55. Chapter Fifty-Five
Penelope
The girls come to our apartment on Friday night to watch the away game because it’s out of state and none of us are driving that far when they have a home game tomorrow.
They arrive in waves — Gianna first with a bag of snacks, then Lucy, Mila, then Aspen and Mara together, and Melly’s already home, so by seven the living room’s full and the stream’s up on the TV and somebody’s opened wine.
The whole room has the loose, relieved feeling of people who finished exams and can finally breathe.
A year ago, I had a hundred excuses to avoid sitting here with them.
It was so hard to pretend not to know Percy, to pretend I didn’t love him with every ounce of me, knowing that I was going to sneak into his room later.
And this year, I don’t have to make excuses.
I’m in my own apartment, watching the man I love on the screen, and I’m not hiding anymore. It feels great.
Gianna and Lucy sit beside me. Aspen is to my right, and then Melly, Mila, and Mara. I’m watching the screen, waiting for the camera to pan to the net, but it’s barely happening.
The girls are eating chips and crackers. I have my glass of wine in my hand. The same wine glasses that Gianna bedazzled for me and Percy.
The camera finally shows Percy, and he blocks the puck. Gianna jumps to her feet.
“Hell yeah, Pers!” Her fist goes up, and then the puck is flying across the rink again. “Come on, Stan!” She’s yelling at the screen now.
Aspen nudges me, laughing. Lucy smiles to herself while she eats another chip.
I miss what happens next because Gianna is blocking the screen, but she yells at Rowan next and throws her hands up.
“Come on, Rowan!” She huffs and drops back down next to me. “He’s got to be sharper than that if he wants a shot at going pro.”
Aspen tips her wine at the screen. “A lot has to line up to go pro. He’s good, though.”
“He’s good,” Gianna agrees, and then she’s back on her feet yelling at a call nobody else caught.
Aspen catches my eye, and we smile at each other. I settle back into the couch and let the noise of them close over me.
The Wolves win it in overtime.
Saturday’s a home game, and we’re all going to it.
I get ready with the girls at my place — Melly doing her eyeliner in my mirror, Gianna narrating a jersey situation, Aspen deciding for me that I’m wearing the Wolves shirt someone dug up in Percy’s number, tugging it over my head like I’m a child. I let her.
“Look at you,” she says, holding my shoulders, turning me to the mirror.
“Look at us,” I chuckle.
“I need a picture.” She pulls out her phone and snaps one of us in the mirror, and then she goes to the corner of the room and snaps a candid one of all the girls getting ready.
I look at myself in the mirror again and smile.
“Okay,” Gianna calls from the door. “Car. Now. I’m not missing warmups.”
The arena is loud. We’re in the family section, and I find Percy on the ice. He’s easy to spot because he wears enough padding to see from miles away. The team’s taking warmup shots on him, pucks flying at the net one after the other, and he catches them like they’re nothing.
When they’re done warming up, he looks up towards the family section.
He lifts his hand, and I hadn’t realized he found me that fast. I wave back and smile.
It hits me right there that I no longer have to pretend that I don’t know him.
Something in my chest warms, and then his attention goes back to the ice, and I lose him to the game.
It is agony to watch. I did not know this.
A puck flies at him in the face, and I gasp, but he doesn’t flinch.
Gianna and Aspen rub my shoulders, but my heart has completely stopped.
The game moves on. The opposing team is strong, but Benson and Stanley are faster.
Every shot goes through me. Gianna keeps grabbing my arm.
When somebody comes down the wing and winds up, I make a sound I’ve never made before, and Aspen laughs at me and grabs my other arm.
But Percy — God, he’s good. I knew he was good, but I think he’s gotten better.
He’s flexible in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Benson taps his shoulder sometimes, and I catch it.
The captain’s approval. He makes a save in the second period that has people on their feet in the stands, and one in the third that has the whole section up, and I’m up with them, screaming with the rest of them. Gianna grabs my arm and shouts with me.
In the third, there’s a scramble, a shot from nowhere. At least to my eyes. It happens so fast, but Percy moves right in time. The puck is in his glove, and the guys are raising their hands, shouting at him. The barn comes apart. Gianna shakes me from the side.
“That’s your man!” Mara shouts.
And Percy looks up. Right away. Before his own team gets to him, before Benson’s stick is off his pads. He turns, looks up into the stands, finds my face, and holds it. He’s smiling — a big, wide smile that’s all teeth.
I’ve got both hands over my mouth, staring back at him.
They kill the minute. The Camden Wolves win. And on his way off the ice, he looks up one more time, and this time I don’t cover my face. I smile back.
He comes out from the locker room with his hair still wet and finds me before he finds anyone else.
There’s no party tonight — everyone’s wrung out from finals and there’s a three-hour drive tomorrow, so the plan is just the Hawthorne house, the guys and their girls, low and easy.
We wait in the concourse while they filter out, and the girls close into a knot the way we do now.
“Okay, but the glove save,” Aspen’s saying. “The second-period one. I genuinely thought that was in.”
“I know that when the puck goes toward Percy, Penelope stops breathing.” Melly bumps my shoulder.
“Someone shot it at his face,” I respond immediately.
Percy wraps an arm around me. “That’s the game. That’s just hockey.”
“It’s a terrible game and I hate it,” I mumble into his shirt, smelling his body wash. I turn around and lean against his chest.
Aspen looks up at Stanley and whispers something. He leans down and bites her cheek playfully. I glance at Lucy, who’s watching them. Then Aspen shoves Stanley.
He chuckles, bringing her in. “My girl’s going to write a list of all the shit we need to improve on.”
Blue wraps an arm around Melly and says, “I could actually use that, Aspen. Thank you.”
Aspen pinches Stanley’s stomach as he whispers something to her. “Cut it out.”
Benson says, “We could use a professional eye.”
“Yeah, babe,” Stanley laughs, grabbing her hand. “Write up a report for your old man.”
Aspen turns to him, and Stanley laughs, running away from her with his hands up and a big smile.
Gianna looks at me and says, “I’m gonna let you girlfriends do your girlfriend thing.” She’s already backing away from her brother.
Percy kisses the top of my head, and I lean into him while we all laugh at Stanley running away from Aspen.
We leave the next morning for Boyne Mountain. Break has officially started, and everybody is excited.
I drive my car — Gianna up front because she called shotgun, and then Percy, Blue, and Melly in the back.
Melly sits in the middle, but she’s leaning on Blue for most of the drive.
Gianna is the DJ that nobody asked for. Her music taste is a variety of everything.
Benson is in the truck in front of us with Lucy, Rowan, Stanley, and Aspen.
The drive north is three hours of nothing, and it’s one of the best drives of my life.
Percy’s behind me with his hand on my shoulder half the way, and every time I catch his eyes in the mirror he’s already looking.
Gianna vetoes songs. Blue says something dry from the back that makes Melly laugh for a solid minute.
We stop for gas and terrible snacks and pile back in, and the mountains come up white ahead of us, and there’s not one part of my life I’m hiding anymore.
I hadn’t realized that was all I needed.
We pull into the lodge at noon with the snow coming down.
Stanley buys lunch. He announces it at the door of the restaurant, loudly, arms spread — “This one’s on me. Don’t fight me.”
Nobody knows what that means, but Aspen grabs his ribs, causing him to put his hands down. We take up a long table, and the snow is coming down outside the window. The restaurant’s warm and loud and the whole house is crammed in elbow to elbow.
Percy sits next to me, and he doesn’t stop touching me the whole meal.
His arm across the back of my chair, his knee against mine, his hand finding mine on the table between courses — easy, unbothered, like he’s making up for lost time.
I keep waiting for him to pull back into himself the way he used to in company, and he doesn’t.
He just stays close, and I lean into it, and I like it more than I know how to say.
When the waiter comes, he orders me a glass of wine — the good one, the one I’d have chosen — without asking, because he knows, and the whole table lights up.
“Excuse me.” Aspen points a breadstick at him. “Excuse me. Did he just order her wine? Did Percy just—”
“He knows her order,” Gianna teases.
“He’s romantic,” Melly says, delighted. “He’s secretly the most romantic one, this whole time—”
“Where do you think he learned it?” Stanley says, leaning back, gesturing at himself with both hands. “This didn’t come from nowhere. I’ve been mentoring this boy for years.”
“You did not teach me anything,” Percy says.
“I taught you everything you know. The juice was practically my idea––”
Percy chuckles, letting that one go. “The juice, Stan? Okay.”
The table continues. Blue argues with Stanley about something else, and Percy pulls me into his side and kisses my temple. The girls are watching us, and I realize we’re the only couple here who can’t keep their hands to themselves.
“Okay, logistics,” Stanley says over dessert. “Who’s skiing and who’s snowboarding? I need numbers for the morning.”
“Skiing,” Aspen and I say, at the exact same time, and point at each other, and the table groans at how in sync we’ve gotten this semester.
“Obviously,” Gianna says. “The two elegant ones. I’m snowboarding. Melly, Lucy — you’re snowboarding with me.”
“I don’t know how to do either,” Melly says.
“That’s the fun part. We fall down together. Lucy?”
Lucy considers it. “I’ll try it once. If I hate it, I’m going in the hot tub.”
“Deal. She’ll try it once.” Gianna points around the table. “We’re all trying it once.”
I turn to Percy. “Are you skiing or snowboarding?”
“Snowboarding.”
“You’ve done it before?”
“No.” He steals something off my plate. “But how hard can it be? I’m athletic.”
“You’re going to be so bad at this,” I tell him, and he actually grins, and I decide that watching Percy Deveroux fall down a mountain is going to be the best day of my entire life.
We’re sharing a room with Stanley and Aspen, which sounded like a lot before and turns out to be exactly right.
The guys disappear to find the vending machine and the ice and whatever else takes five grown men forty-five minutes.
Aspen and I end up on my bed with the girls piling in — Melly and Lucy wandering in from next door in their pajamas, Gianna arriving with bottles of water for each of us, handing them around.
“I don’t know why we didn’t do this last year or the year before,” she says, opening her bottle.
“I’m just glad to be done with finals,” Melly says.
Gianna says, “You and Percy cannot keep your hands to yourselves.”
I blush.
“I thought you two have been together for years.”
I gulp the water and nod. “We have.”
Gianna bumps Aspen and says, “You and Stan are hilarious. You two fight like cats and dogs.”
She shrugs. “He likes that I’m mean to him.”
We all laugh at that.
She smiles. “I’m just kidding. He knows how to get on my nerves.”
Gianna rolls her eyes. “He knows how to get on everyone’s nerves.”
“True.”
“Where are you sleeping?” Lucy asks Gianna.
She replies reluctantly, “The couch. Rowan’s taking the ground.”
Lucy shakes her head. “Sleep on the bed with me. Benson and Rowan can take the couch.”
Gianna hugs Lucy. “That’s why she’s my best friend.”
They get up. “Come on. Let’s go set it up for them.”
Aspen lies flat on her bed when Melly follows them out.
“How much do you want to bet Stanley is buying one of everything from the vending machine?” Aspen says.
I lie down and laugh. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
“He’s going to see me on skis and want to try to ski tomorrow, so midday, I’m expecting him to switch.”
“I think you know him better than he knows himself.”
She laughs. “What do you think Percy’s doing right now?”
I drop my shoulders and mock his blank face.
She throws her head back and laughs. “He doesn’t say a word like ever.”
I shake my head. “He doesn’t.”
“I think you two are cute. Probably my favorite couple,” she whispers. “He can’t keep his hands to himself. His love language is physical touch, isn’t it?”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I agree. “Yeah. What’s Stanley’s?”
She turns onto her stomach. “Being ignored. Watch — when he comes back, I won’t acknowledge him.”
When the guys come back to the room, Stanley is the first voice I hear. And Aspen was right. He bought one of everything because he announces, “I didn’t know what everyone liked.”
Then he pops his head into the room and says, “Aspen, come out here. I got you something.”
She keeps her eyes on me, her eyes gleaming.
Stanley enters the room, looking at me and then back at her. “What is this?”
She chuckles. “Told you.”
He picks her up in one smooth motion. Her body folds over his right shoulder, and her hair falls in front of her face as she shrieks. He hauls her to the living room.
Percy walks in right after and points at them. “What was that?”
I try her method. I keep my eyes out the door. He sits on the bed and watches me.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks quietly.
I look at him because I can’t help myself.
He says, “Ermington got one of everything, so it took forever. Are you okay?”
I smile, not able to keep it up. “Yeah.”
He kisses me, and I hear Aspen trying to run away, but Stanley catches her again. I laugh, listening to them mess around. Benson is scolding Stanley. Blue says something I barely hear.
Aspen makes it back into the bedroom with two snacks. She hands me one and then we high-five across the bed.
I lie in Percy’s arms for the night, listening to Stanley and Aspen bicker over snacks, and I’m exactly where I want to be.