Page 100 of On His Mind

“Where’s Lucy?” I ask, in a gap.

“She doesn’t come to these things,” Gianna answers.

“That’s because you don’t let her,” Mara says.

“It’s for the best.”

I don’t know what she means, but I don’t press.

I look back at the bench without meaning to. Percy’s at the end of it, big even sitting down, his mask up on the top of his head, his eyes on the ice.

During the break, Ivory leans down the row toward Gianna and Mara.

“What are you two doing after this? Come to Drew’s thing, it’ll be fun.”

“Hell yeah,” Mara says.

“I’m always down,” says Gianna.

When the second period starts, Ivory loosens up a little, sitting between Mara and me, waving at Drew on the bench. I keep my eyes forward. And then there’s a body hitting the boards across the rink.

Theo’s out there on the right, fast and sharp and cocky with it, exactly like he is off the ice. The puck flies across to him, and he snaps it straight into the net.

And in the same second, down on the bench, Percy looks up. His eyes come up off the ice and into the stands, and they find me. I smile. For him, only him, across the whole loud barn. And he looks away, back to the ice, fast, like he never looked up at all. I sit there with the smile still on my face and nowhere to put it.

I don’t look at him for the rest of the game.

Eventually, they lose by one. I don’t fully understand the game, but Gianna is rushing to leave before everyone else does.

“Is it a Hawthorne party?” I ask as we walk out. Ivory has her arms hooked through mine.

Gianna scoffs so hard she nearly chokes. “My brother won’t allow me to go to a Hawthorne House party. Is that where you invited us to?”

Ivory shakes her head.

Mara interjects, “We’re warming him up to the idea.”

“It’s a long game. Maybe by next year he’ll crack, and I’ll finally be able to go to one.” She loops her other arm through my free one, so I’m pinned between the three of them, moving toward the doors.

“It’s at some frat, Drew’s friend’s place. The same one as last night,” Ivory says. “You’re all still coming, right?”

“Obviously,” Gianna says.

Ivory looks at me.

“I’m coming,” I say.

Chapter 33

Percy

Ididn’tsleep,andit wasn’t because of the game.

I had a whole weekend of nothing. I made it nothing myself, and now it’s Monday, and I’ve spent two nights lying in the dark with a phone I can’t stop turning over in my hand. That’s good. That’s the last thing that crossed between us. Two words, from me, on purpose. Then she went quiet on the other side of it, and I told myself that was what I wanted. But it isn’t what I wanted. I don’t actually know what I wanted, but I know it wasn’t this.

I hate that I don’t know where I stand. She smiled at me at the game, up in the stands, and I looked away because I’m a coward. And now I don’t know if it was for me or for the guy on the ice she came to watch, and I can’t ask, because it’s not my place. So I’m just here. In the maybe. And I can take almost anything — I’ve taken almost everything in my life — but this is different. I’drather know I’m out than not know. That’s the sick part. I would rather she told me flat that it’s Theo, that Sunday was nothing, than lie here one more night not knowing which it is.

Practice is at eight, and I’m the first one on the ice. Nobody can beat the man who gets here at five. I go hard because the heaviness in my chest won’t fucking settle. Josh used to push me through drills when I had an attitude problem, and to this day, it stuck. This is where the nonsense in my head ends. This is all I’ve got.