18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
GIANNA
I wake up Sunday with sore legs, a dead phone, and Rowan’s goal still replaying in my head. Not even the whole goal. Just the second after.
The red light comes on, Blue crashes into him, Stanley gets there screaming, and Rowan looks toward the stands like he already knows exactly where I am. I have thought about that look approximately forty times since last night.
I roll onto my stomach and reach blindly for my phone. Dead. Great. I plug it in, wait long enough for the battery symbol to appear, and then drop my face back into the pillow.
My body feels like I played the game instead of watching it.
Yesterday started before sunrise with forty-eight children, eighty-seven parent questions, figure skates, giant jerseys, one child throwing up, and Gary carrying skate hooks that belong in a Smithsonian exhibit.
Then Ohio State. Then Hawthorne. Then Rowan carrying me through the backyard because apparently walking had become optional.
I smile into the pillow.
My phone turns on. There are nineteen notifications. The family group chat is mostly pictures from the clinic. Mom has sent one of me standing beside the gate, another of the entire group, and then a screenshot of the picture Rowan sent Benson.
Mom: This one is my favorite.
I open it. I’m halfway across the lobby holding three helmets and looking in completely the wrong direction. I don’t even remember him taking it.
Something stupidly warm settles in my chest. Then I see Rowan’s message.
Rowan: Awake?
Sent four minutes ago.
I type back.
Me: Technically.
His reply comes immediately.
Rowan: Hungry?
I stare at it.
Me: Always.
Rowan: Come outside in ten.
I sit up.
Me: Excuse me.
Rowan: Nine now.
I throw the blanket off.
“Shit.”
Ten minutes later, I open the front door with one shoe untied and no makeup on. Rowan is standing beside his truck holding coffee.
He looks me over. “Rough.”
“Good morning to you too.”
He hands me the coffee. I take a sip. It’s my order.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Food.”
I tilt my head back and close my eyes. “You could have said that.”
“I did.”
I look at him. He looks completely rested, which is offensive considering he played a hockey game last night.
“You scored yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
“Just checking whether you remembered.”
“I did.”
“You seem very normal about it.”
“What should I be doing?”
“I don’t know. Walking around like this.” I throw both hands over my head and imitate myself from the stands. “ROWAN FUCKING LAURENS!”
He laughs and opens the passenger door. I climb in.
We get breakfast at a place near campus because I refuse to eat eggs cooked by Rowan for the third time in a week, which he takes as a personal attack.
“It’s not that I don’t like your eggs.”
“You said you were sick of them.”
“I said I want potatoes.”
“They have potatoes at Hawthorne.”
“I want professionally prepared potatoes.”
He looks at me across the booth. “You’re high maintenance.”
We talk about hockey. He says Stanley has watched his own game-winner at least twelve times and Rowan’s goal at least twenty.
I tell him Ives emailed me at seven-thirty this morning with three sentences of feedback on the clinic, which means she was apparently thinking about my event before I was even conscious.
“Good feedback?”
“Mostly.”
“What’s mostly?”
“She said I overstaffed the second half.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, but I wanted her to tell me I’m brilliant. Not criticize me.”
Rowan drinks his coffee. “She probably assumes you know.”
“No. They ration praise like it costs tuition.”
He smiles.
After breakfast, neither of us suggests going home. We end up at my apartment instead.
Lucy is gone. I know because she texted me an hour ago that Benson was taking her somewhere for lunch, which is suspiciously convenient information to give your roommate.
I unlock the door. Rowan follows me inside. The second the door closes, I turn around. He is already looking at me.
I smile. “Are you pretending that you came here to hang out?”
He looks confused, which is what I was aiming for. “I did come here to hang out.”
I shake my head. “Liar.”
He reaches for me and pulls me into a kiss.
I tease, “See.”
He shuts me up with another as his hand goes around the back of my neck, mine hooks into his hoodie, and whatever respectable version of Sunday afternoon we might have had disappears. We make it three steps toward the couch.
No, not the couch. I pull him towards the hall. “Bedroom.”
“Okay.” There is something ridiculous about how quickly he says it.
I laugh and grab his hand. “Come on, boyfriend.”
He stops walking. I take two more steps before realizing he is no longer moving. I turn around and smile. Little butterflies fly around my stomach.
He looks at me.
“Oh,” I say, sarcastically.
Rowan’s mouth shifts. “You testing something?”
I smirk. “Maybe.”
I walk backward, pulling him with me. “Did it scare you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? You didn’t just black out there, did you?”
“No.”
“Do you need a minute?”
“G.”
I laugh and pull him into my room.
The door barely shuts before Rowan gets his hands on me again. There’s no hesitation this time, no moment where either of us has to stop and consider whether this is where things are going. We’ve crossed that line already.
I get his hoodie halfway over his head before he has to finish the job himself. Mine follows it to the floor, then my jeans, then his, the whole thing less graceful than it is urgent. I’m laughing when he catches me around the waist and walks me backward toward the bed.
“You’re impatient,” he says.
“I’ve had a very long weekend.”
“You had a successful weekend.”
“Still long.”
My knees hit the mattress, and Rowan follows me down.
His mouth finds mine again while I get both hands into his hair.
I like that he doesn’t seem worried about impressing me anymore.
The first few times we hooked up, there was always some awareness underneath it — of what came next, of whether somebody was going to walk in, of how far we were going to let it go.
Now there’s just us.
I know the weight of him. I know the sound he makes when I drag my nails lightly down his back and the way he slows everything down the second he thinks I’m trying to rush through something.
Which he does now.
I make an annoyed sound against his mouth.
He smiles.
“You’re doing it on purpose.”
“Doing what?”
“Rowan.”
His smile gets worse.
I grab his face. “Stop being annoying while you’re naked.”
He kisses me again, and I forget what we were arguing about.
By the time he reaches for the condom, my entire body feels warm and heavy. He slides it on, settles between my legs, and looks at me before he moves.
I nod.
He presses into me slowly enough that my breath catches.
“Fuck.”
Rowan’s eyes stay on mine. “Good?”
“Yes.”
He gives me another second anyway, because he always does, then starts moving. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer. He laughs softly against my mouth when I try to change his pace.
“There you go again.”
“What?”
“Impatient.”
“I’m not impatient.”
He thrusts harder. The rest of my argument disappears.
Rowan grins. “Better?”
“Yes.”
His mouth comes down on mine, and the pace changes with it. There’s nothing tentative about him anymore. His hand slides under my thigh, pulling my leg higher, and the angle makes my whole body tighten.
I grab his shoulders. “Okay.”
He pauses just enough to look at me. “Okay good or okay stop?”
“Good.”
He kisses me again.
A few minutes later, I’m still smiling because apparently this is what sex with Rowan has become. Half the time we’re kissing. Half the time one of us is saying something stupid. Then something changes, and neither of us is laughing anymore.
He pushes deep into me and stops moving.
I drag my fingers through his hair and look up at him. “You okay?”
He says, “Did you mean what you said in your living room?”
“What?” I ask, wanting to hear him say it.
“That I’m your boyfriend,” he says.
I move my hips, begging him to move. “It feels like it.”
He drops his head, and he starts laughing while he is still very much inside me.
I start laughing too, even though my whole body is humming.
He lifts his head, still smiling. “So I’m your boyfriend now?”
I run my hand along the back of his neck, buzzing. “You’re currently naked in my bed, so I feel like you have a pretty strong case.”
“That’s the qualification?”
“It’s one of them.”
He kisses me.
When he pulls back, the smile is still there. “Okay, girlfriend.”
My stomach flips so hard it is ridiculous.
I cover it with a grin. “Just like that?”
He grabs my face. “Yeah.”
“You’re not even going to ask me?”
Rowan’s eyebrows lift. “Do I need to?”
I open my mouth to answer, but he chooses that exact second to start moving again. Faster.
“Oh, fuck you,” I moan.
He groans, “That’s happening.”
I laugh, but it comes out broken because he does it again. My body is coming more alive.
“Rowan,” I whisper. “You cannot make me your girlfriend through sex.”
“I’m pretty sure you called me your boyfriend first.” He slows his pace, drawing out the pleasure as he dips his head and kisses my neck. “You’ve been my girlfriend for a while, G.”
My hands stop moving. He doesn’t.
I stare at him. “What?”
Rowan looks down at me like I’m the one being confusing. “You heard me.”
“No, I heard you. I’m trying to understand when you apparently made this decision without informing me.”
He smiles. “I didn’t make a decision. It just happened.” He says it so simply that I stop joking for a second.
His pace slows again, not because he is backing away from the conversation but because he’s looking at me now.
“I see you every day I can,” he says. “When I can’t, I talk to you anyway. I don’t want anybody else. I want you at my games. I wanted to be at your clinic. You’re the first person I think about calling.”
Something inside my chest goes very soft.
Rowan brushes his thumb along my cheek. “So yeah. Girlfriend.”
I swallow. “You could have asked.”
“Would you have said no?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Then we’re good.”
I laugh. “That is such a you answer. You’re lucky you’re hot.”