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I look at it. It sounds like something a guy says to a girl at a bus stop before the news does a segment on him. I delete it.

I’ll drive you home.

That’s an order. That’s me telling her where she’s going. Delete.

You can come with me.

Like I’m doing her a favor. Like I’m letting her. Delete.

I’m leaving at four-thirty.

That’s just an order with a time on it. I hold my thumb on the delete key until it’s gone, and I throw the phone down on the comforter, and it bounces. I pick it back up two seconds later.

Fuck.

I know how to tell people things. I know how to buy things, arrange things, decide things, walk into a room and have the room move. I’ve been doing it since I could talk. I watched my father do it at every dinner table I’ve ever sat at.

I don’t know how to offer somebody something. Not really. Not the kind of offer where the other person gets to say no and I have to just stand there and take it.

I’ve never had to.

Kennebeck’s on the floor packing. He’s got his duffel open and he’s putting things into it in the order he’ll need it. He’s leaving tomorrow the second practice is over.

“Thought you weren’t talking to your dad,” I say.

He looks up at me and looks back down at his socks.

“I’m not. I’m going with Kylie.”

I don’t reply.

He packs a hoodie. He packs another hoodie. He gets to the bottom of the bag, and I’m still sitting there.

“What,” he says.

“Nothing.”

He goes back to packing.

I last about a minute.

“This is fucking stupid,” I say.

“What is?”

“If I’m already driving somewhere, and somebody else needed to go to the same place––” I don’t continue because I can’t. It’s stupid.

Kennebeck stops. He looks at me with a rolled-up pair of socks in his hand. I’ve lived with him for three months, and I’ve never asked him a question about anything that wasn’t hockey or whose turn it was to take out the trash, and he knows it.

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He looks at me for exactly a second and a half. “Tessa?”

I don’t say anything. Which is an answer. We both know it’s an answer.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t make a face. He doesn’t do any of the things Barnes would do, which is why I would ask him and not Barnes. He just puts the socks in the bag.