Page 76 of On His Mind

“A soccer player,” Gianna says.

Mara leans in and says to me and Ivory, “Her brother plays hockey.”

Gianna ignores the soccer player, turning to us. “His name is Benson Reeve,” Gianna says. “The most annoying boy alive. And his roommates are worse. You would not believe the state of that house. There’s a whiteboard with rules on it—”

Something moves through me. I hold my cup a little tighter, and I don’t say anything.

“—like they’re a fraternity. Like they invented having a house.” She waves it off. “Anyway. Please don’t tell me you’ve been to one of their‘Hawthorne House’parties?” she mocks.

Ivory says, “I know Drew.”

“Drew!” Gianna gasps.

“What?” Ivory asks, offended.

“Nothing. Just –– you know. Hockey boys. No, thanks.” Gianna looks at me. “Do you dance?”

“I don’t dance,” I reply with a laugh.

“We’re going to fix that,” Mara agrees, and the two of them pull me into the next room.

I’m home by two. Ivory drunk-dialed Drew and then met up with him. Mara made me put my number in her phone and texted me a photo of my face before I’d even left the party. Gianna hugged me goodbye like we’d known each other for years.

It was a good night. I think I collected a person or two tonight that I’m going to keep. When I step inside of my apartment, I stand over my drafting table and stare down at my pencils. I have no urge to use them.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I had fun tonight, met a few new girls, and still, I can’t shake the summer.

I walk into my bedroom and take off my boots. I put them back in the closet. Then I walk into the bathroom to shower, but instead, I pull out my phone and stare at the screen.

I click on his name. The last message is from last month, and it’s from me, and under it, there’s nothing. I scroll up through the summer. Every reply he sent is four words or less. He has never once texted me first. I start typing.

There was a girl tonight. She reminded me of Taylor, my best friend from home, from before we drifted, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you about her, or about the before part. I’m a little drunk and it’s two in the morning.I keep thinking about the fire escape.

My thumb stops over the arrow.

The whole thing sits in the grey bubble, every word I’d never say to his face. He’s awake. He should be awake. He’d answer in four words and never once ask me what I meant. I hold my thumb over the arrow for a long time. Then I press and hold the backspace, and I watch it eat the sentence a letter at a time — Taylor and the fire escape, all of it — until the bubble is emptyand the cursor blinks in the white like I never wrote anything at all.

He never texts first.

This year, neither will I.

Chapter 21

Percy

Ilearnedthatthestrawberries have to be cut small, or they clog the blender. I’ve got two pounds of strawberries on the cutting board while the party builds behind me, the music coming up louder every time somebody props the front door. I work through the flat of them with the little paring knife from Rowan’s block, tops off, quarters, into the bowl. Mango next. I know how to pick a mango now — thumb at the stem end, a little give, not soft — and I’ve got four good ones. I cut them the way I saw in a YouTube video.

Last year, one pitcher was gone inside an hour. So this year it’s two, and I strain it through the sieve so there’s no pulp in it, because pulp in the bottom of a cup is the difference between a thing people drink and a thing people make a face at. Lime goesin last. One drop of the liquor, so it tastes like juice. I taste it off the back of a spoon. Adjust. Taste it again.

Somebody I’ve never met leans into the kitchen and asks did the goalie make the juice. I don’t answer, and she takes that as a yes and yells it back into the living room like it’s news, like it’s a fact about this house now — the goalie makes the juice — and I pour it into the two pitchers and set them out on the counter with a stack of cups.

The front door opens, and it’s three girls from the volleyball team. It opens again, and Drew and Theo. No Ivory tonight. And if she’s not here, then Penelope isn’t coming.

A year ago at this party, a girl walked into me in this kitchen and spilled a beer down both of us, and I caught her before she went down, and I have been watching that door ever since. I thought I fucked up back then. Now I’m really fucked.

Stanley’s at the keg, going after Benson again about his sister. “When is Gianna coming?”

“She’s not.”