Sean walked Patrick and me to the bus on Saturday afternoon, carrying a bag of my soccer gear and making inappropriate sports jokes. "Hit all the home runs, P!" he called after his brother as Patrick trotted up the stairs onto the bus. I went to follow, and he added, "No touchdowns for the other guys!"

I laughed, reaching for the handrail to pull myself inside when Sean yelled, "Carter!"

"Huh?" I glanced back over my shoulder at him.

"I know you gotta spend all your time with Wesley, but you just remember who your number one roomie is!"

I grinned, encouraged. Sean was good at that. "Love you, too, buddy!" I waved at him and hauled myself the rest of the way up into the bus.

I was one of the last ones on the bus—surprise, surprise. Someone was already sitting next to Wesley, and I felt a splash of relief that I wouldn't have to sit next to him. We would be rooming together, anyway, and that was going to be hellish enough. It would be good to get a bit of a break beforehand.

I made it past Wesley's seat without making eye contact and had almost secured the spot beside Duncan when Coach's voice boomed through the narrow space: "Gutiérrez, up. Move so Quinn and Beckett can sit together."

Duncan caught my gaze and gave me a sympathetic frown. I sighed, backed up, and dropped into the seat beside Wesley. "Hey," I said.

Wesley rolled his eyes and thunked his forehead against the bus window, and I swallowed the urge to say something sharp. Oh, boy. This was going to be a long weekend.

Wesley didn't speak to me for the whole trip, and after the first hour or so, I gave up trying. I had some good music to listen to, anyways. We bumped along through several hours of highway, stopping at a sub shop for dinner and finally rolling into the hotel parking lot around seven o'clock. Coach sent us all straight to our rooms. "Settle in and go to sleep early," he said. "I want you well-rested for the game tomorrow."

That made sense, though I wasn't tired at all. I tagged after Wesley to our room, the door slamming shut behind us. The claustrophobic isolation of the place, just the two of us trapped in here together, made his silence even more oppressive. Dumping out my things onto my bed, I started to put them away in the dresser drawers just to have something to do.

Wesley gave me a look like Who does that? and I thought, Fair. Who did actually use the dressers in a hotel? Especially for a one-night stay? But I definitely didn't feel like explaining to him that he was making me feel so awkward that I was manifesting my mother's obsessive-compulsion. I kept my head down and lined up my socks in a tidy line at the bottom of one of the oversized drawers.

Wesley, for his part, dropped his things in a heap at the foot of his own bed and turned for the door. I straightened up from my sock-arranging, startled, and asked, "Where are you going?"

"None of your business," he said. It was the first thing he'd said to me that day.

"Actually," I countered, "it is my business. Coach stuck us together. You know, like the detective and the murder guy in that anime."

I'd hoped that bringing up the anime might conjure some of the closeness I'd felt to him that night, but instead, he gave an exaggerated sigh and stomped out the door.

I scrambled back into my sneakers and followed after him without bothering to tie them. I was afraid if I stopped for even that long, he'd lose himself somewhere in the maze of hotel corridors, and I'd never know where he'd ended up. He swung around a corner, paused to consult his phone, and then button-punched his way into an elevator. I squeezed myself after him before the door could close, and I finally got a chance to tie my shoes.

The elevator dinged on the 9^th floor, and Wesley zigzagged through the hallways to room 917. When he knocked, Patrick answered. His grin looked exactly like Sean's—all brotherliness and dimples. "Hey, guys." Pizza smells wafted out of the room behind him, and I could hear the voices of some of our teammates. "Come on in."

Pretty much all the team was gathered in Patrick and Juan's room, draped on the beds and scrunched up in corners with pizza and soda and gummy bears from a five-pound bag of them. The guys were mostly throwing the gummy bears at each other.

I started to smile. This was one of my favorite parts of away games—the part where you hung out with the team and did stupid things just because you were stuck in a hotel somewhere in a strange city. Duncan pelted me with a gummy bear, and I thought that maybe things would be all right.

Wesley sat down with his back to the wall and got immediately absorbed in a conversation with Patrick and Juan. I returned Duncan's fire. Pretty soon, things started to feel normal.

"Hey, freshies," Juan called over to us after a while, bridging the gap between our two conversations and making me stiffen up. I didn't want to be in the same circle as Wesley. "Y'all been to Spain yet?"

Duncan and I blinked at each other. "Spain?" I echoed. "…No? My parents went to France a couple years back, but it was an anniversary thing. I didn't go with them…"

Juan and Patrick exchanged a coded look. The room erupted in laughter. "Naw, man," Patrick said to Juan. "They've never been to Spain."

"Spain's next to campus, dumbass," Wesley snapped at me.

Now nobody was laughing. I felt my cheeks get hot. "As far as I knew, Spain was across the Atlantic," I snapped back.

The silence hung for a minute. Then Patrick made a settle-down gesture with his hands. "Okay, guys. It's fine. Carter, 'Spain' is what we call this cool old abandoned house in that empty lot behind Rosencrantz."

"Oh, really? That sounds awesome."

Wesley glared at me. "It's awesome if you like radon poisoning and mouse poop."

I ignored him. "I had a friend in high school who was really into photography, and we used to go into—"

Wesley cut me off by turning to Patrick and Juan. "Did you guys see Ernesto Abarca's last game?"

Duncan was giving me another one of those looks that was quickly going from sympathetic to pitying. I set my teeth, frustrated, and steered the conversation back. "Patrick, I guess you've been to Spain? What's it like in—"

"Abarca's got some of the best ball control on the field today. He got a hattrick before halftime. Real—"

I'd had enough. I picked up a gummy bear off the carpet and flung it at Wesley's head. It hit him in the ear, and he whirled around to face me. "Damnit, Wesley," I said, "One, I did that on my goddamn demo reel. Two, I'm trying to have a conversation!"

Wesley gaped. Somebody snickered. Then Patrick cut in. "Okay, you know what? Enough. I don't know what's going on between you two, but I can't take it anymore. Out. Both of you."

"But—" Wesley started.

Patrick held up his palm. "No. This is a fun zone, and you are not fun right now. Get."

He walked us to the door and shut us out in the hall. We stood there, staring at the closed door for a moment, and then Wesley spun away and marched back off in the direction of our room.

I followed. "What the hell, man? Come on. Seriously. What's your problem with me?"

Wesley didn't answer. He mashed the button on the elevator and I jammed myself in. "Oh, so now we're back to the silent treatment, huh? Did you get tired of arguing?"

Still nothing. The elevator landed, and I jogged after him back to our room. "What is your problem?" I repeated. "Look, I have tried fucking everything I can think of to get on your good side. I am not the problem here, so—"

He slammed our door behind him and reeled around to face me. "You are the problem, Carter. You're exactly the problem. The only problem, and you always will be. Even if you don't remember it, I will never forgive you for what you did."

"Agh!" I fisted my hands in my hair. "So tell me what the hell it is. Jog my memory, please, because I am not here to drink your haterade."

"What are you even talking about?"

"Are you dense as well as mean? I'm saying I’m over your bullshit, man. Tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it or get the hell over it."

"I will never, ever get over it," he hissed. He took a step towards me. I thought maybe he was going to hit me. I almost wanted him to hit me. Maybe that's what we needed—a good fistfight to settle this thing once and for all. Wreck a hotel room, let him really get it out of his system.

I took a step forward. Bring it, I thought. Whatever comes next, I'm ready for it. My heart pounded. Wesley's breathing came in heavy pants. I could see his pulse in his sculpted neck. We were so close, now, I could feel the heat coming off of him. His eyes were fixed on mine—icy, bright, unreadable as the winter sky.

Suddenly he closed the distance between us, and before I had time to react, his lips were pressed against mine, pillow-soft but hot as fire. In that moment, everything else ceased to exist.

Wesley was kissing me.