On His Schedule (Boys of Hawthorne House #1)

Chapter 1

Benson

“Reeve.”

“Coach.”

He turns the paper around and slides it across the desk. I look down.

It’s my projected midterm grade for STAT 215.

Sixty-seven percent.

There is a feeling that happens to me sometimes — not often, but sometimes — where my chest gets a little tight, and my brain immediately starts negotiating with itself like it’s in a hostage situation.

I’m having one of those right now. Sixty-seven percent.

That is academically a D-plus. It’s not good.

“That’s projected,” I say, but it sounds like a question.

“That’s projected as of last Thursday.”

“It’s the first week of classes.”

“It’s the third week of summer-semester carryover, the syllabus quiz, and one homework set, and you’re at sixty-seven.”

“I had two-a-days.”

“Everyone had two-a-days.”

I shut my mouth.

Coach leans back. He’s wearing the navy quarter-zip he wears on Mondays. The man has six quarter-zips and rotates them like a uniform, and I know this because Stanley made a spreadsheet about it in our sophomore year. It’s genuinely one of the funniest documents I’ve ever seen.

“You’re a senior,” he says. “You’re my captain. You are projected first round in seven months. You know what NHL teams ask about?”

“Coach—”

“They ask about academics, Reeve. Not because they care if you can do a t-test. Because they want to know if you can sit in a room and learn something that’s hard for you and not quit.”

“I’m not quitting.”

“You’re at sixty-seven.” His eyes catch mine, so I nod.

There is no good answer to this.

He pulls a second piece of paper out from under the first and slides that one across too. It’s a flyer. Athletic Tutoring Center, phone number, hours, the Camden logo embossed in the corner like it’s a wedding invitation.

“Call them today,” he says. “Get matched. First session within forty-eight hours.”

“Coach, the guys can help me. Percy took Stats last year, he—”

“Percy is a goalie with a four-point-oh and his own problems. I’m not asking you to study with your roommates. I’m telling you to get a tutor.”

“My sister—”

“Reeve.” He doesn’t raise his voice. “If you don’t have a real tutor by Friday, you sit the home opener.”

I open my mouth. No fucking way.

“You sit the home opener,” he repeats, watching my face, “and I’ll let your agent know why.”

That doesn’t feel very nice. The tightness in my chest is now knotting loops around my brain. This is definitely a hostage situation, and one I cannot get out of. I pick up the flyer. I don’t want him to tell my agent shit.

“By Friday,” I say, understanding that I can’t convince my way out of this one.

“By Friday.”

I’m halfway out the door when he says my first name. “Benson.”

I turn.

He’s already looking back at his computer. “You think NHL teams want a guy who can’t pass Stats?”

“No, Coach.”

“Make the call.”

The walk back across campus is a drag. I’m in a hoodie, but the weather is bipolar, so I shouldn’t be in a hoodie.

I left the house when it was freezing, but now it’s hot.

I’m fucking sweating. I clutch onto the flyer about tutoring and try to figure out how I, Benson Reeve, captain of the Camden University Wolves, projected first-round draft pick, son of a man who can recite the entire 1996 Red Wings roster from memory, am about to sit the home opener over a class about the mean.

The mean.

The actual statistical mean.

My phone buzzes. Then it buzzes again. Then it buzzes seven more times because the group chat is never quiet. I pull it out.

Stanley: [photo of a raccoon eating a slice of pizza]

Stanley: This is Rowan when he cooks.

Rowan: Wtf. I’m literally making you eggs rn.

Stanley: [photo of the same raccoon, zoomed in]

Stanley: Look at his little hands.

Blue: Almost home. I want some eggs too.

Percy is, as always, not in the chat. He always reads the chat but never contributes. Percy is a French-Canadian ghost.

I don’t text back. I just walk and look at the flyer and think about the word projected.

Hawthorne Street is the kind of street where the houses have been rented to college students for so long that they’ve forgotten they were ever real houses.

Ours is the third one on the right, white with green shutters and a porch swing that hangs at a forty-five-degree angle because Stanley sat on it wrong in March and we never fixed it.

The doormat says GO WOLVES in block letters.

Stanley stole it from a tailgate when he was a freshman.

Sometimes I think about how every single object in our house has a story like that.

I go up the steps and open the door, expecting a raccoon to spawn somewhere in here. Instead, I’m blinded. Stanley is shirtless on the couch with the sun reflecting off his skin.

“—and that’s why,” Stanley is saying, gesturing with a banana, “we have to outlaw it.”

“Outlaw what?” Rowan says from the kitchen island. He’s whisking something. There’s a small mountain of grated cheese next to him. He looks like a man who has been awake for four hours and has plans for the next four. “Outlaw what, Stanley. Use your words.”

“Love.” Stanley puts his hands in the air like it’s sprinkling it with his fingers.

I close the door behind me. Nobody looks at me. The Hawthorne House operates on a kind of social radar where you can enter or exit a room without acknowledgment until you’re load-bearing for the conversation.

“You can’t outlaw love,” Rowan says. “That’s not a thing you can do.”

“I’m not saying outlaw it forever, Laurens, Jesus, I’m not a monster. I’m saying for senior year. As a household.”

“You’re not even a senior in normal terms,” Blue says.

He’s at the kitchen counter standing up, eating cereal directly out of a plastic container because we haven’t done dishes since last week.

His hair is wet, which means he’s been at the rink.

He goes to the rink at 5 a.m. every single day of his life.

When I asked him why, he has never given me a real answer.

“I am spiritually a senior.”

“You’re spiritually a freshman,” Percy says, from the dining table. Percy doesn’t look up from his book when he says this. He’s the kind of man who says about one thing per day and then closes for business. The book in his hands is in French. The cover has a sad-looking man on it.

“Et tu, Deveroux,” Stanley says, and clutches his chest with the banana. “Et fuckin’ tu.”

“I’m just saying,” Rowan continues, like nobody else is talking, “you’re proposing we legislate the human heart, and I’m—”

“My dick,” Stanley says matter-of-factly.

The room pauses.

“My dick,” Stanley repeats, “is doing too much of the talking lately. And I am a man. I’m self-aware, and I’m acknowledging this. As your captain — sorry, Reeve, I’m acknowledging this as a natural-born leader — I am proposing we, as a unit, take feelings off the table for the fucking year.”

“You are not the captain,” I say, dropping my bag by the door. “I am the captain.”

“Reeve!” He turns to me, banana raised. “Reeve, thank God. Tell them.”

“Tell them what?”

“The number one Hawthorne House rule. No falling in love before the draft. Senior year is sacred. Hockey and bros only.”

“I just got told by Coach that if I don’t have a tutor by Friday, I’m sitting the home opener,” I say, peeling off my hoodie and tossing it on the back of the couch, “so honestly, no falling in love is the easiest rule I’ve ever agreed to in my life.”

Stanley points at me with the banana. “See,” he says. “See. The captain agrees. It’s a rule.”

Blue scoffs, “It’s been a rule for years, man. What’s your point here?”

Stanley says, “We make sure we fucking stick to it!”

Percy says, “It sounds like someone’s not sticking to it.”

Stan points at him. “No, it’s the start of the semester. Let’s not fuck it up with distractions.”

“Pussy is a distraction now?” Rowan asks.

“Love is,” Stanley deadpans. “Aren’t you listening to me?”

Blue and Rowan laugh. “Not really.”

“It’s already a house rule,” Percy says, finally setting his book face-down on the table, “so why are you bringing it up?”

“You know what’s not a problem?” Stan asks. “Hockey. Hockey doesn’t text you back weird. Hockey doesn’t ask you what you’re thinking. Hockey doesn’t hand you a fucking Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year and—”

“Where is this coming from?” Rowan asks.

“It’s not coming from anywhere.”

Rowan shrugs, not about to let this go. “It’s coming from somewhere.”

“It’s coming,” Stanley says, pivoting smoothly, “from strategy. It’s coming from the fact that we have one shot.

Three of us — me, you, Reeve — get drafted in seven months.

Percy and Blue have one more year after this, but they’re in it, too, philosophically.

And I am telling you, as someone who has watched too many great men get hockey-disrupted by some girl with—” he gestures vaguely at the air, “a personality — that we have to lock in.”

“You are describing a normal woman,” Rowan says.

“I am describing a menace.”

“Show of hands,” Blue says, from the counter, deadpan.

Stanley spins. “Wait — really?”

“Show of hands. Let’s just do it. I want him to shut up.” Blue lifts a hand without looking up from his cereal. “Who wants to keep the rule?”

“Aye,” Stanley says, raising the banana like a gavel, “you have to say aye.”

“Aye,” Blue says.

“Aye,” Stanley says, raising his other hand.

“That’s two hands, you only get one—”

“Aye times two.”

“Stop.”

Rowan sighs, the way he does when he has decided that a thing is too dumb to fight. “I abstain. This is a stupid rule. You can’t will yourself to not fall in love. That’s not how the brain works, Stanley, it’s literally an involuntary—”

“Percy.”

“I abstain,” Percy says, picking his book back up. “On the grounds that the question is unserious.”

“Reeve,” Stanley says, turning to me. “Captain. Your vote.”