Page 71 of On His Mind

Benson turns around.

“By July.” I nod. “You have to cut the foil under the lip, so it doesn’t show. Then get the screw in straight, or you tear the cork. I dropped a foil in a woman’s soup in June.”

“You did not.”

“She was nice about it.”

He chuckles. “And Marco.”

I shake my head.

Benson laughs and heads for the stairs. “That ice machine still make noise?”

“It’s worse.”

“It’s been making that noise since I was there. He’ll never fix it.” He takes the first step. “Bruno still comes in on Thursdays?”

“Every Thursday. Table six. Same wine.”

“Same wine,” Benson repeats, and shakes his head at it. “You stay here the whole time?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He nods. “That’s a long summer.”

That’s it. He doesn’t ask why. He heads upstairs, unpacks, and when he comes back down, he tells me about his summer. The house doesn’t seem so empty anymore.

The next day, Stanley arrives, and I can hear him from the street. The front door bangs off the wall.

“Mon petit Percy poney.”

He comes across the living room at me with both arms out. He’s tanner and louder than I remember him. He takes my face in both hands. Everything in me goes rigid at the touch, the way it always has since I was small. He shakes my head once and lets go.

“Three months,” he says. “Three months and not one text. I could have died.”

“You texted the group chat forty times a day,” Benson says from the couch.

Stanley pivots on him instantly. “Reeve.”

“No.”

“Reeve.” He drops onto the arm of the couch. “I hear Gianna’s working the equipment room this year.”

He lets it hang, eyebrows up, until Benson looks over.

“So?”

“So I’m just saying. Proximity.” Stanley leans in. “Skates. Tape. All that gear. A man could spend a lot of time in the equipment room. Freshman meat.”

Benson comes off that couch, reaching for Stanley. Stanley laughs, trying to get away. He blocks Benson’s hand. Stanley hits the floor. Benson’s genuinely angry for about four seconds — he’s got a fistful of shirt, and he’s saying say it again — and then Stanley says something into the carpet about the equipment room. Benson’s laughing now, furious and laughing. A chair goes over, and Stanley’s shin catches the table leg, and he screams about it and does not stop talking.

“I’m just saying—”

“Say it again.”

“Gianna and the sticks—”

A laugh comes out of me as I watch these two guys.