Page 18

Xander, October 28th

T here’s no alarm to wake me, but consciousness rushes me as brutal as a D-man ramming me into the boards. With it come the memories of last night. I turn over with a groan and bury my head in my pillow.

Maybe if I hide a little longer, I won’t have to deal with the knowledge that I kissed my best friend last night.

Of course it doesn’t work, because now that I’ve thought about it, the impressions won’t leave my mind. Pulling my blanket over my head doesn’t make me forget how I buried my fingers in Nate’s soft hair, and the way his lips felt pressed against mine.

Awareness of his presence across the room slowly sneaks its way into my brain. It’s not entirely unexpected, since I vaguely remember being woken up by someone stumbling around our room in the dark. Briefly I had contemplated flicking on the light, the idea like a hazy dream that I swatted away.

Bringing up the kiss in the middle of the night, when we were both tired and half-drunk, was not a move I wanted to make.

Also, I was pissed that I wasted two hours searching for Nate after he bolted, texting him several times, only to eventually call it quits when he didn’t answer. Not that I was in any mood to party after that, but since Nate had the keys to the car I had to find another ride.

Nate on the other hand doesn’t seem to share my turmoil at all. He’s peacefully sleeping, even snoring softly, unaware of the mental battles I’m fighting. Every soft breath Nate exhales somehow makes it far enough to tickle the hairs on the back of my neck.

Now that I’m fully awake, I wish that I had put this behind me last night.

But how exactly does one bring up a kiss to their best friend? Should I apologize again? Probably, right?

I groan and roll onto my back, rubbing my eyes and then my temples, keeping my fingers buried in my hair and pressing my palms over my eyes.

And he kissed me back! I can’t exactly apologize for that, can I?

This is getting me nowhere. Feeling the tentative tugs of curiosity, I glance across the room—and start when I catch Nate looking right at me.

Despite his ruffled hair, he appears far more awake than I feel, pushing off his blanket without a care in the world.

“Morning!” he chirps with a smile, all cheer, then swings his legs over the side of his bed, getting up with a hop.

I sit up fast enough to make my brain feel as scrambled as my stomach. By the time I’ve recovered, Nate is already on his way out the door, arms stretched over his head. His humming trails down the hallway and then echoes out of the bathroom.

“What the fuck?” I mutter to myself as I lean back against the wall, legs dangling over the edge of the bed. It feels like I’ve woken up in a different reality. Or maybe I went back in time, Groundhog Day style, and Nate will come back in and tell me that he has a good feeling about beating the Wildcats tonight.

But no, my phone tells me it’s quarter past nine on Saturday morning—and that I’m late for my morning workout.

I take a deep breath and slide out of my bed, stumbling when my feet hit the ground. I find a pair of sweatpants and do a sniff test on the shirt I’ve slept in, deciding that it’ll do.

I manage to evade Nate by slowly sipping a cup of coffee until he’s done brushing his teeth, rushing to hide away in the bathroom when he goes back to our room.

The shower feels good but doesn’t clear my head. I’m glad that, when I’m shuffling back into our room, I catch a glimpse of Nate making himself breakfast in the kitchen. I still hurry with getting dressed, suddenly worried about being walked in on with my pants around my ankles. I’m done in a minute, but then hover awkwardly around my side of the room, unsure what to do now.

I could just go and join my best friend in the kitchen, but my stomach is in knots, so I don’t feel like eating.

Also, I don’t want witnesses to my nervousness. Especially since the conversation I imagine I'm about to have with Nate feels like one to have in private. The whole ordeal of “sorry I kissed you last night, I don’t want to ruin our friendship so please don’t stop being my friend—but also why did you kiss me back?” is not something I want all of our dorm-mates to overhear.

Frustrated, I groan and sink down into my desk chair, only to jump right back up when the door opens.

“Whoa,” Nate laughs, raising his hands as he walks in. “Bad timing?”

“What– no?” I can’t help but feel like he’s mocking me somehow, with his good mood, his calmness; generally, with how unaffected he is. I guess he means well, putting on a front on my behalf? Or maybe he can’t even remember? He was drunk after all.

But drunk enough to forget I kissed him? To forget that he kissed me?

I lean against the edge of my desk, carefully crossing and then uncrossing my arms, pushing my hands into the pockets of my sweatpants. I’m unsure how to stand all of a sudden. I clear my throat but speak to the bookshelves rather than my roommate. “I, uh…I think we should talk.”

“Oh man, are you pregnant?”

“What?”

Nate just laughs again, reaching out to ruffle my still wet hair as he passes me on his way back to his own desk. I just stare as Nate hops up to sit on the tabletop, feet swinging.

Something is off about his face, but I can’t put my finger on it. I can’t muster up the strength to control my own features, causing his smile to slowly slip away.

“Uh, you know, because you’re all serious and...nevermind, what’s up?”

“I...I just...I’m sorry.” I try to ignore the way my stomach lurches. What if I’m messing up big time by reminding him about last night? What if he really had forgotten or just written it off as a drunk mistake? And now here I am, dragging it back into the light of day.

“Oh, okay…what for?”

“For…last night?” I say slowly, then let out an annoyed huff, crossing my arms. “If you’re making fun of me, cut it out right now, I’m...I really mean it, Nate.”

“I’m not! I just have no idea what you’re talking about, Xan.”

“I’m talking about,” the words feel like a too-large bite, stuck painfully in my throat. I take a few steps up and down. It takes three paces before I manage to push what I need to say out of my mouth.

“I’m sorry that I kissed you.”

“You what?!” Finally, it seems like Nate is on the same page I am; his eyes go wide and he almost slips off the table. It doesn’t make me feel better, but at least he isn’t joking anymore.

The silence that’s settling between us feels both fitting and suffocating.

I hate that I can feel my cheeks heat up. I’m not embarrassed. Nate is important to me after all; he’s a great friend, calming and caring and handsome too. Not to mention that there were a lot of new sides of him coming out these past two weeks. Sides that I hadn’t known, but that I do find attractive.

Still, I don’t want to push my sudden attraction on my best, and very straight, friend. I have to believe that one kiss, no matter how spectacular or unexpectedly reciprocated, won’t break our friendship.

“I…” Nate shakes his head, starts again, gapes again.

I give him all the time he needs.

Finally, he raises a hand to brush his hair off of his forehead. For a second there’s a shadow around his left eye, but then his hair falls down and covers it. He takes a deep breath.

“You didn’t kiss me.”

“Oh, come on! Yeah, pretending it didn’t happen might make this easier, but we need to talk about it before we can just…” I make a gesture to signify sweeping the whole mess under a rug.

“No, you’re not hearing me.” Nate is looking everywhere except at me, plucking at a loose thread on his t-shirt. “You, uh...you didn’t kiss me .”

I manage a short huff, bewildered.

“Uhm, if I didn’t kiss you, I kissed someone who–” looks exactly like you . I don’t finish the sentence, my mouth hanging half-open as I stare at my roommate.

My roommate, who has a twin brother.

I’m such an idiot.

I fumble for my desk chair and hold onto the backrest of it. My head is swirling with all those sudden changes that had seemed so weird and that I had quietly accepted or explained away: by Nate being ill; by thinking he just wanted to try something different with his hair, his glasses, his clothes; by assuming he’d been mad at me. The list goes on, unrolling in my head like one of those stupidly long grocery receipts.

It all falls into place now that I’ve been given the answer. Like shifting all the letters one space to the side and getting an entirely different word out of them.

It hadn’t been Nate at all.

“I kissed Nicko?! ” I hear myself say. I feel like the shittiest friend who can’t even tell that it hasn’t been his best friend he’s been living with for–

“You switched places? Since when?! ”

“Just since I had that stomach bug, I swear.”

“Jesus Christ Nate, that was two weeks ago!”

“I had to do something!” Nate insists with a fervor I didn’t expect, making me look at him in disbelief.

“You had to switch places with your twin? What the fuck for?”

“He needed this!”

“He needed to what, fuck with my head? What the hell are you talking about?!” It’s genuinely making my head swim. There’s no good explanation why Van der Hoff would have to live Nate’s life, why he’d have to sleep in our room, be at that damn party—and play on our team!

“He’s my brother! I had to help him! He lost his starting spot! And you saw how down he was.”

I shake my head, refusing to believe what I’m hearing. Running my hands through my hair seems to get the thoughts to seep into my brain that it hasn’t been my best friend I’ve been clicking so well with on the ice but his asshole twin brother.

“Fuck Nate, you broke the rules! To...to make your brother feel better? You...I can’t believe you did this!“ I can’t help but shake my head again. My earlier upset stomach has made room for the angry heat rising in my chest, clawing at the back of my throat. “And behind my back too? What the fuck!” It’s starting to really sink in that I’ve been living with essentially a stranger for two weeks. I thought I was going crazy because “Nate” behaved so oddly toward me. No wonder now, since his brother hates my guts. A mutual feeling really.

“You– I’m sorry, but…Nicko wouldn’t even have done it if I hadn’t told him there’d be scouts at the game and–”

“Scouts? What scouts?”

Nate is standing right next to me now, looking up at me—and stupidly all I can think of is that his eyes aren’t as green as his brother’s. I also notice that there actually is a bit of swelling around his left eye. The skin has the yellow-green tint of a still healing bruise.

Reflexively I want to ask what the hell happened, but then I lock the thought away. He made me look like an idiot and lied to me for two weeks, all because his brother was being an entitled brat.

“I told Nicko there’d be scouts at the game against the Grizzlies, that they had to see me play,” Nate’s words barely make it through the blood pounding in my ears. I can’t decide if it’s anger or shame.

“But there weren’t any.”

“I know! I just– and I was right! It was all in his head! He played insanely well! Hell, he scored three goals in two games!”

“For the wrong fucking team! Christ, Nate!” I throw up my hands and then rake them through my hair once more, turning my back on my best friend as I pace over to the window and then back again.

I still barely manage to face him. It’s all swirling together, the hurt over our fight, the anger at the realization of what he has done, the confusion over the sudden attraction, and the kiss last night. I don’t know what to do with any of it.

It’s safest to focus on the anger.

“If anyone ever finds out you’ll both get thrown off the team! Maybe even banned from the NHL!”

“Then don’t fucking tell anyone!” Nate grabs for my arm. His eyes are glinting with fury.

I pull myself free, growling. “Don’t make it sound like I’m the crazy one for being upset that you broke the damn rules! And made me live with your brother!”

Nate lets his hands sink, looking me over with raised brows.

“Apparently it wasn’t that terrible for you.”

I can only stare at him in disbelief. Even shaking my head a few times doesn’t make his words fall into place. I had always thought he was the reasonable one. The sane one. Not just between us, but between the twins too. But apparently, they do share the asshole gene.

It’s a hard thing to find out about my best friend.

Almost as hard as coming to terms with the fact that I kissed fucking Nicholas van der Hoff. My stomach lurches again, and I clasp a hand over my mouth. The slight bruise of where Nicko bit my lip pulses softly.

“What the fuck , Nate.”

“I’m just saying! Don’t act like this is some terrible thing that I did!”

“It is! You– I was honestly freaking out for a week and a half! When we...I mean he and I fought– And– and this morning too! Not to mention last night!” I just barely manage to keep my voice down. My hands shake when I pull a hoodie out of the wardrobe. “And that’s entirely besides the rules you broke!”

“Oh, forget about the fucking rules! It’s not like it was the Frozen Four. It’ll be fine, and next week I’ll play again.”

I stop on my way out the door, Nate’s words hitting me like shards, bringing the entire confusing mix of feelings to boil over. Fuck him for making me go through all of that.

“Oh, this is all just so easy for you Van der Hoffs, isn’t it?” I grab the doorknob so tightly I’m half expecting my fingers to squeeze the metal together and leave my handprint behind.

“Come on, that’s not what I–”

“No, but it’s what it feels like!” There’s a whole lot more I want to throw at him, get him to understand how angry it makes me that of course I can’t say anything to Coach, to anyone! Because no matter how angry I am right now, Nate is still my best friend, and I would never risk his career. But I’m also fuming over how casually he handles this; how easy it is for him to break the rules while I’m constantly worried that something I say or do will turn me into The Bad Example. The one the bigots will point to when they want to argue for less “politics” in their sport.

While I’m digesting my anger, there’s an entire other part of me slowly rearing its head. The tiny piece that’s upset, confused, relieved , that it’s not Nate I’ve been crushing on.

Just his annoying twin.

I’ve been standing there for far too long, so I finally shoulder my way out of our room without another word. At least the weights at the gym won’t lie to me.