12 #2
“Look,” I say. “I don’t know you. But whoever you end up with shouldn’t make you feel like this. Raise your bar.”
She puts her face in her hands.
“And you were right to come ask me,” I say. “You had a feeling, and you went and checked. That’s not stupid. That’s the opposite.”
Her shoulders shake once. Then she wipes her eyes hard, sits up straight, and breathes out. “Okay.”
There’s a long pause while she fidgets with her sleeve again. “What did he actually say? In the kitchen.”
She’s sad, Kennebeck. Sad girls are easy.
“That he got your number in four minutes while I was standing right there,” I say. “And that it was a good start.”
She’s quiet. “That’s it?”
I don’t answer.
“What else?” she asks, concerned.
I don’t tell her.
“Was it bad?”
“Yeah.”
She looks up at me. I look back and don’t tell her, and after a second she nods, and I watch her decide not to make me.
“Okay,” she says again. She stands, leans back against the wall, and pushes her hair out of her face with both hands. “So what do I do?”
“About what?”
“About him. He’s going to text me tomorrow. He already texted me tonight.” She pulls out her phone and shows me the screen: Glad you came, twenty minutes ago. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Block him.”
“And then he knows I know.”
“Who cares?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since the rink.” She shoves her phone back in her pocket. “If I block him, he knows somebody told me, and there’s only one person who could have told me. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t know what he’s doing to you, but I don’t want to make it worse.”
I don’t say anything for a second. “That’s not your problem.”
“Well, it’s a problem, isn’t it?”
“It’s mine.”
“I just don’t want to hand him a reason to—” She stops. “What does he even want? Actually. What’s the end of it?”
“My position. So he’s finding ways to get me to hit him in front of people, so everybody thinks I have a problem.”
She stares at the ground for a moment, then she whispers, “Holy shit. And you did it. You fell right into his trap.”
I clench my jaw.
“I don’t know if it helps,” she says, “but I told him we’re not friends. So maybe he’ll lose interest in me.”
Not good enough. “You should block him.”
She breathes out and looks at her shoes. “I’m sorry I bothered you. It’s late, and I showed up at your door with my entire friend group and cried in front of you again.”
“You didn’t bother me. I was doing homework.”
“Oh, so I saved you.”
“Basically.”
She laughs, actually laughs, through the tears, surprised. Then she wipes under her eyes one more time and pushes off the wall. “Thank you, Nash.” She looks up at me. “You could’ve told me to fuck off.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
She chuckles. “That’s true.”
The hallway is empty when we come back through the door, and we walk down it side by side. It’s awkward. I never liked this girl, and she’s hated my guts. She stops at her door, and I stop at mine, eight feet apart, and we both stand there with our hands on our own doorknobs.
“Night,” she says.
“Night.”
We go in at the same time.
Rafe is against the wall with his arms crossed. Koda is sideways on my bed with his feet hanging off, eating my pretzels.
“Well,” says Rafe.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Get off my bed,” I tell Koda, and sit down at my desk with my hand over my face.
“Start at the kitchen,” Rafe says.
I glare at Rafe.
“Better start talking,” he demands.
I start with Greeley’s phone in my face, the number, four minutes, sad girls are easy, and then the part I haven’t told anybody. I’m going to take everything you have. The spot. The line. Waleska, because he’s going to get tired of losing games for you.
Rafe uncrosses his arms. “He said me?”
“He said you’d get tired of losing games for me.”
“He said my fucking name?”
“He said Waleska.”
Rafe comes off the wall. He goes very quiet and stands in the middle of our room looking at nothing, and his jaw is working.
“He’s been telling people I’m a problem.
Since August. Mathers and those guys. Waleska line is going to get somebody killed.
That’s not Mathers. Mathers doesn’t think. Somebody gave him that.”
Koda stops eating.
“Okay,” Rafe says. “So we get him.”
“No.”
“Nash.”
“No. You know what he wants,” I snap. “He wants us to do something.”
“Then we do something he can’t use.”
Koda sits up, smirking. “I have an idea. You’re not going to like it.”
I wait.
Koda says, “Give him Jules.”
I stare at him. Is he fucking serious?
“Hear me out. He thinks you’re into the blonde, right? That’s his whole play. He took her number to get at you and took her out on a few dates. So give him a different target. Jules is your dick sucker, right? Point her at him. Let him think he’s winning something.”
“Jules is a person, Koda,” I remind him.
“I know she’s a fucking person,” Koda scoffs. “Jules is a girl who’d love it. She loves hockey players. She’d barely notice the switch.”
I shake my head. “We’re not using her.”
Rafe hasn’t moved from the middle of the floor. “There’s another one,” he says.
“What?”
“You’re nice to him.”
I turn around in my chair. “What?”
“You’re nice to him. Starting Monday.” Rafe’s face is doing something I don’t like at all.
“You sit at that table twice a week and say hello. You hold the door. You ask how his weekend was. You do it in front of everybody. In front of Dannebrog, in front of Berwyn, every fucking day, until Christmas.”
Koda grins at the ceiling. “Oh, that’s good.”
“He has one thing,” Rafe says. “Everybody thinks he’s the reasonable one and you’re the animal. So take it. Be the most reasonable guy in the building. He has to keep pushing, because it’s the only thing he does, and eventually he does it in front of somebody who matters.”
It’s a good plan. It’s exactly what Berwyn told me in his office, and it’s what my dad would tell me, and it’s the last thing on earth I want.
“And when he keeps going at her?” I say.
They both look at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re worried about the blonde?” Koda says.
“He’s using her to get at me. She’s fucking crying about it.” They fall quiet. “It’s about a hockey spot, and she’s—”
“Yeah,” Koda breathes. “That’s fucked.”
“I’m not into her,” I say. “But it’s––”
“Nobody said you were into her,” Koda says. “Rafe, did you say he was into her?”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Neither did I,” Koda says.
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m not.”
Koda blows out hot air.
Rafe says, “Kill him with kindness.”
I nod. I guess it’s a start.
Rafe goes to sleep around one. I don’t. I sit at my desk with homework open until my brain won’t do it anymore. On Tuesday I’ll go back to that table and sit across from Greeley, who told me exactly what he was going to do to me and has been right about all of it so far, and I’ll say hello.
My phone has been face down next to my notebook since nine-forty. I turn it over. Nothing. Dad at six, about the Bruins. Koda in the group chat at midnight, posting a picture of a pretzel.
I turn off the light and lie there thinking about a blonde sitting on a cold step in a stairwell saying I’m so stupid, and how fast I said no.