10. CHAPTER TEN
ROWAN
I didn’t know Gianna liked me.
That is still true the next morning, but it’s also useless information now because I know now, and apparently that changes things. Every interaction we’ve had for the past month has been moved into a different folder in my head overnight, and my brain keeps opening it without permission.
Her taking half my steak. Sitting beside me at the kitchen table.
Doing things just to annoy me. Her hand on my chest at Drew’s birthday.
Her knee against mine Saturday night. Yesterday, standing behind the equipment counter with both hands over her face because she’d accidentally told me she liked me.
None of those things felt particularly complicated when they happened. They do now.
I come downstairs a little after seven and find Stanley in the kitchen wearing one of the slippers Gianna spent five straight minutes making fun of last night.
He’s wearing just the one.
I stop in the doorway. “Where’s the other one?”
He looks down at his foot like he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t know.”
If it were anyone else, I’d be worried.
“I haven’t lost it. It’s temporarily displaced.”
“That’s lost.”
Stanley opens the refrigerator and looks at me over the door. “Why are you hostile this morning?”
I reach around him for the eggs. “You sound irritating.”
He takes out a bottle of water, shuts the fridge, and watches me crack an egg into the pan. I can feel him staring before I look over.
“What?”
“I was going to ask if you’re making enough for me.”
“I can.”
He pipes up. “Seriously?”
I turn back to the stove and crack another egg.
Stanley drinks his water in silence for maybe ten seconds before saying, “I have incredible self-control.”
That gets me. I laugh before I can stop myself.
Stanley immediately points at me like he’s won something. “See? I knew that was funny.”
“Gianna was funnier.”
His eyebrows go up.
I stare down at the eggs.
“Interesting,” he says.
“It’s not interesting.”
“I was talking about breakfast.” He laughs under his breath, and Benson comes downstairs before Stanley can get anything else out.
“Why are you wearing one slipper?” Benson asks.
Stanley turns toward him. “Jesus Christ. Everybody leave me alone.”
“Did you lose the other one?”
“It’s temporarily displaced.”
Benson nods. “Lost.”
Stanley walks out of the kitchen muttering about living with assholes, and I finish making breakfast without anybody asking me about Gianna.
That’s good because I don’t have anything to tell them. She likes me. That’s hers. I don’t know what mine is yet.
Practice is at one. Coach doesn’t mention Michigan State once. He has the board full when we walk into video, and everything on it is Ohio State. Their forecheck. Their entries. Their first unit. Their weak-side winger cheating high when the puck changes sides.
The message is obvious. Whatever happened last weekend is already useless unless we do something different with the next one.
We’re on the ice for an hour and forty minutes. My retrievals are better. Not perfect, but better. The second look is starting to happen before I remind myself to do it, which is the first time the whole thing has felt less like an assignment and more like hockey again.
After practice I shower, change, and come out of the room with my phone already in my hand.
There isn’t a message from Gianna. I notice immediately, which annoys me. Not her. Me. She doesn’t owe me a message because she told me she likes me. That would be insane.
I put the phone in my pocket and make it almost all the way down the hall before I take it back out.
Nothing.
Mackey walks beside me and glances over. “You lose something?”
“No.”
“You’ve checked your phone three times.”
“Are you counting?”
“Yeah.”
I put it away again.
At Hawthorne, I get through lunch, half an hour of film, and twenty minutes on the couch before my phone buzzes.
I grab it fast enough that Stanley looks over.
I don’t care.
Gianna: I have decided yesterday didn’t happen.
I stare at the message and grin.
Me: Okay.
The typing bubble appears immediately.
Gianna: You are such a dick.
Me: Sure.
Gianna: I hate you.
Me: That didn’t last long.
Nothing for a few seconds.
Gianna: I walked directly into that one.
I lean back into the couch.
Gianna: Are you leaving tomorrow?
Me: Afternoon.
Gianna: Ohio?
Me: Yeah.
Gianna: Good luck.
I look at that longer than I need to.
Me: Thanks, G.
I put the phone down, then pick it back up again.
Me: Coming over tonight?
Her answer takes maybe twenty seconds.
Gianna: Why?
I look around the living room. There are five people in this house. Benson is upstairs. Blue is in the kitchen. Stanley is sitting six feet away from me pretending not to look at my phone.
There is no good answer to the question.
Me: You always do.
The typing bubble appears, disappears, then comes back.
Gianna: Wow. Romance is alive.
I laugh.
Me: Is that what you wanted?
The bubble appears again.
Stops.
Starts.
Then nothing.
I stare at the screen and realize that was probably too much.
I don’t know why I sent it.
My phone buzzes.
Gianna: Maybe.
I lean back against the couch.
She comes over around six. I hear her before I see her. Stanley says something from the kitchen, and Gianna answers loud enough that Benson laughs from upstairs. Then she walks into the living room wearing jeans and an old Camden sweatshirt with her hair down.
Nothing about her looks particularly different from any other night she’s been here.
Except now I know she likes me. Apparently that’s enough to make me look. Her eyes find mine. She stops for half a second.
“Rowan.”
“What’s up, G?”
She looks toward the TV, then at me, then at the open space beside me. She sits, and her thigh touches mine immediately.
“Sorry,” she says. “You are enormous. You occupy most available seating.”
My head turns slowly. “There’s more couch over there.”
She looks down and narrows her eyes. “You’re enjoying this again.”
“A little.”
“I regret everything.”
“No, you don’t.” The words come out before I think about it.
Her expression changes, not much, but enough.
“You’re very confident,” she says.
Then Stanley walks into the room carrying a bowl of popcorn and ruins it. “What are we watching?”
Gianna leans away from me.
I look at Stanley.
He stops. “What?”
Gianna steals a handful of popcorn out of his bowl.
Stanley looks down at her. “See, this is what I’m talking about. Nobody respects me in my own home.”
“You live with four other people,” she says.
“Four men who respect me.”
Blue walks through from the kitchen. “No.”
Stanley turns around. “Fuck all of you.”
Gianna laughs.
I watch her.
Now that I’m aware I’m doing it, I can’t stop noticing the exact moment before she laughs. Her mouth opens first. Her shoulders lift. Sometimes she looks at whoever made the joke, sometimes she looks down.
I have known this woman for years. Apparently, I’ve never looked at her properly.
Later, everyone ends up in the kitchen because Benson orders food. Gianna is standing between me and the counter when it arrives, and when she reaches around me for a plate, I move right at the same time she does.
She moves left. So do I. We stop.
“Seriously?” she says.
“You’re following me.”
“I’m trying to get around you.”
“Then go left.”
She goes left.
I go left again.
She starts laughing. “Rowan.”
“What?”
“Stop.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, you’re not.”
I am. Mostly.
She puts both hands against my sides and tries to physically move me. It works less than she expects. Her palms land against my ribs. I look down at them. Then at her. She looks up. Neither of us is laughing anymore.
The kitchen stays loud behind us. Benson and Stanley are arguing about ranch dressing. Lucy is opening containers. Somebody drops a fork.
Nobody is looking at us.
Gianna pulls her hands away. “Sorry.”
“Why?”
Her eyes flick to mine.
I step aside.
She gets her plate.
Thursday is travel. We leave after lunch. The bus ride to the airport is mostly quiet. Guys sleep. Stanley spends twenty minutes trying to convince Percy that a neck pillow makes him look vulnerable.
Percy keeps his eyes closed and says, “I am asleep.”
Stanley continues talking to him anyway.
I put my headphones in. My phone buzzes before we board.
Gianna: Don’t suck.
Me: Good luck with your motivational speaking career.
Gianna: Ives says I have natural leadership qualities.
Me: Ives has never heard you talk to Stanley.
Gianna: That’s where the leadership is strongest.
I grin.
Me: Yeah.
Gianna: Seriously though. Good luck.
Me: Thanks.
I type something else, delete it, and board the plane.
Friday doesn’t go the way we want. We play well enough to win and don’t, which absolutely sucks. Ohio State scores late in regulation to force overtime and ends it before we can.
4-3.
I have an assist, but it doesn’t matter. The room afterward is quiet, but it isn’t Michigan State quiet. That was disbelief. This is anger. Nobody looks broken. We’re pissed.
Coach walks in and says one word. “Tomorrow.”
On the bus back to the hotel, I take my phone out.
Gianna has already texted.
Gianna: That was bullshit.
I smile despite myself.
Me: Which part?
Gianna: The ending.
Me: That’s usually the important part.
Gianna: I hate sports.
Me: Yeah.
Gianna: You played good.
I look at it.
Me: Well.
Gianna: Do not correct me tonight.
Me: Okay.
She sends a middle finger.
I laugh.
Blue looks over from across the aisle. “What?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes go to my phone. Then back to me. I put it face down on my leg. He doesn’t say anything.
Saturday is uglier. Ohio State gets one early. We answer in the second. Reichel gets another. They tie it, and nobody scores again.
Percy stops forty-one.
The shootout doesn’t go our way.
Officially, it’s a tie.
It feels like a loss for about ten minutes, until Fuller reminds us we took a point on the road after losing the first night and Percy basically carried the building on his back.
We leave Ohio with a loss and a tie. It’s not what we needed, but it isn’t fatal.