Page 84 of On His Mind
I want that banner.
I don’t know when that happened. I don’t know when Stanley’s dumb championship became a thing I wanted, but it’s here. Iwant it now. I want to be there for it. I want to be the guy in the net when they hang it.
The house is loud and warm when we get back — Rowan already at the stove, the TV going, guys decompressing off the road. I sit in my chair with my back to the wall and get the French book out and can’t get a single line of it into my head.
I go up to my bedroom before the rest of them. Nobody makes anything of it. I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark with my boots still on, and the hot thing burns down slow.
When she came back in the last week of August and didn’t reach out, I felt way too fucking excited to see her. Then she didn’t call, and it felt like a knife. My mind didn’t let her go easily. Every time I had nothing to focus on, my mind always trailed back to her. Like she had some hold on me that I couldn’t see. I wondered what she was doing all the time. I held my fingers over her name on my phone more times than I’d like to admit.
I fucking hate how much I think about her.
I think about her drawing at midnight, sitting on her bed. I think about what she’s doing all the time. I think about Chicago, and I never in my life ever thought about Chicago before. I bought a stupid magazine about architecture because I imagined she bought the same one.
The weird thing is that I just simply like being near her. And I don’t like being near anyone.
I told myself all of it was nothing, the way I tell myself everything’s nothing, and tonight I watched her car pull out of a lot, and it took me apart.
This is what it takes to make me realize I’m completely gone for her. I’ve been gone a long time. I just found out how far. And I’ve got no right to any of it. I’m not her boyfriend. I couldn’t be — there’s a wall in my kitchen with it written down, a rule I walk past every day. I want her that much, and I’m not allowed to.
My phone buzzes, and I imagine it’s the guys downstairs –– Stanley –– texting the guys about how we blew it this year.
When it buzzes again, I look at it.
It’s her. Calling. FaceTime, her name filling the screen, my reflection in the screen.
Why is she calling?
I don’t understand. My heart’s doing four things at once.
I sit up, glancing down at her name.
Then I answer it.
Chapter 26
Penelope
Theo’sinthepassengerseat before the bus has finished emptying, bag in the back, saying something about the game that I’m not hearing as I pull out of the lot.
“—so we’re down two and Kovac just stands there,” Theo’s saying. “Best hands on the team, no hockey IQ. None.”
“Mm,” I say, but I can’t shake the feeling.
It comes up low under my sternum, a pressure that makes my heart hiccup. I breathe around it as Theo continues to talk. But my vision is replaying what just happened in the lot, coming off the bus. I shouldn’t have looked up. I don’t know why I did. I spotted him nearly right away. His overgrown blonde hair, and the eyes that I know are as blue as the ocean. He had a bag on his shoulder, that stillness he has, and when our eyes caught and held, across the whole distance, it felt like a crack in my system.
Theo says something and laughs.
This was the plan. I reached for the one reliable off-switch I have — texted him, arranged it, drove out here at eleven at night to collect it. Theo is nothing. Theo has always been nothing, and nothing is the whole point of him. Nothing is exactly what I wanted, a warm body, and no questions. I just wanted a few hours where I don’t have to be anyone or feel anything at all. I don’t want it anymore.
Somewhere on the last block, it stops being possible, the way the pencil stopped being possible in August, my hand hovering over the paper every morning and not coming down. A thing I could always do that I suddenly can’t.
“Actually,” I say, and I hear myself say it, “I’ve got the firm at eight, I completely forgot. Let me drop you home.”
Theo stops talking and looks at me, “Really?”
I nod.
“Okay, all good.”
