Chapter 4 #2
“You sure?”
“I’m fine, Stan.”
A pause.
Then, the volume coming back up like a dial being turned. “All right, brother. I’m gonna go tell Benson and Rowan everything I just saw.”
“I will end you.”
“You can’t end me, Blue. You love me.”
“I don’t love you.”
“You love me a normal amount.”
“I tolerate you.”
“That’s the same thing.”
I hear him push off the door and his footsteps go back down the stairs. When he walks into the kitchen, he immediately starts narrating, and Rowan laughs like a hyena again. I hear Benson saying Stanley, leave him alone, in the same tone he uses to break up scrums in front of the net.
Then I hear, faintly, “We’re going to the bar tonight. I’m taking Golding out. The man needs help.”
I close my eyes.
The bar Stanley picks isn’t a college bar.
It’s a real bar. Wood top, scarred at the edges from twenty years of drinks set down too hard.
The kind of TV mounted in the corner that runs the game with the sound off and the closed captions on.
Three older guys at the far end nursing whiskey on the rocks like men with nowhere else to be.
A couple at a booth eating burgers in silence the way only married people can eat in silence.
A bartender who’s known Stanley since freshman year because Stanley knows everyone everywhere within a forty-mile radius and has the same effect on bartenders that he has on the rest of us, which is to be tolerated.
He picked it because upperclassmen don’t want to be in a room full of freshmen on a Saturday. That was his pitch. I didn’t argue.
Two beers between us. A basket of wings. He has sauce on his thumb. He hasn’t done anything about it.
“— and I’m telling you, Blue. Telling you. You weren’t there because you had to —”
“Take a shit.”
“Yeah, Rowan’s chicken casserole all gave us the shits that day.
So you while you were sitting on the toilet for twenty minutes, Coach is running the breakout drill, and Rowan is on the point.
And Coach yells, low pass, low pass, and Rowan rifles it cross-ice at Benson, and cap isn’t looking.
Like, at all. Cap is looking at the bench.
Why? Because Benson’s been on his phone, baby Blue, because Benson’s been texting Lucy between drills like a madman.
” He spreads his hands. “The puck hits him in the cup.”
I lower my beer.
“In the cup.”
“In the cup. Direct hit. Reeve goes down. Folds in half. Glove off. And Coach skates over and stands over him, and looks at him for a long second, and then he says, captain, get your head out of your girlfriend’s ass and into the game.”
“He said that,” I chuckle. “He knows about Lucy?”
“He knows.”
“How?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It was the first time Coach ever said anything about it, but you know how coaches are. Nosy fuckers. He’s probably got a listening device in the locker room.”
I drink to that.
“Or it’s G.” That’s Benson’s younger sister, Lucy’s roommate. “She works in the equipment room, so I bet she hasn’t stopped talking about it.”
“But Lucy moved back in with her, I thought.”
Stanley shrugs. “She did, so now the girl group grows.”
I drink again.
He picks up a wing and starts eating.
On the TV, somebody scores, the camera cuts to a celebration, and the captions race across the bottom of the screen too fast to read. Stanley watches it for a second. He turns back to me.
“Real talk.”
Fuck. “No.”
“I’m asking you a question. As your roommate. As your friend. As a man.”
I glare at him, waiting for whatever the hell it is.
“How serious are these Hawthorne House rules, structurally, if cap has already broken number one?”
I scratch my cheek and look down at my beer. “It’s the rules.”
“Are they though?”
I take a pull of my beer and don’t answer.
He leans in and drops his voice. “Because I’m just saying, Bluey, philosophically speaking — if the captain has a girlfriend, and he has her over basically every night ––” He shakes his head, pausing for a moment.
“I watched the man sear a steak. I watched him slice butter into a pan. He used a garnish. If the captain is breaking rule one in front of God and everybody, in our own house, with a garnish, are we — the rest of us — really still bound by the rules? Like––”
“Like?” I question.
He keeps his head down, looking up at me. “Philosophically.”
“Philosophically,” I repeat, wondering what girl has his panties in a bunch. He’s been obsessing over these rules since the start of the year. He must’ve fucked someone over the summer and can’t get over it.
“Also––” He drops his voice further. He leans in. “I can hear them. Through the wall. I can hear them, Blue.” He puts his head in his hands. “I’ve heard things I can’t unhear. I’m scarred.”
I laugh through my nose. I don’t mean to. It happens.
He looks up. “Don’t laugh at my pain, Golding. I’m a victim in that house.”
“You’re a menace in that house.”
I take a sip of my drink. He finally leans back and grabs his. We watch the game on the TV for a second. Stanley turns back.
“Seriously, though. What’s the play? Are the rules still rules, or is it open season?”
“I don’t care about the fucking house rules.”
He nods slowly. He drinks. “Cool. Okay. Cool. I’m still gonna give Reeve shit about it though.”
“I assumed.”
“He gets so mad. The other day, I told him to keep her quiet at night, and he put me in a headlock and choked me out, even though I was tapping out.”
I grin. “Was Lucy there?”
“No, but I’m starting to see her as one of us, you know. Like Lucy is officially an unofficial resident of Hawthorne House in everything but name on the lease.”
“You like Lucy?”
“I love Lucy.” He says it without performance.
“That’s the problem, Blue. She’s one of us now.
But it breaks all the fucking rules. I’m all fucked up in here.
” He points at his head. “I’m a man of principle.
I have stood by Rule One since I was a freshman.
And now Lucy is bringing us coffee, Blue, she brings us coffee, and I’m supposed to be mad about it? ” He shakes his head. “I’m not.”
I sip my beer, and he moves on to Rowan. He thinks Rowan is suspicious of him. Rowan thinks Stanley’s going to be the next one to break Rule Three on account of Stanley flirting with a teammate’s sister at a tournament last month.
“I didn’t flirt with her.”
I question that entirely. He flirts with everyone.
“I was being nice.”
“Eh,” I huff. “You probably flirted.”
“There’s a difference between flirting and being nice.”
I stare at him, deciding that he’s too defensive about it. “You flirted.”
“I —” He stares at his wing and takes a bite. “Okay,” he says, mouth full. “I flirted a little.”
A guy at the end of the bar starts yelling at the TV. Stanley turns. Looks at him. Turns back. “That guy needs a hobby.”
“He has a hobby.”
“A different hobby.”
For about an hour, I almost managed it. I almost managed to sit at this bar with this idiot and not think about anything.
The wings are good. The beer is cold. Stanley is doing the only thing he was put on this earth to do, which is run his mouth, and my body is, slowly, against its will, starting to come down.
Then we finish the wings. Stanley pays. I protest.
“You pay everywhere we go,” I say.
“Family discount, Golding.”
I glare at him.
“I’m rich.”
I let him pay because I know I’m not winning this. “Alright, thanks, Stan.”
He stands and stretches. He grabs his jacket off the back of the stool and looks at me sideways. “Hey,” he says, casual. “Real quick. Since I paid, I just need you to do something.”
“What is it?” I ask, standing.
“You’re gonna start locking the door when you jerk off in our bathroom.”
I almost laugh, but I hold it in as I stare at him.
He flashes me a quick grin and pats my back. “Let’s go.”
The walk back to Hawthorne is three blocks.
Our breath shows. Stanley’s on a tear about the team plane on Friday.
He wants to sit by me, but Coach has him next to Percy.
He says he’s grateful not to be seated with Benson because he’s just going to talk to Lucy the whole time.
I’m half listening, hands shoved deep in my jacket pockets, chin tucked down against the cold, watching the cracks in the sidewalk under my feet.
When we get to the porch, music’s coming from inside. Not party music. Something low and instrumental, the kind of thing I didn’t ever think I’d hear coming from our house.