Chapter15
“Didyou know they stream Bribury’s hockey games?” Emily asked me on Friday night. We’d just come back from the dining hall and hadn’t made any definitive plans for the evening. Chloe and Abby were in their room—we could hear them talking—but we didn’t bother them and went straight to our room.
“They do? I mean, I guess why not, right?” It had never occurred to me that I could watch Logan’s games this weekend.
Did I even want to?
“Do you want to?” Emily asked.
“Spend my Friday night in my dorm room watching the Bribury hockey team, which I didn’t even know existed three weeks ago?”
She shrugged as she went to her bed and climbed on, pulling her laptop out of her backpack. “Not an answer.”
“Feels kind of pathetic, doesn’t it?” I said.
Another shrug. “Maybe. Not too much more pathetic than sitting in your dorm room so that you’re somewhere quiet when you FaceTime your boyfriend who’s multiple states away.”
“At least he’s your boyfriend. And he’s probably doing the same thing at Florida State.” A snort this time. So I quickly got off that topic. “I’m sure Chloe and Abby know of lots of parties to go to if you want. We could come back before you FaceTime with Caleb, or find somewhere quiet to do that.”
She waved a hand at me and the door, in kind of a half-hearted shooing motion. “I’m good. I’m really not missing out on the party scene. It was never my thing, even before Caleb and I got serious.”
“So, you stopped partying in eighth grade?” I joked. She and her boyfriend had been together all through high school.
“Guess I don’t have enough experience to know what Idon’tlike. But just the thought of making all the small talk, and all the new people?” She shivered. “Ugh. No thanks.”
At first I’d felt sorry for Emily. She and Caleb had agreed to the long-distance thing, and I had not with Blake. I’d assumed she’d miss out on so much. And maybe that was true. But it was also true that Emily was an introvert, an adult, and knew what she wanted. If she wanted to stay in on a Friday night, then I was cool with that.
Chloe and Abby, on the other hand, would not be.
I floated somewhere in the middle. I liked going out, dressing up (or down) and meeting new people, experiencing new conversations with kids from places not in the Corn Belt. But other times, like tonight, I was happy to stay in and… okay, yes, stream the hockey game of a guy I was wildly attracted to, had an emotional connection with, and was very leery of.
“Do you have it up?” I asked Emily, nodding at her laptop.
“Game doesn’t start for a half hour, but yes, the stream is live.” She moved to one side of her bed and put her pillows behind her to sit up. I grabbed my pillows and joined her on her bed, grabbing us both pops from the mini-fridge first.
“Call up the Bribury Athletics site and find out what number he is so we can keep an eye on him,” she said.
When the game started, we had Logan’s stat page up on my phone. I’d also brought up Dex’s (although he still wasn’t playing), Veeti’s, and Gabe’s, explaining to Emily that they were Logan’s housemates.
“It says Logan and Veeti are defensemen and Gabe’s a goalie. Whatever that means,” I said.
“Defensemen are the big guys. They’re down in front of the goalie when the other team has the puck and at the blue line when we have the puck. Basically, they’re not supposed to let the puck get by them on either end. They’re the guys that get in fights the most. The enforcers.”
“You know hockey?” I asked. Emily was from what I believed was an old-money family in south Florida. Not that she still couldn’t know hockey; I was just surprised.
“My father is a big Panthers fan,” she said.
“That’s hockey?”
She laughed. “That’s Florida’s NHL team. They play not too far from us.”
“And does your dad go to the games?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. Evasively.
“Em? Does your dadownthe Panthers?”
Another laugh. “No. No. Well… No. He might have a minority share, I really don’t know. But he does go to every home game.”
