Page 30 of On His Mind

Sitting with the novel in my hands is how I learn the house. Benson’s the one I’d call if I got into something. He’s seriousmost of the time, but he’ll land a joke so flat and so late you don’t see it coming. But he’s genuine and caring like he genuinely gives a shit about you. Rowan keeps to himself and has a colder sense of humor than anyone expects out of him. He shows his respect in a different way than I know. He’s made me toast and coffee countless times. I didn’t know how to accept it at first, and now it’s just a given. I still don’t know what to do with that. And Blue — Blue’s the one I’d call if I needed to get bailed out of jail. He barely talks. I get the feeling he’s carrying something of his own he doesn’t set down either. But he took the seat next to mine and never gave it back, and some nights that’s the entire conversation.

Then it’s three months in, and I still haven’t played a single hockey game.

Practice is fine. It’s only that all of it bends toward Cole — his senior year, his last real shot at going pro — and that’s how it should be. I take the third net down at the bad end and I watch him run live reps and then I take my own, and the pucks get in on me more than they stay out. Every one of them measures the exact distance between where I am and where I’d have to be to matter. I’m not ready. I know I’m not ready. Some nights that sits fine, and some nights it sits like a stone in my chest.

The strange part is school. I never gave a single damn about school in the past, and now I’m acing all of it. Midterms come back with numbers next to my name I’ve never seen before. It isn’t that I got smart. It’s that I’ve got nothing else here. There’s no drama. No running from my life. No trying to impress my foster family so they don’t hand me back to the state. None of it. Josh was right about everything. I’m building a life here. Now, it’s just a quiet room, a dining table, and a stack of hours I don’t know what to do with, so I pour them into school, and it turns out that it fucking pays off when you put in the work.

Hawthorne loves to throw parties, and I’ve got those figured out, too.

If I don’t have a drink in my hand, Stanley won’t let it go, Benson starts asking if I’m all right, and Rowan watches me all night with that worried line cut between his eyebrows. I learned that weeks ago. So I hold one beer that I can’t fucking stand to drink, and I make it last until three in the morning. It buys me the quiet to sit in my chair and be left mostly alone.

It only stops working when Stanley’s had too much, because then he won’t get out of my face.

It’s a cold night in December when Hawthorne throws a celebratory party for winning our home game. I’ve got the book open and the warm beer beside me when Stanley drops into the seat across from me, three drinks past sense, and points his cup. “You’re the definition of mystery, Deveroux.”

I turn a page as he looks at Blue sitting next to me.

“Golding and Deveroux. The mysterious men of Hawthorne.” His eyes narrow, delighted with himself. “You ever killed a man, Percy?”

It gets a sound out of me before I can stop it, a tsk.

He snaps his fingers, and half comes out of the chair. “Fellas — fellas — I got a reaction out of the goalie.”

I drink the beer I hate so he’ll have less to say about the fact that I’m not drinking it.

Benson’s beside me with his elbows on his knees, and Stanley swings the whole table into one of his speeches — the boys of Hawthorne, here to play, here to turn pro, not here to end up like Faulkner across the room with his tongue down some girl’s throat.

“Rule number one, boys.” He lifts his cup and goes around the table, and when he gets to me, he doesn’t skip me. He looks at me the same way he looks at Benson, like there’s a version of things where I go pro right alongside him, and my gut pulls tight,because I know exactly what I am — third string, a year off a real minute, maybe two — and he’s not looking at me like that at all. “Swear it.”

Benson knocks his cup to his. Rowan lifts his. Blue and I raise ours at the same second without looking at each other, and it’s stupid — a drunk kid’s oath about not falling in love before the draft.

Then Stanley smirks. He swings his cup toward the couch across the room, where Faulkner’s got the girl half in his lap. “And to not ending up whipped like that sorry bastard Faulkner over there.”

Half the room laughs. Drew doesn’t.

He comes up off the couch, the girl sliding off his knee, his neck already going blotchy red. “The fuck did you just say, Ermington?”

“You heard me.” Stanley doesn’t lose the grin. He looks like a man who’s done this a hundred times confidently.

Drew says across the room, “Say it to my face.”

Stanley keeps the smirk as he crosses the room. He walks right up until Drew has to tip his chin to keep the eye contact, because Stanley’s got a few inches on him. He pats Drew on the cheek, once lightly. “Put your dick back in your pants and maybe you’ll have a future, brother.”

Drew slaps his hand away and steps into him — and I’m up out of my chair fast enough that people look at me. But so is Benson. So is Rowan. And Blue. The four of us rise at the same second, no word, no signal, and end up standing at Stanley’s back in a line.

Drew’s eyes go down the wall of us, and the fight leaks out of his face. “What the hell is this?”

Stanley laughs and drops both hands onto Drew’s shoulders, folding the whole thing into a joke before it can turn into anything else. “Relax. Nobody’s swinging on anybody.” He steers Drew back a step. “You’re too pretty to bleed.”

Stanley lets go of him, turns, and climbs up onto the coffee table like the last thirty seconds never happened. “Who’s doing a keg stand with Stan the Man?”

The half of the party he hasn’t insulted yet roars back at him, and then he’s off the table and carving through the crowd toward the kitchen.

Rowan chuckles. “Can you believe he’s calling himself that?”

“Better thancup,” Benson says.

Rowan tilts his head. “Why would he call himself cup –– oh.”