MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 6:47 PM

The house on the corner of Bellweather is impossible to miss.

Not because of the address.

Because, apparently, five Division I hockey players returning to campus requires enough noise to alert the entire fucking neighborhood.

Music spills through the open windows of the two-story house, bass carrying across the front lawn. Two cars are half-assed into the driveway, another is parked partly on the grass, and the front door has been propped open with a battered hockey skate.

Preseason started this morning.

Judging by the house, unpacking did not.

Ryland Sturgis crosses the downstairs hallway with a protein shaker in one hand and his phone in the other. His dark hair is still damp from a shower, gray Coldbrook hockey shirt stretched across his shoulders.

He says it without raising his voice. He does not say it twice.

A stray puck comes flying at his head. He catches it out of the air, sets it on the console table, and keeps walking.

Something heavy hits the floor upstairs. He looks at the ceiling the way other people look at a bill.

His eyes close.

Upstairs, somebody says it was not them. Somebody else says that is exactly what someone who did it would say. In the kitchen two girls start shouting about a bottle, and Ryland moves before the bottle does, taking the tequila off the counter and setting it beyond reach on the far side of the sink.

He opens it, drinks, and puts the cap back on.

Then he turns, and apparently discovers that you are somehow still standing in his hallway.

He looks at you. He does not do you the courtesy of guessing.