This is the fifteenth installment (and, chronologically, the third) in an increasingly unwieldy fictional series. Part one is here.
In retrospect, Evan will remember that Saturday in early December of his junior year as the day the revolution began. As with most changes of regime, the catalyst was not some oppressed soul rising up to shake off chains: it was, instead, a well-off visionary who could muster a following. On paper, Evan might have been the least likely to go to the barricades, but when some teammates ask him pointed questions about the course of events in the coming weeks, he’ll shrug and say it was just how things fell into place. Over time, Evan has learned that his casual shrugs have purposes beyond the naked eye, though the only person allowed to know this secret is his co-conspirator in the plot.
“Well that was a not fun win,” Mark muses from his seat at his locker next to Evan’s. After a game on the bench Mark hasn’t bothered to shower, though he still takes his sweet time making his exit, shirtless and showing off his sculpted chest and collection of gaudy necklaces.
Mark isn’t wrong. Evan had fired home a power play goal in a 4-3 win, but the three third-period goals conceded loom over him. Their coach, uncharacteristically, has shrugged it off, said these things happen and they executed their game plan well. This leaves unspoken the obvious failing: the incumbent senior goaltender who coughed up two painfully soft goals, a second straight ugly outing that had some of the team’s top scorers trading glances and edging closer to the hyped sophomore import who is his backup.
“One rough period,” Evan offers, with a sidelong glance at the four seniors down the row from him, including the starting goalie. These boys, the hardworking and talent-poor veterans who’d survived the cuts as talented junior and sophomore classes took over more and more of the varsity roster, are already dressed, tracking every word of this conversation. Suddenly, Evan can see the looming conflagration. To his right, tensing up, a thick, short forward in clunky boots and a camo hat over short-cropped hair, his neck welling up in a bruise on his neck from a stray puck. To his left, suddenly on alert, the sculpted, shirtless pretty boy in his Air Force Ones and salmon sweats without a hair out of place in his fluffed blond coiffure.
“We outshot them. The D held up. If it weren’t for…” Mark trails off, laying his bait.
“Weren’t for what?” asks Jason Gates to Evan’s right.
“Well, I took a dumb penalty,” Evan deflects.
“We killed it no problem, bro,” says Mark. “And that cunt you cross-checked deserved it after running Nick.” There it is: the goalie’s name is in the open now. Eyes swing to Nick, one seat to Jason’s right.
“If it weren’t for what?” Jason demands.
“I’ll let you supply that answer,” says Mark. His smirk curls on the edge of his lip.
“Marky…” Evan cautions.
“So goddamn entitled,” Jason snarls. “Nick’s been to war for us. You’ve got nothing on him.” He steps around Evan and Mark shoots to his feet.
“You’ve never even seen me play, you little bitch!” Mark yells. The whole locker room freezes. At first blush his words are absurd, untested sophomore to battle-scarred senior, but six-foot Mark has a good five inches on Jason, and his chest muscles bulge as he tenses up. Evan throws himself between the them, but even as he does so, he feels the team’s whole balance of power spin around him.
“Shut the fuck up!” Jason yells back.
“That all you got, Carhartt boy? You gonna lie to your friend and say that showing was okay? Or are y’all just a bunch of nepo kids slapping backs and making up bullshit about how this all works? Fighting for the lost cause, even though reality’s moved on. Might as well get some Confederate flags for your pickup truck, you already got the look down. You get off to that kind of shit, bruh?”
Jason staggers under Mark’s machine gun fire. The retaliatory vulgarities, though loud, simply die in the room. Evan still holds him back, but it’s hardly necessary.
“Sorry, Nicky, nothing personal,” Mark says, pasting a fake grin on his face. “Just tryna light a fire under you. But you could get better friends. Might get caught with this one’s dip tins in your car if you keep hanging with him.”
“Dude, what the fuck?” Nick asks, shaking his head. “I was trying to…nah. It’s not worth it. C’mon, Jay.” He claps a hand on Jason’s shoulder and guides him out of the locker room. Evan’s heart rate slowly settles down, and he turns to Mark, who surveys his audience, nonplussed.
“Not cool,” murmurs someone on the other side of the room.
“Prolly got a bit extra there,” Mark admits. “Sorry, boys. But you gotta know I’ll always stand up for what I believe in. And it ain’t cocky if it’s true.” He tugs on his team sweatshirt, parks a cap on his head at a jaunty angle, and makes his exit.
Evan watches Mark go out of the corner of his eye. He pulls things in and out of his bag, aimless, forgotten as small camps form around him. The remaining seniors to Evan’s right mutter among themselves, and a few others cross the room to join them. To his left, a few JV kids close ranks, the powerless bystanders in a brewing war. Across the way the team’s most skilled players are trading nervous looks, their initial enthusiasm for the promising young goalie now troubled. Just one person notices Evan on his island: Brody, the team manager, who slides over and helps him make sense of his gear.
“I didn’t know he was like that,” he whispers.
Evan pauses. He wants to agree but finds an unexpected honesty rising up within him, in need of an outlet.
“I did.”
“Really?”
“I’ve gotten to know him. I think you know that. And there’s a real good side of him. But he’s also been through, what, a girl a month since he moved here? And his family story…it’s not surprising.”
“He’s everything we’ve been trying to get rid of here, isn’t he.”
Evan shrugs, loath to admit that, yes, Mark’s display is counter to everything this team has tried to instill in its culture after the locker room brawls and weeknight parties of previous years. Brody stares at him expectantly as the locker room empties out behind him.
“Want to just chill? I’d get it if you don’t want to go to Zack’s.”
“I don’t. But you should. Distract them if it turns into a bitchfest.”
“You’d be better at that than I am.”
“I might try to talk to Mark. Someone has to.”
“People know you’re tight with him, though. You gotta be careful.”
“Tell them I’m just gonna be with Bridget. They expect that by now anyway.”
Brody shakes his head at him but sighs in acceptance. “Tell me how it goes, okay?”
“Yeah. Course.” By now Evan’s bag is ready and he heads straight out the door without a backward glance at Brody. The guilt begins as soon as he’s in the hallway and begins to process: what, exactly, is he doing? This situation is s black and white as it gets. Brody has just offered him a night of companionship, of exactly the commiseration he’s always wanted in this world, first impossible to find and recently available only in a ridiculous, egomaniacal move-in who just alienated his entire team.
Evan is so lost in his thoughts that he almost trips over the gaggle of seven-year-olds contorting themselves in the arena lobby. Only when he looks up does he see why they’re all bent to one side: they are synchronized in matching the stretches of the goalie who holds court in their midst.
“Secret to great goaltending is all positioning,” Mark tells the boys. “Anytime you see a goalie make a crazy diving save? That’s slop. He’s just making up for being out of position. The best never get there in the first place. Make it look easy.” He snaps a picture of himself amid his adulatory crowd, framed just so to catch a group of onlooking girls who giggle at his display in the background. Mark pops out of his stretch and swings to Evan’s side.
“Let em try to say I’m the selfish one when I post that,” he whispers, smirk back in place. “You know I’m playin, right? If you can’t move heaven, raise hell. Got a nice wine bottle and some gummies if you wanna swing over.”
Evan’s eyes dart about the lobby and land on Jason and Nick, who are watching him from by the doors with narrowed eyes.
“Uh…sorry bro. Gonna hang with Bridget tonight. Maybe next weekend?” He tries to shuffle off at a pace that is neither too slow for his teammates nor too fast for Mark, but when his eyes alight on Bridget, head buried in her phone in a corner, he bounds over to her and wraps her in a hug.
“What did I do to deserve that?” she asks as she narrowly rescues the phone from escaping her fingers.
“You just were you,” Evan says in relief. He bores his eyes into hers, a refuge from judgment, and decides he won’t tell her one word of the locker room drama. Bridget brushes his wet hair into place and meets his gaze, her hazel eyes aglow. “I just want you tonight. Nothing more, nothing less. We don’t even need to do anything. I just want…you.”
“Third wheel life, here I come,” a blasé voice rips through the reverie. Evan had completely missed Bridget’s best friend Jackie standing right next to them, a feat considering her height and her cascading blonde hair and her on-point halter top that outclasses the rest of the lobby. He coaxes her into the hug, though she pulls the three of them out before long.
“Jackie and I were going to binge watch dating shows,” Bridget says. “You really want to join?”
“Of course.” Evan then stops to ponder this arrangement, deflates, and deflects. “None of those dudes are as hot as me, it’ll be good for my ego.” Bridget laughs at his joke, but Jackie’s eyes are elsewhere, and he traces her gaze across the lobby toward the goalie who has just now shaken his admirers and is mentally undressing the best catch in the whole room. The way Jackie’s gaze lingers on Mark turns Evan’s stomach in ways he cannot fully explain.
Bridget’s dad collects the three of them and drives them to her house. Evan gamely laughs at the doltish hunks in the dating show, but his mind is elsewhere, and Jackie’s presence keeps him from cuddling too closely with Bridget. Jackie fields stray messages all night; are they from Mark? Evan’s phone, meanwhile, goes off like a lightning show. The hockey team dissects the drama and plans its postgame gathering in discordant jolts, but he feels so isolated from that world. Brody demands to know how his détente with Mark is unfolding, and Mark himself unleashes a barrage of media, from videos of himself with his fan club to none-too-subtle musings on the importance on belief in oneself when others try to tear one down. Evan turns off his notifications and shoves the phone in his pocket. He wishes he could nod off here on the couch.
A hand sneaks down beneath the blanket he shares with Bridget. Evan feels it ease across his lower back, where it softly massages away his tension. Somehow, she knows. And rather than interrogate his troubled thoughts, rather than lapse into some cliché, she just shows him why she is there. He wants to pounce on her, kiss every inch of her, make love to her like they’ve never done before. Just what he needed, some unfulfilled sexual desire to add to his soup of anxiety.
A few hours later, Bridget’s mom enters the basement rec room and tells them to wrap up their evening of brain rot. Her eyes linger on the blanket Evan and Bridget share, and Evan can’t help but feel her judgment, her worry that this mop-haired jock, for all his bashful sweet talk, just wants to deflower her daughter. Little does she know that ship sailed months ago.
“I made your mom some banana bread,” she tells Evan after they head for the kitchen. “We should do dinner again, the five of us.” She smiles at Evan as if he’s part of the family and goes to summon her husband to drive the two visitors home. Now he feels guilty about assuming she was judging him, layer upon layer of confusion compounding and leaving him in a rut.
“Hey.” He looks at Bridget beaming up at him and realizes Jackie has retreated to the bathroom. Finally, they are alone, there in the soft lights of a galley kitchen in an old Duluth home. This time, the hand slides down the front of his sweats.
“Oh fuck,” he murmurs and extends a hand to return the favor. “I want you so bad.”
“You’re needy tonight, aren’t you?”
“How obvious was I?”
“More than usual, that’s for sure.”
Evan laughs. “Sorry. There was some locker room crap after the game today. I’ll tell you about it some other time. Tonight, I’m just looking for an escape.”
“Wish I could give you more of one. You and Jackie were both in moods, I could tell.”
“Thanks for being the glue. You doing alright?”
Bridget envelops his lips in hers and slides her hand in deeper.
“So I see,” says Evan when she comes up for air.
“How bad is it? Should I try to sneak over?” she whispers.
“I don’t know if—”
“Has anyone seen my tablet?” Bridget’s mother bellows from upstairs. “Greg, you are coming to give them a ride, right?”
Evan and Bridget’s hands withdraw from their respective spelunking expeditions, and Evan’s whole being droops. Jackie and Bridget’s parents barge into the kitchen from different directions at once, and the small talk leaves Evan with just one fleeting good-bye embrace before Bridget’s dad leads him and Jackie to the garage. Evan suspects some pretext when he takes an odd route to drop Jackie off first, but Jackie quickly pulls him in from any worries when she confirms his looming suspicions.
“Mark Brennan’s kind of your new bestie, right?” Her gaze, steadfastly out the window, belies her casual tone.
“You could say that. He’s a fun time.”
“Bridget says she’s worried he’s competition.”
Evan scoffs. “She beats him in some important departments. But we’ve got some things in common.”
“Like…”
“Like some weird family stuff, and liking to read, and being good at hockey even though it’s not the center of our worlds?”
Jackie smiles. “Is it true his dad is stupid rich? And that he ran off on his family with a prostitute after he knocked her up and made Mark?”
“I mean…”
“Sorry. Maybe not the best way to put it. But, you get what I mean.”
“Yeah. And yeah, that’s basically right. His mom is from here, so they moved back to a place up the Shore.”
“I loved how he dragged you out to the middle of the dance floor at Homecoming. And Bridget loved it too, even if she complained.”
It’s Evan’s turn to smile. “I know she did. He just…” he trails off at the sight of the glint in Jackie’s eyes. “He moves at a different speed, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the rumors.” Jackie sighs. “Is it actually bad?”
Evan becomes aware of Bridget’s dad’s intense interest in their conversation. “I…” he fumbles. “I don’t know what to think, actually.”
“You’d tell me if I should worry, right?” she asks as the car pulls up to her house.
“Of course,” Evan says, almost convincing himself. Jackie gives him a perfunctory hug, thanks her chauffeur, and makes her exit. Bridget’s dad drives Evan in silence for a few blocks until he starts choosing some words.
“That Mark is the new goalie, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I work with Nick’s dad, you know. Tough spot there.”
“Oh. No. Sure.” Evan says, less confident with every syllable.
“Says the new kid is pretty cocky. Has some private coach who jets in.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“And hearing what you just told Jackie…”
“I mean, he’s—”
“Look, you’ve been great to my little girl, as far as I know. Just make sure you’ve got people around you who act the same way. Okay?” Evan can see that his driver is sheepish, doesn’t quite know how to say what he thinks. His immediate reaction is defensive: of course he treats Bridget well, and everyone knows he’s the one hockey player who follows his own beat. But a nagging doubt lodges in his mind and starts to eat away: for all that independent thinking, he always wants to blend in, to at least be part of the party, and when a fellow contrarian did come along he’d glommed on to him immediately, admired that reckless push even as he himself stopped short, saved not by virtue but by anxious indecision. That choice now feels like a troubling one. And then there is the matter of his after-school sojourns in a steamy car with Bridget, where he cautiously but purposefully asks her to try more and more new things…
“Don’t worry,” Evan says after far too long a pause. “Mark’s fun, and he’s super smart too, but his style isn’t my style.” There: an answer with no lies. Is it odd that trying to choose his words so carefully leaves him feeling somehow shifty?
Mercifully, Bridget’s dad turns the conversation to hockey, and Evan is free to gush about the chemistry on the top line where he’s been installed as the right wing, about the potential of some of the sophomores. Bridget’s dad is a basketball man, but he knows enough to carry his side. He asks Evan to explain the junior hockey system to him, and Evan lingers in the car when they arrive at his house to explain that yes, he sure does have a few scouts looking at him.
“So you think you’ll go that route after high school?”
“Probably. Hockey isn’t my life, but if I’m good enough, I’ve only got one shot, right?”
“Do you tell the scouts that?”
“I do. Good way to see if it’s a good fit or not.”
“Huh.” Evan surges with pride when he sees he’s made an impression. “Bet they don’t get many kids who work them like that.”
“They’re the ones who think it is life—more than the college coaches, they at least have to talk about academics. I don’t love it, but yeah—gotta play the game, or else it’ll play you.” He stole that line from Mark, but decides not to volunteer this fact.
“Sounds like high school hockey’s turned into a business sort of like that, too.”
“Sometimes. What it does have is way too much drama.”
“News flash for you, the real world’s pretty much the same. A lot of people end up playing the same roles, year after year.”
Evan, stops short at this unexpected, possibly bitter insight. What is his role, exactly? Today he was a peacemaker, or tried to be; most of the time, he is the hard worker at some remove, the devoted boyfriend, a worrier who nonetheless finds his ways to settle things. He could do a lot worse, he figures. But could there be more?
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Of course.” Bridget’s dad starts to say something else but stops, and the words he settles on are exactly what Evan needs: “Keep doing what you do.”
Evan checks his phone as the car pulls off. He has ten minutes to spare before curfew. Gifted this extra time, he does a lap down his block, silent in the December night, its stillness interrupted by only a few winking Christmas displays. He busts out one of the breathing exercises his mom taught him after she started dabbling in meditation, and for a few seconds he tames the evening’s myriad frustrations. He exhales and looks up at the sky.
Suddenly he is back at the hunting camp his dad kept with a few friends, 11 years old, the year his mom finally agreed he could go. The whole affair was a total fiasco. Evan had shamed his dad as he trembled when he held the rifle, recoiled in disgust when another man brought home a deer, suffered the mockery of the other boys in camp for his cluelessness at it all. By the second night he ignores everyone in the shack, tucks away in a corner, reads the hiking-related sections of leftover outdoors magazines by flashlight. But then his dad coaxed him from his sleeping bag to see the stars, and they’d been rewarded with a slight glimmer of the aurora, a triumph that made the whole ordeal worthwhile. He’d beamed in delight, and his dad had swatted him lightly on the back of his head and called him his lucky star.
It should be a cherished memory. Instead, the intervening years have made it a queasy one, and as he gazes up at the stars peeking through wisps of cloud his stomach knots up again, any peace brought on by his mantras lost to the great night sky. That night his dad had seemed an ideal of manhood, but he gave up any such claim with his final choice. Evan is left now with Bridget’s kind but waffling dad, a coach who punts on addressing the looming tension, and the likes of Mark’s dad, a cold, distant figure. There are no answers, save in those deep corners of the internet he sometimes probes with a queasy curiosity. He’s losing control in the face of that void, lapsing not into his dad’s depression but into his own frantic nerves and coping through retreats back into himself, a safe but lonely place.
He snaps back to that afternoon. He’s set up in front of the net on the power play, scraps with a defenseman to create a lane as a teammate weave through the zone. He waits until his marker turns to track a pass back to the point, takes three quick strides out to free up space, wheels around just in time to collect the blind pass and snipes a one-timer into the back of the net. He normally disdains gaudy celebrations, but this is such a satisfying, high-caliber goal that he can’t help but drop to a knee, cock his stick like a rifle, and fire a fake shot before he pops up to hug his teammates. That’s the power he needs.
Evan grins to himself and sprints back up the block. He’s halfway up the front steps before he registers the light flooding from the house, not just the one stray lamp his mom usually leaves on for him. Something is up. It isn’t curfew yet, is it? Has something happened in the family? Does she somehow know what he and Bridget did in his bed last weekend? He pushes the door open.
“Bout time, you lovebird.” Evan does a double-take at the sight of Mark at the dining room table across from his mother.
“You have a visitor,” Charlotte says in bemusement at her gawking son.
“Wha—how long have you been here?” Evan asks.
“Two hours, maybe?” Mark looks to Charlotte for confirmation, and she nods. “Since you ignored my third call. You do make me work, you know.” He sips idly at the tea in front of him and pours a serving from the pot on the table into a waiting third mug.
“Sorry, didn’t think…” Evan mumbles. “Sorry, Mom, there was some stuff after the game today, I should’ve…”
“Mark’s told me all about it,” she says. “Though for the past hour we’ve been on Aunt Cathy’s work in Mexico. Did you know that Mark’s been to a dig site in Egypt? You’re both amateur archaeologists!’
“Evvy knows how to dig deep,” says Mark. “Why we love him.”
Evan is too incredulous to groan. “And here I thought I was going to bed. Can I put some of the rum in my tea?”
“You promised no drinking during the season,” his mother chides him, a laugh still on her lips. “But I will leave you two. I’m sure you have more pressing things to talk about than Aunt Cathy scolding you for brushing the artifacts too vigorously.” She gets up and hugs her son, and he returns it a moment too late, sheepishly.
“Thanks for the tea and chat, Mrs. Evvy’s Mom,” says Mark. “Next time you gotta tell me how Evvy introduced you to Bridget. You just had to tease me with that one.”
Charlotte giggles. “Behave yourselves, and don’t stay up too late.”
“Dope.” Mark watches as Evan’s mom goes up the stairs, and as soon as she’s out of sight, he goes to the liquor cabinet and tips some of the rum into his teacup. Evan slumps into a seat and shakes his head when Mark offers him the bottle.
“You’re such a good boy.”
“You’ve got no limits, do you?”
“Who’d ever want that?”
“Some of your teammates, for one.”
“Damn, Evvy’s firing shots.”
“Honestly. What did you think of what happened after the game?”
Mark returns the rum to its perch and sniffs at the contents of his mug. Evan tries to read this pause, to discern if the hand brushed through those flopping locks is one of exhaustion or a vain restoration. He is here, clearly troubled, or at least in search of something from the closest thing he has to a friend in his new home. But what? Forgiveness? Commiseration? Some blurry mess of all the above?
“For the record, your mom did straight-up offer me a drink.”
“You’re kidding me. She’d never do that to me.”
“Have you ever asked?”
Evan shrugs, concedes the point.
“I’ll say this, she read me as well as anyone ever has. She coulda just told me you weren’t home. I can charm, I know that. But she just gave me two hours.”
“You actually talked about today with her?
“I didn’t exactly quote myself. But, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Most of us don’t do that with their friends’ parents.”
“I’ve never been most of us.” It suddenly strikes Evan how, for all his wealth, for all the heads he turns, Mark must be truly lonely in his path through the world.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I fucked up and said too much. And that I was here to apologize to you for putting you in that spot.” Mark sips from his mug and bores his eyes into Evan’s.
“Well shit. Thanks.”
“Did you think I wasn’t sorry?”
I mean, you didn’t sound it.”
“Fair. I wasn’t, in the moment. But I stopped and I thought and, well, here I am. The gates of hell are always open. Going down’s the easy part. Coming back up is where you gotta work. But Evs…no matter how much I get handed to me, I’m gonna work.”
Evan smiles. “So I do think you should start the next game.”
“That’s right you do.”
“And what you said about Jason, and the seniors…I mean, it was brutal, but…you know, there’s something there. Life is more than some endless party with the boys. Gotta get out and see so much more.”
“Knew you were mine all along.”
Evan laughs. “You should still probably do a real apology, though.”
Mark sighs, sets down his mug, and pace the length of the dining room.
“I will. But only when the moment’s right. When I can fire em up and make em think we came together as a team or whatever.”
“There’s always a grand plan, isn’t there?”
“Sure is.”
“Marky, I love ya, but you’re the weirdest team player I’ve ever met.”
“Guess when you get raised like I’ve been, you get weird ideas of what it means to be part of a team. Who would’ve guessed?” Mark picks up a piece of the banana bread and munches his way through it. He appraises Evan, who is starting to fade into exhaustion, rubbing at his eyes.
“Does make me wonder, though. Why are you such a team player? You’re the rebel against just being one of the boys, maybe even more than me, but you almost do more than anyone to keep it together.”
Evan snaps to attention and takes a piece of bread for himself before it disappears. “Because I’ve lost things. And when you lose things, you hold on tighter to what you have.” He sniffles, chokes up, hates himself for it, and then jolts in shock when Marks wraps a hug around him.
“Evs, you feel it deeper than anyone I’ve ever met. And that’s what makes you the best.” Mark slaps him on the back and releases him. “But get your shit together now.”
The boys both laugh. Evan assumes a casual lean against the kitchen doorframe, at ease even as he dabs at his eyes. Mark is right: his emotions seem so vivid compared to the facades on so many as they drift through the world, whether he is on the ice or in the classroom, stealing time with Bridget or probing at friendships, even when he sits down on the beach and feels the pull of a radiant summer day along Lake Superior. He feels it, he feels it deep.
“Sorry I get like this some.”
“Don’t be. I admire it. And it hits different for me, but I know the feeling.”
“Yeah.” Evan nods and pulls himself up from his lean. “I can tell. You’ve got things you feel real deep, too.”
“We both get it,” says Mark. “Never trust anyone who doesn’t.”
“How do you know if someone doesn’t?”
“Fair question. But I like to think I’ve got a good eye for it.” Mark barely misses a beat, still chewing the bread. “Hey. Bridget and Jackie are BFFs. You think Jackie gets it?”
Evan is caught between a laugh and a groan. “She does. But she’s sharp, you know. You’d have to work for her. Way more than with…well, all the other ones.”
“Game on, motherfuckers. Think I’ll host a party next weekend. Show the boys some hospitality to make up for today. Though I’ll have my own agenda.”
“Dude, you never quit, do you?”
“I think you know my answer.”
“I’m not sure anyone can keep up with you, honestly.”
“I got my pace, Evvy. No apologies.”
“It feels…manic, almost. Are you sure you’re doing okay?”
“I’m fine, yeah. But I’m here to be way more than fucking just fine.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” Evan says it automatically, but it is true. He knows exactly what Mark means.
“Of course you do.” Mark beams as he rediscovers his enhanced tea and polishes it off. “Mind if I crash here?” Only now does Evan notice that Mark has come with a small duffel bag packed for the night.
“Do I have any choice?”
“Evs, you’ve always got a choice. You could kick me out and invite over Jason and Nick if you want. You’re the heart and soul of the team, everyone knows it. Up to you to decide the culture you want.”
“You’d better make this a damn good apology.”
Evan sets up the air mattress in his room, a process drawn out by repeated consultations with the directions and ample hushed swearing. When Mark goes to clean himself up in the bathroom, he finally responds to Brody’s five unanswered texts, and ropes in his linemates for good measure: ‘Talked to Mark tonight. He’s sorry for this afternoon. And he’s the best we’ve got. Gonna ask Coach to start him on Tuesday.’ He relishes the responses, first gawking and then promising support. The coup is under way. Mark will claim the starting job and won’t release it until his graduation.
Pleased with his work, Evan braces himself for pillow talk and further dissection of Mark’s social standing. But instead, Mark drops on to the freshly made air mattress and fishes a yellowing, hardcover book from his bag.
“What’s that?” Evan asks.
“The Aeneid.”
“The hell is that?”
“Evvy, I expected better of you. You philistine.”
“Something from an old white dude who’s been dead a few thousand years. Okay.”
“Virgil. Story of how Rome got built. This bro Aeneas is one of the losers in the Trojan war. Spends a long-ass time wandering in the wilderness after it. Way worse off than Odysseus, though at least he got to bang Dido for his trouble. And now he’s about to get with this Latin princess. My kind of stud.”
“Escaping your parents’ Trojan War and starting your own empire. I get it. But aren’t there some wolves involved somehow?”
“That part comes later. But we’re in northern Minnesota, I’m sure we can find some around to fit the script.”
“Alright Mr. Wilderness. I’m taking you to the Boundary Waters next summer.”
“Bring it, bro. Let’s build our Rome.”
A Patient Cycle 