Chapter 21
Melly
I am dating Blue Golding.
I have been dating Blue Golding for fifteen days, and I’ve been saying the word boyfriend out loud to other people for nine of them, and the word has not, in nine days, lost the small private thrill that lives at the back of my throat when it comes out of my mouth.
I said it to Penelope. I said it to Mila.
I said it to my mother, on a Tuesday phone call last week, in the middle of a sentence that started with, so I have to tell you something and ended with my mother screaming so loud Joel had to take the phone away from her for two minutes.
I said it to my supervisor at the field placement, by accident, when she asked me why I was smiling at my email at three in the afternoon.
I said it to a stranger at the grocery store last Friday, when she complimented the hoodie I was wearing and I said thanks, it’s my boyfriend’s, and the stranger gave me the small soft good for you nod that strangers give a random girl talking nonsense in public.
The boyfriend in question is Blue Golding.
And I’m walking out of my Tuesday three o’clock seminar with my phone is buzzing in my pocket because I have a boyfriend.
Blue: Done with practice. I’m coming over.
Me: Perfect. I’m just leaving class.
Blue: I’ll meet you.
Me: Okay.
I smile at my phone in the entryway of the academic building with a backpack on one shoulder and my coat half-zipped. I have been smiling at my phone like this for two weeks, and the butterflies haven’t faded.
I walk home, cutting across the quad. The grass is dead. The trees are bare.
Lucy and Gianna are outside the dining hall.
They see me. Lucy waves. She is bundled into one of Benson’s coats, and her hair is in a long side braid. Gianna is in her own coat. They wave me over. I cross to them.
“Melly.”
“Hi.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m heading home. I’m meeting up with Blue.”
Gianna smiles. “You two are so cute. I loved hearing about how you guys got together.”
Blue, Mila, and I told the story at a Hawthorne party last weekend.
“So adorable,” she says.
I grin. “Thanks.”
Lucy says, “Yeah, you two are my favorite couple.”
Gianna says, “Really? Even before you and my brother?”
I look at Lucy.
She rolls her eyes. “I was his tutor, so yeah. Blue and Melly beat our story by far.”
I smile back at her when she looks at me.
Lucy hugs me. Gianna hugs me next.
When I get to my street, Blue’s truck is parked outside my building.
When he sees me, he gets out and crosses the sidewalk in three long strides. He kisses my forehead and takes my bag off my shoulder and slings it over his own.
I let him carry the bag the way I have, for two weeks now, been letting him carry small things he wants to carry — my bag, my coffee on the walk home from the corner, the bowl of pasta from the kitchen to the couch on Sunday night when Penelope made enough for three.
He has been doing it without comment, without performance.
He is the kind of boyfriend who does things for the small joy of doing them.
I take his hand, and we walk up the path to my building.
Penelope is on the couch when we come in. She looks up and smiles.
“Hey.”
“We’re back.”
“I see.”
Blue says, “Hi, Pen.”
“Golding.”
He kicks his shoes off and turns to me. “I brought you something.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He hands it to me. I unfold it. It’s a printed schedule.
Camden Wolves Athletic Training, the small letterhead at the top. Physical Therapy — Golding, Blue. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Four to five. Six weeks. The signature at the bottom is his trainer.
I look up at him in shock. “You told the trainer?”
“I told the trainer.”
I’m grinning. I also might start crying. He pulls me against him.
“Don’t cry.”
“I’m not.”
“It’s just PT. It’s a rotator cuff strain. I have been making it worse by playing through it, but it’s manageable. Liv said six weeks of PT, and I can play through the season. No surgery. Not yet. Maybe not at all.”
I hug him hard. His arm goes around my back, and his face goes into the side of my hair. He smells like the rink and soap, and faintly, like my fabric softener, because his hoodie has gone through my dryer at some point in the last week.
I pull back and look at him. “This is good.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking down at me. “Knew you’d think so.”
I smile up at him. He kisses my temple, my nose, then my mouth. He brushes his tongue against mine for a minute too long, and Penelope, from the couch, says, without looking up, “I’m right here, you two.”
Blue says into my mouth, “Hi, Pen.”
He kisses me again.
We end up on the couch next to Penelope. He hooks his arm around my shoulders and pulls my legs over his lap. He puts his hand on my shin. This has become our thing on the couch in the last two weeks — my legs across his thighs, his hand on my legs.
“Coach told me he had been watching me favor the right side for a few weeks and was about to bench me.”
“Blue!”
“Yeah.”
“If you had been benched —”
“I would’ve blown it.”
He pauses, grinning into the side of my hair.
“Coach has me on a manageable load plan. I don’t get the penalty kill. No fights. I play my line, two-way responsibilities only. He said I am asking you to be a professional, Golding, and you are going to be a professional.”
“That’s good.” I nod.
He agrees. “My girlfriend said don’t pick a fight , and I have not picked a fight in three weeks.”
I press my mouth together. “Mhm. You’re not a naughty boy anymore.”
“Only for you, baby.”
Penelope huffs, “You two are too much.”
We smile at each other.
The week settles.
That night we study at my kitchen island.
He has a quiz on Friday and a problem set due Thursday.
I have a forty-page policy memo for my social work professor that I have been avoiding for a week.
We eat takeout so that we can get the work done and not have to cook and clean.
Blue stays the night. He drives home at six in the morning for practice.
He kisses me at the door before he goes.
I fall back asleep with his hoodie wrapped around me.
On Wednesday, I have class until four. He texts me at three.
PT went good. They iced me after. I love you.
I read it walking out of the building, and I have to lean against the brick wall outside for a second because my heart cannot handle being texted I love you by Blue Golding. It still doesn’t seem real.
Wednesday night, he comes over again. I cook something simple. We watch a movie. Penelope is at the kitchen table with her studio crit due Friday, and she is panicking. Blue helps her carry her project across the apartment to the door so she can take it to her crit space at nine PM.
Thursday is the home game.
I’m getting ready at six. I’m in the same blue sweater when he tossed the puck to me.
I keep the puck on my nightstand and touch it every morning when I wake up and every night when I fall asleep.
My hair is half-up the way Blue likes it.
Mila is on the floor of my room with her own makeup bag, doing her eyeliner in the small handheld mirror she carries everywhere.
Penelope is at the kitchen table, recovered from the studio crit, eating a yogurt and reading.
My phone buzzes.
Blue: I did warmups and the shoulder’s good.
Me: Hell yeah!
Blue: Yeah.
Me: Good luck. Be a good boy. No fights.
Blue: Only for you.
I laugh.
Mila looks up and asks, “What?”
“Blue’s promising not to fight.”
“The man is whipped.”
I laugh.
“He is whipped, Melly.” She turns back to her little mirror and shakes her head. “If you had told me a year ago, two years ago, five years ago that he would be your boyfriend, I wouldn’t believe it.”
I look at her on the floor of my bedroom. “Yeah.”
I smile.
The game is loud. Apparently, the team that they’re playing has been a thorn in Coach Fuller’s side for three years.
The rink is full, and the family section is full.
Lucy is in her usual seat in the navy hoodie she has been wearing since October, and Gianna is next to her in a Wolves beanie that has become her signature item.
Mila is on my other side in her own Wolves beanie that Gianna lent her.
The puck drops. We scream for the boys hitting the puck across the rink, jumping to our feet at the right times. Gianna is the loudest, screaming at the guys every time they do something she doesn’t like.
The Wolves win four to two.
Blue plays his line. He doesn’t fight or take a single penalty.
He skates clean, smart, fast, and at one point in the second period, he back-checks a forward all the way to the blue line and breaks up the rush by stick-lifting him.
Coach yelled that’s hockey, Golding, that’s the hockey we want from the bench so loud I could hear him in the family section.
And I am embarrassingly proud of my boyfriend.
At one point in the second period, the Jumbotron camera pans across the family section. I’m on the screen for half a second. The crowd cheers, mildly, in the small generic family-section girlfriend on the screen way they cheer.
Gianna howls.
“Mel. Mel. You are on the Jumbotron!”
“Gianna.”
Lucy yells, “Melly!”
Mila shouts, “Melly! Melly!”
I bury my face in my hands.
The girls laugh.
I keep my face in my hands for a count of five, and I let myself laugh into my own palms, and I am — for the first time in my life — the girl who is on the jumbotron because she is the second-line winger’s girlfriend, and I do not, in any of the laughing, hate it.
I am Blue Golding’s girlfriend.
The girls walk out of the rink with me. It’s cold in the lot. The crowd is filtering out around us. The cars are starting to fill the family parking. Lucy peels off first because Benson has texted her from the locker room, and Lucy is gone. She hugs me on the way past.
Gianna peels off next. She has an eight AM class.
Mila and I are alone in the lot.
She’s walking on my left, hands in her coat pockets, beanie pulled down over her ears. The crowd noise is fading. We parked at the far end of the family lot because Mila’s car is here too — she drove separately because she had to drop something off at her own apartment first. We stop at her car.
She stares at the asphalt, then she lifts her head. She looks at me. “I was wrong about him.”
I stop breathing.
“What?” I ask, thrown off a bit by her tone.
She gives me sympathetic eyes. “I was very wrong about him.”
“Mila, you weren’t wrong. You were protecting me.”
She shakes her head.
“I was protecting the girl I knew at seventeen. He’s been — he’s been good to you. He’s been so good to you. I’ve been watching him for two weeks, a little scared to be honest, but he is — he isn’t the boy who left you at seventeen. He is —”
She stops.
Mila Brooks, my best friend since forever, does not admit when she’s wrong. This girl would rather eat dirt. So, it’s not only him who has changed in college.
“He’s the boy you knew he was the whole time, Melly. You knew. I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry. I know I made things harder for you, and I’m sorry.”
I open my arms and step forward. She hugs me hard. I hold onto her.
“It’s––”
“Don’t say it’s fine. I was such a bitch about him.”
“It’s fine. It’s okay.”
“I was a bitch.”
“Okay,” I say, letting her win.
She laughs. “I love him for you.”
I pull back and look at her.
“I want you to know that.” She hugs herself now that we’re apart. “I love him for you.”
I almost cry.
“I mean it.”
“I love you, Mila. Thank you.”
I hug her again. We stand in the cold of the parking lot for a long time.
“Coffee tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“My place at ten.”
“Okay.”
She gets in her car and drives off.
Blue walks out of the rink five minutes later. His hair is wet. He’s in his Wolves hoodie and jeans. His gear bag is over his shoulder. He sees me standing alone in the lot. He frowns.
“Melly.” He looks around. “Where are the girls?”
“Home.”
He crosses the lot and stops in front of me. He looks at my face. “Is everything alright?”
I nod. “Mila and I had a moment.”
He goes still.
“Good moment?”
“Very good moment.”
A beat.
“What did she say?”
I look at him.
He looks worried. The Mila question has been a wire in his chest for two weeks.
He’s only mentioned once before that he deserves how much she hates him.
I disagreed, but he insisted, and we haven’t brought it up since.
He’s been letting it sit. And he’s been carrying the small possibility that she would never come around.
“She said she was wrong about you.”
He stops moving.
“Mila said that.”
“She did.”
“Mila?”
“Yeah.”
He exhales. His shoulders drop. He reaches out and cups the side of my face with his hand.
“That means a lot.”
“Yeah.”
He kisses my forehead and puts his arm around my shoulders.
“Come on. Let’s get out of the cold.”
We walk to his truck. He puts my hand in his pocket while we walk. He opens my door for me. I get in. He goes around. He gets in. He puts the truck in drive. We drive home.
On Friday, we go to a movie.
A bad one. The new Marvel thing that Stanley wanted to see, and Stanley dragged Walker and Drew with him, and the four of us — me, Blue, Lucy, Benson — went along for the comedy of watching Stanley watch a movie.
Stanley yelled at the screen three times.
The theater told him to be quiet twice. He was unrepentant.
Lucy held Benson’s hand in the dark theater, and Blue held my hand the entire time.
We got pizza after. Stanley paid for everything because Stanley says that he’s rich and can afford it.
On Saturday, we sleep in until nine. Blue makes me coffee in my own kitchen at nine-thirty in his sweats.
I sit at the island in his hoodie with my hair in a knot, and Penelope joins us at ten in her own pajamas.
The three of us are in the kitchen with our coffees, and nobody is saying anything.
The radio is on low. Outside, it’s starting to snow.
I look out the window at the snow falling, and then I look at Penelope.
“Wanna watch the snow fall?”
She nods, so we walk over to the couch, sit, and stare out the window. Blue sits next to me with his coffee. I lean against him and watch the snow.
That night, we’re in my bedroom. We’re just lying next to each other, and I’m on his chest. I stare at the puck on my nightstand.
I think about what Mila said –– if someone told her that Blue would be my boyfriend, she wouldn’t believe it.
And I smile because I’m on his chest.
I was the girl who waited for a miracle. I prayed for him. I took a chance on him before he was ready, and I literally transferred to Camden U because he was here.
And the waiting is done.
I got my man.
Thank you so much for reading!
If you haven't read Book 1 yet, CLICK HERE FOR BENSON AND LUCY'S BOOK: ON HIS SCHEDULE.
Eeee, have fun!
If you have and book 3 isn't out yet, you're going to love Pucking Grey! Same vibe, different team:)