Chapter 4
four
ROWAN
Mason’s arm is along the back of her chair, and I watch her lean toward it.
Seb steals another sip of my coffee. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh.” He glances across the table at Mason and Sloane. “Sure.”
I know what my face did, and it won’t be happening again.
I drink what’s left of my coffee as the others talk on, only looking at Sloane once, just as Mason says something and she laughs.
But it’s the same polished laugh she’s been running since he sat down, not the one from the courtyard.
Then I turn away because lingering on them would be weird, and if I’m here, I can’t not look.
Which means it’s time to go.
I’ve got other stuff to do, anyway, I tell myself.
At the top of the list is a shoulder that needs ice. But there are also texts to reply to, an early lift in the weight room, no doubt I’ll need to catch Theo to see if Mason taking his seat has turned into something he’ll carry for days.
“Heading out,” I say.
“Boo,” Luca says.
I push back from the table, pull a twenty from my wallet, and tuck it under my mug. Then I head for the door, clapping Seb on the shoulder on my way past and telling Luca his wreaths are going to look great. He flips me off, pleased.
I don’t look at Sloane and Mason.
As I head out and start walking, the campus is mostly quiet now, its post-game energy scattered into house parties and dorm rooms. The path is empty except for a couple holding hands near the library steps, and a handful of people seated outside the cafés and restaurants.
Then I cross the courtyard, and that moment comes back.
Her crouching on the brick, laughing at her own disaster for a full second before she caught it and tucked it back in. That’s the part that stayed with me: the practiced face cracking, and seeing the girl underneath before she locked it down.
My apartment is off-campus, at Ridgeview, ten minutes from Ironwood House and all its hockey share-house noise. I moved in halfway through last semester, and haven’t really regretted the choice, because it’s always dark and quiet when I get in.
Tonight is no exception.
I kick off my shoes at the door and line them up beside the other pairs before heading to the freezer for an ice pack.
It’s the shoulder I put into a Briarhaven kid in the first period — the hit Sloane stood up for — and it gets fifteen minutes of treatment while I sit on the edge of my bed, waiting it out like a kid at a clinic.
When I’m done, I set the alarm. Five-thirty, to get me to the gym by six.
I last about forty minutes in bed before I decide sleep is going to stay elusive. But even though my mind keeps circling back to Sloane, I tell myself it’s the shoulder and the other things I need to do, because at least they’re problems I know how to handle.
I get up, pull on sweats, and go to the kitchen. The counters are clean, but I run the sponge over them anyway. As I do, my legs feel like concrete from the knees down, the post-game ache finally hitting me, but that’s nothing new.
I rinse the sponge between sections of the counter and keep going, but I can’t escape thoughts of her.
The way she laughed in the courtyard, loud and real.
Then the café, where she needled me and we volleyed — quick, dry, the easiest thing I’d done all week — and then the real laugh escaped again before she could catch it.
Great, I think. Now I’m thinking about a girl I’ve met twice who’s probably going home with Mason tonight.
Counters done, I open the fridge. A yogurt is two days past its expiration date. I know it’s fine, but the date says what it says, so it goes in the trash. I rearrange the shelf, pushing the tall things back and pulling the pickle jar closer.
Close, like Mason’s arm along the back of her chair, the half-inch of space between his fingers and her shoulder. And when I think of her leaning toward it, my stomach tightens, which isn’t really fair given I’ve met her twice and she owes me nothing.
But, underneath the jealousy — simpler and dumber — I know that I want her. But I only let that thought linger for a second before I throw that one out like the yogurt, then close the fridge and stand in the dark kitchen with nothing left to clean.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. The group chat, probably, or another problem queuing up for tomorrow. I don’t go look, because that list is closed for the night, and the last thing I need is another open problem keeping me up.
As I stand there with my hands empty and nothing left to fix, she surfaces in my thoughts.
Nina.
I haven’t thought about her in a while, but like always thoughts of her come back at the strangest times. This memory, sophomore year, sitting on her dorm floor at two in the morning. She’d been crying for a while by then, and she said the line that sticks with me.
“You are everybody’s safe place and nobody’s actual partner, Rowan,” she’d said. “Is there any part of you that is able to just be and not always be looking to solve?”
I tried to answer. I remember my hands opening and closing on my knees, looking for something to hold or do, but whatever I came up with was the wrong shape. I could see it landing wrong before I’d even finished saying it, and it made things worse.
She went to sleep, and a week later we were done.
With Nina shoved back down and the apartment as clean as it gets, I turn off the lights and go back to bed. But sleep still won’t come, and I almost pick up my phone, not to check the group chat, but to text Ivy and ask for Sloane’s number.
But I hesitate, my thumb resting on Ivy’s name, because I already know exactly what I’d do with that number.
There’s a version of herself that she hands to a room — smooth, easy, the one she wants people to take — but twice now I’ve watched the other one appear, quick and real, like sun breaking through cloud.
That’s the one I’d chase.
And a girl showing everyone the easy version while she keeps the real one tucked away is the kind of thing I’ve never in my life managed to leave alone. She’d say she doesn’t need help. Nina would say I can’t help it. Neither of them is wrong.
So I don’t text Ivy.
I set the phone face down and lie back in the dark, but I’m unable to shake the fact I want her. Not as a project, not as something to solve, just her. And what I want, more than I’ve wanted anything in longer than I can remember, is to be the one she doesn’t bother hiding from.
But wanting it doesn’t change what I’d do with it.
So I do the only thing I know how to do with a problem I can’t fix: I set it down for the night and tell myself it’ll keep till morning, although the morning seems a long way away when I can’t think of anything else but Mason’s hand on the back of her chair.