9. Chapter Nine
Stanley
Lucy shows up at the house at three on Monday with her laptop under one arm and a good attitude.
And I’m ready for it. I have my own book open on the kitchen table on the Aristotle chapter.
I’ve highlighted things I bypassed the first time.
Anything less than an A for a random elective for my senior year is a hard no.
“Okay.” Lucy turns my book to face her. “Walk me through what you read.”
I tell her everything, show her the quiz I failed, and I wince every time I look at the grade.
“Close,” she says. “But the virtue isn’t the feeling. Try again.”
I try again.
She sits back. “Stanley. You know you can do this, right?”
I put a finger to my mouth and grin. “Don’t tell anyone.”
We work for forty minutes, give or take. And the strange part is that I’m just doing it. Reading the lines. Asking when I don’t follow. There’s a joke somewhere in me about Aristotle being a guy who clearly never had to backcheck, and I don’t reach for it. It stays where it is.
Lucy’s explaining how Aristotle figured virtue isn’t a thing you feel, it’s a thing you do, over and over, until you’re the kind of person who does it without choosing to anymore — we are what we repeatedly do — and I get it instantly, all the way down, because that’s the rink.
That’s the tape job. That’s ten thousand reps until your hands know the save before your head does.
You don’t decide to be good in the third period.
You already decided, months ago, every morning you laid your gear out in the same order.
“That’s it,” Lucy says, watching me. “That’s exactly it.”
“Huh.” I look at the page. “He’s not wrong.”
She’s looking at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m grand, Lucy girl.” It’s out before she finishes the question.
“You’re being ––” she shrugs. “Quiet.”
I give her a smile. I feel it not reach the top of my face. “I’m trying to graduate, Luce. I’m G.”
“Okay.” She lets it go. “Read me chapter four.”
I bend over the book. And over the top of my head, I see that Lucy looks at Benson in the doorway, and Benson looks back at her, and something moves between them in the second before I’ve found the start of chapter four.
I don’t know what. Couple stuff. Telepathy.
I go back to reading, because page eighteen isn’t going to read itself, and I’ve got a quiz to un-fail.
When we’re done, I fold cash into her hand. Too much, and she knows it.
“Stanley, this is—”
“It’s for your time.” I close her fingers over it. “There’s a lot more where that came from, Lucy, don’t worry about it.”
She tries to give some back. I don’t let her.
I’ve already squared the rest of it, too — emailed the professor, asked for the retake before it got to the point of no return, the way I never do, the way I’d never tell my dad I had to.
She said yes and said I could grab extra credit on top of it if I wrote her something — a real opinion, mine, on anything in the unit. My pick. Easy.
Benson’s looking at me from the doorway a moment too long.
I grin at him. “I’m gonna pass philosophy, Reeve. Watch me.”
He smiles. “Yeah.” He looks at Lucy gathering her books. “My girlfriend’s the best.”
On Tuesday night, the house is mostly empty, and Benson hands me a beer I didn’t ask for. He sits down on the other end of the couch. There’s a game on, low.
“I’m gonna ask you one thing,” he says, eyes on the TV.
“Shoot.”
“Whatever it is.” He takes a drink. “And I think we both know what it is. Don’t break Rule One.”
I keep my eyes on the screen. Somebody scores on it. Neither of us reacts.
“Rule One is intact,” I tell him. “Air-tight. Hermetically sealed. I’d take a polygraph right now, strap me in.”
“I didn’t ask for the play, Stan.” His voice doesn’t go up. “I asked you not to break Rule One.”
“And I’m telling you. It’s not happening.”
He nods, once. “Okay.” He drinks his beer.
I have every opportunity right now to give him shit for dating Lucy and breaking the rule himself.
It’s lined up fucking perfectly for me, but I keep my mouth shut.
I know what he’s getting at. He and I have a lot on the line, and no time to dick around.
But Lucy didn’t drag him under, which is why the rule is a thing.
I guess if you’re in love with a good girl, there’s room for hockey.
Then Reeve looks at me, and I can see it written on his face that he doesn’t believe me.
“Whose game even is this?” I say.
“No idea.”
We go back to watching it.
On Wednesday afternoon, Lucy carved out one hour for me.
Apparently, the girl is really busy on Wednesdays.
This just so happened to work out because the person she’s tutoring is sick, and now I can pay her triple whatever she’s making.
And then she has something with her family every Wednesday, so I’m keeping it brief. I just need her help with my paper.
We’re deep in the extra-credit thing when my phone buzzes on the table. I glance at it. Lucy doesn’t look up from the laptop.
Gavin: Brother!! In town this weekend, doing some media at Camden for the org. Gonna crash if that’s cool. Good times’ sake. Miss the Hawthorne House, man. Hope it’s no problem.
And I grin because Gavin’s a brother. We played a full year on a line together, his last year of college and my first. Back when I was a freshman, the last name gave me status, and he took me in.
We’ve had some good times. I already know that a weekend of Gavin is going to be loud and loose and exactly the kind of nothing my whole week has been missing.
Me: Always welcome here at HH.
I put the phone away and go back to Aristotle.
“Gavin’s coming this weekend,” I tell Benson. “You remember Gavin? He’s in the league now. Texted me he’ll be in town, wants to crash at the house for old times’ sake.”
Benson looks up at me.
“Told him he could crash.”
“Give him your bed,” Benson says.
“Fuck that. He can take the couch.”
Lucy grins. “Okay, so this paragraph…”
That night, I’m in the kitchen at midnight for a glass of water, and I don’t mean to look out the window over the sink. I do anyway.
From this exact spot — only this exact spot — you can see down the slope of the street, past the back fences, to the third house down.
Two of her lights are on.
Four days. That’s the math I’ve not been doing all week, and I do it now, standing here in the dark with the tap running cold over my hand.
Four days, and she hasn’t answered a single text.
She hasn’t returned the stick. She hasn’t sent one cutting word back, hasn’t knocked, hasn’t taped anything to my window, hasn’t so much as let me see her face.
She is, as far as I can tell, choosing to behave as though none of it happened at all. Which is the one move I didn’t expect.
I know what to do with a fight. I know exactly what to do with a girl who hits back — I’ve got a hundred answers loaded for that, it’s the best game I play.
But I don’t know what to do with a girl who simply opts out of the war mid-war.
There’s no equation for it. The puck just never leaves the other end of the ice, and I’m standing here on my own blue line waiting for a play that isn’t coming.
I stand at the window longer than I mean to.
I want her to do something. Anything. I want the war back because the war was fun. It was a good time. Linwood, steal all my hockey gear if you must. Actually, no, that would be bad. But something –– give me something.
I drink my water, shut off the tap, and turn off the light.
I go upstairs and lie there for a long time. And then I hear something rhythmic, and then a soft moan. Shit. Lucy must be back. I cover my ears until I find my AirPods, and then I slide them in and blast music because Benson and Lucy have no consideration whatsoever. Jesus.
Friday’s an away game, and the ritual’s back, full and quiet.
The stick’s my magic stick now — broken in over a week of practice, no longer the new one, no longer anything to do with her, just a good piece that does what I tell it. I eat my two eggs. I walk. I listen to the one playlist, no skips.
By the time I step into the locker room, the boys are loud, and I’m louder.
Gavin arrives at the house when we’re already on the road. He’s staying the weekend, and since we’re gone, he’s having a few people over while we’re out — I told him fine, it’s his old house too, we’ll be back by eleven, and the real damage can start then.
“Who’s Gavin?” Walsh asks, taping his own stick.
I tell him the NHL team he plays for.
Rowan looks up. “Then why’s he not playing tonight?”
“I don’t know, Row.” I shrug into my shoulder pads. “I didn’t run him through twenty-one questions before I gave him a couch. Media thing. Community thing. Who cares. Shit—” I catch the time and start moving faster.
My phone’s still out of my bag when it lights up one last time before I have to kill it.
Gavin: Hey, does Aspen Linwood still live three doors down?
Something rolls through my chest, quick and ugly and gone before I can name it.
Then I think better of it, because I’m not an animal.
Of course he knows Linwood. Everybody in hockey knows Linwood — her old man’s one of the most famous coaches alive, the girl’s been rink-adjacent her whole life, half the league’s met her at some banquet or other.
It’s nothing. It’s a hockey guy asking a hockey question.
I don’t answer it.
I shut the phone off and drop it in my bag, and I go play my game.