20. CHAPTER TWENTY
GIANNA
A week after Senior Night, Rowan’s name is still taped to our refrigerator.
His mom printed the picture before she left town, and Lucy stuck it up with one of our magnets.
Rowan is standing between his parents on the ice, shoulders broad under his jersey, his mom holding flowers against one side of him and his dad’s hand on the other.
He hates the picture.
I love it.
Mostly because every time Rowan comes over, he sees it.
He is standing in front of it now with the refrigerator door open, drinking orange juice straight from the carton.
“That’s disgusting.”
He lowers the carton. “You do this.”
“I live here.”
“That doesn’t make it cleaner.”
“It makes it my bacteria.”
Rowan looks at the carton, then at me. “That isn’t how bacteria works.”
I’m sitting on the counter in one of his shirts with my bare legs hanging over the cabinet doors.
It is barely eight in the morning, and Rowan is supposed to be leaving for class in twenty minutes.
He came over last night after practice with his backpack, his laptop, and absolutely no intention of leaving again once he got here.
That has been happening a lot. It’s not every night. We both have lives, and Rowan has practice, meetings, lifting, class, film, and whatever other forms of scheduled suffering college hockey requires. But whenever he has room between those things, he somehow ends up here. Or I end up at Hawthorne.
He puts the juice back, closes the refrigerator, then walks over and stops between my knees.
I look down at him. “You’re going to be late.”
“I have twenty minutes.”
“You need to drive.”
“Twelve.”
“And park.”
“Three.”
“And walk.”
“Two.”
I smile. “You’ve timed this.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you have.”
His hands slide around the backs of my thighs, and he pulls me closer to the edge of the counter.
There is something unfair about Rowan first thing in the morning.
His hair is still slightly damp from the shower, and there is a faint crease along one cheek from my pillow.
He looks more relaxed here than he ever does at the rink.
I run my fingers through the front of his hair. “You should go.”
“Probably.” He kisses me instead. Not rushed, even though he has apparently allocated exactly seventeen minutes between my apartment and whatever classroom he has to be sitting in by nine. He puts one hand behind my neck and keeps the other on my thigh while I hook my ankles loosely behind him.
This has changed too. He doesn’t wait for me to close the distance anymore. He reaches for me because he wants me. Calls because he wants to hear me. Shows up because he has an hour and apparently an hour is enough.
I spent the beginning of whatever this was trying to figure out whether Rowan liked me. Now I’m mostly trying to figure out why I ever had to ask.
He pulls back far enough to look at me. His mouth shifts.
I touch the little line beside it with my thumb. “Do you ever think about how funny this is?”
“What?”
“You and me.”
He shakes his head, thinking. Then he laughs. “No. Not at all.” He pulls me closer. “There’s nothing funny about you and me.”
“Really?” I laugh against his lips.
He nods, kissing me, then his phone vibrates on the kitchen table.
I look past him. “That could be important.”
“It’s probably Stanley.”
“Which means it could be devastating.”
He kisses me again.
The phone buzzes a third time.
Rowan sighs against my mouth, steps back, and reaches across the table for it. I watch his expression change slightly as he reads.
“What?”
“Fuller moved video up.”
“To when?”
“Eight-thirty.”
I look at the clock on the microwave.
8:07.
I burst out laughing.
Rowan grabs his backpack.
“I told you to leave,” I sing.
He comes back just long enough to kiss me once more. “Tonight?”
I don’t even pretend not to know what he means. “Here?”
“Yeah.”
“After practice?”
“Probably eight.”
I nod. “I’ll be here.”
He looks at me for half a second longer than necessary, then nods once.
“Go.”
He goes.
I’m still smiling when I look at the clock again.
Then I remember I have class in twenty-three minutes and I am not dressed. “Fuck.”
The week after Senior Night has an odd, unfinished feeling to it.
The regular season is over, so there are no more Friday-and-Saturday home weekends circled on anybody’s calendar and no more pretending March is some distant thing they will eventually have to deal with.
The team still practices. Rowan still disappears into the rink every afternoon.
Hawthorne is still full of hockey bags and protein powder and somebody’s wet gloves drying where they shouldn’t be.
But now every day points toward something that can end.
Penn State comes first. Best-of-three quarterfinal. Friday. Saturday. Sunday if necessary.
I know more about postseason college hockey than I ever expected to know about anything in my life, which is how I end up lying beside Rowan on Thursday night asking questions like I am studying for an exam.
“What happens if you lose the series?”
“We don’t move on.”
“I know that.”
He is flat on his back in my bed with one arm behind his head. His other hand is resting loosely on my hip beneath the hem of my shirt, moving every so often like he is not really thinking about it.
“What happens after?”
“We wait.”
“For Selection Sunday.”
“Yeah.”
“And you could still get into the NCAA tournament.”
“Could.”
That one word carries enough irritation that I lift my head off his chest. “You hate that.”
He looks at me. “Hate what?”
“Not knowing.”
“I know we need to win two games.”
“No. The part where if you don’t, somebody else decides whether your season is over.”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
That is answer enough.
“I hate not controlling it,” he says eventually.
“Yeah.”
I settle my chin against his chest.
His fingers continue their slow path along my side.
There is another thing I have been meaning to ask, and now that we are apparently discussing the future, it comes out.
“Did you ever submit your grad application?”
His hand pauses for maybe half a second. “Yeah.”
I push myself upright. “What?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Couple weeks ago.”
I stare at him.
Rowan looks completely calm.
I say, “You submitted your graduate-school application two weeks ago and didn’t tell me?”
“You had the clinic.”
“That took one day.”
“You were working on it before that.”
“You have seen me approximately every day since then.”
“I forgot to mention it.”
“Rowan.”
He starts smiling.
“No,” I warn. “Don’t smile. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t think it was a big announcement.”
“It is absolutely a big announcement.”
“I applied. You knew I was going to.”
“That is not the same as you actually doing it.”
He reaches for my waist, but I lean away far enough to make him work for it.
“When do you hear?”
“Not sure.”
“You didn’t check?”
“I checked.”
“And?”
“Could be a few weeks.”
I narrow my eyes. “You are terrible at this.”
“At what?”
“Having developments.”
He laughs and pulls me back down.
I land half on top of him. “You’re supposed to tell your girlfriend when you apply to graduate school.”
“I’m telling you.”
“Because I asked.”
“Still counts.”
“It absolutely does not.”
He kisses the side of my head.
I try to hold onto my annoyance, but it is difficult when his arm tightens around me and he pulls the blanket higher over both of us.
“Do you want to get in?” I ask after a minute.
“Yeah.”
There is no hesitation in it.
“Even if hockey ends?” I ask.
“Program doesn’t.”
“I know.”
“I wanted it before.”
“I know.”
He looks down at me.
I smile. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
There are about twelve follow-up questions in my head.
Whether he stays at Hawthorne if he gets in.
Whether he uses his remaining eligibility if he can.
What happens if hockey gives him another option.
Whether any of that changes where I fit.
I don’t ask them. I’m trying to get better at letting things become real before I demand the entire ending.
Rowan’s thumb moves slowly against my side. “You have spring break next week.”
I nod.
“You going anywhere?”
“No,” I say. “Mara wanted to go somewhere warm until she remembered she is broke.”
“Makes sense.”
“Lucy’s staying too.”
“You can stay at Hawthorne.”
I lift my head again, excited. “All week?”
“If you want.”
“You are aware I have an apartment.”
“Yeah.”
“And clothes here.”
“Bring them.”
I smile. “Are you asking me to move into your room for spring break?”
“For a week.”
“What if you get sick of me?”
“I won’t.”
The answer comes so easily that I stop teasing.
Rowan looks at me for a second.
Then he reaches up and pushes my hair behind my shoulder. “Stay.”
There it is again. Simple. Direct. No giant declaration attached to it.
I kiss him. “Okay. Yeah.”
Friday night, Camden wins four-two.
I watch from Hawthorne with Lucy, Mara, Aspen, Melly, Mila, and Penelope. Nobody officially organizes these things anymore. If the guys travel, everybody seems to know where to end up.
The first game is tense without ever feeling desperate. Camden gets the lead in the second, extends it in the third, and holds it well enough that I only spend the final six minutes wanting to throw up instead of the entire game.
When the horn goes, Lucy exhales beside me. “One.”
Aspen nods. “One.”
Nobody celebrates much beyond that.
They have to do it again tomorrow.
Rowan calls me from the hotel before he goes to sleep.
“You played well,” I say before he can correct me.
He laughs quietly. “Thanks.”
“I’ve learned.”
“Proud of you.”
I joke, “I’m basically an athlete now.”
“No.”
“Why do you always ruin this for me?”
“I’m honest.”
I can hear movement in the room behind him, then what sounds like a drawer closing. “Who are you with?”
“Mackey.”
“Is he listening?”
“No.”
From farther away, Trent says, “I can hear you.”
I laugh.
Rowan says, “He says no.”
“I heard him.”
“Okay.”
There is a comfortable pause.
I lie back against my pillows. “You tired?”
“Yeah.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Wanted to call you first.”
That settles somewhere low in my chest. “Okay.” I smile. “Win tomorrow.”