Page 15

“Still playing hockey, I see.”

“Every day.”

“And after?”

Blair pulls my ear again. Charlie’s inside yelling for the cat. My sister is telling her son to leave Rosemary alone. And I’m standing on the porch, with my niece trying to rip my ear from my head, while my brother-in-law wants to question my five-year plan.

“Haven’t decided,” I say, and I smile at him.

Chuck hates that. He wanted the fight. He wanted to discuss the pros and cons of college sports, and remind me how, unless I’m going professional, I’ll need a job that pays the bills and affords me a comfortable life – like his.

You know the one his family has paid for.

I get Blair’s hand out of my ear, then set her down so she can chase her brother, who is chasing the cat, who has gone under the couch where nobody can reach her. My sister stands there with her hands on her hips.

“So who is she?” she asks.

“Who’s who?”

“Devon.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

I take my jacket off the kitchen chair to take it to my room, and something falls out of the inside pocket onto the floor.

White. Round. Fluffy.

I pick it up. It’s her tail, the little puff of it, torn free at the clip. I don’t remember putting it in my pocket. I remember putting my hands on her, and I remember her laughing into my neck when the snaps gave, and I remember thinking there’s no way I get to keep any part of this.

I’m still holding it when my phone lights up on the counter. Not Hogan this time. A number I don’t have saved, with a Mississippi area code.

Hey! It’s Steph. Hogan’s girlfriend. He said not to do this so obviously I’m doing it.

Then, before I can decide what my hands are doing: Do you want her number? I have it right here.

Three dots. They stop. They start again.

She’d kill me. But I think she’d forgive me.

I stand in my mom’s kitchen with a bunny tail in one hand, and all I have to do is answer the text message. My sister yells at my nephew to get out from under the couch while Chuck is asking my sister for breakfast.

The bunny . . . she set the rules from the start. Fake names, masks on, nothing after last night. It’s what she wanted. She grinned when she said it. One night only.

If I go behind her back and get her number, I take the power away from her.

I pick up my phone and type: Don’t. Don’t tell me her number, don’t tell me her name, don’t send me a picture. We made a deal.

The dots come up right away, but I block the number.

“Uncle Dev! She won’t come out!”

“That’s ’cause you’re yelling at her, bud.” I shove the tail in my pocket and sit on the floor with Blair. She wobbles toward me, falling into my arms.

Behind me in the kitchen, the phone buzzes against the counter. Once. Then again. I suspect it’s Hogan, wanting to know why his girlfriend’s messages aren’t coming through.

I don’t get up.

The night needs to stay where we left it, back at the hotel, under our masks.