#swayman

It was how he looked at Anne when she showed up in his doorway. 

Jeremy looked at Anne the way he had first looked at Emeline. 

It was how she wished he still looked at her.

Emeline took her work bag from the kitchen chair she always rested it on and brought it to her room, locking the door behind her before dropping the thing and flopping face first onto her bed. Jeremy didn’t want to date her. He didn’t want to be her rebound, no matter how many times she told him that he wouldn’t be. He didn’t want to be with her, so why shouldn’t he date other people?

Why didn’t he want to date her anymore? 

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a notification from the dating app Fran downloaded on her phone for her showing up on her screen. She didn’t do anything on the app; it was just notifications that guys liked her. It’s not like she liked them.

Emeline scrolled through the profile that Fran and Maddy set up for her, a picture of the three of them that Johnny took one night with Emeline in the middle, the three of them smiling; a picture of her coaching her lacrosse team, standing on the sideline, yelling at the ref for something she thought was unfair against her team; a picture of her that she took for Keelan when she was chaperoning a trip in France with her students two years ago; one of her teaching that was taken when a photographer came to campus for their website; one of her with a puppy that the girls saw while they were on a run together that Emeline wished she could have taken home with her; and one of her and Jeremy at a bar, Emeline looking at the camera and Jeremy looking at her like she was the only girl in the world.

She zoomed in on the last photo, on Jeremy specifically. That’s how he looked at Anne, now.

If Jeremy could date, why couldn’t she? 

She had plenty of guys over the last week who had liked her on this stupid app; they couldn’t all be undateable, could they? 

After what felt like hours of hitting the x button, she finally went through all the guys who liked her and found that not a single one of them appealed to her. None of them were Jeremy. 

Emeline was ready to throw her phone across the room when Ethan tries to FaceTime her. She didn’t want to talk to him, but they were getting close in the last couple of weeks. How could she say no to talking to him? 

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” she asks, sitting up on her bed as Ethan looks like he’s on the T.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Can you come to my game?”

Emeline tries to think of what his schedule for the week was. “The game against BC?”

“NHL scouts are going to be there and Mom and Dad are going to Oliver’s show with Luke and I need someone from my family there so if I throw up everywhere at least I know one person won’t laugh at me.” 

“Yeah, because vomit is so funny?” Emeline jokes, hoping it could calm her brother down. 

“Em,” Ethan whines.

“Ethan, yes, I’ll be there,” Emeline reassures him. She hears Ethan let out a long sigh of relief. She had never seen him this nervous before. Granted, she hadn’t been seeing him at all other than for the last month, but still. “I’m wearing BC stuff.”

“Emeline,” Ethan yells. “You can’t wear BC to BU.” 

“You will not catch me in BU gear. Eagles are superior to Terriers.” 

“Emeline, my sister can’t wear BC gear to my game when I play for BU.”

Emeline laughs, her mind quickly wondering what her life would have been like if she grew up with Ethan instead of getting to know him now. “It’s not like anyone is going to know that you’re my brother.”

“We look like we could be twins.” 

“Except for the fact that you’re just barely 18 and I’m 25, yeah we could totally be twins.”  

“Please, wearing something Bruins related or something, instead?” Ethan begs, Emeline freezing. The only thing she had that had a Bruins logo on it was the jersey Jeremy bought for her, the one with his last name on it that she had buried in the depths of Fran’s closet.

“Fine, fine,” she relents. 

“I’ll send you two tickets, ok?”

“Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Ethan hangs up right as he gets off the T, Emeline left sitting on her bed alone. 

Who was she going to bring to this game?

Johnny was away on a road trip, and Jeremy was out of the question even if he was in the state. Fran was with her family for her mom’s birthday, and Maddy had an overnight shift again. Javier didn’t care enough about hockey to go to her brother’s game. 

She sits and scrolls through her contacts, trying to find anyone that she had talked to recently to bring to this game, seeing person after person she hadn’t talked to in over a decade. 

Emeline sighs, finally finding someone to bring. 

What are you doing tomorrow night?

___________________________

“When was the last time we were on this campus?”

Emeline thinks back. “Accidentally when we went to the Sox game last season. Intentionally probably back in college.” 

Keelan looks out over the ice, the twos out for warm ups already. “I can’t believe you have a brother,” he says, a frown on his face. 

“Three.” 

“You have three brothers?”

“Ethan, Oliver, and Luke.” 

“I can’t believe you never told me.” 

“I didn’t know how.” Emeline feels his gaze turn to her. “I didn’t want to know how. I thought at the time that my mom not only had a new family, but that she didn’t think about me. How do you tell someone that?” 

Keelan sighs, “You could have just said that.” 

“Why, so you could have broken up with me then instead last a couple months ago? So you could have started sleeping through whatever sorority you wanted earlier?” Keelan looks at her, confused and shocked. “What, you didn’t think all those times you bragged to your friends about how you were with me because you thought I was too unstable to break up with, even though you didn’t want to ‘deal with my baggage,’ that all the times you said those things wouldn’t get back to me?” 

The anthem starts before Keelan can say anything else. Ethan wins the faceoff, BU getting possession of the puck. Emeline laughed to herself; if someone had told her six months ago she would have understood any of the words that ran through her mind outside the context of lacrosse, she wouldn’t believe them. Jeremy came into her life and changed that for her. 

Keelan shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looking like he was trying to figure out what to say to her. “Why did you think proposing to me was the thing to do at my party? Especially after you dumped me.”

Keelan stares at the ice, his eyes not following the game. Emeline studied the man next to her. She knew, physically, why she spent so much time with him as his girlfriend. He looked like each one of her celebrity crushes when she was growing up. He had exactly the look she thought the guy she would end up with had; he had blonde hair that was slowly turning to a golden brown as he got older, the crooked smile with perfect teeth that made her swoon when he smiled at her for the first time, hazel eyes that shined in just the right light.

But she knew that physical wasn’t enough. 

“You weren’t just with me for seven years, Emeline. I was with you, too, that entire time. And I had to watch you fall in love with someone else easily while I know you had to convince yourself you were still more in love with me.” Keelan stares out at the ice while Emeline tries to understand her own feelings. Ethan has the puck, circling around the goaltender for BC and trying to get it to the net. The goalie saves it, the ref stopping the play. “I knew it was my last chance to show you that I loved you.”

“You proposed, believing I was in love with someone else?”

Ethan gets the puck again after his goalie makes a save against one of the BC defensemen. He streaks up the ice, trying to dodge the Eagles flicking him on the sides. The goalie is wide open, just him and Ethan facing off. 

“Yes.”

Ethan scores. 

Emeline jumps to her feet along with half of the crowd, cheering for her younger brother as his teammates on the ice crash into him. He breaks out of the pile on the ice, pointing to her as he skates to the bench. 

“Em?” Keelan asks once the noise dies down and the play starts again. “Why him?”

She could play dumb and pretend he’s asking about her brother, why was she here cheering for him at Boston University when she so proudly hated the school. “Because he knows me.”

“I know you.”

“Not the way he does,” she says, watching her brother interact with his teammates on the bench. “I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t tell you, or because you didn’t listen when I did. It might be both. But Jeremy?”

Emeline thinks back on the last few months. She thought she loved Keelan and that Keelan loved her. But meeting Jeremy made her realize she didn’t know what it was like to be cared for by someone who didn’t have to care for her. He was there for her when she needed him, and let her be there for him if he needed her. She knew the details about her, and loved her for them anyway. Keelan was what she thought her dream man was, Jeremy is who her reality should be. 

“Even if we aren’t telling each other everything, we pay attention. I think I know him better than I know myself. And he knows me better than anyone ever has.” 

“Better than Fran and Maddy?”

“Yeah.” 

Keelan takes in a deep breath, the period ending with BU up 1-0 as the players head off to the locker rooms. “He’s at least treating you right?”

Emeline looks over to him, the two of them trying to move out of the way of people heading up to the concourse. “Jeremy and I aren’t together.” 

“We broke up because of him, and you aren’t even dating him?” 

“He didn’t want to date me yet.”

Keelan scoffs. “What an idiot.” Emeline laughs. “Do you regret anything?”

That question catches her off guard. She had spent how many nights recently telling Fran and Maddy that she ‘wasted’ seven years with Keelan. What really good times had they had together? 

“I regret us not ending things when deep down, I think we both knew we should have. We both knew we weren’t each others forever.” 

“I just always hoped that feeling was wrong.” 

___________________________

Keelan didn’t end up staying the entire game, leaving Emeline alone about half way through the second period. She ended up getting a video of Ethan scoring another goal, his second of the night, his third point of the night, to put the Terriers up 3-2 against the Eagles, Emeline sending the video in the group chat with her roommates and the boys. 

BU ended up winning the game, Ethan getting the game-winning goal. 

Emeline stands outside the locker room where Ethan asked her to wait for him after the game. 

Ethan comes out, a man in a suit stopping him before he can reach Emeline. She watches them talking, trying to pretend to not be too creepy about it, scrolling on her phone to read the texts from her friends about Ethan’s goal. 

She honestly just wanted to hear the conversation between this guy who looked important and her brother, but she was just out of earshot. 

Ethan shakes the man's hand, the guy patting him on the back before turning and leaving, nodding at Emeline as he passed by her. 

“Who was that?” she asks, Ethan looking starstruck as the man walked away. 

“A scout from the Bruins.”

“The Boston Bruins?”

“No, the UCLA Bruins, Emeline.”

“Don’t be a little shit. What did he say?”

The two of them start walking down the hallway, Ethan heaving his bag on his shoulder. “He was telling me how he was impressed with my game tonight and that if I keep it up, he thinks I might have a chance to be invited to the combine.” 

“That’s a good thing,” she says, not really sure what he was talking about.

“The combine is where the top prospects that year get invited to work out and show off in front of all the teams scouts and managers before the draft. Do you know how many guys' draft stock have gone up because of the combine?”

“No.”

“Enough of them that I could get drafted in the first or second rounds.”

“Ethan,” Emeline exclaims, stopping her brother and pulling him in for a hug. “That’s awesome.” 

Ethan lets out a deep breath, running his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe this.” His phone starts going off, a call coming in. “Oh, it’s our mom.” Emeline feels a weird rush go through her at the sound of Ethan saying ‘our mom,’ to her as he answers the call and puts it on speaker. “Hi Mom, I’m here with Em.”

“Hi,” she says, cutting herself off before she says, ‘mom.’ Still too weird for her.

“Hi guys,” Celine yells, clearly driving as the sound of her turn signal clicked in the background. “We’re all here, we’re just leaving Oliver’s show.” The rest of the family says a chorus of hello’s. “How was the game?”

Ethan and Emeline start walking back toward his dorm as he talks a mile a minute about the game and the scout. They get back to his dorm, Ethan signing her into the building as they make their way up to his room. 

“Mom, I’m gonna go,” Ethan says, hearing the car stop in the background to signal that their family was pulling up in front of their house. 

“Ok, I’ll talk to you two later,” Celine’s voice sounds through the speaker. “Emeline, say hi to your friends for us.”

“Will do,” she says, sitting down on Ethan’s bed, looking around at his dorm. His side of the room was neat, kind of like how she kept her room when she first moved into the room she shared with Maddy and Fran, the only three freshmen on the lacrosse team in their building, the rest of them living in a dorm on the other side of campus. He had a picture of him and his family from his high school graduation on his dresser, another one of him from what looked like his senior night with his parents and brothers on either side of him. There was a Bruins poster on his wall, right next to a Yankees poster.

“There’s no way,” she says, pointing at the NYY insignia on his wall.

Ethan smirks, “It’s more fun this way.” Ethan laughs at Emeline’s scoff. “So, no Jeremy tonight?”

“He and Johnny are up in Canada.” 

Ethan shakes his head. “I know that. I mean, you haven’t talked about him.” 

“I also haven’t talked about a lot of people I know,” she deflects, the way she does when her students try to pry into her personal life.

“Who was that dude you brought to the game?” he asks, sitting back in his desk chair.

“Keelan.”

“Ken doll reject?”

“Excuse me?”

Ethan shrugs. “That’s what Mom calls him. But why did you bring your ex-boyfriend to the game?”

Emeline sighs. “He was the only one free.”

“I doubt that.” 

Emeline rolls her eyes, Ethan giving her that look she often gave her roommates when they weren’t telling her the whole truth. “The last time I saw him, he proposed to me, and the time before that, he broke up with me. It’s hard to end a seven year relationship like that.” 

“And you ended it because you’re with Jeremy now?”

“I thought you said I didn’t mention Jeremy.”

“Not to me, but I can read lips.” 

“Weren’t you supposed to be paying attention to your game?”

Ethan smirks. “I had just scored a goal, my attention could wander.”

“I hope you never meet Johnny. You two together would be awful.” 

“But you and Jeremy?”

Emeline shakes her head. “He’s dating someone else. And we barely talk anymore. Everything’s been weird between us lately whenever we’re alone.”

“So why don’t you date someone else? Are you on any of those apps?”

“Maddy and Fran made me a profile, but I don’t really use it.” 

Ethan gestures for her phone, Emeline rolling her eyes and reluctantly gives it to him, standing over him as he scrolls through her profile. He stops at the last photo, the one of her and Jeremy, and frowns. “Why would you put a photo of a guy who’s clearly in love with you on your profile.”

“Maddy and Fran made me the profile,” she repeats. 

“Yeah, no, I don’t know any guy who would like a profile with a girl who has a boyfriend.” 

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“This photo makes it look like you do.”

Emeline snatches her phone from her brother, sitting back down on his bed. “I don’t really want guys to like my profile. I don’t want to date someone else,” she admits.

“Then what do you do?”

Emeline shrugs. “I guess I wait.” 

___________________________

“You’re getting home late again,” Fran says when Emeline opens the door, Emeline dropping her bag on the floor with a grunt.

“Yeah, it’s almost eleven,” Trent points out, sitting next to Fran.

Emeline groans. “I was staying for lacrosse and then one of the teachers who was supposed to help with senior sleepover got sick so they asked me to stay since I was still there, anyway.”

“Saying, ‘no,’ is an option, you know,” Johnny says as Emeline sits down.

Emeline glares at him. “Not when you’re a teacher.” 

“Can you call out tomorrow?” Maddy asks. 

“Nope,” Emeline shakes her head. “We have an away game tomorrow and I can’t go with them if I’m not at school that day.” 

“Go to bed, babe,” Fran tells her, Emeline yawning and nodding as she heads back to her room. 

It was days like the one she had today where a long shower was the best feeling next to actually crawling into bed. She does her routine, trying to not take too long out of pure desire to get into bed as fast as she can. 

Emeline heads back to her room, hearing her roommates talk with the guys.

“We should definitely be worried about her, right?” Maddy’s voice carries through the hallway despite her trying to whisper.

“She normally stays later during her season, but not this late and not this often,” Fran says.

“Is she still not over Jeremy?” Johnny asks.

“She was into Jeremy?” Trent asks.

The other three groan. “How does that not earn a comeback? He’s not new anymore.”

“He’s not important right now,” Fran scolds Johnny. “Do we try to set her up with someone new? Someone to get her to forget about Jeremy?”

“Even with Jeremy dating Anne, he hasn’t forgotten about Emeline. He’s still just as in love with her now as he was the day he met her.” 

“It’s like they’re not even friends anymore,” Maddy says. “They can’t be around each other.”

Emeline rolled her eyes. She shouldn’t be surprised that her friends would be having this conversation. They were constantly worried about her since her grandmother died, right after they met her. She loved her friends, but she wasn’t this fragile person she felt they thought she was.

Fran sighs. “She either needs to get over him or get under him.”

Johnny laughs. “I said that to him when we all met.” 

Emeline closes her door quietly so they don’t know she had been listening the entire time. She finally gets in bed, her entire body relaxing as her body sinks into her mattress. 

Everyone was right, she needed to forget about Jeremy. He didn’t want to be with her anymore, and she didn’t really want to wait for him. She opens the dating app, desperately looking for someone she could find remotely attractive, Jeremy be damned.

One guy that had already liked her, Ben, finally catches her eye, matching with him. He didn’t look like Jeremy, he didn’t look like Keelan. He was completely different at first glance.

He messages her right away, Emeline struggling to keep her eyes open as she responded back to him.