only ten minutes late to my first class, so I count it as progress.
The day moves in pieces.
Ethics lecture.
Coffee with Harlow.
A reminder to buy poster board, which I did last night, thank you very much, Past Me.
A text from Mom asking if I can thaw chicken for dinner since she’s only working a partial shift today and should be home in time to get the twins from school.
A second coffee I cannot afford but buy anyway because some days financial responsibility has to get in line behind survival.
Harlow corners me outside the student center after our class together.
She knows about the interview, but I asked her not to share it with Grayson, in fear it would get back to Kai before I was ready.
No point in worrying him when it’s still not set in stone. He might get angry, frustrated, excited? No, we are not going there.
Harlow’s face softens a little. “Are you okay?”
I sigh. “Everybody has got to stop asking me that.”
“That bad?”
“No. It’s just…” I look across campus, toward the athletic buildings in the distance. “It makes me feel awkward. Has me questioning if I’m already failing more than I think I am.”
“You’re doing a great job juggling a million things. I only ask because I care,” she says. “Are you worried about being back around Kai?”
“Obviously that’s a big part of it.” I pull out my lunch of a granola bar and quickly unwrap it as we walk toward the dorms, with Harlow being done for the day, and the athletics building being farther down the same row.
“He won’t make it harder for you,” she says, readjusting her bag on her shoulder. “He wouldn’t ever do something that could hurt you.”
“I know.” And I do know that. Kai would cut off his own hand before he intentionally made my life harder. The problem is, Kai not trying to hurt me has never meant I didn’t get hurt.
He didn’t intentionally hurt me when he left for college.
He didn’t mean to hurt me when the calls got shorter and fewer in between.
We were both so consumed by our own struggles at the time that we didn’t have the brain capacity to notice something was going wrong with us.
By the time the calls stopped happening, it took me a while to notice, but then it hurt.
I love Harlow, deeply. She’s my best friend, and I’d never discount the trauma she experienced in high school, but not talking to her for periods of time never made my heart physically ache the way it did with Kai.
Losing her brother was a whole different level of loss.
He knew me better than anyone, including her.
There were things I talked about with him that I didn’t with Harlow.
We had plans—future plans. He’d go to college, and we’d make it work for a year before I joined him at PCU.
Whatever came after that, he always had a plan.
NHL, a house, a family, us. Always us together.
Funny how that worked out. Sometimes we can make the best plans, with the best intentions, and they still end up shattered on the ground like broken glass. You can try to salvage those plans and piece them back together yourself, but they never look quite the same.
Harlow shifts closer. “He doesn’t know, right?”
“That I applied? No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
I shrug. “If I end up getting the job, yes. If I don’t, I don’t think there’s any point in making him nervous about it.”
She makes a face.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m deciding whether to interfere.” She sighs. “But we’re not kids anymore, and this is an adult situation between two adults, so I won’t say anything until you give me permission.”
“How mature of you.” I pin her with a glare. “Sounds fake.”
“It is, but I’m trying.” Harlow grins, reaching out and squeezing my arm gently. “You deserve the job if you want it. You know that, right?”
Want is a complicated word.
I want tuition paid. I want my mom to sleep. I want my siblings to have full lunch accounts and new shoes that aren’t falling apart and a house they can come home to. I don’t know if I want to work around hockey. I definitely don’t know if I want to work around Kai, but I need the job.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
Harlow doesn’t look convinced, but she lets me go.
At 2:17, I stand outside the athletics building and consider leaving.
Not seriously.
Just for a second.
The building is all glass and concrete, with Pacific Coast banners hanging high above the entrance and students walking in and out like they belong here.
I check my email again.
2:30.
Letting out a shaky breath, I put my phone away as I head inside.
The student working the front desk points me down a hallway, the familiar smell of rubber and cleaner mixed with the cool air bringing back a sense of familiarity that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I spent most of my teenage years in arenas and rinks because of Kai.
Tournaments. Practices. Games. Waiting in stands with bad hot chocolate and cold feet. Watching Kai skate like he had somewhere to put every feeling he didn’t know how to say.
I pause outside an office with a nameplate.
Donnelly Pierce
My hand hovers near the door for one second.
Then I knock.
“Come in.”
Donnelly is exactly what I expect and not at the same time.