He clearly saw the stick. He left it anyway.
I look at the photo of my father. I should put him face down. I can’t make myself do it.
Stanley Ermington was in my room for less than fifteen minutes. He saw the empty wall. He saw the shark. He saw my father. He saw the text on my phone. He didn’t take a single piece of leverage he could have weaponized in front of me. I don’t know yet whether that means he isn’t going to use any of it, or whether he’s waiting.
I’m sitting in the middle of my own bedroom, realizing I just got read by a boy I thought could read.
I miscalculated.
I don’t miscalculate.
I’ll see him tomorrow at the game.
And I will not make that mistake again.
Chapter 7
Stanley
“Where’s your gamer?”
Benson, three stalls down, half into his pads, nodding at the fresh stick the equipment guy’s just laid across my palms.
“Retired her.” I turn it over, feel the weight of it. “Sentimental reasons.”
Rowan’s head comes up. “Sentimental?”
“She gave me three good years, Row.” I run my thumb down the shaft. “Three years of love. We had a beautiful run, me and her. But you can’t hold a girl back from her dreams forever.” I sigh, heavy, a man at a graveside. “Time for fresh wood.” I look at Benson. “It’s a good brand.”
Blue throws a roll of tape at my head. And down the bench, Benson, tying his skate, gives me a look that’s about three-quarters bought and one-quarter doing math — because Benson’s known me too long to fully buy anything — so I wink at him, and he shakes his head, and he goes back to his laces.
The only person in this entire room who knows where my gamer actually is, is me.
And the funny thing is that I don’t care she has it.
I have never in my life cared about a single thing I couldn’t get back, and that goes double for a hockey stick. She thinks she took something from me on Friday. She walked out of this building with a tremendous sense of accomplishment, and she went home and stood it up in her bedroom like a hunting trophy, and she thinks that’s a point on the board.
We’ll find out.
I start wrapping the new one. Same tape, same wrap, heel to toe, the way I’ve done it ten thousand times. It feels different in my hands when I’m done.
I dig my phone out of my bag. I scroll down to Linwood, A. — saved in here for years, sitting there untouched the whole time, a number I’ve had and never once dialed — and I type.
Me:How’s my new tenant settling in?
Send.
Me:Take notes for me, princess. There’s gonna be a quiz.
Send.
I drop the phone back in my bag, and I don’t look at the screen again. That’s the whole trick of it. You throw the line out, and you walk away from the water. A man who watches for the response has already lost, because now she’s got something of yours too — your attention, your waiting — and I’m not in the business of giving that away for free.
I lace up and hit the ice.
Second lap of warm-ups, I let my eyes go to row three.
She’s there. Same fancy coat, posture like she’s holding up a flagpole, and she’s not looking at her phone. She probably read it. Which means I’m in her head. I grin so wide my cheek pad shifts in my helmet.
