CHAPTER 26
THEN: Freshman Year, October
Bennett
It’s our first away game series of the season, about four hours on the bus and one night at a hotel, and I feel sick.
We’re playing Vermont twice, back-to-back, which happens with the longer distance games. Still, as I load onto the bus, everything feels o.
“You sure you’re good?” Rhys asks, tossing his bag next to mine in the lineup. “You seem… more tense than usual. You can talk to me about it, you
know?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I know.”
Rhys would never shut me out. He would never do something to hurt me.
But I can’t stop the fear of his rejection engulfing me until I can’t see the way out.
My best friend pats my back with a bright, dimpled smile. “Alright, Ben.”
For a moment, I consider opening up—telling him that my anxiety in this moment is from something unknown to me—a girl. Maybe he could help. But then another wave of fear rushes my spine.
They’re both too good for you.
It’s startling enough to keep my own promise to myself: to keep Rhys and Paloma as separate as I can.
Though, maybe that won’t be necessary if she’s decided to remove herself from me entirely. I haven’t spoken to her since that day in Dr. Britton’s oce.
She hasn’t answered my texts. And if I think too hard on it, I start fidgeting worse and spiraling through darker thoughts.
Two steps onto the bus and I stop, thankful that Rhys is far enough in front of me that he can’t hear the audible hu of breath as I spot her.
Paloma Blake, light brown hair piled high into a messy bun, tendrils swirling around her face. She loops one over and over on her finger, tongue slightly out between her lips and brows furrowed while staring intently at her phone. I’ve seen the expression before; she’s reading something. A book, probably, though the idea that maybe it’s a poem spurred by the one I left in the Tupperware container makes my chest squeeze.
She’s incredibly beautiful, tucked into a back row where some non-players sit and chat. And yet no one seems to notice her. She’s good at blending in, but I can tell it’s intentional.
No one notices Paloma. She isn’t in our practices or the locker room except with me. And still, here on the bus, it’s like she’s made it that way on purpose.
Unless she wants you to notice her, you won’t.
For a moment, I consider going to her, sitting at her side.
But I always sit by Rhys. It’s my routine, the one that relaxes me when it comes to hockey.
I look at her a little longer, memorizing the soft curve of her chin and the deep well of sadness in her brown eyes that makes the thing in my chest pull tighter, before turning and settling myself into the seat next to my best friend.
My entire world feels like it’s crumbling. I’m not rooming with Rhys because the assistant coach screwed up the assignments. I played my worst game yet, letting in five to the opposite goalie’s shutout.
Paloma wasn’t there for our postgame routine, which should be fine, except it isn’t. My anxiety is too high. Everything feels like it’s breaking— which is most likely the reason I’m standing at the door of Paloma’s hotel room, hair wet and dripping onto my shirt.
I shouldn’t be here. It’s an invasion of privacy.
Not to mention stealing the room assignments sheet was an obsessive, awful thing to do. Still, I raise my hand and knock.
It takes a long while but the door cracks open, just slightly. Paloma hesitantly peeks around the door, eyes going wide as she spots me.
“Bennett?”
She’s in a big T-shirt but no pants. My eyes dart back to hers after a quick skim over her long, muscular legs. I’ve never seen so much of her skin before.
To prevent my blush from growing, I try to inspect her face. Her skin looks a little flushed, and dark circles are starting to develop under her eyes.
“Are you all right?” I blurt out. “You look tired.”
She grimaces and darts her eyes down, away from me. “You’re not supposed to tell people that.” Her words aren’t reprimanding, however. She sounds exhausted—proving my point.
“But yeah,” she continues. “I know I look terrible. I am tired. I’ve… I’ve been having nightmares again. So, I’m not sleeping.” The words seem to come out almost accidentally and she shakes her head, rubbing her hands over her eyes and slumping against the doorframe.
Something throbs in my chest. She’s so beautiful and sad. I want to fix everything for her, despite knowing logically that I can’t. Is this how my dad
feels with me all the time?
“What are you doing here, Bennett?”
I avoid the closed-o tone of her voice, shifting from foot to foot.
“I played horribly,” I confess. “We lost. I—it was my fault. I screwed everything up for everyone and now… I don’t know.”
“You’re the goalie,” she whispers. “Not surprised you’re taking all the responsibility. Though I highly doubt it’s your fault. What was the score?”
“Five to zero.”
She shakes her head. “That’s a whole team eort to lose, Bennett. Not on you.”
I let her words wash over me, absolving some of the guilt I feel weighing on my shoulders. Part of me wants to confess that this is one of the reasons I’ve never loved hockey like the others do, because it’s a constant pressure in
my chest when I play.
“You were gone.”
Her eyes dart down, away from my gaze as her hand grips onto the door tighter. I wonder briefly if she might slam it in my face.
“Um, yeah. I just… I wasn’t doing well,” she says.
“Oh.” When she oers nothing else, my mouth opens unbidden. “Did I do something wrong? I just—” A frustrated breath pus from my lips. “I can’t always read your expressions. I don’t know if you’re angry or upset with me.
You have to tell me if I do something wrong or upset you.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bennett,” she says sincerely. “I promise. I just… with the nightmares again, I sleep a lot during the day to make up for not sleeping at night and I needed some time for myself.”
I nod, biting my lip to not press for more.
“What would help?”
“What?”
“I just… Is there anything I could do to help you? To sleep?” It’s invasive, but I can’t stop myself. The obsessive center point of my anxious thoughts has shifted to her, her, her.
“Oh.” She darts her eyes back to the floor, biting at her lip. “I don’t know. I —my—”
“Maybe I could stay awake with you?” I blurt again, unable to keep my damn mouth shut around her. “Or, if you are going to sleep and you have a nightmare, I could stay awake and wake you up?”
She’s hesitant, standing a little straighter with eort and crossing her arms over her chest as if to hug herself. A long moment passes as she considers my oering.
“You can trust me,” I vow, blue meeting brown in a rare show of direct eye contact. But I want her to see the sincerity in my gaze, the truth of my words.
I won’t hurt you. Please, trust me. Let me help.
“Okay.”
Paloma is pacing in front of me now, quiet as she looks toward me and then away again. Over and over. Normally the movement might give me anxiety,
but with her here, where I can see that she’s okay, I feel calmer. If I could use that serene energy as a superpower, I’d encase her in it.
Finally, she stops and chews on her lips before speaking.
“I’m… I need to explain. My nightmares are bad. Dreams feel really real to
me, but so do the bad ones.”
My brow furrows. “Okay?”
“I just don’t want to freak you out. I haven’t… well, I’ve never slept next to or near someone when I’ve had a bad nightmare.” Her eyes well, but she holds back the tears. “I’m worried I’ll hurt you.”
I look her over.
Paloma is maybe five-foot-six, give or take an inch, to my six-foot-six. If anyone could hurt the other, it’s me. But something stops me from even hinting at that prospect.
Instead, I oer, “That’s okay. I’m good. I’ll wake you up faster than you could hurt me.”
She’s not convinced, but eventually Paloma settles on the bed nearer to the window, underneath the already-rumpled bedding. I sit atop the untouched bed closer to the door, propped up against the pillows and headboard, eyes trying to focus on the muted NHL season-opener game playing on the television.
But I feel her eyes on me every few moments. Her wary emotional turmoil is stifling in the air. She said she’d try to trust me, but she doesn’t. And it’s making it hard for her to sleep.
“You like hockey?” I try, pushing through my half-closed up throat, hoping the shift in concentration will help lull her like it often did for me as a child.
“Yeah.” She blushes, turning on her side to look at me, tucking a hand beneath her pillow. Her hair is messy and long, looking brighter than her usually darker flat brown. I wonder briefly if it’s dyed. “It’s really fast and
interesting. I’ve always enjoyed it.”
“Did you play?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve never really skated before, but I like to watch it.
I…” She pauses, swallowing and closing her eyes. “I want to work on a team—
not as an equipment manager, but as an assistant coach or something. It’s stupid—”
“It’s not.” My hand rakes through my curls, tangling lightly before I smooth them through my fingers. “I think it’s great, P. You’d be amazing at it.”
There’s a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she nods.
“And swimming?” I ask, desperate in so many ways to understand her.
“It’s… yeah. It’s important to me.” She watches me with her same inspecting gaze, in a way I find more comforting than unnerving. “What about you? With hockey? You love it?”
“Oh.” I pause. No one has ever asked me that before. Probably because my dad is Adam Reiner, and I’ve never not played hockey. “Um. Well, my dad played in the NHL before he got hurt. His best friend did, too. And then he stuck me in skating classes and hockey as soon as I was old enough. I was a big kid—”
“No,” she says, perching her hands beneath her face, eyes sleepy but sparkling. “You? Big?”
My cheeks color as she rolls her gaze over me playfully. I know I look dierent than Rhys or Freddy, or most of the guys we’ve played with. I’ve always been tallest, but the biggest, too. Muscular, sure—I work out with the team. I’m heavily conditioned and trained. But it’s muscle with a layer that’s softer than the more cut forward and centers.
Maybe there was a time I would’ve been embarrassed by it, but with the way Paloma looks at me it’s almost impossible not to be proud of it.
“Yeah. But I wasn’t very aggressive with the puck. Not like the other kids.
But I liked playing goalie. So I just stayed there.”
“That’s not really an answer,” she mumbles, eyes fluttering.
The way I feel about hockey is dierent than Rhys or my dad—I’ve always known that. I stayed because it was easy for me. I’m good at it. But it’s not my passion. It’s not what I want to do forever.
I just don’t know how to tell anyone.
Except… “I don’t love hockey,” I admit into the quiet of the room, turning my head toward her. “I just play because I’m good at it. Because my dad loves it, and I
feel closer to him and my friends when I play. But it’s not…”
“It’s not like poetry is for you,” she finishes for me. “That’s what you love.”
For a moment I’m twelve and embarrassed to ask my mom to get me more poetry books because I’ve finished all the ones Dad got me the week before— knowing the look on my mom’s face means something important, but I can’t read it.
“Yeah,” I breathe, a weight present for the majority of my life finally rolling o my shoulders. “Yeah, it is.”
I was worried she might think the poem I slipped her on our date was too intense. Petrarch is known for only two things, really: the style of sonnet he created, and pining after the same woman for over three hundred of those sonnets.
Makes a little more sense now, I think as I admire Paloma’s profile as she rolls onto her back. The angle of her jaw, the heavy pout of her full, peachy lips.
Burnished golden strands mixed in the light brown of her hair, like clouds over a brighter color. Eyes like deep chocolate or the freshest soil around a
blooming garden.
“Will you read me one?”
“Now?” My voice drags out the word. “Oh—yeah. Let me find—”
“Do you know any by memory?”
I know a lot from memory. But this feels intense. I’d prefer to have hours to figure out which one would suit her and this space between us best—but my mouth opens before I can think about it.
I recite John Keats’s “Bright Star,” my mouth moving leisurely and practiced across each word like a lullaby only for her ears.
She drifts o, her breath growing deeper, the rise and fall of her chest more drawn out. I don’t take my eyes o her. I don’t sleep.
An hour or two passes before the quiet whimpering starts, her brow furrowing deeply. I wait, hopeful that it might dissipate into nothing and she’ll get more sleep.
But then she cries out sharply, hands shoving the pillow away from her.
Heart in my throat, I cross to her and try to wake her. I call her quietly, trying to avoid directly touching her. At first, she doesn’t rouse, only cries
silently, begging with an anguish I haven’t seen before. Her hands grab onto my forearms, nails scouring my skin.
“Paloma,” I call, louder than I mean to, shaking her upper body as I lean over her, trying to keep her from thrashing so violently she falls from the bed.
She wakes up, eyes wide before another terrified noise chokes from her and she tries to scurry backward away from me, smacking her head into the headboard in her haste.
“Shit.” I rear back, slapping the nightstand between our beds to flick on the lamp. My hands hover in the air, heart in my throat at the image of her beneath me, curling slightly into a ball while fat tears make their way down
her reddened cheeks.
“Bennett?”
“Hey,” I say, voice calm and gentle. “Just me. I’m here—are you—”
I reach for her and she flinches back, scrambling away from me before sprinting o the bed and into the bathroom with a hard slam of the door.
I feel a bit like throwing up.
I stand before I mean to, stepping up to the bathroom door like I might knock. I can hear mued, choked sobs from the other side. The sink runs for a long while. Then silence.
She emerges slowly, eyes pointed toward her feet.
It feels wrong, towering over her while she’s so vulnerable. I want to hold her, but I don’t know how.
Her face is soaked with tears and water that she’s splashed herself with, wetting the collar of her T-shirt. She’s still clearly distraught, but more embarrassed now. Paloma tries to pull at the now-tangled knot of her braid, gripping and yanking hard enough that new tears spring forward.
“Let me,” I try softly.
Like a reprimanded child, she sulks as she moves forward.
My hand threads through her hair, pulling gently at the braid she was wearing and loosening the strands. It smells like her—juniper and fresh laundry—and feels soft like silk against my fingers.
The pad of my thumb swipes against the back of her neck, igniting a shiver through her body. But she only leans farther into me. Her body droops more
heavily as my palms ghost over her shoulders and slender neck, into the base of her scalp.
Paloma relaxes almost instantly, hiccupped cries the only bit leftover as her
eyes blink back open slowly.
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” I murmur, tucking her tighter against me. Like that can stop the waves of self-hatred I can almost feel rolling o her. “Don’t. It’s okay, Paloma.
Just breathe.”
She follows my directions easily, as if just the command is enough to settle her.
