My face burns. I don’t know if it’s humiliation or anger or maybe a little bit of both. I stagger to my feet and go for the rest of my clothes. It takes five tries to get my head in the right hole of my T-shirt.
“Good news is you’ve earned the right to Terzo,” Jaysen adds when I stay silent. His voice is a little softer, like he actually feels bad for insulting me for once.
“No more ‘Your Grace,’ then?” I ask roughly.
He shrugs. He’s stretched himself out on the couch now, one hand behind his head, the other resting on his stomach. I try not to look at him directly. “I still like it,” he says. “But Terzo looks good on you.”
Okay, yep, he’s definitely still drunk. Or maybe sleepiness makes him weird, because this is not normal Jaysen Caulfield behavior.
I pull on my hoodie and shove both hands through my hair as I look around for my socks. They may be a lost cause. For a second I think about throwing myself back on the couch and getting more sleep, but that would mean setting myself up for even more awkwardness once everyone else wakes up.
Doesn’t matter that I don’t know my way back to campus from here. Doesn’t matter that every step feels like I’m walking through sand. I need to get as far from this house and Jaysen and last night as possible.
Jesus. You have dimples. I really said that, didn’t I? And Jaysen likes the color of my eyes, and my haircut, and my voice. Now I’m gonna be thinking about that all day.
“Hey.” Jaysen stops me halfway to the door. He’s quiet enough not to wake the others, but honestly with how out they all look, I could probably start screaming right now—like I kind of want to—and they wouldn’t even flinch. “Sorry for being a dick all the time.”
I blink at him. “Okay?” I croak.
He tilts his head a little, scratches his chest. Looks at me like he’s waiting for something.
I frown, but it only takes a second before I realize what he wants. “Sorry for breaking your stick.”
Jaysen blows air through his teeth. “You’re lucky this school’s paying for my equipment now. Oh, and stop calling me Jaysen. You sound like my mother.”
I am out. I slip from the attic and ease myself down the stairs, as much as I’d love to just throw myself to the bottom at this point. I put a hand over my mouth and squeeze. I feel beyond sick. Like I’ve died a thousand times over.
At least when Jaysen … or Cauler, I guess, is being an asshole, I have something to temper my attraction to him. If he starts being nice to me, it’s all over.
A few of the upperclassmen are in the living room when I make my way down, slumped on the couches watching cartoons, eating cereal, and drinking coffee.
“Yeah, Terzo!” Zero says through a mouthful of cereal. Milk dribbles down his chin.
“Jesus has risen!” Kovy calls.
They all laugh. The sound is a drill into my skull. I keep walking, groaning out some kind of unintelligible hungover greeting that only makes them laugh some more.
And with that, I leave my team behind.
My team.
Shit.
* * *
JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE my team doesn’t mean they’re my friends. They seem to have missed that memo.
I don’t know if there’s some big heart-to-heart buried in my blacked-out memories from last night, but the others don’t look at me like they’re waiting for me to leave so they can talk crap about me anymore. They act like they want to talk to me. Like they want me to sit with them in the dining hall and hang out in the team lounge between classes. And like they want me on the ice for more than my wrist shot.
It’s absolutely horrifying. Whenever one of them calls me Terzo, I get heart palpitations.
Cauler bumps my shoulder as he skates up beside me at practice one night. His grin is less vicious than it used to be, but it’s still just as smug. He leans down to say, “I’ve noticed something about you, Terzo.”
“What’s that?” I keep my tone flat and bored, but he’s got my attention.
We look out over the ice together from the blue line as drills go on around us. Cauler shifts his weight from skate to skate, knocking into my shoulder repeatedly. I don’t know if he even notices, but it’s got my nerves all coiled up inside me, heat flushing my cheeks.
“You’d rather party with the laxers than us,” he says. “And you play hockey like it’s lacrosse.”
I scoff. “How?”
“You camp behind the net half the time. And your favorite trick shot is the Michigan. I think…” He taps a gloved finger to the cage of his helmet, right over his chin, looking up at the rafters. “I may have stumbled on something you like. Shame it had to be lacrosse. The boys’ll shun you for sure.”