“Please do,” I mumble.
I can get away with hiding out in my room with a hoodie pulled up over my head most of the day, but there’ll be cameras at the game. Cameras and thousands of people with cell phones. Then there’s study hall on Sunday and game tape and a light skate Monday. Two games next week, more cameras on me, and my parents here, and no way this’ll fade in time.
Jade sits on the other side of me, sandwiching me between them as Delilah wrestles her way out of her blankets just enough to see. She squints in the light and pushes her head back into the pillows for a better angle when she looks at me. She scowls. “That is repulsive. You are my little brother, get that away from me.”
I feel like I’m dissolving. I roll over onto my stomach and bury my face in a pillow, arms curled under me.
It’s too much. I smell like saliva. I need a shower. I need sleep. I need water. I need to work on my papers. I need to go back to the rink. I need.
I spent two full seasons with the NTDP and never grew attached to any of my teammates. A few months with the Royals and I’m already dreading the day our season ends and I lose them. I don’t even know how it happened or when, but I care about them.
And soon they’ll all be added to my list of former teammates, Dorian and Barbie and Cauler still here, still with one another, with team study halls and parties at the hockey house and I’ll be off in whatever city drafts me. Alone.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say. I pull the pillow up over my head to hide from them.
“What do you mean?” Delilah asks slowly.
“Hartland. I want to stay.”
“You can,” Jade says. She puts a hand on my shoulder, and I try to stop shaking so she doesn’t feel it. Fighting it only makes it worse. “You have a full ride. You can have four years if you want them. You don’t have to leave.”
“The NHL will wait for you,” Delilah says.
But she’s wrong. If I stay, there’s a good chance I’ll lose the top pick. The goal I’ve had set for me my entire life. The one thing I want more than anything.
I can’t give that up for anything.
Not even Jaysen Caulfield.
* * *
I’M NOT ALLOWED on the bench with the team for the next game, so I sit with Jade in the row behind where the women’s team will sit once they finish changing. All anyone wants to talk about is my fight, and I chew on the rim of my plastic cup like it’ll hide me and everything I did last night. Delilah used cover-up on my hickey and honestly god bless her, because I didn’t need to add that to the bruises plastered all over the internet now.
Most of the people back off when Jade starts telling me all about her plans for her final art portfolio, but a couple are still rude enough to try to interrupt.
I ignore them.
“I don’t know, I’m worried though,” she says as the first few women’s players start filing into their seats. “I feel like nothing is original anymore, like anything I come up with, someone’s already done, and done better, and even if they haven’t people will say they did because I’m a Black woman. People don’t like to admit when a Black woman can do something better than them.”
“Gonna be real hard to deny it with the work you do,” I say. I don’t know anything about art, but I know when something looks good, and hers looks good.
Jade sighs, watching as Delilah makes her way toward us. “They always find a way.”
It’s weird seeing Delilah in something other than a dress or hockey gear, matching her team in their postgame sweats. She slumps into the seat right in front of Jade, and when I say slumps, I mean she’s sunk so low, she’s barely on the seat at all. Jade leans forward and offers her the tea she brought in a travel mug and a pill over her shoulders. Delilah tilts her head back and says, “God, I love you. Thank you.”
Jade kisses her temple and sits back as Delilah downs the pill with a short sip of tea.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask.
Jade frowns. “Cramps.”
I’ve been in a group chat with my sisters long enough to know that’s not something to scoff at. Especially not with Delilah. She’s got something called endometriosis and apparently it’s worse than a heart attack.
“But you just played a game!” I say. And she straight-up dominated the ice.
“Such is life with a uterus,” Delilah grumbles.
I grimace, turning my attention back to the ice where my team is finishing their warm-up. Dorian, Barbie, and Cauler skate toward the bench together. The sight of Cauler makes it hard to breathe, and when he looks up at me and smiles, I think I die a little.