Page 10 of Nowhere to Hide
“About?”
“I don’t know what the rotation looks like,” he blurts out. “Like, will I get ice time?”
“You’re not playing the first four games,” I say. “Maybe six.”
His jaw sets.
“Okay,” he says, but his tone tells me it’s not okay.
“It took me two months freshman year to get a real shift,” I say, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “The guys ahead of you are the guys ahead of you for reasons that matter for about eight weeks. After that, your own performance will start to matter more. But don’t talk transfer portal in week one.”
“Okay.”
“If you still feel this way in a few months, come find me.”
He nods, shoulders dropping half an inch. “Thanks, Rowan.”
“Yep.”
I turn to grab my towel, but Mason is right there. “Team dad,” he says.
“Shut up.”
Seb catches my eye, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
I finish before the rest of them because I started before the rest of them, and now I’m starving. A quick check of the campus dining app tells me that Benny’s Bagels has a line out the door, so I take a quick shower, say my goodbyes, and then head out for the dining hall.
The quad is a circus, which I should have expected for nine in the morning on freshman move-in day. There are families with hand trucks, parents peering at building numbers like they’re hieroglyphics, and eighteen-year-olds pretending to be adults.
Then I see her.
She’s ten steps ahead of me, heading toward Sterling House and carrying a duffel bag and a box. But the first thing I notice is her walk. Chin level, shoulders set, moving like someone who has decided today is going to go well whether today likes it or not.
I adjust my line to overtake on the left, but then the strap on her bag gives.
My arm goes out on reflex even though there’s nothing to catch. The duffel lists and hits the ground, then the zipper gives, and the bag opens in the middle of the courtyard.
It’s like an explosion of underwear.
She freezes. A breath, maybe two. Her shoulders go up, and I see the decision settle on her face:don’t react, don’t acknowledge the situation or anyone else, just pick up the bras and panties and go.Then she crouches, starts scooping, and laughs.
Just once, one note, low.
It’s like something escapes out of her, animating her whole face, and she looks fun and cute in a way I haven’t let myself notice in a girl in a hell of a long time. But then she banishes the laugh, and it’s like her whole frame stiffens.
I don’t remember deciding to go over, but when I open my mouth, it takes her two full seconds to register what I say as a joke — actual count, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi — before she fires back something fast and a little rude.
I have to work not to laugh out loud in a public quad at a stranger on move-in day. So instead, I crouch and help her pick up her things, folding the ones that need folding, because I have a sister and I’ve been doing the laundry for years.
We volley, and the back-and-forth is at a pace I haven’t hit in a while. She’s quick, and every time she lands something good, she half-flinches, as if being funny violates a rule she’s set herself, and then she goes a little faster to cover the flinch, which makes her funnier.
Halfway through, she says something she regrets out loud. She regrets it before the sentence is finished. “Don’t,” I say — low, involuntary, closer to a please than I’d like — and I watch it land on her face.
It’s a flicker she decides not to show.
I pretend I don’t feel it catch me too.
Finally, after our quick-fire exchange, she bundles the duffel’s flaps over and stands. Her thank-you comes in a different voice from the one that just told me to stuff a pair of panties in my mouth. It’s neutral and volume-controlled.
