Chapter 36 #2
“Fine.” I sit on the edge of my bed, peel my hoodie off, and drop it on the chair. I pull my t-shirt off. I drop it on top of the hoodie. The cheek is throbbing now in a dull way. I lean forward with my elbows on my knees and sigh.
“What’s going on, cap?”
I look over at him and zone out for a second. My mind’s all over the place. After a moment, I say, “I asked G for permission to ask Lucy to be my girlfriend.”
He puts the phone down on his chest. “Yeah? What did she say?
“Got the greenlight.”
Blue nods. “Nice. How’re you doing it?”
I sit with the question, imagining all the different ways I could do it. “I’ve been thinking about it. I want — I want it to be romantic. I want her to remember it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe — flowers in the kitchen. The boys hanging back. I drop to a knee in the living room. Stanley films it on his phone for me from the stairs.”
Blue takes a moment to think. I don’t think it sounds like a bad idea because it’s not fully public.
He looks at the comforter and asks, “Would Lucy even like that?”
I stop, not knowing the answer to that. “I — what do you mean?”
“Some girls don’t want a big thing –– in front of other people. Some girls want it private.”
“Yeah.”
“Lucy doesn’t like it when Stan compliments her sweater in front of the boys.”
I close my eyes for a beat. He has a point. “Yeah.”
“Do you know if she likes flowers?”
I shake my head. “I have no clue.”
“I think she’d be freaked out if she saw one of us videotaping you two.”
“Right.”
He picks his phone back up. “I don’t know her that well, man, but I think she’s shy.” He nods to himself. “You found a shy one.”
He has, in the last thirty seconds, saved me from a thing I was going to do tomorrow that I would have regretted by Monday.
Lucy is not a girl who wants the boys filming it.
Lucy is a girl who would rather have it happen in a quiet room with no audience, no flowers, and no production.
She’s going to want it small, intimate. She’s going to want it ours.
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, Reeve.”
I lie on top of the comforter and stare at the ceiling. Then I get up, brush my teeth, get under the covers, and turn the lamp off on my side. I fall asleep within minutes.
We arrive at Chicago by lunchtime. The entire ride over, I sat with ice on and off my face.
Coach pulls me aside before warm-ups in the visitor’s tunnel and tells me that there are going to be scouts at the game tonight.
He doesn’t elaborate. He claps me on the shoulder and walks back to the bench.
I don’t say anything to the boys about it but tell them that we need to work harder tonight.
The Chicago game is harder. The home crowd is loud.
They go up 1-0 in the first on a power play.
Stanley took a stupid hooking penalty in the offensive zone, and we go into the first intermission down a goal and tired.
I tie it in the second on a wrist shot from the slot off a Blue feed.
The shot goes over the goalie’s blocker and ticks the post going in, and the noise from the home crowd goes flat for the second it takes the puck to drop in.
They go ahead again on a deflection in front a couple of shifts later.
The kind of goal where the defenseman is doing his job, and the puck just changes direction off a stick on the way through.
Percy looks at the ice for a beat after it goes in.
He looks up. He nods at the bench like he’s decided he’s going to make the next one count.
He does. He stops the next thirteen shots in a row.
I score again in the third. I take the puck off a Rowan stretch pass at the offensive blue line, beat the first defender on the wide side, drop my shoulder past the second defender at the dot, and put it five-hole on a goalie who has been guessing all weekend. We go up 3-2 with eight minutes left.
I tap gloves with Stanley on the way back to the bench.
Coach is yelling.
We hold the lead for two and a half minutes.
Chicago ties it on a rebound off a point shot. Percy never had a chance — the shot tipped twice on the way in, and his glove was on the wrong side. He bangs his stick against the post once after the goal and doesn’t do it again.
They take the lead with five minutes left.
I go double-shift the rest of the game.
I get a look at the net with three minutes left, and the goalie steals it with his glove.
I get another with a minute left, and the puck goes off the crossbar.
Rowan and Percy come on for the last shift with our goalie pulled and the offensive zone face-off.
We lose the draw, Chicago clears, and the buzzer goes.
Final 4-3.
We lose.
The locker room is quiet. It’s our first loss of the season.
Stanley sits at his stall pulling his sweater over his head without saying anything for the first time in three days.
Percy is at his stall with his pads still on, looking at his glove on the bench in front of him.
Blue is at his stall with his head in his hands for a beat before he straightens back up.
Coach comes in. He stands at the front of the room. He looks at the floor for a second. He looks up. “That was a good game. We got beaten by a good team. We will be better for it. Get out of your gear. Bus at seven.”
He turns to leave. Then he pauses at the door. “Reeve. Two goals.” His eyes meet mine, and he nods once. “Good game.”
“Coach,” I acknowledge.
He leaves, and the boys peel out of their gear slowly.
Stanley, in the showers, leans against the tile with the water running over the back of his neck and mutters at the floor. “We should have won that one.”
“Yeah,” a few of the guys agree.
Stanley scoffs, “We had it.”
Percy says, “Their goalie was guessing all night.”
I add, “We’ll get the next one.”
“Yeah.”
He nods at the tile. He’s quiet through the rest of his shower.
I sit on the bench in the locker room in just a towel and ice my face again. The bruise has come in across my cheekbone in a plum color with a small red split at the highest point where the elbow caught me. It looks worse than it feels.
I pull my phone out of the bottom of my bag.
Lucy watched the game with Gianna tonight.
She knows we lost. My parents, Gianna, and Lucy have been texting me the entire game.
I read them in the locker room in my towel and write back to my girl first. I tell her I’m about to eat dinner and hop on the bus, so I’ll see her tomorrow.
I finish getting dressed. Then we board the bus.
Four hours back to Camden U through the dark.
The bus is quieter than the bus on the way out.
The boys are tired. The team lost. Coach is in the front.
Walsh is two rows behind him on his phone.
Stanley is across the aisle from me already mostly asleep against the window with his pillow under his cheek.
Blue is in the row behind me on his phone. Rowan is in the back.
I have a window seat with my hoodie up. The interstate goes black past the windows somewhere around Rockford.
The cabin gets darker after Coach turns the overheads off.
I close my eyes and let my head go against the window.
The bruise on my cheekbone is against the cold glass of the window.
It keeps me up longer than I anticipated.
My mind’s racing about tomorrow. I feel a mix of excitement and nerves when I think about asking her to be mine.
It means I’m Camdenking the number one Hawthorne House rule, which I’ve followed the past three years.
I agreed to the rules because I had my head in the game, but now I’m worried that I’ve gotten too cocky about my position.
I want Vancouver so fucking bad, but I think I might want Lucy more.
And it’s messing with my head in ways I didn’t anticipate.
I readjust my position on the bus and rest my head so that my cheek’s not throbbing. I start thinking about how I’m going to ask her. All the voices ring in my head, but deep down I know that she’s going to want it small. She’ll want it to be ours.