21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ROWAN
By the time we get back to Camden on Sunday, I’ve slept maybe three hours.
Most of that happened on the bus with my forehead against the window and Stanley’s foot under my seat.
It should be enough to make me want Hawthorne, food, a shower, and nobody talking to me for the rest of the night.
Instead, the first thing I do when we pull into the rink parking lot is text Gianna.
Me: Here.
Her answer comes before I’ve finished getting my bag out from under the bus.
Gianna: Leaving now.
I look at the message.
Me: Thought you were already at Hawthorne.
Gianna: I went home to shower.
I smile and put my phone back in my pocket.
Mackey hits me and says, “Good game, brother.”
“Yeah.”
He shoulders his bag and keeps walking.
Stanley comes around the other side of the bus carrying enough stuff that I don’t understand how it all belonged to him for a two-night trip.
“Is your girlfriend coming over?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Melly’s coming. Blue’s already trying to leave, which means he’s lying because Melly has his location.”
Blue, ten feet ahead of us, lifts one hand without turning around.
“Fuck off.”
Stanley looks at me. “See?”
Winning the semifinal has not made any of us normal.
It has made everything louder.
The conference championship is six days away. Michigan again. One game for the Big Ten title, and after that, Selection Sunday, regardless of whether we win or lose.
All week, people keep telling us we’re in a good position for the NCAA tournament.
Good position.
Probably in.
Should be safe.
Nobody says guaranteed.
That word doesn’t exist until your name appears on the screen.
I carry my gear into the rink, drop what needs to stay there, and drive home with Stanley talking the entire way.
Gianna is sitting on the front steps when we pull up. She stands before I’ve parked.
Stanley looks through the windshield. “She’s been here thirty seconds.”
I shut the truck off. “How do you know?”
“I saw her location.”
I turn slowly toward him.
He shrugs. “Mara shared everybody’s locations with everybody.”
“Why?”
“Safety.”
“You use it for surveillance.”
“Also safety.”
I get out before I have to keep talking to him. Gianna walks down the path toward me with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
She smiles.
I leave my bag in the truck.
The second she reaches me, I put both arms around her.
She laughs into my chest. “Hey, Laurens.”
“What’s up, G?”
She smiles. “You got an assist, baby.”
I grin. “Yeah.”
She tilts her head back. “A good one.”
“It was okay.”
“I saw it,” she says. “The second look. I knew what you were doing before the announcer did.”
That gets my attention. “You did now?”
“Yes.”
“Look at you.”
“I know hockey.”
“Little bit.”
She hits my chest with the side of her fist.
I catch her hand before she can pull it away and kiss her knuckles. Her face changes. I like being able to do that to her.
“Are you staying?” I ask.
“At Hawthorne?”
“Yeah.”
“Tonight?”
I nod.
Gianna studies me for half a second and smiles. “You just spent a week with me.”
“I know.”
“And then approximately twenty-four hours away.”
“Long time.”
She laughs. “I brought a bag.”
“Good.”
I kiss her.
Stanley walks by carrying his ridiculous number of bags.
“Please move this away from my parking space.”
Gianna pulls back just far enough to look at him. “Sounds difficult.”
“It is.” He goes inside.
Gianna looks back at me. “I missed you. Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“Say it.”
“I missed you.”
Her whole face softens.
I kiss her again before she can make it into a thing.
That night, Hawthorne fills without anybody planning it.
That happens more often than actual parties now.
Melly comes. Lucy is obviously there. Mara shows up with a bag of fast food nobody asked for.
Penelope arrives sometime after eight. Aspen sits on the kitchen counter while Stanley makes her watch his shift before the overtime goal for what I’m guessing is the tenth time.
Gianna stays close to me. Not attached the way she was around her parents on Senior Night, but close enough that I keep finding some part of her against me. Her knee under my hand on the couch. Her shoulder against my arm in the kitchen. Her bare foot tucked under my thigh when she sits beside me.
At ten, she gets up to take her plate to the kitchen. I catch the back of her sweatshirt before she gets away.
Gianna turns. “What?”
“Come back.”
“I’m putting this away.”
“Then come back.”
Her smile starts slowly. “Yes, sir.” She laughs and goes into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, she hasn’t come back because Lucy has trapped her near the sink.
I wait maybe another minute. Then I get up.
Stanley watches me cross the room. “Where are you going?”
“Kitchen.”
“Your girlfriend has been gone six minutes.”
I keep walking.
“Six minutes, Laurens.”
I don’t turn around.
Gianna sees me before I get to her. “You came looking for me.”
“No.”
“You absolutely came looking for me.”
“I wanted water.”
She looks at the empty glass in my hand.
I didn’t know I was holding one.
“Sure.”
I fill it.
Gianna waits. Then she leans closer, watching me. I drink my water. Then she follows me back to the couch.
The week narrows toward Saturday. Practice, lift, video, class. Then more video. Michigan sits underneath all of it.
My grad application is still somewhere in the university system, unchanged by how many times I check the portal. I look twice that week anyway and get the same answer both times. Nothing yet.
By Wednesday night, Gianna is at Hawthorne with a backpack and the claim that she is going to study. She lasts maybe half an hour. I’m at my desk watching Michigan clips when she gets off the bed, comes over behind me, and closes my laptop.
I look up at her.
“You’ve watched that same entry six times.” She settles into my lap before I can open the computer again, one arm looping around my shoulders while the other stays on the closed lid. “They’re doing something different?”
I put my hands around her waist. “Their weak-side defenseman is stepping earlier when Benson carries. Last game they gave him more room before they closed.”
“So if they step?”
“Somebody else opens. We have to move it before they recover.”
Gianna nods like she understands. Then her attention leaves the laptop completely.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
She studies my face.
I know that look now.
I let out a breath. “Just overthinking it.”
Her fingers move slowly along the back of my neck. “I like when you tell me things.”
“Yeah?”
That gets a small smile out of her.
I pull her closer and kiss her.
The rest of the night gets easier after that.
Later, she is stretched across my bed in my T-shirt, and I’m beside her with one arm resting over her lower back. Neither of us is really doing anything anymore.
She turns toward me. “What are you going to do if you win Saturday?”
“Celebrate.”
“Obviously.”
I smile.
Then she asks the question underneath the first one. “And if you lose?”
That changes the room a little. I look at the ceiling. “Wait until Sunday.”
“For selection.”
“Yeah.”
Gianna is quiet for a few seconds, then shifts closer and rests her head against my shoulder. “You’re probably getting in.”
“Probably.”
“I know you hate that word.”
“I do.”
Her fingers trace absently along my forearm.
I stare at the ceiling for another second before I say it. “I can handle losing.”
She lifts her head slightly.
“I mean it. If Michigan beats us Saturday because they’re better that night, I’ll hate it, but I can live with it.”
Gianna waits. That is one of the things she has gotten better at with me. She doesn’t fill every silence anymore.
“I just don’t want somebody else deciding when I’m done,” I say. “If Saturday is my last college game, I want it to be because we lost. Not because I spend Sunday sitting around waiting for somebody to decide whether our season counted enough.”
Her hand stops moving.
That’s the thing I’ve been avoiding saying because once it’s out loud, it sounds too close.
The end.
Gianna looks at me for a long moment, then leans down and kisses my shoulder. She doesn’t tell me we are definitely getting in. Doesn’t tell me not to think about it. She just stays there. She settles against me again, and for the first time that week, I stop thinking about Sunday.
Saturday comes anyway.
By the time we get to Detroit, Michigan has turned enough of the building maize that it feels less neutral than it is supposed to.
Their crowd is louder during warmups, louder every time one of their guys touches the puck, louder when the scoreboard shows anything with their logo on it.
It is not the whole arena. It is just enough to remind us whose state this is every few minutes.
Everybody in the room knows exactly what tonight is.
One game for the conference title.
One game for the automatic bid.
One game that lets us skip tomorrow’s waiting entirely.
Michigan scores first.
Stanley gets it back late in the period after a rebound sits loose in front long enough for three different sticks to miss it. He gets there fourth and finally buries it.
1-1.
The second period is where the game starts slipping.
Michigan gets their second off a turnover at our blue line, and then eight minutes later we spend almost an entire shift trapped in our own zone.
By the time they make it three-one, all five of us have been out there too long and everybody knows it.
Benson gets one back before intermission.
3-2.
We go into the room down one.
Nobody says we have come back from worse. That is already sitting in everybody’s head.
The third starts with us playing better.
For six or seven minutes, we have more of the puck.
Blue gets a clean look from the left circle.
Stanley catches the outside of the post hard enough that half our bench stands before the puck kicks wide.
Benson drives through the middle and gets dragged down badly enough that he turns toward the official and stares.
For a second, I think he is going to lose it. He skates away.
Then Michigan gets another one.
4-2.