Chapter 12
Blue
Benson takes the long way home from the diner because Lucy wants to swing by her place to grab her bag, and the long way home is twelve minutes instead of six.
I’m in the back seat of the truck as the third wheel.
I would have never thought of this scenario with the drafted first-round captain of the Wolves.
Lucy talks the whole drive about math. Honestly, I don’t get it, but Benson is all about the conversation like he knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“What is this?” I ask. “A tutoring session?”
They both laugh, looking at each other.
I stare out the window, tuning them out.
When we get back home, the house is warm. Stanley actively pauses the game on the TV. Rowan is on the couch scrolling his phone. Percy is at the dining room table.
I’m two steps into the entry when I see my hoodie and my t-shirt folded neatly.
Rowan looks up from his phone. “Melly dropped that off.”
I look at him.
Stanley says, “Yeah. She just left. Like ten minutes ago.”
“Fifteen,” Percy corrects.
Great. All three of them saw her without me here?
Stanley makes a sound at the ceiling. A weird noise. Halfway between a laugh and a wince. He puts the controller down on the cushion next to him. “Everyone, I’m calling a house meeting.”
Benson is three steps in the house. “Right now?”
“Right now. Kitchen table. Everyone.”
Benson turns to Lucy. “Sorry you have to hear this, baby.”
She smiles up at him. “I don’t mind.”
I kick my shoes off by the door. I don’t look at the stack on the bench again. I walk through the entry, past Stanley, past Rowan getting up off the couch, into the kitchen.
Percy is already at the table.
I don’t care what this meeting is for. I care that she came here while I was gone. I take a seat at the head of the table, drop my elbows on the wood, and wait.
Benson sits across from me. Lucy slides onto his lap and tucks her legs sideways and rests her cheek on the side of his head, and he doesn’t even flinch. Rowan takes the chair next to Benson. Percy is to my right. Stanley sits last. He claps his hands once.
“All right. I’ll get straight to the fucking point.” He says, “Blue.”
I look up.
“You good?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
Benson is staring at the table. Rowan and Percy are watching me. Lucy has gone very still on Benson’s lap.
“Tell us about last night,” Stanley says.
“What about it?”
“Melly.”
“Is this because she dropped off my clothes?” I shrug. “Her costume broke. I lent her a shirt and a hoodie. You guys all saw. So what.”
“See.” Stanley points at me. He’s grinning the wrong kind of grin. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“What?” I widen them at him, losing all my patience. “What, Stan?”
He turns to Benson. “Tell him, Reeve. Tell him.”
Benson says, “You’ve been on edge all morning.”
Stanley points again. “You disappeared to the rink this morning.”
I look around at them. Benson, Rowan, Percy, Stanley. Lucy on Benson’s lap with her eyes politely on the saltshaker.
“So,” Stanley says, “we need an intervention.”
I push back from the table and stand. I’m going to leave.
“Sit the fuck back down.” Stanley is on his feet across from me. He is one inch shorter than me, and he is using all of his inches.
“Stan.” I shrug.
“You’re gonna wanna hear what Melly said.”
I don’t want to hear what Melly said. I don’t want to hear it from him. I don’t want to hear it from any of them. I want to hear it from her.
I sit back down and drop my elbows back on the table after a ten-second stare down with Stanley Ermington, my new fucking best friend. Right now, he feels like a pain in my ass.
Stanley sits back down. He clears his throat. “She told us a bit of information,” he says, “that you might want to know. But first –– tell us.”
Rowan makes a small sound. A disbelief sound. The Rowan version of come on.
“Everything,” Stanley says, “there is to know about Melly.”
“Why,” I scoff.
“Because she stood at the front door — and I quote — said to me and Rowan and Percy that we don’t know you as well as we think we do.”
I look around at them. They’re all nodding. Benson is listening to Stan in disbelief.
Stanley keeps going. “She said to us — you don’t know who I am?”
He pitches his voice up. He uses a high girl voice that is not even close to Melly’s, and I could lean across this table right now and put my hand around his throat for mocking her like that.
“And I said — I’m sorry, should we? And she said — well, she said we should ask you. So we’re asking you.”
I look at Benson. Benson knows the most of any of them. Benson knows that I knew her before. Benson knows a little bit of it — not the details, but the gist of it.
I look back at Stanley. “Why? Why should I tell you? Why do you even want to know?”
“One,” Stanley says, ticking it off on his thumb. “We have house rules. We live together. Two — you’ve been in a mood since the party she came to weeks ago, and —”
“Three,” Percy interrupts, quiet, from my right — “we have your back.”
Rowan nods. “Four,” Rowan says. “You went apeshit on that kid Thursday.”
Benson sighs. “Five.” His voice is gentle. “We have no idea what’s going on with you, man, but we can help.”
I lean back in the chair. They think they got me. They don’t. “No.”
Stanley inhales and his face twists. “We’re not taking no for an answer, Golding.”
“That’s all you’re going to get. Meeting’s over.”
I stand.
“Is it because of the house rules?” Benson asks.
I stop.
“Is that the thing?” He’s looking at me now. “You don’t want to break them, is that it?”
I look back at him.
Stanley shrugs. “Man. If it’s killing you, we can loosen up the rules.”
They have no idea.
They have no idea what has been killing at me since the day I learned Melly Sorcha set foot on my campus.
The rules are not the problem. The rules are the smallest possible version of the problem.
The rules are a Sharpie on a whiteboard, and what’s in my chest is this fucking monster of something I can’t explain.
And they think I am stuck on the Hawthorne House rules? Fuck the house rules.
I take another step.
Stanley says, “Come back here.”
I keep walking.
He calls out. “Melly is single.”
I stop. That’s the last fucking thing I thought I’d ever hear.
Rowan adds, “She said she broke up with him on Tuesday, man.”
Percy says, “I heard it myself.”
I turn around and walk back to the table and sit like an asshole.
Stanley starts to smile.
I glare at him until he stops.
“Believe me when I say we got your back, Blue.”
I look at him. “What the fuck else did she say?”
Rowan and Stanley look at each other. Stanley nods, like you tell him, and Rowan does.
“She said, you know her intentions, but she doesn’t know yours.”
I lean forward. My heart is doing a thing. It’s going like an animal in my chest. Pacing in the cage I have it locked in.
“Jesus Christ. Did you guys sit her down and interrogate her?” I ask, running a hand through my hair and readjusting my hat.
Stanley says, “She brought it on herself.”
I give him a look.
He shrugs. “She did.”
Rowan says, “When she left, Stan said I guess we’ll see you around, and she said she highly doubts it.”
I freeze. She said that?
“So,” Stanley says. “What the hell’s going on with you two?”
Benson adds, “It’s a safe space.”
I shake my head.
Benson looks around the table. “We promise we won’t bring it up after this. We won’t make a joke. Right, boys?”
They all nod. Even Percy. Stanley nods like a man taking an oath.
Benson says, “As the captain, if anyone in this room makes a single joke about it, I will make your life a living hell.”
“Yes, cap,” Stanley says.
I look at the table. They want me to talk about something that I never talk about.
Nobody in my life has ever heard me say her name.
Devin knows her as the friend from school who is weird about you, not because Devin is dumb but because that is the version of the story I gave him when he was eleven and I was seventeen.
My mom knows her as the girl from my seventh-grade birthday party who wrote me a happy birthday card I keep hidden in my closet. But that’s it.
Nobody knows.
Mila knows.
“It’s not healthy,” Stanley says. “Keeping it in like this. Say something.”
Rowan asks, “Do you even like her, man?”
I let out a small, sarcastic laugh. This is fucking ridiculous to be sat down by my teammates over this. Who cares. They want to know if I like her? Like her. That’s funny.
They don’t say anything. The kitchen is quiet. The fridge hums. Lucy, on Benson’s lap, has not moved. Stanley has finally stopped grinning. Percy is holding space for this conversation, listening, and only butting in when he wants to.
“Start at the beginning,” Benson says, putting his hand on the table.
Okay.
The beginning.
I can do that.
I lean forward and drop my elbows back on the table. “That would be the sixth grade.”
“Jesus Christ,” Stanley barks.
“What?” I ask.
“You were kids.”
“No, dumbass. I’ve just known her since the sixth grade.”
“Thank fucking God.” He wipes his face.
I shake my head.
Percy says, “So you’ve known her a long time.”
I nod. “A very long time.”
“Friends?” Rowan asks.
I shake my head.
“Then what?” Benson says.
Stanley says, “Yeah. Get to the good part.”
I sigh. I haven’t told anyone this. “We lost our virginities to each other.”
There’s a small unison gasp from at least three of them. Stanley slaps the table hard enough to make Lucy jump on Benson’s lap. Benson goes very still. Rowan’s mouth opens and stays open. Percy makes one short sound, low in his throat, the small huh Percy makes when he is processing information.
I look up, swallowing the dread in my throat. “Senior year of high school. I ran, but I knew one day she’d come to Camden.”
“Is that why you chose Camden?” Rowan asks.
I stare at the table. “No. Opposite.”
A pause.
“Shit,” Benson says. “So you hooked up. She went to community college. She transferred here. Now you’re —”
He waits for me to finish.
“I’m fucked.” I nod.
“Yeah,” Stanley says. “We can tell.”
“She’s on my campus now, and I am––” I run a hand over my mouth.
Percy says, “She slept in your bed last night.”