36. Chapter Thirty-Six
Aspen
I’ve done this before — the ceiling, the dark, the replaying.
Except the last time I lay awake like this, three years ago, it was because something had been done to me.
Tonight I did it to myself, and I keep waiting for that to make it feel different, better, like a thing I held the reins on. It doesn’t. It feels exactly the same.
That’s the part I can’t get around as the window goes from black to gray.
I spent a lot time expecting he’d be like the rest. I thought I’d wake up and discover he was never going to take me seriously, that all of this had been one of his jokes.
And now the morning’s here, gray and quiet and unbearable, and the aloneness sitting on my chest exactly the way I always knew it would is because of my own choices.
There’s no one to be angry at but myself.
I did the right thing. I removed myself.
A man like that, a career like that –– my father has not once in his life been wrong about hockey.
I pull up the text again. Get his head right before he throws it away.
It started off as fake, sure, but it got real in the hotel, so as long as I’m a variable, then walking away wasn’t cruelty.
It was the kindest thing I had in me. I did a good thing.
I read it four times, needing it to be true.
There are two silences in my phone, and I lie there thinking about it.
The first is his. I’ve got nothing from Stanley. Not a word, not a dot, not a what the hell happened. This is confirmation.
The second silence is my father’s. And this one I could break.
I could pick up the phone right now and type the thing he wants.
Handled. You can stop worrying about his career.
I ended it. He’d be pleased with me, and I’d have done the thing he asked, fixed the thing he flagged, earned the small clipped good I have spent my whole life arranging myself to receive.
I start typing it. It’s handled. You don’t have to—
And my thumb stops.
Because a small part of me balks at the sentence on the screen.
I’m about to report to my father that I have dismantled my own happiness for him like a soldier reporting a completed order, like that’s a normal thing for a person to do, like that’s love.
I look at the half-typed sentence and think better of it. I delete it.
Gianna texts me at nine.
Gianna: Hey, you vanished after the game. You good?
And then, a minute later, because she’s Gianna.
Gianna: Bringing coffee. Don’t argue. Outside in 20.
I lie there holding the phone, and I could cry, because I have friends now. Real ones. For the first time in my adult life, there is a person driving over with a coffee because I seemed off, and I cannot tell her one true thing about why.
I can’t explain the breakup without explaining the relationship, and I can’t explain the relationship without saying it was fake from the beginning.
The single real thing I gained out of this whole disaster are these friends, and it’s fragile, sitting on the exact same fault line as everything else.
To be honest inside the friendship, I’d have to blow the friendship up.
So I’ll do what I do. I’ll give Gianna a partial truth and a working face and let her think she’s helping, and I’ll lie to the kindest person who has ever brought me coffee.
Gianna fills the doorway first, three coffees in a cardboard tray and a bag of something from the good bakery, already talking before she’s all the way inside.
Lucy is behind her, carrying a second bag with that watchful warmth she carries everywhere.
They let themselves in like they’ve done it a hundred times.
They haven’t. It’s the second time Gianna’s ever been in my house, but it feels like the hundredth.
“Okay,” Gianna says, handing me a coffee, dropping onto the end of my bed like she lives here.
“I’m just going to say it, because I’m bad at not saying things and worse at sitting on them.
I know it’s not real. You and Stan.” She winces.
“I’ve known for a few days. Benson told me — well.
Benson didn’t tell me. I got it out of him, which is a different thing and not his fault, so don’t be mad at my brother. ”
The coffee stops halfway to my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she rushes on. “I’m sorry I know, I’m sorry if it’s weird that I know, I debated not saying anything and pretending, but that felt worse — like I’d be the one lying to you then, in your own bedroom, while you’re clearly going through something.
” She pulls a knee up. “So. I know. And I don’t care. We’re here for you.”
I look at Lucy.
“I knew before Benson said a word,” Lucy says, settling into my desk chair.
“I was standing right there at the party. I know what a real thing looks like and what a performance looks like, and that kiss wasn’t a performance.
” She takes the lid off her coffee. “I saw both your faces. That was your first one, wasn’t it? ”
“Okay, I did not know then,” Gianna cuts in. “For the record. I found out way after.”
Lucy ignores her. “Wasn’t it?”
I nod, the coffee halfway to my mouth.
“So you guys know,” I manage to say, mortified.
“We’re not judging,” Gianna adds. “We totally get it.”
Lucy nods.
“And Stanley has been different,” Gianna says, making a face. “He’s…you know.”
Lucy watches me as I smirk. Gianna and I look at each other and laugh.
I say, “But he’s not like that when it’s just us.”
Gianna nods. “We heard about what Halifax offered him.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
“That’s huge.”
I lean forward. “It’s massive.”
“But he doesn’t want it yet,” Gianna says, and Lucy nods in agreement.
“We heard him talking about it. He wants to finish the season strong with the boys and go pro on his timeline. He kept mentioning how nobody ever asks him what he wants, and he wants to win the national championship with the boys.”
Lucy nods. “I’ve had a lot of talks with Benson about this. It’s been his and Stanley’s goal since they were freshmen.”
“And I vouch for that because I’m his sister. Benson is the captain, and he is determined to end this year on a bang.”
Lucy nods.
“And Stanley’s a part of that.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, understanding.
“So,” Gianna says, and I can tell she’s working up to something. “He’s gone for you, Aspen. Like — anyone can see it. I’ve never watched him be like this over anyone.”
Lucy watches me intently.
“What?” I ask.
“He’s in love with you, Aspen,” Gianna says with wide eyes. “I’ve never seen him so chill.”
“So chill,” Lucy echoes.
Gianna adds, “And like Stanley doesn’t stop. He can keep going and going. He’s finally chill.” She chuckles. “He’s changing.”
“But that’s not good, right?” I ask. “I shouldn’t be changing him.”
She shakes her head before I’ve even finished. “No — this is a good thing. You have no idea how wound up that boy usually is. Years of house rules, the whole monk routine, treating the draft like a religion.”
“What she’s trying to say,” Lucy cuts in, “is that his world got bigger because of you. He’s softer. More thoughtful.”
“Less annoying,” Gianna adds, like she’s proud to finally say it. “And it’s because of you. You tamed the wildest one at Camden.”
I flush.
“Seriously, Aspen. He’s never even looked at a girl. That kid’s been following the house rules since day one, and then you come along and boom!”
“Boom,” Lucy echoes.
I chuckle, unable to help myself.
The inner-circle intel cracks something open.
They talk about Stanley like people who love him and are worn out by him equally.
Gianna does an impression of him at a party so accurate I have to put my coffee down.
Lucy tells me he once spent an entire team dinner convinced he could name every player’s skate brand by the sound their stride made and got thrown out of the restaurant for testing it in the aisles.
They tell me he’s the loudest person any of them have ever met and the most exhausting houseguest in America, and that Benson would do anything for him, and so would the rest of the house.
And then Gianna goes quieter than I’ve heard her all morning. “He’s not himself right now, though. You should know that. Benson says he came back from that trip different, and this week he’s been — off. Quiet, almost.” She makes a face. “Stan is not quiet. Ever. In his life.”
“It doesn’t touch his hockey,” Lucy says. “It never does with him. But off the ice.” She shrugs. “He’s not okay.”
I don’t have anything to say to that, so I drink my coffee and let them think I’m just shy about it.
They stay for an hour. It’s the first hour of real friendship I’ve had in my entire adult life, and it’s happening in the middle of the worst week of it, right when I need it most, and I appreciate that so much.
When they get up to go, Gianna hugs me too hard. “You’re one of us now. That doesn’t switch off because something got complicated.” She pulls back. “We’re here. That’s the whole reason we came.”
“For what it’s worth,” Lucy says, light, no push behind it, “I think you should talk to him.”
And then they’re gone, down the hall, the front door, Gianna’s voice trailing off about something for someone’s birthday — and the house goes quiet around me.
I sit on my floor with a cold coffee and the quiet.
I told myself his silence meant he didn’t care.
What if his silence is just him doing the one thing I never thought Stanley Ermington was capable of — giving me room?
I don’t fix anything today. I want to be honest about that.
I don’t decide I was wrong. I don’t decide I was right.
I don’t text him, and he doesn’t text me, and the day goes gray to grayer outside the window.
But the certainty I had when I woke up this morning doesn’t hold anymore.
And if I was wrong, then I didn’t save him last night. I just hurt us both.
I lie back on my unmade bed in the gray middle of a Saturday I don’t know how to be inside of, and I am not okay.
On my desk, propped against the base of the lamp, is the note. I’ll make you another pie. I haven’t thrown it away. Not even now, after I’ve decided we’re over.
I stare at it for a long time.
The one piece of physical proof I own that says it was real.
I leave it where it is.