Chapter 19
Declaring
Sophomore year required declaring a major, a deadline Tessa had been quietly dreading since October, mostly because every option on the list felt like it belonged to a version of herself she wasn't sure still existed after everything that had happened since the funeral.
She'd started as undeclared, drifting through intro classes without much conviction, until a Tuesday afternoon in an elective statistics course -- taken almost as a joke, a filler credit Nina had talked her into because the professor was supposedly easy -- when she found herself finishing the problem sets an hour before everyone else, actually excited about a probability model in a way she hadn't expected to be excited about anything school-related in longer than she wanted to admit.
Tessa sat in the back of that lecture hall and felt something click into place that she hadn't expected, a door she hadn't known was still ajar somewhere inside her.
It wasn't a total surprise, if she was honest -- she'd been breaking down power-play percentages and shot conversion rates without thinking twice about it for months now, the numbers just making sense to her the way they seemed to elude everyone else at the table.
"I want to teach math," she told Beck that night, almost sheepish about how much conviction had arrived so suddenly. "High school, probably. Statistics specifically, if I can swing it. I know it's not the most glamorous thing to want."
"Tessa. You argue hockey analytics with grown men for fun. This might be the least surprising thing you've ever told me."
"It scares me a little, wanting something that specific again. I don't know why. Maybe because it means actually committing to something instead of just being good at a lot of things without picking one."
Beck was quiet for a moment, something careful in his expression.
"For what it's worth, I think it's exactly right for you.
You already explain things to people in a way that makes them feel smart instead of stupid -- you did it to me about the power play the first week we met, and you've been doing it to Jax about penalty kill percentages ever since.
That's not nothing. That's basically the entire skill required to teach.
" She declared math education not long after, walking out of the registrar's office lighter than she'd felt in months, like she'd finally given a real name to something she'd been circling her whole first year without realizing it.
"Proud of you," Toni texted, the second Tessa told her, followed immediately by a string of celebratory emojis that felt entirely earned. "Poppi would be insufferable about this. He'd tell everyone at every family function for the next decade."
Tessa smiled at that, sitting on the steps outside the registrar's building, spring finally arriving in earnest around her. She had reclaimed one dream that afternoon. She had no idea how many more she'd have to fight for before the year was over.
? ? ?
It was easy, most of the time, to think of Toni as the steady one, the fixed point, the sister who showed up at eleven at night with no explanation needed and never once seemed to need anything back.
It took Tessa most of freshman year to realize how unfair that framing actually was, how much weight Toni had been quietly carrying of her own.
She found out by accident, in April, stopping by Toni's apartment unannounced and finding her sister crying at the kitchen table over a laptop, a rejection email from a summer internship program still open on the screen.
"I didn't want you to see that," Toni said, quickly wiping her face, the old instinct to be the strong one kicking in even now.
"Why not? You've seen me cry approximately four hundred times this year."
"That's different. You needed me to be steady."
"That doesn't mean you're not allowed to fall apart sometimes too, Toni. That's not how this is supposed to work." Tessa sat down across from her, taking her hand the way Toni had taken hers so many times before. "Tell me what happened."
It came out slowly — the internship Toni had wanted badly, a real shot at the career she'd been quietly building toward for two years, gone now, and underneath it, older, heavier things Toni had never fully said out loud.
How much she'd absorbed, growing up, being the older one, the one who was supposed to have it figured out first, blaze the trail.
How much of her own grief over Poppi, over the aunts, over the whole fractured family, she'd swallowed in order to have room to show up for Tessa the way she had.
"I've been so busy holding you together," Toni admitted, "that I don't think I ever properly grieved any of it myself.
I just filed it away somewhere and got in the car and drove home the day after the funeral, and I've basically been running on that same momentum ever since, not stopping long enough to actually feel any of it. "
"I'm so sorry. I didn't realize."
"You weren't supposed to realize. I made sure of that, on purpose. Which I'm starting to think might have been the wrong call, now that I'm sitting here crying over a laptop at eleven at night."
Tessa thought about Beck's words from months earlier, half-remembered — some people are just disappointed, and it's not a math problem you can solve — and understood, watching her sister finally let herself fall apart a little, that the same lesson applied here too, differently.
Toni didn't need Tessa to fix the internship, or fix the family, or fix any of it.
She just needed someone to finally show up for her the same way she'd been showing up for everyone else.
"I've got you," Tessa said, echoing words Beck had said to her once, in a different context, the same promise passed forward. "Whatever this is going to look like, whatever you need. I've got you too, Toni. That's not optional. That part isn't up for negotiation."
Toni laughed, wet and surprised, recognizing her own words handed back to her. "That's my line."
"I learned from the best." Tessa squeezed her hand. "Let me actually use it, for once."
They stayed up talking until nearly two in the morning, and Tessa understood, walking home in the dark afterward, that the family she'd built this year went both directions. She just didn't yet know how soon she'd need Toni to show up for her again.
? ? ?
Sal called a second time in early February, more insistent now, less patient with Beck's polite deflection.
"I know I mentioned this a while back," Sal said, "but the client's ready to move on this, and I really think it's a good opportunity, Beckett. It's not a huge commitment. A few posts, an appearance or two. Decent money for basically nothing."
"I appreciate it, but I'm still not interested. I told you that in December."
"Sure, sure. No pressure." A pause, deliberately casual. "How's everything going with Tessa, by the way? Family's been wondering."
Something about the question, too smooth, too pointed, made the back of Beck's neck prickle. "Things are good."
"Good, good. Glad to hear it." Sal let the silence sit a beat too long before wrapping up. "Think about the offer. I'll check back in."
Beck hung up again without mentioning it to Tessa, telling himself again that it was nothing, that bringing it up now would only mean explaining why he hadn't brought it up the first time, a hole he was digging himself steadily deeper into with every week he stayed quiet, though he wouldn't let himself fully admit that yet.