Page 103 of On His Mind

The firm is good that afternoon. Renata drops the Halvorsen revisions on my desk without a word and I get into them. The hours go easily.

It’s the next evening, on the couch, Ivory’s scrolling, half-telling me about her day, and she gets to Drew, because it always comes back to Drew.

“—oh, and apparently practice was insane yesterday, Drew is still talking about it. Some drama with the goalies or whatever.” She’s not even looking up. “The backup guy — the quiet one, nobody really knows him — he like, ran Theo into the boards? In practice? Out of nowhere. Coach lost his whole mind, threw the guy off the ice. Drew said it was the weirdest thing, everybody’s confused, the kid never does anything, and then just—” she makes a little crashing gesture with one hand “—snapped. On Theo. For no reason.” She goes back to her phone. “Anyway, Theo’s fine, he’s just being dramatic about it—”

I hold my face, the way I’ve held it a hundred times in a house where a wrong face cost you. Ivory keeps talking and I stop hearing her, because the pieces are moving.

The backup goalie. The quiet one nobody knows.

Percy.

Percy ran Theo into the boards. Percy, who is all stillness, who kept his face flat through eighteen months of everything, who says four words, who has never in the time I’ve known him done a single thing he didn’t decide to do first — cracked. In front of his whole team. At Theo.

Ivory keeps talking, but I’m too busy in my own head, putting the pieces together. The two-word reply. The way he looked away the second I smiled at him. It hadn’t worried me before –– I thought it was Percy just being Percy –– but it isn’t that. He thinks I’m with Theo.

“—right? Like who even does that,” Ivory’s saying.

“Insane,” I manage.

Ivory starts talking about how Gianna should go to a Hawthorne House party just to spite her brother, and I’m not hearing any of it because I’m already reaching for my phone.

I need to see him. Not talk over text, not a call where I lose my nerve halfway through. I need to be in a room with him and say it to his face. I pick up my phone.

Me:I need to see you tonight. Please.

I hit send before I can talk myself out of it, and then I sit there with my thumb still on the screen and my heart racing, because I have never once in my life sent a message like that to anyone, and now it’s out there, and there’s nothing to do but wait and see if he answers.

Chapter 35

Percy

Hernamecomesupon my phone at 7:52 in the morning, and my first thought isn’t a thought, it’s a drop in my gut.

Penelope: I need to see you tonight. Please.

I just got home from the early skate. Blue, Benson, and me had the ice to ourselves at six, no Fuller, nobody, just the three of us and a bucket of pucks. I came home wrung out, and then her name lights up the screen, and it’s the please on the end of it that already has my body up off the bed.

Me: Are you okay?

Me: Come. Text me when you’re close.

I stand in the middle of my room after I’ve sent it. The text is burning a hole through my heart as I stare at the screen, waiting to see if she’ll text back. I read it a hundred times and sigh when I realize she’s not going to text me back. I sit back down on theedge of my bed, leaning my elbows onto my knees. I stretch my back and look at the phone again.

No three dots. Just tonight sitting there, a whole day away.

The day is long and useless. I’ve got two classes. I attended both of them, but I couldn’t tell you one thing that happened in either. I sit in the back, the professor talks, and my leg won’t stop. I keep checking the time like midnight’s going to come any sooner.

I cross the quad between classes, and I see Rowan. He’s with a few guys from the team. I catch Drew’s laugh. Then I see Theo talking animatedly. I look at him for one second, and something goes cold and hard in my gut. I put my head down and keep walking.

I come home at six after studying in the library for hours. That helped take my mind off things for a bit, but now I’m back at Hawthorne, and my nerves are high. Stanley is barking at Benson about the FIFA game they’re playing on the TV. Rowan’s cooking something that smells like onion and rosemary. Blue’s on the couch, watching the TV blankly. I sit at my spot at the table and pull out my book.

Stanley notices me come in and says, “I was thinking we should put Percy on defense.”

Benson scoffs.

Rowan turns to look at me. “Hear that?”

“Yeah,” I say, keeping my eyes on the book. “I did, and it’s not happening.”