“That’s so much cuter,” Dana gushed. “It hugs you in just the right places. Now, wait. Put on these hoops.”
“Fine,” Corey sighed, “because it’s quicker than arguing with you.”
“And I’m not letting you out of the house without lipstick.”
“God, why?”
That’s when I laughed, and Corey’s door opened all the way. “Gotta go,” she called to Dana.
“Wait!” her roommate cried, fumbling on Corey’s dresser top. “Don’t you own any mascara?”
“Good luck at the rush parties,” Corey called as she crutched toward me in a hurry. “Run,” she mouthed, and I opened the door.
Corey managed the six stairs into Bridger’s room with little difficulty, which was great since I wouldn’t have been any help. But that night, the party itself was the real work. It was exactly what I should have anticipated. Warm beer in plastic cups? Check. Music too loud to talk over? Check. Girls tossing their hair at all of my teammates? Check and check.
Bridger’s room was thick with Harkness Hockey jackets and sweatshirts. The puck bunnies fanned out around them, fawning. I followed Corey’s stare to find a rather drunk young woman grinding up against Bridger. When I caught Corey’s eye, she raised an eyebrow. All I could do was shrug. You might think that there wouldn’t be any puck bunnies at an ambitious school like Harkness. But you’d be wrong. At every home game, there was at least one homemade poster reading: “Future Hockey Wives.” They weren’t even subtle about it.
When Corey and I had battled all the way into the party, Bridger gave us each a warm smile and a warm beer. It was then that I discovered the logistical difficulty of drinking a beer while supporting oneself on crutches. Corey, who was obviously smarter than I was, had wedged herself onto the arm of Bridger’s beat up old sofa. Leaning her crutches up against the wall behind her, she had her hands free.
From her perch, Corey surveyed the room that Bridger and I would have shared if not for my broken leg. Beaumont House was a hundred years old, and the university hadn’t renovated it in a few decades. So the dark wood moldings were scratched, the walls yellowing. But it was still one of the coolest places I’d ever been. The arched windows were hung with real leaded glass, divided into tiny shimmering rectangles. An oaken window seat stretched beneath.
Students perched on its edge, cups in hand, the same way they’d been sitting since the 1920s. I’d always thought that was cool, but tonight it just seemed depressingly stagnant.
Bridger even had one of those felt banners hanging above his not-functional-since-the-1960s fireplace, reading Esse Quam Videri. The university motto was: To Be, Rather Than to Seem. It was a nice sentiment, but the vibe in Bridger’s room that night was more along the lines of: To See, To Be Seen, and To Drink a Lot.
The first beer went down quick. “You need another?” I asked Callahan.
“Not really,” she said with a smile.
And good thing, because I probably couldn’t carry one back to her without spilling it. With my cup in my teeth, I made my way through the crowd to the keg without crushing anyone’s toes with my crutches. Bridger took the cup out of my mouth and refilled it.
“What happened to that octopus I saw hanging on you earlier?” I asked him.
He tipped my cup to avoid too much foam. “Christ. I had to peel her off me. That’s Hank’s little sister.”
“Seriously? I thought she was younger.”
“That’s the problem. She’s sixteen, and just visiting for the weekend. Now she’s reattached herself. To Fairfax, of all people.”
I scanned the scrum of bodies. Sure enough, on the window-seat I spotted a half-lidded girl wrapped around our teammate. And Fairfax looked pretty deep into his cups himself. “Fuck. Where is Hank, anyway?”
“I really don’t know. Haven’t seen him for a while. Probably someone offered him a smoke.” Bridger handed me my cup, and we both watched a drunken Fairfax shove his tongue in the girl’s mouth. “That’s just some kind of wrong,” Bridger muttered. “Do you have your phone?”
“Sure. Hold this.” I gave Bridger my cup, and shot off a quick text to Hank. “911. Put the bong down and come get your sister.”
Bridge and I drank a beer together while watching the door. But Hank didn’t appear. I looked back toward the happy couple. “Dayum. Did she just grab his junk?”
Bridger winced. “We’ll have to stage an intervention. If that was my little sister…” he let the sentence die. “That girl is drunk off her ass.”
It had to be done. “Coming through,” I called, and Bridge and I wove our way towards the window seat. They were still hot and heavy by the time we got over there.
I tapped the girl on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Hank is looking for you.” Their lips made an audible popping sound when they came apart. “Whah?” the girl slurred.
“Your brother,” Bridger said, pulling her off Fairfax. “Right now.”