12. CHAPTER TWELVE
ROWAN
My phone buzzes face down beside my laptop, and I turn it over before the vibration finishes.
Gianna: Mara wants to know if you can walk today.
I’m sitting in the second-floor library with half of Novak’s case study open in front of me and a coffee I’ve forgotten to drink cooling beside it. I read the message twice, mostly because I don’t understand why Mara is suddenly concerned with my mobility.
Me: Why?
Gianna: She has concerns after yesterday.
I stare at that for another second.
Me: Tell Mara I’m fine.
Gianna: She says that’s not what she meant.
Then I get it.
I put the phone face down again and sit back in my chair, rubbing a hand over my mouth as yesterday comes back with enough clarity that I don’t need Mara helping.
Gianna in my bedroom with both knees on either side of me.
Her hands in my hair. Her trying to maintain a reasonable bathroom timeline while sitting on my lap.
The way she looked at me afterward when she said she wasn’t telling Lucy yet.
Not because of Benson. She’d made sure I understood that part.
Because she didn’t want everybody else asking me what we were before either of us had figured it out.
I have thought about that more than I expected to.
Gianna had every opportunity to turn what was happening between us into a larger thing.
She could have told Lucy. Lucy could have told Benson, even accidentally, and then I would have had Benson watching me across Hawthorne while Stanley asked enough questions for everybody.
Instead, she had looked at me and said she didn’t want anybody pressuring me into an answer.
Then she’d kissed me again before going downstairs and acted normal.
Mostly. Apparently Mara has been given a security clearance.
I pick my phone back up.
Me: Jesus Christ.
She doesn’t answer, and I’m smiling at the screen wondering exactly how much Gianna told Mara.
Me: Give G back her phone, Mara.
Gianna: This isn’t Mara.
Me: Nice try.
Nothing comes back immediately, and for some reason that makes me impatient, so I call. The phone answers with fumbling, and Gianna’s voice comes from somewhere away from it.
“Give me the phone, Mara!”
“No, I’m going to get you laid!”
“Shut up! He’s on the phone!”
A beat of silence follows.
“Shit.”
I laugh quietly enough that the girl at the table across from me looks up from her textbook.
Then Gianna comes onto the line sounding out of breath. “Hello?”
I lower my voice. “Hey, G.”
“Sorry. What was she texting you?” Her voice pulls away from the phone again. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Mara screams. There’s a thump, then Gianna tells her to get off her leg, and I sit there smiling into my hand while the two of them apparently fight over a phone somewhere across campus.
Finally Gianna comes back. “Okay. I’m here. Please disregard anything she said. Why are you calling me?”
“You told Mara about last night?”
“Yeah. I had to tell somebody.”
I smile.
“Don’t worry. She’s not going to tell anyone.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It is.” There’s movement on her end, then a door opens. Her voice gets clearer. “Also, for the record, I did not tell her anything that would justify asking whether you can walk. She came up with that independently.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I’m protecting my reputation.”
“Think Mara already took care of that.”
Gianna laughs, and I look down at my case study without seeing any of it. I’ve gotten used to hearing her laugh through a phone. I know the difference now between the one where she’s genuinely amused and the one where she’s laughing because she thinks something is stupid. This one is both.
I click my pen against the table. “Come over tonight.”
The laughter fades into a little pause. “What?”
I glance around the library even though nobody here gives a shit about my answer. “Yeah.”
“You called me to invite me somewhere with no plan?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s suspicious.”
“You come over all the time.”
“Not after secretly making out with you in your bedroom.”
That shuts me up.
She catches it. “See? You stopped talking.”
“I’m in the library.”
“You’ve been talking this whole time.”
I look toward the windows and smile. “What time are you done?”
“Five.”
“Come at six.”
“Six-thirty.”
“Six-fifteen,” I counter.
She laughs. “Why are you negotiating my arrival?”
“Six then,” I say.
“Rowan.”
“I’ll see you at six, G.”
“You’re very demanding for somebody who claims he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
That lands differently. She isn’t accusing me of anything, and I know her well enough now to hear the smile in her voice. The problem is that she’s right. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know I want to see her tonight. Apparently those things can exist at the same time.
“Wear clothes,” I tell her.
There’s a longer pause.
Then she says, “You’re an idiot.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Six-fifteen.”
“Six.”
“Bye, Rowan.” She hangs up.
I look at the phone for another second before setting it beside my laptop.
The case study is still open to the same paragraph.
By the time I get back to Hawthorne in the afternoon, I have finished the assignment, gone through lift, eaten lunch, and spent enough time at the rink hearing about Bowling Green that the Ohio State weekend finally feels like it happened more than twelve hours ago.
We don’t have time to keep carrying losses around.
Friday night in Columbus got away from us late, and Saturday gave us a tie that felt better only because Percy stopped forty-one fucking pucks and kept us alive long enough to earn the point.
We need the next weekend. Everybody knows it.
Nobody is saying it every five minutes because that would make the house unbearable, but it sits underneath everything anyway.
Benson is in the kitchen when I come in, eating cold pasta straight out of a container.
Blue is standing at the blender, and Stanley and Aspen have taken over most of the living room with her laptop, his laptop, three notebooks, and enough loose paper to suggest neither of them has ever heard of a folder.
I drop my bag by the stairs and open the refrigerator.
Benson points his fork at me. “Lucy’s tutor session got canceled. I’m taking her to the movies.”
“Okay.”
Blue looks over from the blender. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Benson points the fork at him next. “Take Melly somewhere. We leave Friday.”
Blue stares at him. “You’re giving relationship advice now?”
“I’m captain.”
“That has nothing to do with your girlfriend.”
“It has everything to do with leadership.”
Stanley yells from the living room, “It’s good for morale!”
Blue looks toward him. “You’re all fucking annoying.”
I take chicken out of the fridge and put it on the counter.
Benson scrapes the last dried pieces of sauce from the side of his container with the spoon.
I watch him for a second. “That’s desperate.”
He glances up. “What?”
“That.”
“There’s still food in here.”
“There’s residue.”
“It’s pasta sauce.”
“It was pasta sauce twenty minutes ago.”
He laughs, throws the container in the sink, and heads for the stairs. “Whatever. I’m leaving in ten.”
Blue shuts off the blender.
I remember the two theater vouchers Prasad gave me after one of the alumni events months ago. They’ve been folded inside my wallet ever since because I don’t go to the movies enough to remember I have them.
“I have two tickets,” I tell Blue.
He looks over. “To what?”
“The theater.”
“You don’t want them?”
I shrug. “Who the hell am I taking?”
The answer comes to mind fast enough that I almost laugh at myself. G. But I already asked her to come here.
Blue wipes the edge of the blender cup with his thumb. “Melly wanted to see that horror movie.”
I take my wallet out, pull the tickets free, and slide them across the island. “Take them.”
He looks at them, then at me. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
I repeat Benson’s line. “Good for morale.”
He tells me to fuck off and takes the tickets upstairs.
I stand there for a moment with the refrigerator open.
Aspen has something at seven that Stanley is driving her to.
Percy told me at breakfast that Penelope wanted him to see one of her studio presentations tonight, which means he’ll disappear around five-thirty and probably stay with her afterward.
Benson is going out with Lucy. Blue now has plans with Melly.
I close the refrigerator.
I did not exactly plan this, but I’m not mad about it.
At quarter past five, Stanley comes downstairs wearing a jacket while Aspen talks behind him about an email he apparently forgot to send.
“I sent it.”
“You drafted it.”
“I drafted and sent.”
“You showed me the draft.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t send it afterward.”
Aspen stops in the foyer and stares at him.
Stanley slowly takes out his phone.
“You didn’t send it,” she says.
He looks at the screen. “I did not send it.”
Aspen groans.
He kisses the side of her head as he opens his email. “That’s why I have you.”
“That is not romantic.”
“It was meant to be.”
They leave three minutes later. Blue follows not long after. Percy is already gone.
By five-thirty, the house is quiet. Completely quiet. I stand in the middle of the kitchen listening to the refrigerator hum. Then I check the time. Gianna is coming at six. I take another piece of chicken out. There is no reason to pretend I’m cooking only for myself when I already know better.
I make rice, cut the ends off the green beans, season the chicken, and put music on low through the speaker beside the sink.
I shower while the rice cooks.
When I come back downstairs, I open my laptop at the island and pull up more homework.
At six-oh-three, the front door opens. Her boots hit the floor in the foyer. Then nothing. I look toward the doorway. Gianna appears with her jacket halfway off and stops dead. Her eyes move around the kitchen, then through the living room beyond me.
“Where is everybody?”
“Out.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah.”
She keeps one arm inside her coat and narrows her eyes.
I look back at my laptop.
“Did you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Get rid of everybody.”