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Wyatt looks between us. “Should we check on Theo?”

“Theo’s on the porch,” I say.

“Is he in porch mode or leaving mode?”

“Porch mode. He’s got a drink.”

“Good.”

He heads for the back of the house. Cash watches him go and then looks at the living room like he’s deciding whether to go back into it, which means he’s going back into it. He glances at me once first.

“You’re good?” he says.

“I’m good.”

He holds the look for a half second in the way Cash does when he’s done being funny and is checking the actual answer. Then he nods and goes, and the hallway empties out, and I stand there for a moment with Wyatt’s beer and the smell of too-sweet perfume finally fading into the rest of the party.

I hope she’s worth it.

I don’t know why I’m still thinking about that. There’s no it. There’s nothing.

I roll my shoulder. The ache is there. I breathe around it and go find my team.

Theo has found something worth staying for.

He’s at the far end of the back porch, a drink in each hand — one of which presumably belongs to someone else — and he’s talking. Actually talking, not performing the conversational minimum that Theo usually contributes to social events. He’s talking to a girl with red hair who I don’t recognize, who is laughing at something he said, which is remarkable enough that I stop in the doorway to confirm I’m seeing it correctly.

Theo Mercer.

Making a person laugh.

At his own party.

On purpose.

Wyatt appears at my shoulder. “When did that happen?”

“Couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes ago.”

“That’s fast for Theo.”

“I know.”

We stand there for a second, which is probably rude, and then Theo notices us and does the thing where his face doesn’t change but something behind his eyes says if either of you says a single word, I will make your life genuinely difficult. Message received. We go back inside.

The party has found its late-night rhythm — the music louder, the rooms warmer, the crowd a little more honest about what it came for. I move through it easier than I did two hours ago. The hallway thing has settled into the back of my shoulders, where things go when I’ve processed them as much as I’m going to tonight.

I end up in the kitchen with Wyatt and a guy from the lacrosse team whose name I always want to be Ryan and isn’t. We talk about the preseason schedule and the Atlantic Conference and whether Whitmore has a real shot at the Frozen Four this year, which is the kind of conversation I can run on about thirty percent of my brain while the rest of it does what it needs to do.

“Captain,” the lacrosse guy says. “What do you think about the new assistant coach?”

“Walsh?” I say. “Good. He’s got a good eye.”

“O’Grady brought him in?”

“O’Grady recruited him. Played for Minnesota in the nineties. He knows what he’s doing.”

“You trust him?”