Page 49

“One song,” he pleads.

And then Nash is there. I didn’t see him come down the stairs. He’s just suddenly in the middle of us, still in his team jacket, and Koda right behind him. The air around gets very small.

Nash looks at Kylie. He looks at me, holding onto her arm. He looks at the boy with his hand still out.

And then he’s in the boy’s face. He doesn’t touch him. He just steps in until there’s about four inches between them. Nash is taller and broader, and he just played sixty minutes of hockey and scored the winner, and it’s all still on him.

Kylie puts her hand flat on his chest and pushes. “It’s okay. He was just leaving.”

Nash doesn’t move. “Is he touching you?”

“No.” Kylie shakes her head. “Tess was dancing with him.”

Nash turns his head. And looks at me. “Tessa.”

I’ve lived down the hall from Nash Kennebeck for ten weeks. I’ve watched him carry my roommate up three flights of stairs. I’ve heard him through two walls. I’ve seen him in our room at one in the morning in his socks, stealing Kylie’s Doritos, saying nothing. He has never once said my name. I didn’t know he knew it.

“You alright,” he says, “or do I need to punch this fool?”

My heart gives when I see how serious he is.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Thank you.”

He looks back at the boy. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Koda doesn’t say anything. He’s just standing behind Nash’s shoulder with his arms crossed and his head tilted, looking at the boy, and the boy takes one look at the two of them and says, “Cool. Okay. Cool,” and goes.

Nash turns around. “You alright?”

He’s asking me again. Not Kylie. Me. I nod.

Kylie wraps both arms around his waist and looks up at him like she’s so proud of him I can feel it coming off her.

Koda’s still looking at me. Then at the stairs where the boy went. Then back at me, with one eyebrow up, like he’s waiting for the rest of the story.

And everybody’s so serious. All three of them. Nash with his jaw tight and Koda with his arms crossed and Kylie holding onto him. I’m warm and loose and three and a half drinks in, and it just comes out.

“He tried to kiss me,” I blurt, “so I put my hand over my mouth.” I demonstrate with my flat palm over my mouth. “He was just asking me to dance again.”

Nash doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me.

Koda laughs. A real laugh, loud, with his head back.

And Kylie loses it completely. She puts her forehead on Nash’s chest and laughs so hard she shakes.

“Okay,” she says, coming up for air, wiping under her eyes. “So Tessa doesn’t like to kiss strangers?”

I laugh. I can’t help it. It bubbles up out of me, and just like that, the whole thing turns over and becomes something light, something we’ll tell later, and I’m standing in a frat basement with my roommate and two hockey players, laughing at myself, and I can’t remember why I was ever scared of a room like this.

And somewhere under the laughing, there’s something I don’t have a word for. Nash came across a basement for me. Koda stood behind him with his arms crossed. And neither of them wanted anything for it. Nobody asked me what I was going to give them back. They just did it, and then they let it go.

I don’t know what to do with that kind of kindness, so I let Kylie hand me another drink.

More hockey players come down the stairs after that. You can tell even if you’ve never been to a game. They take up the stairs and then the room, loud and wet-haired and still high off the win. The music gets turned up to match them, and the basement goes from crowded to packed.

Koda’s face changes. He’s looking at the bottom of the stairs.

“Fuck,” he says. “Greeley.”