35 #2
We buy two trays of nachos and share them.
Bianca eats all the cheesiest chips, and we all yell at her, because it’s bullshit.
Kenzie turns out to be extremely passionate about football, which she was not at the hockey game.
I can tell Paige’s upset about something, but she’s the kind of girl you just don’t ask.
And Tessa has come out of her shell. She’s one of us, and I’m still adjusting to it.
The team’s up ten at the half. I check my phone twice the whole game, and there’s nothing from Nash.
Then some guys come down the aisle past us, and one of them looks familiar. He’s wearing a Woodbury hockey hoodie.
“Wait, is that—” Bianca says.
“He’s a freshman, so he didn’t travel,” Kenzie says. “He’s friends with Koda—”
“We’re not talking about Koda,” Paige says to the field.
“Nobody was talking about Koda,” Kenzie says.
Tessa, who is on her third drink of the day and has stopped filtering entirely, says, “That was convincing.”
Paige turns around and looks at her. “You haven’t been around enough to have an opinion.”
“I have eyes and ears,” Tessa says.
I think the drink finally hits my system, because I grab Tessa and laugh.
Paige yells something at the field. Nobody gets another word out of her about it.
Bianca tries once more at the end of the third, very gently, and Paige just says, “Nope,” and points at the field like something’s happening there, and nothing is.
In the fourth quarter, with the game basically over and everybody standing anyway, Kenzie leans into me while I’m sending Nash a picture of the field. “So you’re actually together.”
“Yeah,” I say, and I smile, because I like saying it.
“Like he said it,” Bianca says, leaning around Kenzie. “He used the word.”
I nod. “He used the word.”
“Which word?”
“Girlfriend,” I chuckle. “Bianca.”
They all start screaming, which is fine, because four thousand people are screaming.
“I have to be honest,” Kenzie says. “I thought Kennebeck would have to be tranquilized before anybody got him into a relationship.”
“He is a little feral,” Bianca says.
“He carried her out of a Scrabble game,” Kenzie reminds everyone. “He was down bad.”
I grin, thinking about it.
“He has been for a while,” Tessa adds.
Everybody looks at her. She takes a drink. “Eyes and ears,” she giggles.
Paige bumps her shoulder into mine. “I’m happy for you,” she says, and she means it. There isn’t one thing underneath it.
I pull her into a hug. “Thanks, Paige.”
“Don’t make it weird.” She looks back at the field. “I hate his fucking friends.”
We win by seventeen, and the whole student section stays for the fight song, which nobody except Kenzie knows the words to, so the rest of us make noises at the right times for the hell of it.
Then we walk to the place that does the fries and eat outside at a metal table in the cold with our hands in our sleeves, and Bianca tells us about a guy in her class who asked her out in the middle of a lab practical.
When we get back to Corvin, the girls pile into my room, and Tessa doesn’t hide at her desk.
She sits on the floor with her back against her own bed and eats the fries she put in a to-go container and talks to everybody.
Bianca makes another round of her cranberry drink, and we all take a sip from the same cup, and there’s maybe a drop of juice in it.
I know I make a face because it’s strong.
When it’s Tessa’s turn, she doesn’t make a face at all. How?
“We’ve unlocked Tessa 2.0,” I announce.
Tessa takes one more sip and laughs.
“It’s happening,” Paige hollers. “Another hot girl in the group.”
Tessa passes her the cup, and Paige takes a long sip and makes a face, and we all laugh. “Oh my God, Bianca! This is straight liquor.”
Bianca takes it back and pours in a tiny drop of cranberry. “There.”
We laugh and pass it around again.
Everybody clears out around one-thirty. Tessa goes to bed. I take my makeup off and get into my own bed with my hair still smelling like fries, and my phone lights up.
Nash. Finally.
“Hi,” I whisper, and pull the blanket over my head so I don’t wake Tessa.
FaceTime opens on his face. He’s lying down with the hotel headboard behind him, hair wet, the lamp off on one side of the room and a strip of light coming from somewhere beside him.
“You’re drunk,” he says.
I roll my eyes and smile. “Barely.”
“Where were you?”
“Football game.” He knows this. I told him three times and sent him a picture. “Woodbury won by seventeen.”
He doesn’t look like he cares.
“Nash.” I get closer to the phone and whisper, “Tessa came.”
“Okay.”
“No,” I smile. “You don’t understand.”
And then I tell him everything, in no order at all. Every single detail of the night. He doesn’t say much. He’s wrecked; I can see it. His eyes are barely open. So I stop babbling and lean in and kiss the screen, and that makes him laugh.
I pull the blanket down off my face. He’s got the phone propped on something and his arm over his head, and he’s looking at me.
“How was your game?” I finally ask.
“We lost.”
“I’m sorry.”
He stares at the screen. I want to kiss him.
“I miss you,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Tomorrow.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” I groan.
“I miss you too.”
I smile. “Tomorrow can’t come fast enough.”
“I’ll text you in the morning, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, shaking my shoulders with excitement. “Tomorrow! I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, you.”
He grins. “Night, Blondie.”
We hang up, and I snuggle into my pillow and scroll back through our texts all the way to the photo he sent of himself eating the apple.
Three days he’s been gone. I finished a paper, went to a football game, got my roommate drunk, and turned down a FaceTime from my own boyfriend because I was busy.
I miss him, and it turns out that’s a completely different thing from needing him.
I stare at his selfie.
This man is so hot, and he is all mine.