Page 108

Perching myself on the counter, I watch him cook, accompanied by the quiet lull of music from his speaker and the sizzle of a pan.

I follow his directions to make a salad in a pretty painted porcelain bowl while he cooks. He pours me a glass of sparkling grape juice, smirking as he offers me a cheers. It all feels so domestic.

Another piece of my soul latches on to him.

“I have something for you to look at,” he says, leaving the steaks he’s cooked us to perfection to rest as he grabs his backpack. He pauses briefly by my blue bag, noticing a bunny ear hanging out of the side where I zipped it up. I blush, my mouth opening to defend the childish, terrified impulse to bring it along, but stop when he grazes it with his finger and looks up at me.

“‘Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you.’”

I know the quote because I’d read the book over and over as a child, hiding in the far shelves of the library in elementary school where they kept the kids for after-school programs. Sometimes my mom never showed up and someone had to walk me home or call my neighbor. But I always had that stuffed bunny, half hidden because I was terrified the real owner would come back.

It barely looks like a bunny now—not even the same color it used to be, because I’ve loved it so much.

“You read it?”

He nods. “The first night you mentioned it, I did.”

Something lodges heavy in my throat. At eighteen, being loved by Bennett was overwhelming. It still is, but not in the same way. This time, I’m not afraid. I’m only in awe of him and the purity of his heart.

He doesn’t say anything more about it, grabbing a stapled packet of papers and handing them to me as he goes back to plating mushrooms, potatoes, and steak.

“It’s a list of internships for your sports program.” He clears his throat, avoiding my gaze before I finally glance down at the printed list—programs mostly in the surrounding areas, all age groups, almost all hockey. All the information is printed alongside it: start dates, requirements, brief pro/con lists.

“In case you want to . . . be here. Or close.”

I want you here. I want you close. It’s his way of saying words he’s not ready to speak aloud. But I hear them all the same.

“Does this mean you’ll be staying here?”

“At Waterfell,” he specifies, taking my hand where I’ve frozen at the countertop and guiding me to sit on the floor pillows near the fire. He sits across from me, one thigh pressing nearly into the brick lip of the fireplace because he’s so massive.

Bennett takes his hat off and tosses it on the sofa. He runs a hand through his hair, tousling his curls. “I switched, officially, to English with a minor in poetry. I talked with Dr. Britton last week and he helped me.”

My smile is so wide my cheeks hurt, my eyes water. “Yeah?” He nods. “God, Bennett—I’m so proud of you.”

We eat and talk quietly, about school and hockey and everything in between. And like always inside the walls of Speyside, it doesn’t feel like we’ve spent three years running in circles, apart from one another. It feels like we’ve always been this.

After he returns to refill my glass, I grab my gift for him.

“I brough you something, too,” I whisper, handing him the folded note tucked away inside a yellowed, dingy envelope I know he recognizes.

His fingers are hesitant, but he reaches out and takes it, unfolding it slowly and reading silently in the glow and heat of the fire still crackling beside us.

I can’t write poetry

But I can write it like this—place the words,

Just so

So that you read it like your favorite poem.

So you trace your eyes over the pages, sensual and slow

So that your teeth bite down on the words

(bite down on my shoulder again and let me show you)

Can I slip you into my brain? It would make it easier to show—to tell