26. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GIANNA
I wake up at eight on Sunday morning in a hotel room in Las Vegas with three hours of sleep in me, and for about five seconds, I’m so tired I’m disoriented.
Then I see a hat on the floor. It’s on the carpet between the two beds, upside down, and it says NATIONAL CHAMPIONS across the front of it in white stitching, and I have absolutely no memory of how it got into this room or whose head it came off.
I sit straight up. “Lucy!”
She groans, still asleep. “What?”
“LUCY.” I feel like I could cry all over again. “THEY WON.”
She smiles with her eyes closed. “Yeah.”
I get out of my bed and into hers. She makes space for me.
“Rowan told me he loves me.”
Lucy opens one eye, grinning. “You told me a million times last night.”
I shrug my shoulders and smile. “He loves me.”
Vegas ends the way these things end, which is badly and slowly and with everybody’s phone at four percent.
We have brunch at eleven with about nineteen people including both sets of parents and Stanley’s mother, who has cried twice before the food arrives and keeps his dad on FaceTime.
Aspen has already looked at the box score.
I’m telling the story of the third period to people who were at the third period.
My mom has one hundred and forty photos and has learned, overnight, at fifty-three, how to make an album on her phone.
My father says the words “hell of a hockey game” twenty separate times.
I have six hundred and eighty pictures, and I am not sorry about a single one of them.
I see Rowan for four minutes in the lobby before the team buses go.
He’s in team sweats with a bag over his shoulder and a hat on, and he’s limping.
Actually limping. Not being dramatic — his left leg is not doing what the right one is doing, and there’s a step in his walk that wasn’t there on Friday.
“Oh my God. You’re limping.”
“It’s just bruised.”
“Have you shown somebody?”
“They looked at it last night, this morning, and forty minutes ago,” Rowan says. “It’s a contusion. It’s fine. It’s going to be about nine colors by Wednesday, and then it’ll go away.”
“Can I see it?”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“How about later, G,” he says.
Stanley goes past us and says something obscene and gets on the bus.
I get hold of the front of his hoodie. “I love you.”
Rowan looks down at me. “Love you too.”
It does exactly the same thing to me as it did in the hallway and after the game last night, which I assumed would wear off but hasn't.
Winning a national championship turns out to be extremely inconvenient if you are also enrolled in college.
That’s the whole of the following week. There’s a thing on campus on Monday afternoon where the university does an official something in the arena and about two thousand people come.
The guys get up on a stage and Coach Fuller gives a speech.
Captain Benson Reeve says his captain’s words about his time playing for Camden U, and I couldn’t be more proud.
Rowan catches me smiling at my brother. Social media is wild with clips and announcements.
They’re going to be printed in a magazine.
Somebody makes a mural. The university announces there’ll be a championship banner hanging in the rafters before the month is over.
People stop Benson everywhere. In the union. Outside buildings. In a grocery store, which I witnessed personally.
Stanley thrives. Stanley has never been happier in his life. He signs a boy’s arm outside the library and then talks about it for two days.
Percy hates it so much that he stops leaving Hawthorne except to go to class and Penelope’s.
Blue pretends to hate it and has changed his profile picture to a sick image of him during that game.
And Rowan gets asked about his leg about ten times a day and plays it off every single time, which is somehow the most annoying thing about him.
And then Tuesday comes, and I have Statistics at nine.
Ives gives me my final assessment on Thursday. She catches me after class with her bag already on her shoulder, and she doesn’t hand me anything because it’s all on Canvas.
“Reeve. Two minutes.”
I stop in the doorway.
“Your event was the best one in the section,” she says. “That’s not an opinion I’d share with the section.”
“Okay.”
“Your concept was strong in January, and your budget was weak in February, and your approval chain was the most accurate one I’ve had in four years.” She flips a page on her own clipboard, which contains nothing relevant to me. “And you were better on event day than you were in the proposal.”
I look at her and grin. “Is that a compliment?”
“A very large one.”
“It sounds like––”
“Most students are the opposite,” Ives says. “They write beautifully, and then something goes wrong at eight in the morning, and they stand in the middle of a room waiting for an adult. You had two children arrive in figure skates and you solved it in four minutes.”
“Cole did that.”
“You sent Cole. That’s the job.” She shifts her bag on her shoulder.
“Athletics takes student event staff every year and there’s an operations internship in the fall that most people don’t know exists because it’s never advertised properly.
Talk to Derek Hall in May. Tell him I told you to. ” Then she walks off down the hall.
I stand there for a second with a big smile on my face, then I text Rowan, then I text my mom, then my brother.
On Wednesday, Stanley is halfway through explaining why Blue is wrong about an NHL game when Rowan’s phone starts vibrating against the couch cushion beside me.
Blue doesn’t even look at Stanley. “You’re still wrong.”
“I’m literally explaining why I’m not.”
Percy is pretending to watch something on the TV while very obviously listening to both of them. Lucy is tucked against Benson on the other end of the couch, and I’m sitting on the arm beside Rowan while he has his laptop open across his knees.
His phone buzzes again. Rowan looks down at the screen. Something in his face changes. He closes the laptop halfway and answers.
“Hello?”
Stanley is still talking until Benson reaches over and smacks him once on the leg.
The room gets quieter.
Rowan listens for a few seconds, then stands. “Yeah. Hang on.” He heads for the back door without looking at anybody. The door shuts behind him.
For a second, nobody says anything.
Then Stanley looks at me. “What was that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Blue glances toward the windows.
Percy finally stops pretending not to pay attention.
Outside, Rowan has one hand in his pocket and the phone pressed to his ear. He says something I can’t hear, listens, then turns away from the house.
Stanley lowers his voice like Rowan can somehow hear him through the wall. “It looks serious.”
Benson looks at him.
I keep looking toward the back door.
Rowan stays outside long enough that Blue eventually goes back to arguing with Stanley, but nobody really settles into it again. Every few minutes, somebody glances toward the windows.
When the door finally opens, Rowan comes back in with the same expression he left with. He sits beside me, puts his phone on the cushion, and opens his laptop again.
Stanley lasts maybe three seconds. “Okay.”
Rowan looks up. “What?”
Stanley gestures toward the back door. “You can’t do that and come back in here like nothing happened.”
Rowan looks at him. “Do what?”
“Leave mysteriously for ten minutes.”
“I answered my phone.”
Blue snorts.
Stanley points at him. “See? Suspicious.”
I look at Rowan. “Who was it?”
His eyes come to mine. “Hockey.”
The entire room stops.
Stanley leans forward. “What do you mean, hockey?”
Rowan looks at him. “An AHL club.”
Benson sits up so quickly Lucy almost slides off his lap. “Which one?”
Rowan tells him. I don’t know the name, but Benson clearly does. So does Percy, because both of them start talking at once.
“For what?” Benson asks.
Rowan answers, “Tryout agreement. Rest of their season.”
Stanley makes a noise like something is being murdered. “YOU’RE GOING PRO.”
“It’s a tryout.”
“YOU’RE TRYING TO GO PRO.”
Everybody starts talking at once. Percy wants to know the roster situation.
Benson asks about their coaching staff. Blue wants to know how many defensemen they’re carrying.
Melly asks Benson what a tryout agreement actually means, and then Mara asks the exact same question two minutes later because she wasn’t listening the first time.
I’m sitting there with my heart pounding because that’s my boyfriend and a professional hockey team just called him.
“Rowan,” I finally say when there’s an opening. “That’s fucking amazing.”
“Yeah.” He says it the way he says everything, like this is information instead of a professional hockey team asking him to come play.
I watch him for another second.
Benson asks, “When do they want you?”
“This week.”
Blue looks at him. “This week?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they give you a deadline?”
“Tomorrow.”
Stanley throws both hands up. “What the fuck do you mean tomorrow?”
Rowan closes his laptop. “Doesn’t matter.”
Benson’s expression changes. “Why?”
“I’m not going.”
The room goes quiet.
Stanley stares at him. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m not going.”
“Why the fuck not?”
Rowan leans back against the couch. “Because I already made my decision.”
Percy gets it first. “Camden.”
“Yeah.”
Blue looks at him. “Another year.”
Rowan nods. “Another year. The degree. Hockey here.”
Stanley looks offended. “You are turning down professional hockey.”
“A tryout,” Rowan corrects.
“Stop saying that like it makes this less insane.”
Benson is looking at Rowan differently now, like he’s trying to figure out whether there’s something he’s missing. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Completely?”
Rowan nods. “Yeah.”
Percy leans back and looks almost satisfied. “Good.”
Blue points at Rowan. “We’re keeping our top pair.”
“Mackey’s your top pair.”
“You’re my top pair.”
Melly makes a face. “That was romantic.”
Everybody starts laughing.