26. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
I’m still staring at Rowan. I already knew he got into the master’s program. I already knew he planned to stay. I cried about it. I celebrated it. I have spent the last two weeks imagining him at Camden next year.
But this is different. Because another door actually opened. A real one. AHL called, and Rowan still knows what he wants.
Stanley follows my eyes and immediately points between us. “Oh, fuck off.”
“What?” I ask.
He says to Rowan, “You’re staying because of her.”
My smile disappears.
Rowan’s doesn’t. “No.”
I look at him. “Wow.”
He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me against him.
I land half across his lap. “Could’ve hesitated.”
Stanley points harder. “Look at this. Everybody look at what’s happening right now.”
Rowan ignores him. “I’m not staying for Gianna.”
“Again,” I say, “you can make this sound slightly more romantic.”
Rowan looks down at me. “I’m staying because I want the degree. I want another year here. I want to play.” His hand settles against my hip. “And my girlfriend being here doesn’t hurt.”
There it is.
Warmth spreads straight through my chest. “Better.”
He smiles down at me.
Benson looks at me. “Good luck.”
I lean farther into Rowan and smile. “I am going to be so fucking unbearable next year.”
“You already are,” Blue says.
I point at him. “Your defenseman is staying because he loves me.”
Stanley groans. “That is literally not what he said.”
I shrug. “That’s what I heard.”
Rowan laughs against the side of my head.
Then everybody starts talking over each other again.
Next year’s lines. Who’s leaving. Who’s coming back.
Whether Mackey and Rowan stay together. Whether Percy can somehow become even more annoying about his save percentage.
Stanley has apparently decided he is going to visit as much as he can despite nobody inviting him.
I barely listen.
Rowan already chose Camden. He chose the degree. He chose another year of hockey because that’s what he wants. And I get to be here for it.
Rowan squeezes my hip.
I look up. “What?”
“You’re smiling.”
“So?”
“So, you love me.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
He leans in. “I love you too.”
My heart does something fucking stupid.
I settle farther into him. “You’re going to love me even more next year.”
“We’ll see.”
I smack him in the chest.
He catches my hand, laughing, and doesn’t let it go. “Saturday.”
“What about Saturday?”
He looks down at me. “Dinner.”
I make a face. “We have dinner four times a week.”
“Not like that,” he says, and doesn’t explain what he means.
The guys pull his attention back, and I listen with a smile on my face.
On Saturday, Mara arrives with a bag and no invitation. I shoot a look at Lucy, and she shrugs at me.
Mara announces, “I’ve come to do your eyeliner.”
“You would remember I have a date,” I tease.
She scoffs. “You have not shut up about it.”
I look at her, and then I look at Lucy. “I’m excited.”
“He’s already your boyfriend,” Mara says, rolling her eyes.
“And I do my own eyeliner every day of my life.”
“And every day of your life it’s slightly different on each side,” Mara says. “Sit down.”
Lucy’s on my bed with her shoes off, eating my crackers, giving me company.
“Which one?” I ask, holding up four different tops.
Mara points. “The black.”
Lucy says, “The brown.”
“If you’re trying to get laid, go with the black,” Mara says.
I wear the white top. I put earrings in, which I haven’t done in months.
I do the thing with my hair that takes twenty minutes and looks like it took none.
Mara does my eyeliner and it’s even on both sides, which I’m never going to admit out loud.
And then I stand in front of my own mirror feeling like an idiot, because it’s Rowan.
I’ve seen him eat cereal standing up over a sink.
He’s watched me fall down a set of stairs.
“The white top was a good choice,” Mara says. “You look hot. Ugh, I want a boyfriend. Where can I find one?”
“Next year, there’s going to be new guys at Hawthorne.”
She smiles. “You’re right.”
“You want a hockey player?” I laugh.
She scoffs. “Please, G. I would take an athlete any day.” She starts moving her hips. “They’re the only ones that have stamina.”
Lucy hides her face in the pillow, and I throw my head back and laugh.
There’s a knock that interrupts Mara’s story of making out with a hockey player from another team. We look at each other, and I make a face.
“Is he seriously knocking?” I ask.
He is.
I glance at my phone. It’s empty of notifications. I stand up and walk to my front door. When I open it, Rowan smiles.
“Hi, Laurens,” I say.
He’s in a shirt with buttons. His hair’s wet. He smells like something that came out of a bottle rather than a gym bag.
“Reeve.”
I hear Mara walk out of my bedroom. “Have fun!”
I turn my head, and Lucy pops up behind her.
“Hi, Rowan,” Lucy says.
Rowan looks over. “Benson’s on his way.”
She lights up.
“Ready?” he asks me.
I nod.
“Bye,” Mara says.
“Bye.” I turn to wave at both of them. They’re so cute standing in the hallway. I smile and add, “Tell my brother I said hi.”
Rowan takes me to the place my brother and Percy used to work, the Camerie.
There’s a pianist in the corner, the building is beautiful, and the table has linen and a full set of silverware.
A person brings us bread as soon as we’re seated.
There are about nine tables of people in their sixties, which is how you know it’s good.
He pulls the chair out, and I smile. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Keep going. I love it.”
He pushes the chair in behind me, sits down opposite, and picks up a menu.
“This is our first date,” I say.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Rowan. This is our first date.”
“We’ve had dates.”
“Name one.”
He puts the menu down. He actually thinks about it. “Hawthorne kitchen.”
I laugh. “You would call that a date.”
He grins and looks down at my white top. “Isn’t that the same one you were wearing?”
“You remember what I was wearing?”
His eyes soften as he looks at it. “Yeah, you look really hot in it.”
I have to drink water.
Then I say, “Unbutton the top one.” I point at my own chest to gesture which one I’m talking about.
He looks down and slips the button off.
“There,” I say, feeling warm. “Good boy.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, and now he’s drinking water.
We order too much food and get to talking about hockey and Hawthorne. I tell him about the operations internship Ives wants me to apply for in May.
“Are you excited for your master’s? What are the classes even like?”
“I don’t know.”
With a mouth full of mashed potatoes, I say, “You don’t know?”
“I know what’s in it,” he says. “I don’t know what it’s like.”
I chuckle sarcastically. “Oh, you’re so particular about the words that I’m using.”
“You asked what it’s like.”
I put my fork down. “Okay, grammar police.”
He laughs. “That’s not grammar.”
I ignore that and keep talking. “Where are you living?”
“Hawthorne.”
I stop chewing. “Wait. You can stay?”
“Yeah. Fuller checked. Since I’m using my fifth year, I can stay with the team.”
I put my fork down. “You’re staying at Hawthorne?”
I say it loudly enough that a woman at the next table looks over. I’m mostly doing it to mess with him, but the more I think about it, the more insane it feels that it’ll be his fifth year in that house.
“It’s just a house, G.”
I deadpan. “Say that again.”
“It’s just a house.”
“Say the words ‘it’s just a house’ to Stanley Ermington and see what happens to your life.”
He laughs.
Afterward, we walk. Not toward anything. No plan. Then we see an ice cream shop and look at each other. We don’t even have to use words; we just walk in and start ordering.
Mine’s mint. His is vanilla.
“You have no personality,” I say, watching him eat it.
“You’re the one dating me.”
I roll my eyes, and he watches me lick my cone.
I lick my lips and say, “Are you remembering our real first date?”
He nods. “Yeah, Hawthorne kitchen.” He smiles. “I think about it all the time.”
I keep my eyes on him.
“But I agree,” he says. “This is our first date.”
I hit my knee. “Thank you!”
“So,” he says. “Do you put out on the first date?”
I grin. “Do you want to find out?”
I lick my cone all the way around, and we both laugh.
I don’t notice that the month of April is slipping away until it’s mostly gone.
One day I’m undressing Rowan and the bruise on his thigh has gone from black to purple to a horrible green and then a yellow, and now, to nothing at all.
The championship hat lives on Rowan’s dresser and becomes one with his room.
The banner goes up in the rafters, and within a week, nobody in that building looks at it.
Finals arrive. I have Statistics on the fourth of May, and I have been building a study schedule with the girls. I created a group chat with every single couple, and it’s my favorite screen time.
Stanley discovers, with three weeks left, that he is two credits short of something and has a genuine crisis in the kitchen at Hawthorne that requires Aspen to sit down with him and a course catalog.
Benson’s on the phone constantly with people about hockey.
Penelope’s finishing her thesis project and has not slept.
Percy and Blue are quietly becoming the oldest people in that house without anybody saying it out loud. Zero guilt; they have another year.
A week into May, I walk into Hawthorne, and there’s a box in the front room. Flat cardboard, folded, propped against the wall by the coat hooks with two others behind it.
I stop dead. “What the fuck is that?”
Rowan looks up from the couch. “A box.”
“Whose?”
“Benson’s.”
Oh.
“No.”
“G.”
“Get it out of here, Rowan.”
He laughs at me and doesn’t move, and I stand there genuinely upset about the fact that my brother is moving.
Then, there are boxes in two of the bedrooms and a vicious ongoing negotiation about the kitchen.
Stanley claims a frying pan that is not his.
Percy tells him it isn’t his. Stanley says he bought it in October, and Percy says he bought it in October, and Blue says he doesn’t care and takes the pan, and the matter is closed.