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“You sure? My mom always says food helps you concentrate.”
“Yeah, I already ate, thanks.”
After Alexei disappears into his room, we eat our food while we watch the movie, and try not to giggle too loudly.
I show Alice out to her car. It’s dark early these days and I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I know she got home okay.
“Hey, is everything okay with him?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Your roommate?”
“Yeah, why?” I rub the back of my neck and hope it’s dark enough for her to miss how hot my cheeks are right now.
“He’s just… distant.”
“He’s always like that.”
“No, he wasn’t like that when we went ice skating, especially not with you.”
I can’t ignore the look on her face.
“Alexei’s straight okay?”
“Okay,” she holds her hands up. “Whatever you say.”
I give her a hug and go back inside, cleaning Alexei’s blender before I go to bed.
I think about knocking on his door, think about what Alice said and the kiss last night. How freaked out he was after it. Butit’s silent behind there, and he might be sleeping, so I leave him alone.
16
ALEXEI
My head’s all over the place as we go into our game against Cornell. The pressure rising now as we get closer to qualifiers. Cornell is still way above us in the standings and have outclassed us nine times out of ten when we’ve met in the past.
Being at our own rink might help, but the home crowd can only give us so much of an advantage. Everything else we have to make for ourselves.
I know my dad’s out there in the crowd, and when we skate out for the ceremonial puck drop, I spot him right away.
He’s laser-focused. Eyes on me the whole time. He makes no gesture to say hi when our eyes meet. It’s like he doesn’t wanna do anything to distract me. But just seeing him there is distracting enough.
His voice is louder when he’s there. Not his real voice. But the voice I hear in my head that sounds like him. Pointing out my mistakes so I can do better next time.
I don’t want it in there right now. I don’t want to know what it’ll say about what I did with Stef. Or how I’ve been feeling about him since he moved in.
When it was just talking to horror boy online, it was different. But Stef’s real. Very fucking real. And that makes what I’ve been trying to ignore, or at least put off, real too.
Once the game starts,we manage to keep our shit together in the opening minutes and I use the pressure as fire to push me forward. Weaving through the neutral zone, I manage to fire the puck through the screen and over the goalie’s glove to put us on the board in the first five minutes.
Cornell doesn’t let us keep the lead for long though, and two minutes later, they level the score when we get sloppy in the defensive zone.
I rally the team, letting that first goal drive me forward and hoping my enthusiasm and optimism rubs off on them.
“We’ve got this Cap.” Pawlowski says, slapping my shoulder as I skate into position for the next face-off.
Come on, you can do this, you have to do this, you need this, you cannot fuck this up, don’t be a fuck up.