Page 240 of Across His Line

I start asking people things. I can’t help it. It’s like an itch.

“If you wanted to make money,” I ask Koda while he’s eating his third breakfast, “just extra money, on your own, what would you do?”

He doesn’t even look up. “Get a job.”

I stare at him. Then I laugh. Right. Duh. Of course. That’s what most people would say. That’s what I would’ve said a year ago if anybody had asked me.

Nash is at the island with his coffee and answers in the way I’m searching for.

He says, “Figure out what people already pay too much for, and do it cheaper. Or do it better for the same.”

I look at him. He shrugs.

Kylie says, “Sell something I already know a lot about. So I don’t have to learn anything.”

I write all three down. Get a job. Do it cheaper or better. Sell what you already know.

I look at the last one for a long time.

On the thirtieth, the guys play hockey on the TV. Rafe and Nash and Koda are on the floor of the front room with the controllers and the screen enormous and too loud. Kylie and I are on the couch behind them under one blanket with the bowl of popcorn that Koda keeps reaching back for without looking.

Koda scores on Rafe. So, he gets up and does a whole thing with his arms and sound effects, pointing at Rafe, chanting something about the student becoming the master.

Rafe doesn’t say anything. He just reaches up without looking and takes the controller out of Koda’s hand and throws it across the room onto the armchair.

Nash laughs at them.

“They’re twelve,” Kylie says, beside me.

“I can see that,” I say.

And Rafe, on the floor without turning around, without taking his eyes off the screen, puts his hand up over his shoulder and flips me off.

I laugh into the blanket.

And I sit there and watch them. Koda going to get his controller, complaining. Nash on his back on the rug with his arm over his eyes. Rafe, with his back against the couch, right in front of my knees, so close I could put my hand in his hair, pretending he isn’t smiling.

In high school, everybody orbited him. That’s what I remember. You knew where Rafe Waleska was in a room because of the way the room bent around him. People laughed at what he said a half second too fast. People moved out of the way in the hall. Everybody wanted something from him, to be near him, or noticed by him, or not noticed by him. I watched it for four years from the end of a lunch table. I thought that’s what he had. People who orbited.

This isn’t that.

Nobody here is impressed with him. Koda just called him a cheating asshole ten minutes ago. Nash has spent half the afternoon telling him his defense sucks. Kylie keeps saying witty comments to the things he says. And Rafe looks happier than I ever remember seeing him in high school.

They came here for break because they wanted to.

Koda comes back with his controller and drops onto the rug.

Rafe says something I can’t hear.

Koda tells him to go fuck himself.

Nash laughs.

I put my hand in Rafe’s hair.

He doesn’t turn around. He just leans the back of his head against my knee and keeps playing.

That night, Kylie comes into the guest room. It’s after midnight. Rafe and Nash are downstairs watching film from a game in November, which they’ve been doing for two hours, rewinding the same power play while Koda snores on the couch next to them. I came up to get my charger and ended up lying across the guest bed in the pajamas with stars, looking at the ceiling, not going back down.