15. Chapter Fifteen
Stanley
She walks the three doors home, and I stay on the porch until she’s inside her own door, and then I go back into my house, and it’s quiet.
Percy’s at the gym. Benson’s at Lucy’s. Blue’s at Melly’s. Rowan is wherever Rowan is.
I walk into my own living room. My controller’s on the coffee table where she left hers next to it, the two of them side by side like a little couple. She left her mug. Which means I am now in possession of an asset.
I stare at it for a moment and smile, because the universe has, for once, handed me leverage.
I pick the mug up, carry it to the kitchen, wash it, and dry it with the towel from the oven handle. This puppy is coming upstairs with me for safekeeping. I set it on my dresser like a trophy, take a photo of it, and send it to the woman who stole my stick.
Me: We have a hostage situation.
Linwood: I need that.
Me: And I need my stick. Funny how the world works.
The three dots come up. They think about it. They go away.
I smile at the ceiling like a man who has won something.
The text goes unanswered all day and all night, and on Monday morning, I check my phone first thing, which is not a thing I do, and find nothing.
I go downstairs, and I stop on the bottom step, because all four of them are at the kitchen table. Benson. Blue. Rowan. Percy. On a Monday. Awake. Together. Looking at me.
“Boys,” I say, throwing my arms wide, because in my heart I am always walking out to an ovation. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Benson and Blue glance at each other. Blue stands and slides a chair out from the table.
“Come here, Sterm.”
I grin at it. “Is that my throne?”
“It’s the hot seat,” Reeve says.
“It’s an intervention,” says Blue.
“An intervention.” I sit immediately and pat Blue’s forearm. “I love these. Who goes first? Is there a talking stick? I’ll volunteer to hold the talking stick.”
Benson goes first. “Stan. What in the hell is happening?”
I settle in. “Reeve, you’re going to have to be more specific, because the world is full of happenings. We’ve got the bees, who are not doing well. We’ve got a soft housing market that, frankly, nobody at this table is equipped to—”
“Aspen Linwood,” Benson says. “Calling you babe Saturday night. You, sleeping at her place. Her, in this kitchen yesterday.” He folds his hands. “You want to talk about that, or do you want me to keep listing things we watched happen?”
I keep the grin on. I shrug, loose, easy, a man with nothing to hide and everything under control. “It’s been a thing, fellas. I just wasn’t ready to make a thing of the thing.”
“Bullshit,” Blue says, before I’ve landed the sentence.
“Baby Blue.” I look at him.
“You are deranged about the house rules. You wrote them in permanent marker. You called a house meeting — with an agenda, with bullet points — because Melly dropped my hoodie on the porch.”
“That hoodie had implications, Blue, and you know it. You only have one, and you gave it to her.”
“Tell us when it started with Aspen,” Benson says.
I turn to him and give him my best one, warm and rehearsed and clean. “Two weeks ago. After a home game. I bought her a coffee. I asked her out. She said yes.” I spread my hands like I’m presenting a painting. A love story. Frame it.
The boys look at each other.
“That’s a line,” Percy says from the corner.
“What line?”
“That’s the line, Stan. The one you practiced. You delivered it like a hostage reading a statement off a card.”
“Pers, you are a paranoid man.”
“It’s not even a real story,” Blue says.
Rowan doesn’t look up from his cereal. “We can do this all morning, Stan. I’ll clear my schedule.”
Benson leans in, and the captain comes out in his voice. “The truth. Right now. When did it start?”
I look at Benson. I look at Blue, hands behind his head. I look at Percy, statue-still in the corner. I look at Rowan, eating cereal like a man who has nowhere to be.
It’s Monday, and I have a class. I know I’m not winning this.
I fold.
“Saturday.”
The room goes very quiet.
“Saturday,” Benson says.
“Yeah.”
“The party.”
“Yeah.”
“You started seeing Aspen Linwood Saturday night. At the party.”
“More or less.”
Blue puts both hands behind his head and tips his chair back. “Oh my god.”
“Define more or less,” Benson demands.
I take a breath. I look at the ceiling, because the ceiling, unlike everyone else in this room, isn’t looking at me like that.
“It’s fake.”
The kitchen detonates without anyone raising their voice.
“It’s what?” Blue scoffs.
Rowan looks up, and milk dribbles off his lip. “Oh. That’s better than what I thought.”
Percy laughs once, soft, surprised at himself.
Benson is not laughing. Benson has gone full captain. “You let her call you babe in front of Gavin. You walked her out on your arm. You slept at her house. You brought her here. And all of it is fake.”
“Cap—”
“What is going on?”
I run a hand through my hair, which is a stalling move, and everyone at this table knows my stalling moves. “Gavin.”
The room goes still in a brand new way.
“What about Gavin?”
“He came at her in the kitchen Saturday night. She panicked, she grabbed me, and I rolled with it, because she’d already said it out loud, and I’m not going to leave a woman hanging in a kitchen.”
Benson nods slowly, processing. “Okay. I track that.”
“And we agreed to keep it running through the weekend, because Gavin was crashing here, and we had to sell it while he was under the roof. The plan was airtight. He flies out, the thing quietly fizzles, the credits roll, nobody gets hurt.” I scratch my jaw and let out a little laugh. “And then it got away from us.”
“Away from you?” Blue says.
I look at him. “Gavin told her dad.”
“Oh,” Blue says.
Rowan sets his spoon down. Benson stares. Percy lifts a single brow, which for Percy is roughly equivalent to screaming.
“Gavin told Coach Linwood,” Rowan says.
“I don’t know the exact route it took. But Gavin’s been treating me as a personal punchline since August, so he probably told his whole organization, and somebody in that building has a phone, and—” I spread my hands. “Everybody knows who Stanley Ermington is. And who Coach Linwood is.”
Benson says, “Mm.”
Nobody at the table denies it. I appreciate that.
“By eleven yesterday morning, Coach Linwood knew. He called Aspen.” I let it land. “He was thrilled.”
Benson drags both hands down his face. “Stan. You’re telling me Coach Linwood is currently under the impression that you’re dating his daughter.”
“Yes.”
“For real.”
“For real.”
“And he is happy about this.” He spreads his hands. “No sarcasm?”
I shake my head. “Apparently.”
Blue makes a noise that is forty percent laugh and sixty percent dying animal.
Benson keeps his hands over his eyes one beat longer, then drops them flat to the table.
“Okay. Fine. So here’s what you do. You sit down with Aspen this week.
You end it clean. You tell Coach it ran its course, no hard feelings, these things happen, and the two of you walk away with your dignity. ” He looks at me. “Right?”
I don’t say anything.
He stops moving.
“Right, Stan?”
“Cap.”
The whole table holds its breath.
“My dad’s in it now.”
The kitchen goes quiet for the third time in five minutes, which has to be some kind of house record.
“Robert Ermington,” Blue says.
I look at him and nod. “Robert knows.”
Rowan pushes his cereal away entirely, like he can no longer eat in the presence of this. “Robert Ermington knows.”
“Coach called him yesterday. Long conversation, I’m told. Real heart-to-heart between two old friends.” I shrug. “He was the same kind of thrilled.”
“Both your fathers think you and Aspen Linwood are together.”
“Yeah.”
“Both your fathers have been best friends since before any of us were born.”
“Mhm.”
“You cannot unwind this without it becoming a thing. In two NHL families.”
“Correct.”
“Oh my god,” Blue says again, much quieter this time.
I lean back and clasp my hands behind my head, because someone in this room has to project stability.
“Okay. Let’s all breathe. Let’s not spiral.
Is it ideal? No. Is it the worst situation I’ve ever personally walked into?
Gentlemen, I once told a customs agent I had nothing to declare while wearing two wristwatches and a third in my sock. I am built for this.”
Percy, who has not moved this entire time, finally speaks. “So what’s the play this weekend?”
I look at him.
Benson snaps his fingers. “Shit. Thanksgiving. That’s three days out.” He points at me. “My parents are flying in.”
I lean forward and put on my gentlest voice. “About that, cap.”
Benson closes his eyes. “You are backing out of my family’s Thanksgiving three days before Thanksgiving?”
“I’m sorry, man. I genuinely am. But I cannot stand up Coach Linwood. He would have my entire future cupped in one hand.”
“Christ,” Benson mutters.
Blue covers his eyes and slowly shakes his head at the table.
“It’s Coach Linwood,” I say, like that explains the weather, the tides, all of it. “And my dad may have mentioned he’s booking a flight to be there.”
The entire table groans.
“This,” Rowan announces to the room, “is a mess.”
“What does Aspen have to say about all this?” Blue asks.
“She’s very sorry.”
“She should be sorry, Stan, because your parents are going to lose their minds when they eventually find out it was fake.”
I had not, until this exact second, pictured myself standing in front of my mother and father explaining any of this, and my stomach takes the stairs down without me.
“You’re right.” I put both elbows on the table, steeple my fingers, and recover. “Good thing I’m already a card-carrying member of the Mile High Club. No temptation on that flight. Peaked years ago. Untouchable.”
“You’re in a lot of trouble,” Rowan says.
We all pause, thinking about it.
Finally, I admit, “I’m aware.”