Chapter Thirty-Eight Rhys
We won. Again.
Fucking finally.
The team is riding the high of gaining back our winning streak, Gym Class Heroes blaring louder than usual as I walk through the tunnel into the dressing room. I smile brightly as my team smacks my back, Freddy and Dougherty skipping around and singing with a few of the more outgoing underclassmen.
Every single one of them deserves this win. It finally pushes our points high enough that we don’t have to worry as much before the Cornell game next weekend. Harvard—one of our top competitors this year—still looms on the horizon, but for tonight, a win is a win.
“A motherfucking Reiner shutout !” Freddy shouts, whistles blaring all around as he takes the sacred knot of rope, looped from cut strands of conference-winning nets, and hands it to Bennett, declaring him our player of the game.
Everyone cheers as Bennett, still in his thick leg pads but stripped down to a long-sleeve compression shirt up top, stands and accepts it with a nod.
I know better than to expect any sort of speech, and he doesn’t offer anything other than, “Couldn’t have done it without my defensemen and this entire team. Go Wolves.” He lifts the long drape of rope before sitting back against his cubby.
Coach Harris smiles, because he knows his star goalie in the same way I do, appreciates his quirks and rituals. He’s built trust with all of us, but I know personally how much he’s worked with Bennett.
Coach nods at all of us once, and leaves with a quick, “Enjoy your evening, boys. Don’t be stupid,” tossed over his shoulder.
But it’s Toren Kane, sitting sullenly in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest, sweat dripping from his wet black hair, that he pats on the shoulder as he goes.
Something pulls tight in my chest at the sight.
Freddy is already announcing the party at “the hockey dorms”—which will be massive, as our Halloween parties always are. And if the large bags of face paint that currently sit on our kitchen counter are anything to go off, he will be forcing any unprepared underclassmen into designated costumes.
We, as a team, usually go all out.
But, considering my girlfriend bailed on said party just before the second period via text, I have other plans in mind.
My girlfriend . Two weeks later, it still tastes just as fucking sweet.
Last night, with my face buried between her thighs, I got her to agree to attend one of my parents’ schmoozy galas.
I shower quickly and change into gray sweatpants and a neon-orange shirt that says I’m Only Here for the Boos with a ghost sporting heart eyes—a gift from Freddy in our freshman year when I said I was too busy to dress up before we went downtown.
It was definitely part of the reason he wormed his way into my heart as one of my best friends.
Since then, the cheesy shirts for every major holiday have become a strange tradition between the two of us.
I’m gone before Freddy can try to stop me, only telling Bennett where I’m going. I know the drive like the back of my hand now, as I spend any of my minimal free time with Sadie—and being with her often means running her brothers around, getting them dinner or picking them up from practices.
Still, I’ve yet to have a run-in with her dad. Which, I’m sure, is a very purposeful thing on her end.
If I’m involved in the plans, we never end up at her house for the night.
She avoids it—even if it means I end the night helping her tuck in sleepy kids on an air mattress on her dorm room floor.
Sometimes I can convince them to sleep at the Hockey House, where Liam and Oliver get showered with endless attention by whatever players are there, who will play games with them until Sadie turns on her stern voice and forces everyone to their respective beds.
Beds I purchased impulsively one day and put in the unused room at the end of the hall.
I know she’s home tonight because there’s only a handful of reasons she would cancel. Ro, our new loyal fan, attended the game, but she gave me a quick shake of her head to tell me Sadie wouldn’t be showing.
The street the Browns live on is dark, with no real decoration, all porch lights off except theirs. I knock in a pattern before stepping back so Sadie can see me in the peephole before she answers.
“Holy shit,” I mutter, smiling broadly as I take in her appearance at the front door.
She’s dressed in a brown, fuzzy onesie—complete with a floppy hood—with a big plastic pumpkin-shaped bowl full of candy hefted on her waist, and a tiny Darth Vader hanging on to her leg.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, but there’s nothing but joy on her face, hidden lightly beneath my favorite little furrowed-brow expression.
“Who are you supposed to be?” I ask, ignoring her question completely because it’s ridiculous—where else would I be but with her?
Sadie smirks, but it’s Liam who shouts, “A Wookiee!” as he leaps for me.
I pick him up and follow Sadie into the house, then shut and lock the door behind me. This is the farthest I’ve been into her home, which is small and cold. It feels like there isn’t any heat on—and maybe there isn’t.
There’s a set of stairs that look a little worse for wear.
Directly to the right is a small, blue-tiled kitchen with cookies in a pan on the stovetop, which explains the sugary smell.
To my left, I spot Oliver perched on a stained floral couch.
The only light comes from a lamp on the side table and the flickering TV.
“Hey, bud.”
“Koteskiy.” He nods before shifting his attention back to the screen.
My eyebrows shoot to my hairline. Sadie covers her mouth to keep a laugh from bursting, turning toward the kitchen. I follow with Liam still on my hip as he tells me about trick-or-treating in the “rich-people neighborhood” and that Sadie won’t let him have any more candy tonight.
I reach for a cookie off the tray, but Liam slaps my hand and screeches, “We have to sing first!”
“Sing what?”
“?‘Happy Birthday’!”
“Is it your birthday, bud?” My eyes dance as I look between him and a blushing Sadie.
He laughs, bright and loud, like I’ve told some ridiculous joke. “No, it’s Sissy’s. She’s… um…” He leans into his sister and loudly whispers, “How old are you again?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two,” he shouts to me immediately.
My heart drops, eyebrows furrowing as I look at her again. “I… I had no idea.”
Sadie shakes her head and crosses her arms. “Obviously, because I didn’t tell you, hotshot.” She shoves a sugar cookie into her mouth before Liam can stop her, smiling wickedly at him as she chews.
It might be ridiculous, but I’m slightly hurt that she didn’t tell me.
Liam climbs down from my arms and demands that I get his brother so we can sing and Sadie can make her birthday wish. I take a cookie, imprinted with a little orange pumpkin, and head into the living room.
I lean over the back of the couch. Halloween 3 is playing on the TV with that same stupid song that plagued my nightmares as a kid.
“How was your game?” I ask Oliver, remembering he had one this afternoon.
He doesn’t look at me. “We won.”
“Score anything?” I smirk, jostling his shoulder. He shifts to stand, coming around the back of the couch and stopping in front of me, closer than he’s ever been to me. Hell, closer than I’ve seen him get to anyone besides Sadie and Liam.
He scratches the back of his neck before dropping his voice to a whisper.
“My therapist said Sadie probably has trauma with her birthday because when she was around my age something happened with our mom.” He shrugs. “I always thought it was because Dad gets really, really drunk on holidays. On Christmas, he’s sad. On Halloween, he’s usually angry. But I don’t know.”
I still as I look at him, stomach sick, the leftover taste of the cookie souring on my tongue.
“But that’s probably why she didn’t tell you. And… I don’t want you to be mad at her.”
I try to swallow past the lump forming in my throat.
“I’m not mad at Sadie,” I tell him quietly.
There’s a hesitancy to his stance, in every line of his face, like he wants to say more but he doesn’t know how.
So I take a guess. “I’m not gonna leave her, Oliver.
Never, okay? She may ask me to go one day, but I will never be the one to leave.
Not her, or your brother, or you . Tell me you understand that. ”
His cheeks blush as he angles his eyes down to the ground. “I understand.”
“Good,” I say, and for a moment I feel like crying. I want to wrap this kid in my arms, because his shoulders look heavy with the weight he carries—but I know he’s a bit like Bennett, and he doesn’t really like touch.
So I pat his shoulder once and direct us toward the kitchen, following behind him.
We sing “Happy Birthday” at the top of our lungs, and clap as Liam adds his own little verse at the end that seems completely made up on the spot, adding lots of silly noises with his mouth until he’s laughing at his own joke so hard he can’t keep it going.
I kiss Sadie on the temple when she reaches for another cookie and she sinks into my touch for a moment.
I’m completely in love with her.