16. Chapter Sixteen
Aspen
I lie in bed Monday night, and I don’t sleep.
I spent the day ignoring Stanley. His hockey stick is in the corner of my room, staring at me in disappointment. I’ve seriously had it for too long and haven’t given it back yet. That is how I know something is wrong with me.
I have his stick. He has my mug. I owe him a text.
Eight fifty-five the next morning, I’m at my desk.
Camera on, hair up, the report open in front of me.
I have read it three times since six. This morning, I am more prepared for a Tuesday analytics call than I have been for anything in my professional life, because preparation is the one thing in this entire situation I still have control over.
I’m drinking out of a backup mug I don’t like. My good mug is three doors down, on a man’s dresser, being held for ransom.
I join the call. Diego’s running it. The grid fills in. Standard Tuesday roster, standard Tuesday faces. One minute in, a new box drops into the grid.
Robert Ermington.
He lifts one hand to the camera with a genuine smile. He doesn’t unmute. He gives a small nod to the room in general.
Diego says, “Welcome, Robert.”
Robert nods back.
He doesn’t say hello to me. He doesn’t, that I can see, look at his own camera. He just tunes in, and it takes everything in me to tune him out.
I look at Diego. I look at my notes. I look at the grid as a whole, evenly. I don’t let my eyes flick to box one. My report is in twenty minutes. I hold the mug I don’t like in both hands.
Diego cues me after some time, so I deliver the report.
I have never, in my life, been more aware of my own voice — every pause I don’t take, every um I don’t make, the exact behavior of my own face.
I finish without breaking a sweat. Diego thanks me. He moves to the next analyst.
Robert’s box does not move. He doesn’t type in the chat. He doesn’t unmute. His expression, as far as I can read it through a webcam, does not change.
I don’t feel sick to my stomach, which I consider a professional triumph.
At nine forty-five, his square goes dark. Gotta jump. Thanks, team, in the chat, and then he’s gone.
I finish the meeting on autopilot. When it ends, I close the laptop and sit at my desk for a long time, and I notice that my hands are shaking.
He came to look.
I don’t text Stanley about it. I don’t text Stanley at all.
I go for a walk that has no destination. I end up in front of a stationery store off campus that I have walked past a hundred times and never entered, and I go in, and I buy a leather journal — heavy, unlined, the good kind. I put it in my bag, and I walk home.
I sit at my desk. I do my homework that’s due today and tomorrow before the holiday. The stick is still in the corner of my room. I don’t look at it. I attend my afternoon classes, submit what’s due, and it’s nice to get that checked off my list.
When I go to sleep that night, I’m thanking my lucky stars that my dad hasn’t forced me to take more notes on Stanley’s performance at practice. I’d be mortified if I had to.
On Wednesday at six in the evening, my father’s assistant forwards me a confirmation. My parents have booked me a flight. Thursday, 6 a.m. Return Saturday, 2 p.m. They booked it through Dad’s travel guy because my father has a travel guy.
I stare at it.
Stanley.
I have, since Sunday, received zero logistics from him about how he intends to physically arrive in the state of Connecticut. So I have no choice but to pull open our text messages and type something.
Me: Flight info. Thursday 6 a.m. Return Saturday 2 p.m. My parents booked it.
I set the phone aside and turn back to the report. It buzzes in under thirty seconds.
Ermington: I’m coming over.
I blink.
Me: Why?
Ermington: To book the same flight.
Me: You can book a flight from your own house.
Ermington: I need to see the confirmation in person.
Me: You do not need to see it in person.
Ermington: I do.
Me: You don’t.
Ermington: Linwood. I’m three doors down. I’m coming over.
I stare at the phone. I type, delete, type.
Me: Fine. Ten minutes.
Ermington: Five.
I am off the chair before I’ve put the phone down.
There’s a pile of folded laundry on the chair, a stack of three reports on the desk, two mugs on the nightstand, and a bed I didn’t make this morning because I’ve been feeling off and can’t get it together.
I make the bed in ninety seconds. I move the laundry into the closet. I rinse the mugs in the bathroom and run to the kitchen to set them down. Kirra walks down the stairs right at the perfect time to catch me being frantic.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just busy,” I call out.
I race back to my bedroom and square the reports into one clean stack. I close the laptop. I turn in a slow circle in the middle of my own room.
I see the stick. It’s in the corner. I haven’t solved the problem of how to give it back to him.
The doorbell rings, and I think the problem will sort itself out for me.
Kirra looks at me when I walk down the hall. “Are you expecting someone?”
I nod. “Ermington.”
She nods once and doesn’t say anything else.
I open the front door and Stanley’s on my porch in a Camden hoodie and sweats, holding two coffees. He brought my mug.
“Linwood.”
“Ermington.” I glance down.
He lifts my mug. “I come bearing offerings.”
“That’s my mug.” I don’t know why, but something wound up in my chest loosens when he hands it over.
“It’s your coffee, too. Fresh.” He releases it. “I’m a giver.”
I take it and don’t look at his face for more than half a second. I turn and go back inside. He follows, nods at Kirra.
Kirra says, “Hey, Stanley.”
He follows me down the hall. My door’s open. I walk in. He comes in behind me. And he stops in the doorway.
He grins when he sees the stick. “Oh, baby,” he says.
I freeze.
“You said you needed to see the confirmation. Sit down and look at the confirmation.”
He is not interested in what I’m saying. He crosses my room in three steps and picks up the hockey stick. He gathers it into both arms, against his chest, like a man lifting a newborn.
“Baby.”
“Ermington?”
“Baby. Baby. It’s been so long.”
What is happening?
“I have missed you so much. Did she feed you? Did she keep you warm? Did she—” He pulls back to look at the stick’s blade, searching its little face. “Linwood. Did you hum to her?”
“I did not hum to your stick.”
“I think you hummed to her.”
“I did not hum to the stick, Stanley.”
“She has a hummed-to quality about her. I can feel it.” He rotates the stick to face me, holding it under what would be its arms if a stick had arms, presenting it like a cat in a movie. “Look at her. Look at the woman who took you. Look how guilty she looks.”
He is so annoying. He pets the top of the blade with one thumb, soothing it.
“It’s all right, baby. She couldn’t help it. You’re a charmer. This happens to you. People take one look, and they fall apart. We knew the risk. We talked about it before you went out there.”
I feel like I’m watching something I shouldn’t be.
“She kept you for ten days,” he tells the stick, mournfully. “She drove you around in the back of an SUV. She leaned you against a wall.”
“I leaned it against a wall like a stick,” I mutter, annoyed.
“You leaned her against a wall like a man’s wife, Linwood. I saw the angle.”
And I lose it. A bubbled-up laugh gets all the way out.
His grin goes enormous. “There she is.”
I’m still laughing. I’m going to laugh until I cry if he doesn’t stop in the next thirty seconds, and I would die before I told him I don’t want him to stop.
He stops. He sets the stick down against the dresser with enormous tenderness, adjusts its angle, and pats the blade twice.
“Stay there, baby. I’m in a meeting.”
He turns to me with a full grin. I laugh again because he is ridiculous.
“Linwood. Hi.”
I swallow down my laughter, but I still have a smile. “Hi.”
“How are you?”
I bite my bottom lip, trying to contain myself. “I’m okay.”
He drops into my desk chair, still grinning. I can feel that I’m still smiling, and I can’t get my face to stop.
He pulls out his phone, opens the airline app. “Forward me the confirmation.”
I do. He books the same flight in under two minutes.
“Done.”
“That fast.”
“Linwood. I am a man who books flights for a living.”
“You are a man who flies on team charters.”
“I have an instinct for it. It’s a gift.”
He sets the phone on his knee. He’s not done, though. I can see it — his thumb is running along the edge of the case.
I wait.
“So, I bet you’ve already heard that the Ermingtons are flying in to join the Linwoods for Thanksgiving.”
I blink. “What?”
“Yeah.”
I’m going to be sick.
“Your dad?” I ask.
He nods. “And my mom.”
“At my parents’ house. For Thanksgiving.”
“Correct.”
“No.”
“Yeah.”
I stare at him, anxiety rushing through me. Oh, God. This is so bad.
“I have never once had a normal conversation with your mom. I have not seen her in years. The last time I saw her, I think I was nineteen, and she asked me what my major was, and I said Sports Management, and she said, oh, like your father, and I said yes, and she patted my hand and said good for you, sweetheart.”
“Linwood—”
“That was the entire conversation, Stanley.”
He’s grinning. I catch it.
“What?”
“You’re calling me by my first name.”
“Do you hear me?” I scoff. “Are you enjoying this?”
He gives me that same grin. “A little. Yeah.”
“You’re enjoying watching me have a breakdown about your mom.”
“Linwood. Relax.”
“Do not tell me to relax.”
“My parents love you. They always have. My mom thinks you’re—” he holds up two fingers on each hand “—sharp. That’s the highest compliment my mother has.”
“Stanley, that’s ––”
“Linwood. Listen. The hardest two are your dad and my dad, and your dad and my dad are best friends. Which means the entire table is, structurally, rooting for us. We don’t have to sell it. We just have to not blow it. That’s the whole job. Don’t blow it.”
I breathe. He’s right. He knows exactly what our families are like when they’re together. I don’t think I’m prepared. I breathe again.
“Okay,” I croak out.
“Okay?”
I nod.
“Good.” He claps his hands once. “Now. When should I leave Connecticut?”
“Don’t you have a game?”
He grabs his phone and says, “I can leave Friday morning.”
“Okay.” Then I calculate that means he’s staying the night. “Wait, where are you sleeping?”
He glances at me. “So, I guess my parents are staying with yours.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
He brushes it off smoothly. “Where would your dad be putting them up?”
I swallow. “I guess the guest room.”
“Is there only one?”
I nod.
“So, I’m sleeping where?”
I wince. “The couch.”
“Okay.”
He gets up, crosses to my desk, and picks up the journal I just bought. He looks for a pen, and then he opens the top drawer.
“Not––”
His eyes are already looking at the Missing posters I saved. All six of them laminated and stacked in the drawer. The top one has the word N-O spelled across his face with Sharpie. I swallow, watching his face.
“Nice place to hide these, Linwood. I need a pen.”
I point to the drawer he’s in. He shuffles around and pulls one out, and I have to bite back my embarrassment. He didn’t seem surprised to see his posters, nor did he make a joke out of it or ask why I wrote that across his face.
He opens the journal to the first page and asks, “Am I allowed to use this?”
I nod. “Sure.”
He sits down and flips to the first page. He starts writing at the top of the page.
Linwood-Ermington Dating Rules.
He puts the phone down and says, “We need rules.”
I look at the journal.
“For tomorrow. The dinner. The whole weekend. All of it.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll start.” He clicks the pen and writes, narrating as he goes. “Rule number one. Casual. We tell them nothing new — the story’s two weeks, after a Camden home game, coffee, I asked, you said yes. Simple. Simple holds.”
I nod, agreeing.
“Two. We don’t oversell. We don’t pretend to be in love. We’re new and figuring it out. People believe new before they believe sure.”
“Not in love. Got it.” Honestly, that’s a great rule. He’s pretty good at this, so I watch him for a moment. He concentrates on the list, thinking for a minute.
“Three. PDA. What do you say?”
“Definitely no kissing.”
“Not even on the cheek?”
I shake my head. “No lips allowed.”
“What about a hand on your lower back?”
I remember the feeling from Saturday. I tilt my head to think.
He says, “Okay, how about this? I ask before I touch you. You don’t have to ask before you touch me, because, frankly, I’ll be flattered.”
I turn red.
“Four––”
“No making this into one of your jokes. Put that in there.”
He stares at the paper for a moment. “Okay.”
“Five.” He writes it and then looks up at me. “We don’t lie to each other.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, we’re lying to our parents, right?”
I nod.
He continues, “So we do that, but we don’t lie to each other. Your dad pulls me aside and says something, I’ll tell you. Your mom pulls you aside, you tell me. We’re a unit. A unit doesn’t keep secrets from each other.”
I study him as he speaks. Rule number five is the most generous thing a man currently helping me lie to my entire family has ever offered me, and I can tell he means it. I always thought everything in his head was nonsense –– maybe I was wrong.
He looks at the list. “Okay, those are a good top five.” He starts turning his head, holding back his words.
“What?” I ask.
He turns to me. “Off the page, I just wanna add a few more.”
I wait to hear this.
“No crying at Thanksgiving. I’m bad with tears.”
“Okay.” I almost laugh.
“No pretending I’m the villain because your ex sucked. No looking at me like I stole your dad.”
I blink. “Wow, Ermington. Anything else?”
He nods. “You have to pretend that I baked the pie.”
“Pie?”
He presses his lips together and nods. “I’m making Laurens bake it for me, but we’re pretending I made it. From scratch.”
A slow smile meets my lips. “Got it.”
He closes the journal, stands up, and looks at his hockey stick. “Time to take my baby home. I’ll see you later, Linwood.”
I watch him as he leaves and think –– maybe this isn’t going to be so bad.