“Wait in his room,” Benson offers, pointing upstairs.
“His –– his room?”
The guys nod. “Yeah, don’t take the couch.”
Blue adds, “Sterm loves the couch, but you should go up to his room.”
“Yeah, go to his room. Have you talked to him?”
I shake my head.
The chatter of all four guys nods in agreement and says in their own words that I should definitely wait in his room for him.
So that is how I come to climb the stairs of Hawthorne House to a room I have never set foot in, while four hockey players downstairs try very hard to look like they aren’t watching me go.
His room is so him, it makes my chest ache. Tidier than I would have ever guessed — he hides his orderliness the way I hide my mess, it seems. A stick leaning in the corner. Gear. The smell of him on everything, all over the dark.
I sit on the edge of his bed, meaning to wait. I’m going to wait up, I tell myself. I’m going to be sitting here calm and composed when he walks in. I’m going to say the thing I came to say.
The week catches me all at once, and I lie back on his pillow, just for a second, just to rest my eyes, just for a minute.
I’m asleep before I’ve finished deciding not to be.
I wake to an alarm, in the dark, in a bed that isn’t mine and smells like him, and for one foggy second, I have no idea where I am.
Then I remember, and I reach over to kill the alarm and find the other side of the bed empty.
I look over the edge.
Stanley Ermington is stretched out on the hard floor of his own bedroom under one blanket, a balled-up hoodie for a pillow, blinking up at me in the dark.
“Hi,” I say, over the edge.
“Hi.”
“I’m sorry I took your bed.”
“Don’t be sorry.” His voice is morning-rough, and there’s no armor on it at all. “I’m just glad you were in it.”
I prop my chin on the edge of the mattress, looking down at him. “My dad called me last night.”
“Oh yeah?” he says, nonchalantly, like he didn’t cause it personally.
“Yeah.” I furrow my brows. “He said there was a crazy lunatic in his house last night.”
A slow grin starts up at me from the floor. “A lunatic, huh?”
“Mm.” I nod, grave. “Tall.”
“Tall.”
I shrug, playful, hands sketching a pair of shoulders in the air. “Muscular. Sort of a problem, physically, the whole — situation.”
“Sounds like a real piece of work.”
“Turned down the NHL, too.” I roll my eyes like it’s the most baffling thing I’ve ever heard. “For — I mean, who could possibly say why.” I look down at him and grin. “But that’s good news for me.”
He goes still, just slightly. “For you?”
