The queen and the gremlin #2
He doesn't slow down when he reaches me.
One hand goes into my hair at the back of my skull and the other one lands at my waist and he kisses me like we’re in his room, not an arena of six thousands people screaming.
And God, it is so good.
It is so unreasonably good. My hands are on his chest and he's still hot from the first half and everything in me goes down about four inches and stays there.
Somebody near the bench yells something. A camera shutter goes off very close to my ear.
When he pulls back his forehead stays against mine and he is breathing like he's run the length of the court.
“I'm so fucking proud to be your boyfriend, you know that?”
————
Princeton win by nineteen.
We beat Penn by nineteen, which the seniors will be dining out on until they are dead.
And on the way out of the tunnel Nate tells me the bracket's set. Harvard on the other side of it. Three years holding that title and a gym in Boston with their own name over the door.
Will is going to be unbearable about this.
Afterwards the floor fills with parents and the department does the senior thing with the flowers and the framed jerseys and an announcer reading four years of statistics in a voice like a wedding.
And my boyfriend stands there in a suit somebody must have physically made him buy, holding roses, looking like he'd rather be dead.
Then a man arrives at his shoulder and I know before anybody says anything.
I read people for a living. Okay. Not for living yet. My parents still pay for my tuition fees.
Anyway, it takes me eleven seconds.
He is smaller than I expected. Will is six foot four and stands like a door, his father comes up to his shoulder.
Good coat, properly good, the kind you buy once. Haircut that costs eighteen dollars and has never once been discussed. Shoes polished tonight, not last week. A man who has never in his life been late for anything and would like you to know it without mentioning it.
“Maddy,” Will pulls me closer. “This is my dad. Dad, Maddy.”
“Richard.” The handshake is dry, firm, and over. It is not unfriendly. It's just concluded. “I've heard a lot about you.”
“Hi, sir.” I don’t know what I’m saying. “All of it's true.” I also don’t know why I warn Richard about me. Fuck me.
“That's what I understood.” Something happens at the corner of his mouth that is nearly the thing Will's mouth does. “That was quite a video.”
“Thank you.”
"You did the whole thing yourself?”
"I had a producer. She's currently being congratulated by the rowing team.” I grin.
“How many clients?” Richard asks me, drowning down Will’s weak protest Dad on the side.
Oh. Oh, this is a test, and I have never been so delighted to sit one.
“Nine active. Six retained.”
“Margins?”
“Improving.”
“Hm.” He files it. I watch him file it. He nods once, like I have come in slightly above forecast, and I understand with total clarity that this is the warmest thing this man is capable of and that I have just been given a great deal of it.
Then he turns to his son. “Good game.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“Proud of you,” he says it plainly, no fuss, and Will's whole body does something I can only describe as standing up straighter while already standing up straight.
And then, in exactly the same tone, in the same breath, without any pause at all. “You're still going right off the second screen. Second half, twice. You did it against Rutgers.”
“I know.”
“You know, but you're doing it.”
“I know, Dad.” My six-foot-four boyfriend who has been shouted at by Coach in front of an entire arena have gone completely unbothered.
“Fix it before Boston.” He pats his son's arm twice. “Your mother sends her love. She couldn't get out of Los Angeles. She said if you make the final she'll be there.”
“Sure.”
“That's what she said.”
“I heard you.”
And Richard Mercer nods again, and Nate arrives to be enormous at everybody, and the conversation moves.
I don't say a word.
I stand in a very loud gymnasium holding my boyfriend's roses because both his hands were full, and I do the maths.
Girls are judged by who they’re seen with and boys are judged by who they’re becoming. Honest truth, while he’s got eighteen fucking points attached to his name tonight.
My boyfriend is sweaty, has great arms, terrifying calm on court and objectively better emotional intelligence than half the guys in this arena.
Yet the first question everyone has asked him for three weeks is whether Princeton is taking the championship back.
Sir.
He is also funny. He has a brain. He opens bottles beautifully. Can everybody develop another conversational topic while we’re here?
Frankly, I don’t blame Will. Now I know the deranged brain that searches every situation for the next useful correction didn’t come from nowhere. Apparently Mercer affection comes with performance notes.
I look at his father's eighteen-dollar haircut and his good coat and his two pats on the arm.
Well. Fuck.
“Hey.” Will's hand finds the small of my back. “You've gone quiet. That doesn’t happen.”
“I'm thinking.”
“About what?”
Not tonight. Tonight he has flowers and a suit and eighteen points and a father who came, and I am not putting one more thing into his hands.
“About how you're going to explain to Coach that your girlfriend hijacked his video package,” I tell him with a massive grin.
“Coach asked for your email.” Will scrunches his nose.
I love that scrunch. That scrunch is mine.
“He did not.” I scream, hands over my mouth.
“He asked for your email, Maddy.” Will's face is entirely serious. “Something about the alumni gala.”
I stop walking. “The gala?”
“That's what he said.”
“Willy.”
“Yeah.”
“How much do you think the gala pays?”
He laughs so hard he has to hand me the rest of the roses.