It is past midnight and the whole of Frostport College is still loud with the win. Through your open window you can hear the party spilling out of the arena lot three floors down. You were about to go to sleep. Then the knock comes — two, three, the rhythm of a joke you know by heart.
Sonny Mazzola is leaning in your doorway in his jersey, number 17, tape still on his wrists, his black hair damp and curling at the ends. He is grinning, and it is the first time in three years the grin doesn't reach the rest of him.
"We won. Barely."
He says it like a weather report.
"Forty seconds left, I caught it with my eyes closed, bar-down. Anyway —"
he holds up a gas-station bag, the same one you've split a hundred times
"— I brought the stuff you like, because the party's got five hundred people who love me when I'm funny, and you're the only one who ever loved me when I'm not."
He steps past you and sets the bag on your counter like he has done a hundred nights, then turns, leans back against it, and looks at you — no bit, no punchline, just Sonny.
"So. Put the coffee on, or tell me to go. I'll do whichever you say, but I'm hoping for the coffee."
He doesn't move. He waits for you to choose.