Chapter 2 #2
The door bangs open behind me, and the thoughts have mostly scared off back to the depths of me.
I don’t turn around, but I know the footsteps.
Percy’s a goalie, and goalies walk like goalies, all weight, no urgency.
He drags a chair over, sets it down next to me, drops into it, and lifts his beer at the fire like he is toasting it.
We don’t say anything for a long minute.
Percy is the only guy in the house I can do this with. The other ones would talk. Percy doesn’t. He’s played goalie his whole life and knows how to live in silence.
He drinks. I drink. The fire eats the magazine page.
“Saw your matching blue-eyed girl in there,” he says.
I roll my eyes. They’ve been on this since she left the house last week. “She’s not my anything.”
“You have the same eyes.”
“Hers are way lighter.”
“So you remember what they look like.”
I don’t answer that. I just rip a page out of the magazine, crumple it, and throw it on the fire. I watch it brown at the edges, curl, and go.
Percy chuckles into his beer. He’s been my friend for two years, and he knows when to stop.
He says, after a while, “Penalty box twice tonight.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Hot-headed.”
I stare at the fire.
He continues, “They didn’t play dirty.”
“They didn’t.”
“Two trips, Golding.”
“I know.”
He drinks. “That kid was a prick, though,” he says.
“He was a prick.”
“Still gotta be smarter.”
The fire pops. Somebody behind us laughs too loudly. Inside the house, the bass shifts to a song I have heard at every party in this town for two years.
“That save in the third,” Percy says, after another minute.
“Yeah.”
“Thought it was gone.”
“Me too.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “That’s why they pay me.”
I laugh through my nose. Just once. It’s the first time my face has done anything that felt like mine since she walked in the door.
My beer is empty, so I stand up. My shoulder grabs again, and I don’t let the wince show, because Percy will tell me to get it checked. I just need rest. I don’t need Coach Fuller to sit me on Tuesday. Percy stands when I stand. He doesn’t ask. He follows me to the back door and goes through first.
The kitchen is fuller now. Mara is at the kitchen island.
She’s swinging one leg and telling a story to a girl with bangs I don’t recognize, who is laughing too hard at every other sentence.
Penelope is by the fridge with a glass of wine in her hand, not drinking it, listening to Mara with the half-smile of a person who has heard the story before.
Mila is leaning against the far counter with her phone in one hand and a red cup in the other.
And Melly.
Melly is standing under the arch between the kitchen and the dining room with the guy. His arm is around her shoulder. Hers is around his waist. He’s telling Gianna something. Gianna is being polite. Melly isn’t really listening — I can see it in the small middle-distance of her eyes.
I cross to the cooler under the window. I crouch, dig past the ice, find a beer, and twist the cap. I toss the cap into the trash. I don’t look up.
I straighten.
And —
Huh.
For the first time, I’m in a room with Melly Sorcha in it, and she’s not looking at me.
The thing that has lived between my shoulder blades since I was in the sixth grade, the soft, constant, low-frequency awareness of being looked at, of being tracked, of being one corner of a triangle where the other two corners were her and whatever room we were standing in — it’s off.
I take a pull of the beer and keep my eyes on the floor a second longer to make sure. I let myself, very slowly, lift my head.
Sure enough, she’s not looking at me. Still. She’s looking at her boyfriend. Then at Mara on the island.
She’s not looking at me.
This is new.
I used to pray for this.
I have actually, literally prayed for this.
I’m not a praying man. My mother dragged me to Mass until I was fourteen, and I stopped going to anything religious approximately ten minutes after she stopped checking.
The only times I have spoken to God in my adult life have been at the bench between shifts when a game is getting away from us.
But I have prayed for this. I have lain in bed at night in my senior year of high school, and asked whatever was up there for one full day, where I did not feel her on me. One full week. One month. One room.
I’m in that room right now. She’s here, and she’s not looking at me.
God came through.
I drink the beer.
The thing in my chest that I was not going to look at gets a little louder.
I look at her boyfriend’s hand on her shoulder.
His fingers are spread loose over the bone.
He’s not gripping her. He’s wearing her.
There’s a difference, and I have done enough drunk anthropology at parties in two college towns to know which is which.
He’s wearing her like a guy who is sure of her, which is — fuck — which is a thing I should be glad about, because she is finally with somebody who is sure of her, which means her attention is off of me.
Mila looks up from her phone. I meet her eyes for the half-second courage allows, and then I break, and her mouth does a small thing at the corner that I’m going to ignore.
I look back at Melly without meaning to. The boyfriend leans down. He says something into her ear. The kitchen has one of those momentary lulls where the music takes a breath, and the words land across the ten feet that separate us.
“Wanna get out of here?” he says.
I drink my beer to have something to do with my mouth.
She tilts her face up to him. Her eyes find his. She smiles. It’s a soft smile. It’s a familiar smile. Something hits me in the chest, and I don’t know why.
It isn’t jealousy. I know what jealousy is.
I felt it in the second period tonight when a kid I’m better than made a clean read off me.
I felt it in juniors when a guy three months younger went round one and I went round four.
This is not that. Jealousy is a thing you can sit with.
This is something with weight. This is something that sits. She’s moved on.
The Melly Sorcha I have been managing since the sixth grade is not in this kitchen.
The Melly Sorcha in this kitchen is somebody else’s.
I push off the counter.
I don’t dare to look at her again. I don’t look at Percy. I don’t look at Mila. I don’t look at Benson. I don’t look at anyone. I walk to the stairs, take them two at a time, and my shoulder grabs on the third one. Off to bed I go. I need to sleep off this shoulder pain.
My bedroom is at the back of the house. I picked it in my freshman year because it’s the furthest from the front street and the closest to quiet, and two years later, I still believe it was the right pick.
The bass from downstairs is in the floor under my feet rather than in my chest, and I can shut the door and have a thought.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take my hat off.
I run my hands through my hair and place the hat on the nightstand.
I grab my phone, but there’s nothing to look at.
Devin sent me a meme three hours ago. I open it and laugh under my breath.
My mom texted good game tonight, love you, after the game, and I haven’t replied yet.
The forwards group chat is popping off about the loss. I am not opening it.
I scroll past all of it.
Down.
Past Stanley. Past Benson. Past Devin. Past my mother.
I stop on a name I have not tapped in years.
Melly Sorcha.
I tap it.
The last text is hers.
Happy birthday, Blue. I hope you’re doing well.
May. Almost two years ago. This was probably before her boyfriend. Little freshman me didn’t respond, and it’s not surprising. It took me all this time to cool down.
I scroll.
Hey, congrats on the commitment to Camden. Devin told me. Proud of you.
Two years ago again. Spring of senior year. Two months after she had fallen asleep with her hand on my chest, and I had left at five in the morning. I left her on read.
I scroll up, surprised that these text messages didn’t automatically delete after a year. But then I remember I changed the setting so that I could periodically scroll through them.
Hi. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your grandma. Devin told me. Thinking about you.
Senior year in high school again. My grandmother had a stroke, and Melly Sorcha somehow knew and sent me a text. I sat in my bedroom, crying and looking at it. I didn’t respond.
I scroll up. Further. Faster.
Saw you got the assist last night. Nice.
Saw the article in the local paper. They spelled your name wrong on purpose I think.
Saw the highlight. I don’t know hockey but that one was good right?
These were in high school. Spaced out across months. I didn’t respond to a single one.
I scroll down further into senior year of high school, my eyes already knowing what feeling they’re looking for. To the four days after the all-nighter.
Hey, are you up?
Are you home?
Blue.
That last one is at 2:14 a.m. on a Tuesday.
I scroll past.
I scroll past a just saw the game, sorry, you’ll get them next time. I scroll past a saw the box score lol two assists, big shot. I scroll past a Devin says hi.
I scroll and find another birthday wish.
She’s never forgotten it, and when I was a kid in high school, it used to freak me out that she knew every detail about me.
But now that I’m older, I realize that there aren’t many people in the world who give a shit about your birthday.
Everyone you love can’t even remember the day you were born.
Happy birthday, Blue. I hope all your wishes come true.