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“They coming Friday?” I ask, because he told me three weeks ago that Fairborn is an hour from where they live.

“No.” He pulls his jeans the rest of the way on. “He’s in London. And my mom has a thing.”

I pull my sweatshirt over my head. “You want me to call them?”

“Fuck you,” he says, and almost laughs, and goes into the bathroom.

My mom calls while I’m crossing the quad. I look at it for four rings. Dad, I can decline. Dad, I’ve declined twice already and turned the phone off.

I pick up. “Hey.”

“Hi, baby.” There’s background noise, a car door. “Are you walking? You sound like you’re walking.”

“I’m going to class.”

“Good. What’d you eat for breakfast?”

“Eggs. Oatmeal. Mom.”

“I’m just asking.” I can hear her doing something with her keys. “Your dad said the game was really something. He said you had a big hit.”

“It was an exhibition.”

“He said the coach put you out at the end.”

“Yeah.”

We do this for another minute, school and hockey and whether I need anything, and the whole time, there’s a thing sitting at the end of every sentence, waiting to come out.

“Dad said you two had an argument.”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t tell me what about.”

I keep walking. There’s a kid on a skateboard coming at me, and I go around him.

“He said you told him not to call you.”

“Yeah.”

She doesn’t say anything for a second. “He feels terrible, Nash.”

I knew I shouldn’t have answered this fucking call. “I have to go.”

“Nash.”

“What do you want me to say, Mom?”

“I just don’t want you making some big decision when you’re angry,” she says. “That’s all. Because you get angry, and then you—”

“I’m not coming home for winter break.”

The car door noise stops. The keys stop. It goes so quiet that I check the screen to see if she’s still there.

“Nash.”

“We play until the nineteenth anyway. I’ll stay here.”