Page 1 of Rival Season
CHAPTER 1
PENN
My college freshmansister barrels through the front door of my San Francisco loft apartment, her puny arms filled with brown paper bags overflowing with groceries. She drops the bags unceremoniously onto the large kitchen island and lets out a huff.
“What the hell is all that?” I demand, still standing in the doorway, stunned.
“Hello to you, too,” Cassie retorts as she shrugs off her khaki jacket.
“Hello,” I reply with a grin. I close the front door and point at the bags. “Now what the hell is all that? Because it looks like you’ve brought me a year’s worth of groceries.”
“Please, I’ve seen you eat.” My sister’s exasperated demeanor evaporates as she grins back at me. “This is more like a day’s worth of food.”
“You shouldn’t be bringing me anything,” I scold her, then stride over to her to pull her into a hug. “But it’s really good to see you.”
Cassie is seventeen, and she started college nearby at Berkeley at the beginning of January. But between her classes and my hockey schedule, this is the first time I’ve gotten to seeher since I picked her up from the airport after she flew in from Canada a couple of weeks back. We went straight to Target to grab everything she needed before I helped her move into the dorms, and I felt like a proud parent when I drove away from the campus that evening.
Which was weird. I mean, I only graduated college myself last year.
“You need to learn how to cook, Penn,” she announces as she hugs me back. “And I’m going to be the one to teach you.”
“Why?” I screw my nose up. “I have no need when I can already assemble a sandwich.”
“You’re such a child.” Cass pushes her thick black hipster glasses up her pierced nose and blinks at me. “Don’t tell me you’re a professional athlete still living on PB&Js.”
“Make that turkey and swiss. I'll never eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich as long as I live, thank you very much.”
“Ugh, same.” Cassie winces, and we share a look—we don’t have to speak about it to know we’re both remembering that one particularly bad foster placement where we lived on bread and peanut butter. I haven’t been able to stomach it since.
“Noah is always cooking chicken and vegetables and whipping up green juices for us, so my diet is just fine these days,” I tell Cass.
Noah’s one of my roommates. We’ve been tight since we played college hockey together, and now we’re teammates on the San Francisco Lions.
“Noah is not your mommy, Penn,” Cassie chides. She pushes her chin-length reddish-brown hair back and ties it into a stubby little ponytail. “And I also can’t believe you have an incredible kitchen like this and never use it. This loft is so bougie.”
I smile as she does a spin, looking around and soaking everything in. She’s not wrong about it being bougie—the penthouse loft is pretty swanky, with fifteen-foot ceilings,industrial brickwork, and insane views of the Golden Gate bridge. It even has a rooftop patio complete with a hot tub. Most days I still wake up and can’t believe this is my life now.
That I actually made it.
“Fisher’s parents are richer than God,” I say as I look in one of the brown bags and start pulling out ground beef and spaghetti sauce. “Apparently this is only one of the many properties they own.”
“Lucky for them.”
“More like lucky for me to have a rich ass teammate with a sweet place.”
When Noah and I met Fisher last year at the Lions’ training camp, we didn’t hesitate when he said he had a great place with four bedrooms that his parents would rent to us for dirt cheap. Noah’s now-girlfriend, Ally, and her cat, Harry Styles, moved in a few weeks later, and the rest is history.
It’s a pretty great living situation with roommates that practically feel like family—although Noah and Ally are all over each other most of the time. I’ve known Noah since our freshman year of college together, and we were both eternally single before Ally came along, and seeing him so in love is taking some getting used to.
“Very true,” Cassie says, walking towards one of the exposed brick walls that features a huge, colorful art piece. She examines it for a moment before her eyes widen. “Wait, is this a Santi?”
I scrunch my brow. “A what?”
“Santi. They’re like, this really mysterious up and coming artist in the Bay area. Don’t you know anything?”
I look at the painting on the wall—which is pretty cool, I guess, but all I really see is a bunch of lines and splotches. “Nope,” I admit. “Can we cook now? I’m starving.”
“Sure. Music?”
