13
New Number, Who Dis
Kylie
When I wake up, the first thing in my head is the stairwell: his arms in that shirt, how quiet he was while I cried, and then his low voice telling me Declan wasn’t worth the salt.
It sounded like he meant it. Then I remember what he said about Declan, and the rink, and I decide I’m not going to read into any of it before coffee.
Tessa is at her desk with her headphones on. This girl has the most disciplined routine I’ve ever seen. If she doesn’t get straight A’s, I’m going to physically remove her from this room, because as far as I can tell, all she does is study.
The group chat is still dissecting Friday night, and Paige is firing a hundred questions at me, so I tell them we can hang out later. It’s Saturday, so they’re bored and impatient, and they knock on my door right after lunch and let themselves in.
Tessa looks up once, says hi, appears to count them, and goes back to her laptop. Bianca takes the floor with her back against my bed, Kenzie takes my desk chair, and Paige sits on my bed with a pillow in her lap. I cross my legs at the other end.
“Okay,” Paige says. “Did you read our texts?”
“I skimmed.”
She rolls her eyes. “Here’s what you do. Next party Declan throws, you tell everybody there exactly what he said in that kitchen. Out loud. In front of his whole team.”
“I don’t know what he said in the kitchen.”
That stops her. “What?”
“Nash didn’t tell me. He said Declan got my number in four minutes while he was standing right there and said it was a good start. I asked if there was more, and he said yes. I asked if it was bad, and he said yes. And then he didn’t say anything else.”
“And you didn’t get it out of him?”
“No.”
“Why?” Paige scoffs because she cannot handle any information being withheld.
And my answer would be because Nash was standing in a stairwell with his hands in his pockets, trying very hard not to say something in front of me, and whatever it was, he’d decided I didn’t need to hear it.
Instead, I say, “It’s none of my business.”
Paige flops back onto my pillow. “God. I’d need to know. I’d die.”
“You’d be fine,” Bianca chuckles.
“I’d be dead.”
“I don’t think you should do anything,” Kenzie says to me. “I don’t mean nothing nothing. I mean don’t get in the middle of a hockey thing. Stop answering Declan’s texts and don’t explain why. Don’t give him one thing to talk about.”
“That’s so boring,” says Paige.
“You know what’s not boring?” Kenzie says. “Being the girl the whole hockey team is talking about by Wednesday.”
The room goes quiet.
“Okay, yeah,” Paige agrees.
“Imagine if you’d kissed him,” Kenzie says with big eyes.
I cover my face. “That’d be humiliating.”
Bianca tips her head back against my mattress and looks up at me upside down. “What do you want to do?”
“I want him to leave me alone,” I say. “I don’t want to be part of whatever this is. I don’t want to be the reason somebody gets benched or punched. I want to go to class and eat lunch with you guys and never think about Declan Greeley again.”
“Then block him,” says Bianca.
“I told Nash I wouldn’t.”
Three heads turn. “What?”
“In the stairwell. He told me to block him, and I said if I block him, Declan knows something’s up. Nash is already off the ice for a week. I don’t want to make it worse.”
Paige sits up slowly. “So you’re protecting Nash now.”
“I’m not protecting him.”
“You are.” She tilts her head. “When’s the last time Declan texted you?”
I check. “Friday night. You saw it.”
“So annoying.”
“You should block him,” Kenzie says.
“Agree,” says Bianca.
“I vote that too,” Paige says.
“What about Nash?”
Paige smiles. “He’s a big boy, Kylie. You saw the fight. He can handle it.”
I did see the fight. I think about the way Nash’s fists kept going at Declan, over and over, and the way Declan took it and laughed after. They both threw punches like they’d done it before. I’d never seen a real fistfight in person, and I stood at the bottom of those stairs stunned.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll block him. I think I should text him first.”
“Like what?”
“Tell him you’re not interested,” Kenzie says.
I type it fast and say it out loud as I do. “Hey. I’m not interested. Don’t text me again.”
“That’s robotic,” Paige says.
“Who cares? Just send it,” says Kenzie.
“I’m not going to explain myself,” I say.
Paige tilts her head. “Yeah, I guess. Okay. Hit send.”
I hit send with my heart racing and stare at the delivered message, wondering if he’s reading it right now.
“Give it to me,” Paige says. “I’ll block him for you.”
I hand it over, glad she’ll do it. She taps away and holds the phone out when she’s done. “This is your sign to be done with boys, Kylie. They’re all lying, cheating, manipulative assholes.”
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“He’s blocked.”
Kenzie breathes out. “Good. Now enough with stupid boys.”
Paige starts talking about Koda and how they’re just hooking up and having fun, nothing serious, and I zone out thinking about the fight in the kitchen and then his arms in the stairwell.
The day chugs along. Eventually we go get food. I invite Tessa, and she declines, like always. My phone sits in my back pocket like a weight the whole time, and I keep wondering whether Declan texted back, and I’ll never know.
When we get back to Corvin, the girls head up to four, and I walk down our hall.
Our door opens ahead of me, and Tessa steps into the hall holding her shower caddy.
At the same second, three doors down, Rafe comes out of 314 with his keys in his hand.
Tessa steps back inside and the door clicks shut before I’m close enough to say hi.
Rafe goes past me toward the stairs without looking up from his phone.
When I open our door, Tessa is standing in the middle of the room with the caddy still in her hand, shampoo sitting right on top.
“I forgot my shampoo,” she says, but she looks terrified.
“Are you okay?”
She lets out a little laugh. “Yeah, fine.”
“Okay,” I say, and she goes back out ten minutes later.
By ten, Tessa’s in bed going to sleep, because it’s late for Tessa, and the girls have gone upstairs. It hits me while I’m lying on my bed with my phone that I did exactly the thing I told Nash I wouldn’t do. I blocked Declan.
I fight myself for twenty minutes about whether to warn him.
He’s the one who told me to do it, but I told him I wasn’t going to, and somehow that ends with me standing outside his door in my sleep shirt and leggings because I feel like I owe him the update.
I hesitate, then close my eyes and knock.
Nothing. I check the time. It’s late, but not late enough for him to be asleep. I knock again.
I have the words ready this time. I blocked Declan. Greeley, whatever. I know what I said. I’m sorry.
The door opens, and I almost sigh in relief, and then my stomach sinks, because it isn’t Nash. It’s a girl with dark hair pulled up in a clip, wearing one of his shirts and nothing on her legs, barefoot and comfortable.
“Hi,” she says.
“Oh.” I can’t think of a single other word. I glance at the number on the door to make sure I have it right. I do. I look at her again. She’s beautiful.
Behind her, the room is dim, one desk lamp on, music playing low, and I can see the end of a bed, a pair of sneakers on the floor, and somebody’s leg.
“Are you looking for Rafe?” she says. “He’s not here.”
“Oh. I—”
Then Nash’s voice, from inside. “Jules.”
Jules looks back over her shoulder toward the bed. “There’s a girl at the door.”
“Who?”
She raises her eyebrows at me.
“Nobody,” I croak out. “Wrong door. Sorry.”
I turn on my heel and walk down the hall so fast I nearly clip the wall at the corner, get into my room, shut the door, and stand with my back against it in the dark. Tessa’s lamp is off. She’s a shape under her blanket, facing the wall, and she doesn’t move.
My heart is going like I ran up four flights.
His girlfriend is really pretty, and she wasn’t wearing any pants.
I can’t believe I just interrupted whatever that was.
Hot shame trickles all the way through me.
I shuffle into bed, pull the blanket up to my chin, and stare at the ceiling for a long time, checking the time over and over while it crawls, and my mind doesn’t.
Then there’s a light knock on my door.
I close my eyes. No. I glance at Tessa. She doesn’t move. I get out of bed and open the door a few inches, and through the crack I see Nash in the hallway in sweatpants and a T-shirt with his hair a mess.
My heart drops. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he whispers.
I step into the hallway and pull my door closed behind me. He doesn’t even look tired. I look at the Woodbury logo on his shirt.
“Jules said a girl came to the door,” he says. “That was you.”
“That was nobody,” I mutter.
He looks at me. “Did something happen?”
I cross my arms over my chest because I’m not wearing a bra. He points at the stairwell, and I nod and walk ahead of him and hold the door for him.
It’s cold in the stairwell, and the light still flickers. I sit on the third step with my arms crossed, and Nash leans against the wall by the railing with his arms crossed too, and for a second, neither of us says anything.
I close my eyes. “It was me who knocked.”
His eyes come over to me.
“I wanted to tell you I blocked Declan.”
“Okay.”
“This afternoon.” I look at my knees. “I also texted him that I’m not interested and not to text me again.
I know what I said in here, that I wouldn’t, and then I did.
” I cover my face a little. “And I didn’t mean to interrupt you and your girlfriend.
I should’ve come earlier, but I didn’t know if you were home, and I—”
Nash doesn’t say anything.
“I hope I didn’t cause any problems.” I shake my head at myself. “I told her I had the wrong room and then ran away, which—I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about her,” he says.
I swallow, and I think about Evan. Did he say something like this to the girl he was kissing? Don’t worry about her.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Nash says after a moment. “And if it makes you feel better, she said you and Rafe would make a cute couple.”
A mortified shriek comes out of me, and I slap a hand over my mouth, horrified by the sound. Heat spreads across my chest. “Me and Rafe?”
“That’s what she said.”
I take my hand down to let my face breathe. “Looks can be deceiving. She probably thought I’m some cute little blonde.” I shrug. “I get that a lot. Then people get to know me, and—”
He uncrosses his arms and grips the railing, and I stop talking when I see his forearm. His sleeve covers his bicep, but it’s flexed because he’s holding the rail. Evan was never built like that.
“Sorry,” I say, and drop my eyes to the floor.
“People get to know you, and what?”
The pressure in my chest tightens, and I try to let it out with a smile. “I don’t make a great first impression. People assume I’m different from what I actually am.”
“Sweeter?”
I press my lips together. “Yeah. My mom jokes that I look like a lamb but have the heart of a lion.”
His expression softens. “Sounds about right.”
I shake my head. “Sorry, that was—”
“Stop apologizing.”
I look at him, and then back at the floor. “Okay.”
“Let me know if Greeley bothers you again.”
I nod. “I’ll knock on your door at a decent hour next time.”
He shakes his head once. “Doesn’t matter. Knock whenever.”
I don’t say anything.
After a quiet moment, he says, “Guess I won’t see you at study hall anymore.”
“That was one time,” I say, rubbing my knees. “He completely set me up.”
“You should’ve seen your face,” he teases.
“You should’ve seen yours.”
That one gets him. He looks at the far wall with his head tipped back, and I can see his Adam’s apple under the light.
“Are you back to playing hockey this week?” I ask, because I want the tension to go away.
He nods, still looking at the wall, which doesn’t help at all. I look at his throat.
“So you and Declan play the same position?” I ask.
Another nod.
“I’d never been to a rink before he invited me,” I say. “Well, he asked me to hang out and then brought me to the rink.”
“How romantic,” he says.
“Yeah, it was dumb.”
He grips the railing again.
“Good luck with hockey,” I say, and stand.
I walk past him to the door, but he gets there first and holds it open over my head.
“Thanks,” I say, and go through.
“What’s your number?” he asks quietly, before we reach my door.
“Um,” I say, because I don’t have my phone.
He quickly adds, “So you can text me if anything happens.”
“Right.”
He pats his pockets. He doesn’t have his either, so we trade numbers out loud in the hallway. I say mine, and he says his.
“What’s your last name?” I ask.
“Kennebeck. Yours?”
“Vandercook.”
He nods and repeats my number back to me.
“Yeah.” I stop at my door and watch him walk to his. When he grabs the knob, he looks over at me. I give him a small smile and don’t wait to see his reaction. I walk into my dark room, grab my phone, get into bed, and hit Create New Contact.
Nash Kennebeck.