Chapter Six
1250 Words
Ace
"You're off today."
Coach says it during a water break, watching me miss a pass I should've made with my eyes closed, and he's not wrong. I've been off since Wednesday night. Since the kitchen. Since I stood three inches from Wren Cole's mouth and told her the truth and she didn't tell me to stop.
"I'm fine," I say.
"You're fine like a guy who didn't sleep is fine." Coach blows his whistle at the rest of the line. "Get it together before Sunday's scrimmage."
Sunday. Mason comes home Sunday. Everything ends Sunday.
I skate the rest of practice like I'm trying to put my whole body through the ice.
Reeves catches up to me in the parking lot.
"Park's saying something," he says, which is never good, because Park doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut and Reeves is the only one of us with the sense to come find me before it gets worse.
"Saying what."
"Sloane's telling people Cole's sister moved in to get back at you. Like — using you. For a place to crash. Says she's been bragging about it at parties." Reeves shrugs. "Probably bullshit. But it's spreading."
My jaw goes tight. "Where'd she hear that."
"Does it matter?"
It matters because it's a lie, and it matters because Wren has spent four years getting talked about by people who don't know a single true thing about her, and it matters because the thought of her walking into a lecture hall today and hearing her own name twisted into something ugly makes something in my chest go hot and stupid and protective in a way I don't have a box for.
"I'll handle it," I say.
"Handle it how."
I don't answer. I'm already walking.
I find Sloane outside the student union, surrounded by the usual three girls who follow her around like she's handing out something free.
"Ace!" She lights up when she sees me. Actually lights up, like she didn't slam my door so hard the other night the sink rattled. "I was just—"
"What are you telling people about Wren."
Her smile flickers. "What?"
"Wren Cole. What did you tell people."
"I mean." She laughs, short and confused, looking at her friends for backup. "I just said what's obvious. That she's using the whole roommate thing to get close to you. Everyone's saying it, Ace, I'm not the only—"
"You started it."
"I—"
"You started it because she called you out in my apartment and you've been pissed about it ever since." I keep my voice level. Quiet. The kind of quiet that used to scare freshmen off the ice. "So here's what's going to happen. You're going to stop. And if I hear my roommate's name out of your mouth again, in any context, I am going to make sure everyone on this campus knows exactly whose stomach I was using that night. Are we clear?"
Sloane's face goes white, then red, then something unreadable.
"You're really doing this," she says. "Over her."
"Are we clear, Sloane."
A long beat. Her friends are staring at the ground like the concrete just got fascinating.
"Crystal," she says, and her voice cracks right down the middle of the word.
She walks off. Doesn't look back.
I stand there for a second feeling like I just did something I can't undo.
Wren's already home when I get back, sitting on the counter — my counter, the one she's claimed like she owns the deed — eating cereal straight from the box.
"You heard," I say.
She doesn't look up. "Heard what."
"Sloane."
Now she looks up. "What about Sloane."
So she hasn't heard. Good. That means I got there before it landed on her, which is the only part of today that's gone right.
"Nothing," I say. "Forget it."
"Ace." She sets the box down. "What did you do."
"I told her to stop talking s**t about you."
The kitchen goes quiet.
"You did what?"
"You heard me."
"Why?"
I lean against the counter across from her, close enough that I can see the exact second her breathing changes. "Because it wasn't true. And because I'm tired of people talking about you like you're something to laugh at. You've had four years of that. You don't need more of it from her."
She stares at me. Really stares, the way she did Wednesday night, right before I almost made the worst decision of my life with my best friend's sister three feet away from his liquor cabinet.
"You stood up for me," she says slowly, like she's testing whether the words are true by saying them out loud. "In public. Where people could see."
"Yeah."
"Why."
"I think you already know why, Wren."
Her eyes drop to my mouth. Just for a second. Just long enough that I catch it, the same way she caught me looking at her legs three nights ago.
"Two days," she says quietly. "Mason comes home in two days."
"I know."
"So whatever this is—"
"Don't." I step closer. She doesn't move back. She never moves back, and God, I am so far past being able to stop wanting that about her. "Don't do the thing where you talk us out of it before it even happens."
"It can't happen, Ace."
"You keep saying that like it makes it true."
"It has to be true." Her voice cracks slightly on the last word. "He's my brother. You're his best friend. There's no version of this where it doesn't blow up everything."
"Maybe I don't care anymore."
"You should."
"I should do a lot of things." I reach up, slow, and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, and her whole body goes still under my hand like she's forgotten how to breathe. "I should've stayed away from you the first night you walked through that door. I should've let Mason find someone else. I should've kept hating you the easy way, the way I've been doing it for years."
"Why didn't you," she whispers.
"Because you walked in wearing that stupid oversized hoodie with your chin up like you weren't scared of a single thing in the world, and I have not been able to stop thinking about you since."
Her hand comes up and grips the front of my shirt.
I don't know which one of us moves first.
Her mouth meets mine and it is not soft, it is not careful, it is four years of hating each other crashing into one single point of contact, and she tastes like cereal and something underneath that's just her, and my hand goes to her jaw, and she makes a sound against my mouth that I am going to be hearing in my head for the rest of my life.
The front door bangs open.
"Surprise, motherfuckers, I caught an earlier flight—"
We rip apart so fast Wren nearly falls off the counter.
Mason is standing in the doorway with a duffel bag over his shoulder and a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and his eyes go from her flushed face, to my hand still half raised in the air, to the absolute guilt written across both of our faces like a confession neither of us got to finish.
Nobody says anything.
Mason sets the whiskey down very slowly on the entry table.
"What," he says, "the f**k did I just walk into."
- Writer
