The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  “Hello?” I called into the empty living room. I followed the sound of voices to the back of the house, where I found two guys sitting in the kitchen, eating dinner.

  “Hey. I’m Evan Peck. I just got here.” I held out my hand.

  “Hey, man. I’m Sebi. And this is Paul. We’re new, too.”

  “Where are you guys from?”

  “Medicine Hat,” Sebi said.

  “Kelowna,” Paul said.

  Our team was mostly composed of guys like that, guys like me—Canadians from the prairies and the western provinces, some New Englanders, a few boys from Minnesota. It made settling in easy. The routine was familiar, the intensity turned up: twice-a-day practices, runs and lifts, team dinners. I was exhausted, not so much falling asleep every night as passing out, too tired to feel homesick. On the second-to-last day of that week, toward the end of afternoon practice, I noticed a man sitting in the stands, watching us scrimmage. He wore a crisp suit and tie, which seemed incongruous with both the August heat outside and the manufactured cold inside the rink.

  “Did anyone else notice that guy?” I asked in the locker room.

  “The guy in the stands?” one of the seniors replied. “That’s Reynolds. He’s paying for all this.”

  The same man was waiting outside the rink when we emerged in the late afternoon light. He wore mirrored sunglasses and leaned against a bright yellow sports car. One of the captains went over and shook his hand, and they spoke briefly.

  “Guys,” the captain called out to the rest of us. “We’re going over to Liffey’s for beers. Mr. Reynolds is treating.”

  “I still don’t really get who this guy is,” I said to Sebi as we trailed the group down Whitney Avenue. At the bar, quiet on a weekday evening when the campus was still empty, Reynolds took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and slapped his card down to open the tab.

  I thought of the dwindling contents of my wallet as I reached for the pitcher. I was planning to find a job on campus, but until then, I was spending the last of the money saved from my summer job. At least the beer was free. A little later, Reynolds came over to our table and pulled up a chair. “You’re all new, huh?” he said, reaching to pour himself a beer. “I don’t recognize any of you from last year.”

  We nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Well, this is my favorite time of year, getting you guys together for the first time. The main thing is you get to know each other. These early days are the best, let me tell you. When everything’s still up for grabs.”

  Reynolds had the build of an athlete in retirement, muscles gone soft, a cushiony midsection. His mirrored sunglasses shone like an extra pair of eyes from the top of his head. He squinted at us. “Not that I don’t expect a return on my investment.” He laughed. “I’m paying for this because I expect you guys might be able to bring home a national championship in your time here.”

  We sipped beer in silence. “Did you play at all after college, Mr. Reynolds?” Sebi finally asked.

  “It’s Peter. No. No, I wasn’t good enough to go pro, never expected to. But there’s another game, you know. It pays better and it lasts longer.” He laughed again, his teeth glowing white. “Moved to New York, started in banking, and now I’m running a hedge fund. You know how hedge funds work?”

  He talked and talked, going into more detail than any of us could absorb. I tried to pay attention, but I kept drifting, noticing instead the embroidered monogram of his shirt, the gold wristwatch peeking from beneath his cuff. His accent still had the last traces of a childhood spent somewhere in Canada’s sprawling interior. He was rich and young. He’d done everything right. But he looked tired beneath it all.

  The sky outside had darkened. Reynolds waved down the waitress to close out his tab. “Have to head back,” he said, draining his beer. He passed around business cards. “I know you guys are good, but odds are you’re not going to the pros after college. Call me if you ever want advice.”

  Earlier that day, before afternoon practice, I’d finally moved my things into my dorm room. The other students would be arriving the following morning. That night, after Reynolds left, I wanted to forget what I was about to face: the people who had earned their place at this school through different means—through more legitimate means. I’d spent the previous week pretending that this place belonged to me, but it was only that—pretending. After leaving the bar, a few of us picked up a case of beer and a handle of whiskey and brought it back to my room, drinking until late. By the end of the night, it had done the trick. I’d almost forgotten. I kicked the empty cans aside and collapsed onto the bare bed.

  In the dim basement of a frat house, in a room that smelled like beer and dirt, a girl pressed her body against mine. She kept laughing at everything I said. It was that first night after everyone arrived, the first real night, and my teammates and I ventured in a pack from party to party. I moved my hand down her waist, over her T-shirt, and she drew closer. Okay, I thought. It still worked. We danced for a while, and then we were kissing. She tasted like tequila and salt. A few songs later, she pushed closer with impatience. She was cute, with a great body, and both of us were the right amount of buzzed. But in that moment sex seemed only marginally appealing, not worth all the trouble. I felt a little melancholy. My teammates were scattered throughout the room, distracted by other girls or games of beer pong, so I extracted myself and left the party unnoticed.

  Back at the dorm, the light coming through the door to my entryway caught a figure in silhouette. It was a girl, tall and long-legged. Blond. She looked familiar. As I got closer, I recognized her from the diner that morning. Her hair was loose and long, and she’d changed into a dress. She was looking for something in her purse and didn’t see me until I was right behind her, reaching for my key card.

  “Oh! God, you scared me,” she said.

  “You need to get in?”

  She laughed. “I think I managed to lose my card already.”

  “You live here, too?”

  “On the fourth floor. I’m Julia.”

  “I’m Evan. Third floor.”

  I stepped aside to usher her through the open door. “After you.”

  “Oh—thanks.”

  The door fell shut with a loud bang.

  “So, Evan.” She smiled. “Where are you from?”

  “Canada.”

  “Really? That’s cool. Where in Canada?”

  “The middle of nowhere. You’ve never heard of it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Carlton. It’s in British Columbia, the interior.” She shrugged, and I laughed. “I knew it. What about you?”

  “Boston. Well, just outside Boston. Brookline.”

  I was tempted to say something about the Red Sox, remembering the hat from that morning, then I reminded myself that she didn’t know I’d been looking.

  “Did you go out tonight?”

  “Yeah, with my teammates. Hockey,” I added.

  “That explains the Canadian thing. You must get that a lot. Or you will.”

  I laughed. My beery buzz had vanished. The way she was looking at me wasn’t the way the other girls looked at me back home. Her face was like an image firmly fixed on canvas where the other girls’ had been slippery glass. Right here in the present, breathing the same air, not off in some imagined future. Midnight wasn’t late. The night was just starting. “Hey, are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Starving, actually.”

  We walked to the pizza place on Broadway. Up at the counter, she reached for her purse, but I waved her money away. I could give her this, at least. On the way home, we sat on a low stone wall, waiting for the pizza to cool. I watched as she plucked a piece of pepperoni from her slice. Her kind of beauty snuck up on you. You had to look a little closer to really get it. Someone called her name from across the street. She waved back at him.

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “What was?”

  “You made friends already.”

  “No
, we went to high school together. There are a bunch of us here.”

  “Oh. That must be nice.”

  “I guess. What about you? What do you think of it so far?”

  “This place?” I swiveled, taking in the panorama. “Just like the brochure. But more drunk people.” She laughed. “It’s about what I expected. Or not. I don’t know. I’m still taking it in.”

  “Different from home?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She smiled. “It must be an adjustment.”

  “That’s an understatement. What about you? What do you think of it?”

  “It’s just like the brochure.”

  “Touché.” I laughed. “So, Julia. How was your summer?”

  She blinked once, staring down at the sidewalk. She blinked again.

  “I’m sorry. Wrong question?”

  “No, no, it’s just—long story. I don’t need to burden you with it.”

  “You can tell me.” A beat. “People like to tell me things.”

  “You’d better be careful. I might never shut up.”

  Eventually she took the last bite of her pizza, and then she held the crust out toward me. “Do you want it? I never eat the crust.”

  “Sure?”

  “I wouldn’t offer it to just anyone,” she said in mock solemnity. “But I can tell we’re going to be good friends.”

  Back in the dorm, we stood in the hallway outside her room. It was late, 3:00 a.m., then 4:00 a.m. Other students tripped up the stairs to bed, but we kept talking and talking, and whenever I thought maybe the conversation had reached its natural end, one of us fired off in a new direction, bringing the other along. She didn’t invite me inside. Mostly I was glad for that. Finally, when she started yawning uncontrollably, I said that I should probably get to bed.

  “Yeah. Me, too.” She paused, hand on doorknob. “Thanks for the pizza, Evan.”

  “Anytime.”

  She smiled. “See you in the morning?”

  Julia had a boyfriend. Of course she did. A guy named Rob, from her boarding school. They’d been together for almost two years. But by mid-September, she was barely mentioning Rob. Usually I was the one to ask about him, as a way of making sure he did in fact still exist. I wondered how much she and Rob actually spoke, how much she told him about her new life at college.

  It turned out to be easy enough: making friends, fitting in. It didn’t seem to matter how different two people might be or how different their lives had been before college. That was true for me and my roommate, Arthur. We fit together like puzzle pieces, a big one and a small one. And it was true for me and Julia. She took my hand at parties, leading me through the crowd. She came and went through our unlocked door like another roommate. She helped me cram for midterms; she read my papers. I needed the help. That was what surprised me most—how hard the work was. It was like the other students saw English where I saw hieroglyphs, even in the most basic, introductory courses. Maybe that hometown feeling had been right all along; maybe I was the same as the Evan Peck who’d failed kindergarten way back. I couldn’t admit this to anyone, not even to Julia, although she probably saw it anyway. She saw everything about me.

  One night in late October, coming home from practice, I passed her in the courtyard, where she was on the phone, pacing back and forth. I pointed to the door, but she shook her head. Then she snapped: “Rob, listen to me—no, just listen. Why are you so pissed? Seriously? What do you want me to say?” She rolled her eyes at me and mimed holding a gun to her head. She cupped her hand over the phone. “Sorry. He’s ranting. I’ll see you up there in a minute.”

  I spent Thanksgiving with Arthur’s family in Ohio. On Sunday afternoon, we got back to campus. Every time I heard footsteps on the stairs from the other students trickling back, I wondered whether it was Julia. We hadn’t spoken during the weeklong break. I fiddled with my cell phone—I’d finally gotten one, after a few months of working on campus—but something stopped me from calling. The neediness of it, maybe. Later on Sunday night, Julia’s roommate, Abby, knocked on our door. They had liquor leftover from before the break and were having people over that night.

  My stomach twisted as we climbed the stairs. There were about a dozen people crammed in Abby and Julia’s small common room. Julia was across the room, talking to Patrick, another guy from our entryway. She looked different, but it was hard to say why. She tossed her head back when she laughed and kept resting her hand on Patrick’s forearm.

  “Evan,” Abby said, pulling me aside. “Evan. I have to tell you something. She might kill me for telling you first, but I don’t care.”

  “What is it?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Julia and Rob. They broke up.”

  The rolling eyes, the mimed pistol. Julia had started to hint that the end was imminent. Abby laughed. “Oh, come on. Don’t act like you’re not totally overjoyed.”

  “I’m not. I mean, I am. But—”

  She shoved me. “Go.”

  The mantelpiece served as the makeshift bar. I went over and poured myself a drink, willing my heart to slow down. I glanced at Julia, but she was still talking to Patrick. She hadn’t seen me, or she was pretending she hadn’t. It seemed strange.

  “Hey,” I said to Arthur when he wandered over. “Hey, Arthur, guess what.”

  “Julia and her boyfriend broke up. I know. Abby told me, too.”

  “Yeah. Big news, right?”

  “So this is it, then? You guys are gonna be together now?”

  I shrugged, but I liked the suggestion of inevitability. Julia. It did seem inevitable. It always had. “I haven’t even said hi to her yet.”

  “You sure it’s such a good idea?”

  “What do you mean?”

  But at that moment, an arm slipped through mine. “Hey, stranger,” Julia said, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Hey, you,” I said. Arthur was slinking away toward the door.

  “How was your first-ever American Thanksgiving?”

  “You people really like your football.”

  “Do you want to know how mine was?” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyebrows arched. She was drunk.

  “I do. You wanna get out of here?” I slipped my hand into hers, which was warm and familiar, and it flooded me with hope. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “No.” She pulled her hand away. Yanked it, almost. “Come on, stay! Don’t you want another drink?” She started to refill my empty cup. Then Patrick called her name from across the room, asking for another beer.

  “You got it,” she called back. She handed me my cup and went back over to Patrick, who ruffled her hair. She avoided me for the rest of the night. When the last of the liquor was gone, Julia and Abby announced they were going to the deli on Broadway for sandwiches. Julia didn’t seem to notice or care when I didn’t come along.

  But I wasn’t tired yet. Back in our room, I stared at a muted rerun of SportsCenter. I couldn’t make sense of it—of her. What explained her sudden distance, her caginess? Julia didn’t bother playing games, not usually. I liked that about her.

  Later I felt a hand on my shoulder, someone saying my name. I opened my eyes, and Julia was standing in front of me.

  “You came back,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I got this for you.”

  She held it out like an offering: a sandwich from the deli. My favorite kind, the one I always ordered. I never realized that she’d been paying such close attention. The heft of the paper-wrapped mass in my hand sparked the strangest feeling, or, really, two feelings at once. A homesickness I hadn’t realized that I’d been feeling all along, and a sudden cure for it. “Can I sit?” she asked.

  I patted the couch, and she folded herself around me, resting her head on my shoulder, draping her legs across my lap. She was always so at ease in the world. Taking my hand at a party, resting her head on my shoulder: those gestures made the world feel big and small at the same time. It was just me and Julia, but what lay before us stre
tched so far you couldn’t see the end.

  “How was your Thanksgiving?” I said. “I never asked.”

  “Abby told you, right?”

  “Yeah. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. There’s not much to say.”

  She lifted her head to look at me. The sparkle and flush I’d seen earlier that night were gone, replaced by the old steadiness. “Abby went home with that guy,” she said. “Patrick. That guy I was talking to. She’s not going to be back until morning.” She took my hand and led me upstairs.

  One week later, we were walking back from dinner, Julia’s hand in mine. It was a cold December night, our breath clouding white in the air, and she slipped our twined hands into my jacket pocket for warmth. I’d been thinking about it all week, and I wanted to say it.

  “Julia,” I said. I stopped and pulled her closer. “I love you.”

  We stood together for a long time. She wrapped her arms around me inside my jacket, my chin resting on top of her head, the night dark and still. She was silent except for the sound of her breath, dampening my shirt. It had been only a week. Maybe this was too soon, too fast. Maybe I was alone in feeling this way.

  But then: “I love you, too. Evan. I love you.”

  The heavy certainty of it, like a smooth stone in your pocket. We stood there for a long time, rooted to the ground by what we’d just said. When we started walking again, I realized my toes had gone numb from the cold.

  * * *

  The years went fast. We had our separate lives, but they were lived in parallel, and we ended every day the way it began: together. I couldn’t untangle the feeling of my new life—the one I’d always imagined having—from the feeling of being with Julia.

  Spring of our junior year, Julia went abroad, to Paris. She said that she’d always regret it if she didn’t. And, she added, it might do us good to have some time apart. To become our own people. I didn’t disagree. Occasionally I wondered whether there was some chance I was passing up in being with Julia, some mistake in committing to one person so early on. I missed her when she was away, but the hockey season didn’t give me much time to be lonely. And it wasn’t loneliness, in any case, that I felt in those rare moments of quiet. I didn’t feel particularly different when Julia wasn’t there—but the world felt different. The horizon drew nearer, the colors grew paler. That semester was when I realized how much I needed her.