"Nerds." Jason drops his bag and heads for his room. “Don’t drink my shakes. I need a shower."
His door closes. The water starts.
I look at Bernard. His hair is wrecked. His face is flushed. His Henley is stretched where I grabbed it. He looks at me, and I look at him, and we both start to laugh—silently, shoulders shaking, because Jason is twelve feet away and has no idea that his best friend and his sister were just tangled together for sex lessons.
“I give you an A,” Bernard whispers, and he chugs my brother’s green smoothie mixture while we both laugh until our ribs ache.
Chapter 8
Howie
Today’s game day drive to the arena feels different as I sit stewing beside Rookie, death metal cranking.
I know why I feel off. I’m one thousand percent aware that Ella will be taking the bus home from Mercy Hospital after dark, alone, and her brother either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.
I adjust my tie in the rearview as I sit at a light, spying the fans already lined up for security. Rookie sits beside me, thumbing his phone and chewing the hell out of a piece of mint gum.
"Hey," I say, merging onto the road. "Can you text Ella and make sure she takes a cab home tonight? And that you’ll pay for it? I don't want her walking around Uptown in the dark."
Jason snorts without looking up. "She's fine, dude. She's been getting herself around since she got here."
"She works in a trauma center, Rook. She sees what happens to people walking around alone at night."
"Ella's tough. She's from Minnesota. This is barely cold.” He locks his phone and shoves it in his pocket. "Besides, she's a big girl. She can handle herself."
Something about the way he says "big girl" — careless, almost dismissive — hits me in a way I wasn't expecting. I keep my eyes on the road.
"Speaking of roommates,” Jason says, shifting in his seat, "you owe me a smoothie. That was my last bag of protein greens, and I know you drank one the other day because I weigh that shit.”
"I'll buy you more greens."
"It's not about buying more. It's about the rules, Howie. My stuff is my stuff. I let Ella stay, I let you have the couch situation, but the fridge is…"
"You let Ella stay," I repeat.
"Yeah. I did. She needed help, and I stepped up."
The words sound like a puck to the glass—jarring, violent. I feel my hands tighten on the steering wheel. I should let it go. I should nod, change the subject, turn up the music, and focus on the prep.
But I've never been smart. I'm the guy who says yes to everything, and I'm about to say something I can't take back.
"You stepped up," I say. "You offered her a couch in a room with no curtains. You didn't pick her up from the airport. You didn't get her a game ticket. You don't know what bus she takes to work, or what time her shift starts, or that she saved a kid's life her second day on the job."
The silence in the car is enormous.
"She takes two buses, actually,” I continue, and I can hear my voice getting harder. "At five in the morning. In the dark. In January. To a trauma center where people come in with stab wounds and overdoses and internal bleeding, and she stands there, and she handles it, and then she gets on the bus and comes home and studies for the most important test of her career on her phone because you wouldn't lend her your laptop."
"She can use the?—"
"You said no, Jason. She asked, and you said no. Because of your rules. Your stuff, your food, your fridge, your smoothie."
Rookie's jaw is tight. He's staring straight ahead. "She never said any of that to me."
"Because she never asks for anything! That's the whole problem!" I smack the steering wheel, and the horn blares. A pedestrian jumps, and I mouth “sorry” through the windshield, but I can't stop now. "She doesn't ask because she learned a long time ago that asking doesn't get her anywhere. She just figures it out herself. The bus, the studying, the food, she handles all of it alone because nobody in her life has ever shown up for her."
"That's not—I show up. I told her to come to Pittsburgh. I gave her a place to?—"
"A couch, Jason. You gave her a couch, and she was expecting a room. You’re a multi-millionaire.”
