7. CHAPTER SEVEN
GIANNA
Apparently none of that means I understand how to give a three-minute speech.
He fucking counted them.
I take a picture of the feedback sheet because I need evidence and shove it into my bag on the way out.
By lunch, I have more important things to worry about because Ives posted the next step for our event project, and thankfully she has stopped asking us to imagine things and started asking us to prove they can happen.
She wants the venue, estimated attendance, rough budget, staffing, major risks, and the actual people we think would need to approve the thing.
I already picked the clinic.
That part is done.
Now I need to figure out how forty or fifty kids magically appear at a hockey rink without me standing outside an elementary school handing out flyers, which I assume Camden would frown upon.
I pull out my phone.
Me: Are you busy?
Rowan answers two minutes later.
Rowan: Class.
Me: So no?
Rowan: That’s usually what class means.
I smile down at my phone.
Me: When are you done?
Rowan: 2:15.
Me: I need your old facilities guy.
There’s a longer pause this time.
Rowan: That sounds illegal.
I laugh.
Rowan: Meet me outside Halloran.
At 2:14, Rowan is sitting on the low brick wall outside Halloran with his backpack between his boots and both hands tucked into the pockets of his black coat.
It takes me a second to realize why he looks different. There’s no rink. No jersey. No gear bag. No Hawthorne kitchen behind him. Nobody yelling his last name from across a locker room.
He just looks like a college student waiting for class to end.
His coat is black and old enough that the cuffs are fading, and his hair is still flattened slightly on one side, like he put a hat on when he left Hawthorne and took it off somewhere along the way.
His eyes find me before I get all the way across the walkway.
“I picked the clinic,” I say.
He stands and swings his backpack over one shoulder. “Good.”
I stop in front of him. “That sounded smug.”
“It wasn’t.”
I stick out my chin. “It sounded a little smug.”
“It’s the one that’ll actually happen.”
“I know.” I pull my laptop bag higher on my shoulder. “That’s why I picked it.”
That gets the smallest shift at the corner of his mouth. “Okay.”
“I need to know where the kids come from.”
He starts walking. I fall into step beside him.
“Where do kids come from?” he says softly, almost to himself.
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“You’re funny, Reeve.”
He looks down at me for half a second, and I grin. “Me?”
He nods. “Do you want to know where kids come from?”
“Shut up,” I laugh.
He laughs.
“Actually, no. Tell me, please.”
“Usually, there are two people, and they get together––”
“I’ve heard enough,” I say, widening my eyes, walking ahead of him.
The athletics building is on the other side of the quad. Rowan holds the door when we get there, and I walk under his arm into a blast of warm air that immediately makes me sweat.
“Great.” I pull off my top layer.
Rowan looks over. “What?”
“I can’t breathe.”
He waits, watching me tug it off. He glances at my shirt for a moment, and then he leads me upstairs.
The facilities and event operations office is at the end of the second floor. There are four desks, a wall calendar covered in handwriting, and radios charging along one counter.
The man at the desk near the window sees Rowan and lifts one finger while he finishes a phone call. When he hangs up, he pushes his glasses onto the top of his head.
“Laurens.”
“Hey, Derek.”
Derek looks at me.
Rowan gestures slightly in my direction. “Gianna Reeve. Sophomore. She’s doing the 240 project.”
Derek puts a hand out. “Derek Hall.”
I shake it.
“Reeve like Benson?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “He’s my brother.”
“Huh.”
That is apparently all he has to say about that.
He pushes a chair away from the desk with his foot. “What are you trying to do?”
I sit. “Youth clinic tied to a home game. Morning clinic, registration includes a ticket for the kid, parents can buy theirs separately, sponsor covers jerseys if Compliance lets me, and some kind of intermission component.”
Derek looks at me for about two seconds. “How many kids?”
“That’s my first problem.”
“Good.”
I blink. “Good?”
“You know it’s a problem.”
He turns slightly in his chair. “You don’t recruit the kids yourself. Camden already works with local youth hockey programs through Community Engagement. You’d partner with one of them and let them distribute registration to their families.”
I immediately open my notes. “So I don’t need names.”
“You should absolutely not have a list of children’s names sitting in your personal email.”
“See,” I nod in agreement, “that felt illegal.”
From the chair beside me, Rowan says, “Told you.”
I ignore him.
Derek continues. “You decide what the clinic can physically hold first. Twenty kids? Forty? Sixty? Then you talk to the youth program and see whether that number makes sense for their roster and age groups.”
“So the number comes from capacity before demand.”
“Exactly.”
I type that.
“Who owns the event?” Derek asks.
“Athletics?”
“Too broad.”
I stop typing.
He waits.
I look at Rowan. He’s sitting with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, watching me. He does not help. Traitor.
I turn back to Derek. “Hockey operations?”
“Closer. Somebody employed by Athletics has to sponsor the reservation and take institutional responsibility for it. Your professor can probably point you toward the academic side, but if you want current players involved, you need somebody inside Athletics willing to own the event.”
I type WHO OWNS IT??? in capitals.
Derek sees it and smiles.
“Next. What happens when your clinic ends at eleven-thirty and game operations needs the second sheet at noon?”
I answer, “I get everybody off at eleven-twenty.”
He shakes his head.
I stare at him.
He waits again.
“Oh.” I lean back. “I need teardown time.”
“You need turnover time. You’re not only scheduling the clinic. You’re scheduling the space after the clinic.”
I type that too.
“And the intermission thing?” he asks.
“Half the kids Friday, half Saturday.”
“Better.”
My fingers stop.
Rowan’s eyes shift toward me.
I don’t look back at him.
Derek asks one more question. “Sponsor wants its logo on the jersey. Who says yes?”
“Compliance.”
“And?”
I hesitate. “Whoever owns the event?”
“There you go.”
I sit back. That was four questions. I now have twelve new notes. And somehow I feel better.
Derek reaches across his desk and pulls a business card out of a holder.
“Email me once you have a headcount and a date you think works. One page. I don’t want a deck, and I don’t want fourteen versions of the same idea.
Tell me what it is, how many people, what spaces you need, and who you think needs to approve it. ”
I take the card. “Then what?”
“Then I tell you everything you got wrong.”
I grin. “Perfect.”
“That reaction is concerning.”
“I like fixing things.”
“Good major, then.”
I put the card into the front pocket of my laptop bag before I can lose it. “Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.”
“Sure.”
Rowan gets up.
We’re halfway to the stairs when I look over at him.
“You didn’t say anything.”
He glances down. “In there?”
“Yes.”
He’s confused. “You were talking.”
I shoot back, “That has never stopped a man before.”
He smiles.
I push the stairwell door open ahead of him. “You knew the answers.”
“Some of them.”
I slow down one step.
Rowan keeps going, then looks back when he realizes I’m behind him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
His eyebrows lift.
I catch up. “You watched me struggle through the entire ‘who owns it’ thing.”
“You got there.”
“I was fumbling like a fool.”
“It still counts.”
I roll my eyes. “That is such a coach answer.”
“I’m not a coach.”
“You could be. You already have the deeply irritating calm thing down.”
He laughs quietly and pushes through the door at the bottom of the stairs.
Outside, the cold hits hard enough that I’m shoving my coat back on, and Rowan laughs watching me pull it on.
I walk beside him across the courtyard.
“You should’ve warned me about turnover time.”
“That would’ve been helping.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
He laughs again.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket.
Mara.
I answer. “Mara.”
She says, “Birthday party.”
There’s music behind her.
I pull the phone away and look at the time.
“It is three-twenty on a Tuesday,” I laugh. “Whose birthday?”
“Drew’s.”
That explains more than it should.
“Faulkner?”
“Yes. Twenty-one. His roommates have apparently decided birthdays follow no recognized calendar or work schedule, so people are already here.”
I glance at Rowan. He’s walking beside me with his hands back in his pockets.
“Mara, I have class tomorrow.”
“We all do. Come for an hour. Mila’s coming.”
I say, “I’m not drinking.”
“Whatever, G. Just come!”
“Fine,” I shout. “Send me the address.”
“I love you.” She hangs up.
I lower the phone.
Rowan looks over. “Mara?”
“Obviously.”
I tuck the phone into my pocket. “It’s Drew’s birthday. There’s a party.”
“On a Tuesday?” he asks.
“Apparently birthdays are exempt from weekdays.”
He nods once like he’s considering this terrible information.
I look at him. “Do you want to come?”
Rowan’s eyes move to mine. For a second, he doesn’t answer. Then he says, “Yeah.”
That’s it.
Just yeah.
Something stupid and warm opens in my chest anyway.
I smile. “Okay.”
We reach the split in the walkway where he has to head toward Hawthorne, and I have to go the other direction.
“I’m changing first,” I tell him. “I’ll pick you up.”
He nods. “See you.”
“Yeah.” I keep walking. I make it to the library before I realize I’m still smiling.
Drew lives in a rental house about ten minutes from campus, and by the time Rowan and I get there, every downstairs light is on. There are cars parked along both sides of the street. Somebody has tied a metallic 21 balloon to the mailbox, and it keeps whipping sideways in the wind.
Rowan looks at it as we get out. “Classy.”
“You still have time to run.”
He gives me a funny glance. “You drove.”
I shrug, satisfied with that answer. “Then you’re trapped.”