11. Chapter Eleven
Stanley
Behind me, I hear her pull away, the engine fading off down the street toward her garage, three doors down, gone. I stand on the porch for a second in the cold with my hand on the door.
Costume on, eleven.
I open it.
Benson’s already home. He’s at the kitchen table with a glass of water.
Blue’s on the couch, looking at his phone.
Percy’s leaning in the doorway to the hall with his arms crossed, because Percy doesn’t run ambushes.
He only attends them. Rowan’s walks out of the kitchen and stops when he sees me.
And Gavin walks out of the kitchen with a beer in his hand. When he sees me, he grins.
Five sets of eyes hit me at once.
I take my jacket off and hang it on the hook by the door. I take my time with it because my mind needs a second to load.
Five grown men sitting up in a dark house at one in the morning to ambush me is a brand new thing in my book. I hope that it’s a five-star experience. I’ve walked into a thousand rooms like this in my life and won every one of them. The only difference tonight is that I’ve got a story to sell.
I turn around and grin. Wide. They all know this face. I spread my arms.
“Gentlemen. Why are we awake?”
Gavin Carroll goes first because Gavin has missed my 2.0 personality these past few years, and he doesn’t know who I’ve grown into or what he’s dealing with.
“Brother.” He leans on the wall. “We need to talk about Linwood.”
The house stills. Benson stares at me.
“Do we?” I head for the kitchen and walk right past him. I go to the fridge and grab a beer I don’t want, because a man with a beer in his hand looks like a man with nothing to hide.
“You’ve been holding out on me, man.” He’s delighted. “Aspen Linwood? You? Since when?”
I pop the cap one-handed against the counter edge. I take a sip I don’t want either. And I look at him, friendly, with nothing whatsoever behind it.
“Since none of your business, Gav.”
The room makes a sound that isn’t a laugh.
It’s the other sound a room makes when a man puts another man flat on his back without ever lifting his voice.
Benson is still staring, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
Blue stops pretending to read his phone.
Percy, in the doorway, does whatever Percy does, which is unreadable by design.
Rowan’s tuning in. The poor fella needs to get to sleep.
Gavin recovers fast — it’s the most useful thing about him and the least trustworthy. He laughs.
“Fair, fair. Just — you, man? Linwood?” He makes a face. “Didn’t see that coming.”
“Yeah.” I drink. “Funny how that works.”
Gavin laughs, and then he shifts on his feet, and I watch him decide to tell a story — because there is nothing on this earth a hockey player loves more than the story where he almost died.
He sets his beer on the table by Benson. He’s grinning already.
“Yeah, funny,” he muses. “Me and Aspen, when we were a thing? Coach Linwood found out about a week in. That was a rough FaceTime.” He wipes his face, smiling at the memory.
Benson and I lock eyes for a moment, and I can already hear what he’s telling me. You shouldn’t have let this guy stay at our house. I glare back. I know.
“Best moment of my life. Coach Linwood tells me––” He mocks Linwood’s voice. “Stares right at me through the phone and goes, ‘If you mistreat my daughter, I’ll personally cut your dick off and feed it to the dogs.’”
The room is silent as Gavin laughs, drinking his beer. I can’t imagine Coach Linwood talking to me like that, so he must have a strong opinion on Gavin.
“We lasted four months.” Gavin shrugs, drinks. “Dogs never came for me. So I figure I did all right.”
Then he looks at me.
“Curious what he told you.”
And there it is. Friendly little blade, slid in sideways. I dated her. I survived her old man. Were you man enough to handle it? And under that, the part he actually wants me to hear. I had her. I know exactly what she’s like behind a closed door.
I give him my lazy grin. I don’t touch the dad story. That’s the trap — the second I bite on curious what he told you, I lose.
“That’s a hell of a story, Gav.” I take a sip. “Real edge-of-your-seat stuff.”
He watches me.
“I’ll tell you mine sometime.” Smooth, easy, mild. A man comparing receipts, not dicks. “Mine’s got no dogs in it. Mine’s just me, dating his daughter for real.”
Gavin’s grin doesn’t move, but it goes flat behind the eyes. He nods, slow. “Damn. Okay.” He lifts the beer an inch — a little toast to a hand he didn’t see coming. “Yeah. Sure.”
He drinks. And then he can’t leave it, because Gavin doesn’t lose conversations, and Gavin can feel himself losing this one in front of a room, so he reaches for the thing that always wins. He gets personal.
“Hey, no — I’m happy for you, brother. For real. Aspen’s a—” He smiles up at the ceiling. “She’s a good one. She’s a really good one. I’ll tell you, man, the first time I — when she — yeah.” He lets it hang there, unfinished, on purpose. “You’re a lucky guy.”
The sentence is the chirp. I’ve been somewhere with her that you haven’t.
Then he leans back into the couch, loose, comfortable, a man who’s decided he’s still in a game everyone else can see he’s already lost.
“She still keep that little stuffed shark on her pillow?” He grins. “Couldn’t believe that the first time I saw it.”
The room doesn’t move. Benson’s eyes cut to me.
He knows about the damn shark.
He’s mentioning an intimate thing in his old college house like it’s a souvenir. He wants me to know that he came first. He wants me to pull out my cock and stand beside him with our rulers.
My face doesn’t move.
Then I set my beer down on the counter.
I’m done.
I walk to the front door and take my coat off the hook, pulling it on as I go.
“Stan?” Blue, looking up.
“Stan.” Benson, sharper. “Where are you going?”
I get my hand on the door handle, and I don’t break stride. I send it back over my shoulder with the grin loaded all the way to the top.
“My girlfriend’s house. Duh.”
“Stan—”
“Don’t wait up.” I pull the door open.
And I look at Gavin, once, on my way out. I don’t say a word to him. I don’t need to.
That’s mine now, buddy.
The door shuts behind me.
Thirty feet of sidewalk between my door and hers. I walk it without a hood, and I’m not cold.
I don’t get to be mad. I’m fake-dating her. I don’t get to be jealous. I’m fake-dating her.
I am, in fact, jealous.
I’ll deal with that later.
Right now I’m going to her window.
Her house is dark. I go around to the side, to the window I taped my own face to, the one I stood at in the cold and looked through, and I knock. Three times quietly. I’m not trying to wake the whole house.
Nothing.
I knock again. “Linwood.”
The curtain twitches. Her face shows up in the gap — hair down, huge t-shirt, no makeup, the exact face I wasn’t supposed to see tonight.
Her eyes go enormous when she sees me. Her mouth drops open, and she mouths, very clearly, what the fuck are you doing here?
I grin and point at the side door. I mouth back, Let me in.
She glares at me with the force of a small sun.
She vanishes from the window.
I walk to the side door and wait. It opens a crack. Her face in it. Furious.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Hi, princess.”
“It is two in the morning.”
“So why are you up?”
“You woke me up.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“No.”
“Linwood.”
She stares at me.
“Aspen.” I look at her. “Please. Five minutes.”
She shuts her eyes and breathes out through her nose. Then she opens the door.
“My roommates are asleep.”
I step inside.
She walks me to her bedroom. It’s dark except for the lamp by her bed. The Cup photo is on the desk, her father still roaring at the ceiling. I stand in the middle of the floor with my hands in my pockets. I don’t sit on the bed. I’ve got just enough sense left to know I haven’t earned the bed.
She closes the door and folds her arms.
“Talk,” she demands.
I run a hand through my hair because I genuinely don’t know what I came here to say. So I start with the safest true thing I’ve got.
“Gavin’s mouthing off.”
Her face changes. “About what?”
I press my lips together.
“Ermington.”
“I had to leave.”
She studies me for a long moment. “You came over here to tell me my ex is running his mouth at your house, and you didn’t feel like listening to it.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to handling it?”
I lean against the dresser because I’m too tired to keep standing in the middle of her floor.
“I am. This is me handling it.”
“This is you handling it,” she questions.
“Yes.”
“That’s not handling it. That’s relocating.”
“Think about it, princess. It’s a strategic relocation.”
She doesn’t take the moment to think. “Stanley. What was he saying?”
I let a moment slide by as I study the floor.
“He was telling me he knows you in ways I don’t. He was being a dick about it. I left.”
Her face moves. Not much. Enough. “Like what?”
“Linwood, I’m not gonna do that to you.”
“Do what?”
“Tell you what he said.” I look at her. “Unless… unless you’re trying to get him back.”
“No,” she mutters quickly. “I’m definitely not.”
“He said things to feel good about losing. You don’t need it in your head if you’re trying to move on.”
She uncrosses her arms, and she doesn’t say anything. The room goes quiet. She sits on the edge of her bed and pulls her sleeves down over her hands.
“Okay.”
That’s it. Okay. The tension in the room drops a little.
I shove my hands deeper in my hoodie pocket.
“You got any cereal in this house?”
She looks up at me. “Are you serious?”
“I’m an athlete, Linwood. I’ve got caloric needs that don’t sleep. I left a full beer at my house, and I came over here. I need carbs.”
“You woke me up at two in the morning to tell me my ex is being an ass and to ask for cereal.”
“Hey, we’re dating now. This is completely normal.”
She stares at me. “Fake dating.”
I give her a little pout, and her shoulders drop a quarter of an inch.
“Don’t move.”
She gets up and walks out of her bedroom. I hear her in the kitchen. A cabinet, a bowl set down on the counter, the fridge opening.
I look around the room while she’s gone. The Cup photo. The shark on her pillow. I put my eyes back on the carpet, because I just walked out of a house over that exact shark stuffed animal, and I am not about to be the second man this week to make her wish she’d hidden it.
She comes back with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, real milk, and a spoon. She hands it to me.
“Eat your carbs.”
I sit down on the floor at the side of her bed, back against it, because I don’t deserve the bed and the chair’s buried under what looks like a week of sweaters. She climbs onto the mattress cross-legged and watches me eat.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t get crumbs on my carpet.”
“That’s rude,” I say with a mouthful. “I’m your guest.”
“You’re a trespasser with a bowl.”
“You need to get used to this, Linwood.” I take another bite. “All choices have a consequence.”
“Eat your Cheerios, Ermington.”
I already am.
“We should get the story straight.”
“The story,” I repeat.
“What we tell people. Before someone asks and we say two different things.”
I think about it around a mouthful. “It’s not really a story. We’re not inventing anything. Our dads have known each other forever. I live three doors down. The only thing we’re—”
“Fine. We edit.”
“Editing.” I point the spoon at her. “That.”
She pulls her sleeves down further. “We started two weeks ago. That’s it. Simple.”
“Simple ones hold.”
We sit with that. The math’s done. The story exists.
After a minute, “Why two weeks?”
“Because if anyone does the work, they can pin it to about the start of the season. Practices, scrimmages — you’ve been in the building. It’s plausible.”
She nods, doing the math I’ve already done, doing it faster.
“And the part where we hate each other—”
“Recent development. Domestic squabble. We’re working through it.”
“We’re working through it,” she repeats.
“It’s the early days of a great relationship, Linwood. There’s gonna be some growing pains.”
She laughs. A real one this time, and she presses her lips together like that’ll keep the rest of them in.
I finish the cereal. I set the bowl on her nightstand because the desk is too far and I’m comfortable.
“Not on the nightstand.”
“Where am I supposed to put it?”
“Anywhere else. Not on my nightstand, Ermington.”
“This is what a host does, Linwood. A host takes the bowl.”
She takes the bowl. She sets it on the floor at the foot of the bed where I can’t reach it and pulls her knees up to her chest.
“You should go home.”
I look at her. “Yeah.”
Neither of us moves. I check my phone. Two fifty-three. I lean my head back against her footboard and close my eyes for half a second.
“Linwood.”
“What?”
“He’s still on my couch.”
She doesn’t say anything.
I keep my eyes closed. “If I go back now, he’ll be on that couch in the morning, and I’ll have to watch him drink coffee in my kitchen before I’ve had any of mine. I want one full night before I have to do that.”
She’s quiet for a long time.
“You’re not getting in my bed.”
I open one eye. “I would never.”
“The floor. With a pillow. One pillow. From the linen closet. Not one of mine.”
“Generous.”
“And you’re gone before Bree or Kirra wake up. Six a.m. You’re out.”
“Got it.”
“Six. Not six-oh-five. Six.”
“Six, Linwood.”
“And you do not tell anyone you stayed here.”
I look at her. “They all know I’m here, Linwood. That was the whole point of leaving. Gavin already thinks it. By morning, he’s convinced this is the real deal.”
She closes her eyes and drops her forehead to her knees for a second. Then she lifts her head. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
She starts listing it out on her fingers. “On the floor. Six a.m. Out the side door. Don’t wake my roommates.”
“Aye aye, princess.”
She gets up and disappears into the hall and comes back with a pillow that’s clearly been exiled to the linen closet — flat, faintly green, possibly white in a past life. She throws it at my chest. I catch it.
“You’re a real gem of a girlfriend, Linwood.”
“I’m your fake girlfriend, Ermington.”
“That’s what I said.”
She turns off the lamp. The room drops to dark, and the strip of light under the door.
I shift around on the floor until I find a position that won’t wreck my back. The pillow goes under my head. The carpet’s harder than I gave it credit for. I’m fully dressed, and I’m staying that way, unfortunately.
I lie there in the dark.
“Ermington.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not letting him talk about me.”
The dark holds. I’ve got six jokes lined up. I don’t reach for any of them.
“Yeah.”
A long pause.
“Linwood.”
“What.”
“One question.”
“What?”
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
I close my eyes.