“You've never been early for anything in your life.”
“Championship game. I was dressed and on the ice before you even laced up.”
“That's because you couldn't sleep.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then laughed, low and a little reluctant, the way he did when he didn't want to admit I was right. “Okay. Fair. But I'll be there at four.”
I leaned against the locker next to his. The hallway was emptying out around us, the last-day-of-classes energy pulling everyone in different directions, and neither of us moved.
“You know Jensen's going to try and make a speech at the grad party,” I said.
“Of course he is.”
“He's been practicing. I can tell.”
Soren's face went through something brilliant. “How do you know when Jensen's been practicing a speech?”
“He keeps starting sentences and then stopping like he's editing himself.”
“That's just Jensen having a thought he can't finish.” He shook his head slowly. “God. Four years with that guy. You'd think it would get easier.”
“It really didn't.”
“No.” He smiled at the floor for a second. “It really didn't.”
“Hey,” Soren said, quieter now. “Four years of you as my center. I couldn't have played it with anyone else.”
It wasn't the kind of thing either of us said out loud. We didn't do that. We communicated it through a shoulder check on the ice or a chirp that had too much warmth in it, but not like this. Not straight out.
“Yeah,” I said, because I didn't trust myself with more than that. “Same.”
He nodded, once, like that settled something. Then the easy grin came back up and he pointed at me one last time. “Four o'clock. Don't be weird about it.”
He turned and walked away, and I watched him go, and I thought about calling after him again but didn’t.
Graduation morning settledwrong in my chest before my alarm went off. I lay there for a minute staring at the ceiling, trying to identify the source of it and coming up empty, and then I got up and got dressed.
My mom had ironed my dress shirt the night before and hung it on my closet door with a Post-it note that saidproud of youin her handwriting.
My dad knocked on my door at eight and handed me a tie without being asked.
“You want me to do that?” He nodded at the tie in my hand.
“I know how to tie a tie.”
“You know how to tie it bad.” He took it back, looped it around my collar, and fixed it in about fifteen seconds with the practiced ease of a man who'd been wearing them to work his whole life. He stepped back and looked at me and his expression went through something I wasn't supposed to notice. “There you go.”
My mom appeared in the doorway with her phone already out. “Stand together. Ro, fix your collar. Martin, put your arm around him.”
“Martha, he doesn't want?—”
“I want the photo, Martin.”
My dad put his arm around me and I let it happen and my mom took six photos in a row and then came over to check if anyof them were good and took four more. I stood there and let her because she'd been planning this morning since September and I wasn't going to be the reason it went wrong.
I checked my phone while she was scrolling through the photos.
Nothing from Soren. Which was fine. It was early. He was probably in the same chaos I was, his mom fussing with a camera, some version of this same morning playing out at his house.
