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The storm touches down mid-afternoon, and when Silverr goes to take in the laundry, she finds herself standing in the summer-warm downpour, holding two Boston University Terriers shirts, dizzy, breathing heavy through the humidity. The red's soaked into a dark maroon, and her head kind of hurts from thinking so hard: This is the last time.
A couple drinks deep and she gets forgetful, apparently. Of the weather forecast, that she hung the clothes out to dry this morning, that she hasn't actually made her peace with Doog maybe-probably never wearing BU colours again.
She'll be in the beachy blues and beige of the Rays next time Silverr sees her and blue isn't her colour—well, everything looks good on Doog; it's just that red is, like—you don't mess with perfect, right?
"Are you, like, okay," Silverr hears, distantly, and she realises she's just been letting the rain soak her through. She turns around and finds Doog waiting under the verandah like a normal person.
"'Course," Silverr says into the wind, then takes the two BU shirts and the rest of their stuff back up the porch stairs.
"You got the…" Doog looks her up and down. "Laundry."
Silverr walks right past her and into the house. Leaves the hamper to deal with later. Then she drops onto the couch, ignoring Doog's protests about her getting the nice throw blanket wet, feeling petty, feeling weird about feeling petty, feeling all too much for, like, a Tuesday afternoon. She wants to be on the ice so she can skate laps until she's too tired to think, or until maybe San Jose decides they want her, too—
She tips back what's left of her vodka soda. Aims the empty can at the recycling bin in the corner and misses by a foot.
Doog goes out of her way to pick it up, which makes the knot in Silverr's chest pull tighter.
"Are you okay," Doog says again, and Silverr draws her legs against her body, curls her arms around them, props her chin on the tops of her knees. Her shirt is tacky against her skin with rainwater, clinging like sweat, and the jolt of adrenaline congealing into a pit in her stomach. Fuck, all she needs is a camera in her face.
Doog frowns. "Do you want to change?"
"Only if you do," Silverr says, kind of petulantly.
"What?"
"You should," she says, and untangles herself onto her feet.
Down the hall, her room is next to Doog's, opposite to the two for Reign and Fein. It's been this way since the four of them moved in together their sophomore year. She imagines the house suspended like a set of scales and if the room next to hers empties everything crashing out of balance. Or maybe they'd just tape posters to telephone poles and find another person to cover the rent. She doesn't fucking know.
She finds the things she wants in the closet and brings them back to the living room. Doog makes an indignant sound and says, "So you did take it."
Silverr tosses a team hoodie at Doog's face in response.
"Put it on," she says, as she tugs her soaked T-shirt over her head. Doog is just, watching, the hoodie laying untouched in her lap, and Silverr thinks about chirping her about, like, locker room etiquette, dude, but fuck that, she's into the way Doog looks. Kind of admiring. Kind of like she wants to reach out and keep her and, shit, if it's not nice for it to be the other way around for once.
Doog takes a closer look at the hoodie and says, "You gave me the wrong one," but she's already got it on, so whatever. Red does suit her.
Silverr smooths the hoodie down, running her hands over the letters, the little cartoon of a pitbull terrier. The screen printing is peeling with the washes, and little flecks of paint come off on her fingertips when she picks at it.
"So we can match this last time," she says, joking, but her voice gets kind of strained. Doog's expression twists dangerously close to pity, which is bad, or guilt, which is worse. "No, no, no, I'm happy for you, I'm serious."
"I know you are," Doog says, in the level tone she would use to wrangle a small child. Or a dog.
"You'll be great. San Jose won't know what, like, hit them."
Silverr tucks her nose briefly into the collar of the hoodie, breathing into the fleece, feels her own breath damp and warm.
It smells distantly like the one fragrance Doog wears sometimes, this warm woodsy scent, but more just like hockey ice. Everything smells like hockey ice in this house; it's probably been soaked into the upholstery, walked into the floorboards, and shit. Holds the whole place together like mortar.
"Come to the home opener?" Doog asks, eventually. "I can get you tickets. Good ones. And, like, I'll cover the flight."
Doog doesn't need to do all that for Silverr to come watch her play, but she lets it hang because she can.
With the Rays, Doog will be on a professional player's contract the way she deserves and the salary that comes with it, which is still about the amount that, like, a desk job at one of the San Jose tech startups could earn her. But it's way better than the cut they get from the NCAA; plus, a player like her, she'll get CCM or Bauer, one of those bigshot names, locked down easy—point is. Doog can pay for Silverr's flight, if she wants. Maybe buy her one of those twenty-dollar beers at the arena when she goes.
"As, like, your WAG?" she says, just to be a dick, as she cracks open another can and wipes her hands dry on her shorts. The stuff's room temperature now but it does its job.
Doog chokes. Silverr says, "Wear the jersey, and all that."
"Stop," Doog says, sounding kind of upset, like, seriously. Silverr snaps her mouth shut, swallows, hears her throat click. She didn’t need the reminder that they could stay friends and circle each other and fuck around when the lights are off and never see each other wake up forever, that Silverr was easy enough to be satisfied if it were forever.
But then there was San Jose. And that's unfair, Silverr knows. Even if she were, like, actually girlfriend material, and worth, like, dinner dates, and anniversaries, and showing off to everyone and shit, Doog would've still been drafted to the team and obviously she would've gone.
Silverr downs a third of her lukewarm drink, lets the bitter sit against her tongue for a moment, wash over her molars. Wonders if she leaned over and kissed her, whether Doog would let it happen or push her away, her nose wrinkling, saying, you taste like vodka.
Doog doesn't really do alcohol, so Silverr's just kind of getting drunk and emotional by herself. The drunk part is fine. She'd just been hoping she wouldn't be alone in the latter. Whatever.
Of course Doog'll be good to San Jose. Their inaugural season had been rocky, to put it nicely, but the moment they were out of playoffs contention they set their sights on the draft and played some, just, decent fucking hockey and racked up the points to secure themselves number one pick.
It's worse that San Jose will be good to Doog. She hates the New England humidity but likes the hot summers. She'll be an hour away from home instead of on the opposite coast, and she'll never say that she misses California because it was always that or hockey but now she doesn't have to choose.
"Can we do something," Silverr announces.
Doog leans back, stretching out her arms. The movement reveals a tiny sliver of skin between the hem of her Terriers hoodie and her waistband that's more dangerous than seeing her half stripped-down in the locker room.
"Alright," Doog says. "You got ideas?"
"Um." Silverr tears her eyes away and squints at the blurry text on the can instead. "No."
Doog laughs, and Silverr feels this little curl of satisfaction low in her gut.
She decides they're too far apart so she swings her legs over Doog's lap, and Doog protests, "Hey," and grabs for Silverr's ankle to shove her off. Silverr jerks and pulls her foot back, then scrambles up to knee-walk across the bit of couch that separates them until she's kind of hovering over Doog, who smiles lazily up at her.
It's the same expression that takes over her face when she scores a beauty, dangles past the defence and makes an Olympic starter goalie look like a complete sieve, knowing the shit she just pulled.
Silverr likes that she's got about four (three, Doog insists, like a liar) inches on her, that Doog has to look up to meet her gaze when they're standing, and if she ducked down a little Silverr would be able to tuck her chin over the crown of her head. Not like Doog would ever let her—she stands like she's got a rod up her spine when she's out anywhere, squares her shoulders and lifts her eyes.
Silverr also likes—then Doog grabs her by the arm and yanks her down, holding her to the cushions, and Silverr yelps, goes sprawling—she likes that Doog can, will, push her around a little. She likes probably anything, as long as it's Doog doing it and her she's doing it to.
Now she's kind of laying over Doog so she jams her elbow into her side and also likes how Doog hisses in response, and Silverr gets that arm pinned too, shoved against the divot of her back.
Silverr puts a little pressure against the hands keeping her still, struggles a little, just to test, and no give. Jesus, she thinks, this syrupy-slow, shivery pulse stirring beneath her skin. This is good. They could stay here with Doog's hands on her forever, or at least until, like, tomorrow.
They're nice hands. Span wide enough when she spreads her fingers to make Silverr go dizzy. There's a rough callus in the junction between her right thumb and palm from where she braces her stick. Silverr pressed a kiss to it once in a haze and never again because it was too, like, sweet. Goal-scoring, silky-fucking-smooth, championship-winning hands.
"You're being weird," Doog tells her.
"I'm not," Silverr says, muffled against the throw.
"You literally are," Doog says. Kind of jostles at her hold on Silverr's wrists.
"Gonna let me up?"
"What's wrong?"
"You know what's fucking wrong," Silverr says. "You're going to California, and I'm not gonna see you for months, and I—" she cuts herself off.
"You, what?"
Silverr shakes her head. "You didn't even pack any of your BU shit."
Doog goes silent and her grip slackens. Silverr wrests away, sits up, shaking feeling back into her fingers. Her knees are sinking into the gap between the cushions. The world has like, slanted a couple more degrees to the left, enough for her to be thrown off but still look like she's insane when she insists, Don't you see it? Don't any of you care?
"What do you want from me?" Doog says, all quiet. "Because I can't, like, stay."
"I'm not asking you to," Silverr says tetchily.
Maybe Doog will hate it. Maybe she'll play terrible and never win a game and she'll terminate her contract and come back to Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts, this beautiful magical bit of land that's managed to hold everything Silverr needed until now. But that's when she's deep in her feelings and stupid fucking resentful, staring into the dark, listening for a sound through the wall.
So she'll just hope to wake up tomorrow and find Logan blown off the map; a sinkhole opening under the tarmac maybe, or a freak earthquake localised to two-and-a-half kilometres east of Boston Common—like, she's not picky. That's the kind of thought that makes her feel—seem—all pathetic, and shit, but it's a better trade-off than selfish.
"Okay?" Doog says, flatly.
"Would you take me on a date," Silverr says, and watches Doog's eyes go wide, "if I ask."
"Silverr," Doog begins.
"Or tell me to fuck off. You can do that. You can say whatever you want. I don't care."
"I'm leaving tomorrow," she says.
Silverr chews at her tongue. "I know."
This sort of distressed look settles over Doog's face, and then, "Why didn't you say something sooner?"
"When? Like, that time you told me to chill on the celly?" Silverr blinks. "Called me a good friend in front of all those media people? So they didn't get the wrong fucking idea? What do you mean, why didn't I say something?"
"I can't—let them think, if—you know I can't," Doog mumbles. "I thought that's what you wanted, too."
"Well it's not," Silverr says, lamely, then stops short.
She sits back on her feet, her throat clogging up.
Doog's eyes flick over to her. "You remember when we won the championship?"
Does she.
There had been fog over the Charles the morning of the game, settling eerie out the car window. Cinematic-looking shit, right out of this movie Doog half-watched with her two nights before, so Silverr'd scribbled BELIEVE down the side of her grip tape like she was in one.
They were a team on a miracle run against the defending title-holders. When the timer ticked to zero, that four-nothing shutout, she made eye contact with Doog across the ice and it should've been big; she was all but pleading for something to shift, right then and there—the moment it all made sense, swelling music, catharsis. Doog just hugged her, one hand dragging down her nape, said, "God, I love you," because they don't do that.
"Like, a little," Silverr says.
"We won, then you came up to me, I just," Doog trails off, tugging at a stray thread on the throw, "I kind of wanted to kiss you, right there. You might've let me. I think."
Silverr swallows down the static in her mouth. "Why didn't you?"
Doog pauses. "You were still wearing the cage."
"I could've taken it off."
She shrugs. The thread snaps beneath her fingers.
So it goes.
"You know it doesn't need to be, fucking, centre ice at SAP," Silverr says, heart wild. "I don't want—we don't need to. What about here?"
"Then," Doog says, slowly, "then like, yeah."
It's not lifechanging, sparks or fireworks or anything, but Silverr tastes of vodka and shitty passionfruit flavouring and Doog doesn't complain, just tugs her closer with a hand on the back of her neck, warm and, like, certain. Another curls around her arm, fingertips light against her skin. These hands will take San Jose all the way, soon.
But before that—lifting the Walter Cup for her team, when Doog’s new liney will press the brim to her mouth and she'll drink from that alluring Tiffany-silver shine, filled with cheap beer, spilling over the lip, staining her jersey the colour of wet sand—before that, they won the Terriers' first ever championship title. And it's not a competition, Doog doesn't belong to San Jose like she doesn't belong to BU like she doesn't to Silverr, but Silverr was there first. That's got to mean something.
"About the opener," Silverr says, pulling away, as Doog makes a quiet, protesting sound. "I’ll, I'll go."
Doog's eyes light up, as if Silverr would've ditched for anything. The game's going to be a sellout, they'll be filling stands at SAP Centre, it's fucking insane—and she'll be telling everyone around her everything she can, That's my liney. My captain.
"We'll do dinner after," Silverr tells her. "Just us. Somewhere you like."
"Yeah. Yeah, anything you want," Doog says, breathless; Not quite, Silverr thinks; but this is bigger than just her. Most things are—she gets to have today, though. And she can keep hoping that the storm outside grounds all the flights out of Boston.