8
Nobody Asked for Pancakes
Nash
Declan Greeley pulls the door open with a beer in his hand and a grin like he’s been waiting for us.
“Barnes!” He claps Koda on the shoulder. “You made it.”
Koda looks at him and sees right through it.
“Waleska. Kennebeck.” Greeley steps back and holds the door wide. “Come in. Kitchen’s through there. There’s a keg out back.”
He says my name like nothing has ever happened between us, and he puts his hand on my shoulder as I go past, a friendly squeeze, and about six people see him do it. I don’t look at him. I keep walking.
Koda didn’t know it was Greeley’s house at first. He found out at Friday’s skate, when two of the juniors were talking about it in the hallway: Greeley’s place, Saturday, everybody’s going.
By then he’d already told Paige we’d be here, and he’d been texting her for three days like a man with a second job.
“It’s a party,” he told me yesterday. “You’re coming. ”
“He lives there,” I said.
Rafe wanted to come for reasons that had nothing to do with Paige. Rafe wanted to come because Greeley would hate it. And now we’re all here.
Friday’s skate was a disaster. Dannebrog split us for good: Greeley stayed at second-line center, and I stayed at third, and it wasn’t a look anymore.
Nobody said the word permanent. Rafe still wouldn’t pass to Greeley, not in a single drill, and when Dannebrog screamed at him about it, Rafe said, “I’m playing my game,” and Dannebrog told him to get off the ice.
Rafe skated off and sat in the locker room in full gear for forty minutes.
Afterward in the tunnel, Greeley fell into step beside me with his helmet under his arm. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” he said, quietly, pleasantly, so nobody else could hear. “Standing there watching somebody else run your line.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’ll get used to it.” He bumped my shoulder with his on his way past. “That’s the good thing about third line. Nobody expects much.”
Dannebrog was standing at the end of the tunnel watching, too far away to hear a word, and what he saw was Greeley patting me on the shoulder like we were teammates who got along.
The kitchen is packed. The keg line runs out the back door, so I take a beer out of a cooler on the floor and stand against a wall and let the party happen around me.
Rafe and Koda end up against the wall with me, watching.
Greeley keeps greeting people like it’s a wedding reception instead of a college party, and I drink my beer and mind my business.
Ten minutes in, Koda says, “They’re here.”
“Who?” Rafe asks.
“Paige.” Koda nods toward the door. “The girls. She’s wearing black.” He pushes off the wall and goes.
I stay where I am, back to the wall, a view of the door and both hallways. My legs are sore from Friday, there’s no skate tomorrow, and I have homework due Monday that I haven’t started. I’m going to give this ninety minutes and walk home.
Greeley works the room the entire time. He’s laughing with the juniors by the stairs.
He has an arm around a sophomore’s neck in the doorway, and then he’s refilling somebody’s cup.
He’s the guy everybody’s glad to see. And every twenty minutes or so, he looks over at me without his face changing at all, and then he looks away.
At some point Koda comes back with Paige. She’s exactly like she was Tuesday, confident and direct, looking around the kitchen like she’s deciding something about it, with a cup in her hand and Koda walking about four inches closer to her than he needs to.
“You remember Nash,” Koda says.
She looks at me. “We’ve met.”
“Have you?” Rafe says, calling her out.
“Briefly,” Paige says, still looking at me.
Neither of us says anything about what happened in that room on Tuesday. I do a pass of the kitchen and the hallway behind Paige, and the blonde isn’t with her. My shoulders come down about an inch. Good.
“So where’s your friend?” Koda leans on the counter next to me and takes a drink. “The one who wanted to know if Nash was busy?”
Paige’s face goes red all at once, up her neck and into her cheeks, and she takes a sip from her cup that’s more about buying time than thirst. “She’s—” She clears her throat. “She was just with us.”
Koda knows exactly what he’s doing. “Is she coming over? Nash is right here.”
“Koda,” I warn.
“What? You’re right here.”
“She just got out of something,” Paige says fast, talking only to Koda now, like if she keeps her eyes off me it doesn’t count.
“Like two days ago. Three years with the guy. He cheated on her at that party during welcome week. That’s why she was so—” She waves a hand. “That’s why she was like that.”
I take a drink.
“Two days ago?” Koda says.
“Thursday night she ended it,” Paige says, eyebrows all the way up. “On the phone. So she’s not, like—” She shrugs. “I just wanted her to come out and have a good night. That’s all.”
I put my beer down on the counter. I knew Paige was lying on Tuesday.
I knew it while she stood in front of me smiling.
What I didn’t know was that she’d use a girl who spent Monday crying in a stairwell as the door-opener, and I’m not sure why that lands the way it does, because it isn’t my business, but I don’t like the girl, Paige.
“Where is she?” Koda asks.
“Front room.”
“Alone?”
Paige smiles nervously. “Trust me. She’s fine.”
Then Koda, being Koda, turns around, cups a hand around his mouth, and yells across the entire kitchen into the front room, “Hey, blondie!”
“Koda,” Paige says, laughing.
He shouts across the house, “Your friend says you wanted to know if Kennebeck was busy. He’s free! Come and get him!”
Half the kitchen turns around. For maybe two seconds, I can hear the music and nothing else, and then the blonde comes around the corner of the doorway with a red cup in one hand and her hair down.
She looks at Koda, then Paige, then me, and I watch her face come apart and put itself back together into something a lot worse.
“What did you just say?” she snaps.
“I said—” Koda starts.
She puts up a finger to shut Koda up, and then she turns to her friend. “Paige?”
Paige closes her eyes. “Okay, so I asked him if he was busy this weekend,” she says, all in one breath, “and I maybe said you wanted to know, because I needed an opener, and it worked, and we got invited, and you’re welcome.”
The blonde’s mouth opens, and nothing comes out. I have never seen anybody go that quiet that fast. She looks at Paige with her jaw working and her eyes bright and furious, and I can see her deciding not to do this here, at a party where she doesn’t know anybody.
Then she turns to me. “And you let her.”
I shouldn’t be stunned, but I am.
Her eyes widen at me, impatiently.
I answer, “Yeah.”
Kylie’s head goes back. “You know I fucking hate you, right?” She starts to laugh, high and disbelieving. “And you didn’t say anything? You knew she was lying, and you just stood there.”
“Kylie,” Paige says. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
She ignores her, keeping her gaze on me. “You didn’t think to correct her?”
I shake my head. “It’s not my problem.”
Somebody in the kitchen says oh, quietly, the way people do at a game.
“Kylie,” Paige hisses. Then, to me and Koda, “Sorry. She’s just going through a hard time.”
Kylie laughs. “I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks.”
“Look, Blondie—” Koda begins.
Then Declan Greeley walks over to her and says something I can’t hear. She’s still staring at me, but for one second, she isn’t angry. She’s listening to him. She takes his hand and shakes it, and then he looks over his shoulder at me while she says something to him. Nobody shakes hands at a party.
He nods toward the back of the house and winks at me on his way past. Paige says her name and goes after her, the room fills back in, and somebody behind me laughs at something I don’t catch.
Koda looks at me. “That went well.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m in the same spot with the same beer, and I haven’t seen blondie since she walked off toward the back with Greeley’s hand on her elbow.
Paige is across the room being loud with Koda.
Whatever happened between her and Kylie is over, or Kylie’s saving it for outside.
It isn’t my business. I check the time, and I’ve got about an hour left here.
Greeley comes into the kitchen with an empty cup. He’s been circling all night, and I’ve been waiting.
“Hey,” he says, easy and loud. “You good, Kennebeck?”
“I’m good.”
“You sure? Looked rough in there.” He leans back against the counter next to me, shoulder to shoulder with the room, so everybody can see what a great host he is. “Your girl’s nice, by the way.”
I don’t answer.
“She’s real nice.” He takes his phone out of his pocket, taps it twice, and turns the screen toward me: a thread with three messages in it and a name at the top. He turns it back before I can read anything. “Took about four minutes. You were standing right there when I did it.”
He’s been drinking since before we got here. I can smell it on him, and it’s in the way he holds his shoulders, loose and wide, taking up more room than he needs.
“That’s the whole difference between us,” he says, watching the room.
“You’ve lived in the same building as that girl for three weeks, and she’d rather stand in a corner than look at you.
I had her for four minutes, and she gave me her number and told me her whole life story.
She’s sad, Kennebeck. Sad girls are easy.
You just have to be nice to them for ten seconds. ”
My jaw sets.
“She’s not going to remember your name in a month,” he says. “But she’s going to remember mine, because I’m going to—”
“Finish that sentence.”
His face changes. He likes it. He steps off the counter, and now he’s in front of me instead of beside me, close enough that I can see the shine on his forehead and the beer in his eyes. The acting is gone.
“You think this is about a girl,” he says. “That’s cute.”
“Get out of my face, Greeley.”
“I’m going to take everything you have.” He says it almost gently.
“The spot. The line. Waleska, because he’s going to get tired of losing games for you.
Every guy in that room, one at a time, because I’ve been here two years and you’ve been here three weeks, and they’re going to believe me when I say you’re worthless.
And when the scouts show up in October, I’m going to be the guy Berwyn walks them over to, and you’re going to be standing at the far boards with two juniors. ”
“You’re drunk.”
He smiles. “You had one thing when you got here. A clean tape and a coach who watched it at night. By Christmas, you’re going to have a reputation, a healthy scratch, a highlight reel with a hole in it, and nothing else.
No line. No spot. No girl.” He taps his phone against my chest, twice.
“I’m going to take it all off you, and then you can go home to whoever raised you like this and tell them how it went. ”
He’s still smiling when he says it, and he’s already turning away, already lifting the phone toward the four guys behind him, already opening his mouth to say something to the room about me.
That’s what this is. It’s a performance, and I’m the prop.
It’s been three weeks of him smiling in my face and cutting my legs out from behind.
Stay down this time, rookie. It’s on me too, Coach. For the team. Nobody expects much.
The feeling comes up my chest, hot and heavy.
I don’t think––I just swing.
I catch him on the side of the jaw, and he goes back into the counter and takes a stack of cups with him.
He comes up off it swinging and gets me in the mouth.
After that, it’s just hockey. I’ve got his shirt, and he’s got mine, and we’re throwing short, ugly punches that land, and I’m slipping on a kitchen floor covered in beer the same way I’d slip on the ice with the gloves off.
He gets me twice. I get him more than twice.
People swarm around us. Koda is pushing people back, and he’s thrilled. I can hear it in his voice. “Fuck yeah! There it is!”
Three or four guys peel us apart. Pennock has me around the chest. Somebody has Greeley. We’re both still going, my collar’s stretched out, and there’s blood in my mouth.
Greeley is laughing as we come apart, one hand at his lip and blood on his teeth, and he isn’t even looking at me. He’s looking at the room. “See?” He spreads his arms as far as the guy holding him allows. “That’s all it takes with this guy. Three weeks.”
The guys holding him let go. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, and then he looks at me with the first honest face he’s shown me since I walked through his door.
“Get out of my house,” he says, and then louder, “All three of them. Out. Party’s still going, everybody. We’re fine.”
Pennock walks me as far as the living room and lets go. I’m wiping my mouth on the back of my hand when I see the blonde at the bottom of the stairs with her coat over her arm, frozen, looking at my mouth. Her eyes go to the blood on my chin, then to my hand, split open across two knuckles.
Greeley comes out of the kitchen behind me with his lip split and his shirt untucked and puts his arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t move out from under it. She’s still looking at me with disgust.
From the front room, Paige calls, “Kylie! We’re going!”
Greeley looks over the top of her head, right at me, and smiles with blood in his teeth.
I go out the front door and down the porch steps into the cold, and I don’t look back at the house. Behind me, the door bangs open, and Koda comes out laughing so hard he has to hold the railing.
“Kennebeck.” He’s wheezing. “Kennebeck, your mouth.”
Rafe comes out right after him and doesn’t say anything at all. He walks down the steps toward me with his hands in his pockets. My knuckles are bleeding, my heart is still going, and the girls are catching up because Koda is walking fast.
“Holy shit,” Paige says. “Are you okay?”
I keep walking.
“Okay!” Koda announces to the street. “Where are we going?”
“Home,” I say.
“No.” Koda points at me with the hand that isn’t on Paige. “You just got us thrown out of a party at ten-forty. We are not going home.”
“There’s a diner on Beall,” Paige says. “It’s open all night.”
“Diner,” says Koda.
“I’m not going to a diner,” I say.
“You’re bleeding,” Rafe says. “They’ve got napkins.”
Down the sidewalk, Kylie stops walking, turns around, and looks at Paige with an expression I can feel from ten feet away. “Are you serious?”
“It’s pancakes, Kylie.”
“I want to go home.”
“Nobody’s going home,” Koda says.