Page 77

Hockey is going okay. Internship is going better than okay. I’ve learned things I’ll probably use in a future career. My advisor likes my prospects for after graduation. Peter likes that I’m scoring on the ice. Blue has mostly stopped asking if I’m still pissed. Eli asked if Quinn was coming to the holiday scrimmage, and I said I didn’t know, which was a lie. I knew. He wasn’t.

At night, I lie on my bed and listen to him breathe and think about the sound he swallowed when I had my hands in his hair. I think about what would have happened if I had told him I was okay with it, too. And I think about how he’s basically a stranger now.

I did this.

I told him I didn’t date. I called him a kicked puppy for fucks sake for being hurt that I didn’t share part of my life with him. And I let him break it all off. He believed every single word I uttered and then he did the smartest thing he could have done: he stopped offering me pieces of himself.

Tonight, he’s at his desk. Hood up. Headphones on. Glasses catching the glare from his laptop. We have tonight and tomorrow night before winter break. Three more weeks of silence will make everything worse than it is now. And what if he puts in for a transfer? Rooms open up in the New Year when people move out, because they finish their degree early.

I toyed with the idea, before pushing it out of my head. I can’t imagine not rooming with Quinn. Even if he’s a master at the cold shoulder.

“You hungry?” I ask.

“I ate.”

I hum and swallow. “Christine?”

“Yes.”

I roll my teeth over my lip and hunt for what I could possibly say to get him to engage in conversation with me.

“That test in Rogers was something, right?”

He sighs. He removes his headphones, and they circle his throat like a necklace. A burst of adrenaline flows through me, almost the same as making a hat trick during overtime. I finally got his attention. His eyes slide to my face, and there is literally zero emotion in them besides resignation, like I’m making him talk to me.

“It was a Scantron. He basically gives you the answer if you’ve studied. You have a twenty-five percent chance of getting it right, honestly, it’s higher than that, because he gives two stupid answers. Which makes it more like fifty percent if you’ve paid even a little attention in class.”

I huff a laugh that dies when he doesn’t join me. That’s the most words he’s said to me at once since I called him a kicked puppy.

I rub the back of my neck and shift on my feet. “Yeah, I, uh. I got it. Thanks to you.” The second half of my sentence comes out quieter.

“You got it because you studied.” He looks back at the laptop. His headphone goes back on one ear. Not both. That’s the only concession I get. “You didn’t need me for a multiple choice test.”

“I needed you for the rest of it, though.” My words hang between us. Crap, that was too much. I can hear the rawness in my voice, so there is no way he could miss it.

Quinn’s fingers stall on the keys. Then they start again.

“You should pack,” he says. “If you’re leaving in the morning.”

“I’m not leaving until Sunday.”

“Okay,” he says, the single word sounding almost bored of talking to me.

I stand in the middle of our dorm room with nothing left to ask. And I can’t say what I really want to say, which is please look at me like I didn’t break your heart. Because that would give away that I know I hurt him, and that I care. I lost that privilege a while ago, and I’m not selfish enough to think I can get it back.

I grab my jacket instead.

“I’m gonna go.”

He doesn’t ask where.

I wait half a second anyway, like an idiot, and then I leave him to the paper and the low light of his laptop and a room that used to feel like the only place on campus I wanted to be.

I don’t go to the rink.

I get as far as the athletic building and the lights over the football field are already on, and even with the kind of cold that makes your breath look like smoke, they have a game. I glance at my phone for the time. Kickoff’s in twenty minutes. Luke’s been on my ass for a week about showing my face tonight, and I almost forgot. Will sent three fire emojis and a threat to our group chat. Ty just wrote be there or be square like he was born in the 1950s.

I almost turn around; I’m not good company right now. Then I picture going back to my room and watching Quinn ignore me for the rest of the night, and my feet keep moving.