Page 92 of Don't Puck His Best Friend
I wake up in his bed more mornings than my own. My toothbrush lives in his bathroom. Rex gets excited when he hears my car pull up. Cole keeps my favorite coffee creamer in his fridge even though he drinks his black.
"You're basically moved in," Maddie points out one Thursday afternoon when I'm back at the dorm grabbing clean clothes.
"I am not."
"Harper, you haven't slept here in five days."
I pause with a sweater halfway into my bag. "Has it been five days?"
"Yeah, it has. But who's counting?" She's grinning though, not annoyed. "It's fine. I'm happy for you. Just saying you might want to start paying Cole rent."
"We're not there yet."
"You're definitely there."
Maybe she's right. But there's something terrifying about acknowledging how quickly Cole has become my entire world. Not in a lose-yourself way, but in a can't-imagine-my-day-without-him way.
March brings the conference tournament, and I'm in the stands for every game wearing Cole's jersey. He scores twice in the semifinals, and after they win, he points at me through the glass. Sirus shoves him and makes kissing noises, but Cole just grins.
In the finals, they lose in overtime. I watch Cole's shoulders slump as he skates off the ice, and my chest aches for him. I wait outside the locker room with the other girlfriends, and when he finally emerges, his hair still damp from the shower, I don't say anything. Just wrap my arms around him.
"We played well," he says into my hair.
"You played amazing."
"Not amazing enough."
"Cole—"
"I know. It's fine. We'll get them next year." He pulls back to look at me. "Let’s go home."
At his place, I order his favorite food and put on a terrible action movie he's seen a hundred times. He doesn't want to talk about the game, so we don't. We just exist together, his head in my lap while I run my fingers through his hair, and eventually the tension in his shoulders eases.
"Thank you for being here," he says during a particularly stupid explosion scene.
"Where else would I be?"
"I don't know. Studying. Hanging out with Maddie. Living your own life."
I look down at him. "This is my life. You're my life."
Something shifts in his expression. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He sits up and kisses me, soft and slow, and I taste gratitude mixed with something deeper. When he pulls back, he's smiling. "I love you."
"I love you too."
We've said it dozens of times since that first night, but it never gets old. Every time feels like a gift.
April is a blur of final projects and papers and presentations. Cole and I study together more than apart, sprawled across his living room floor with textbooks and laptops and Rex stepping on our notes. Sometimes we actually work. Sometimes we get distracted and end up making out on the couch while our assignments sit forgotten.
"We're going to fail everything," I say one night after we've spent an hour doing everything except studying.
"We're both getting A's in all our classes."
"That's not the point."
