"OW!" Cato yells as his head smacks against the frame of the open window.
"Shut up, Cato!" I hiss, trying to cover my smile. "You aren't supposed to be here in the first place, let alone disturb Hannah and Sadie!"
"Where's Allegra?" Cato asks.
"She went home for the weekend."
Allegra Kowalski, Sadie Spencer, and Hannah Murphy are my roommates. I played hockey with them in high school, and we did a huge hockey intensive and one final tournament with our team this summer, and then most of us went off to college or university. Becca and Flora are our age, but they're both doing a gap year before college, and Ridley, Street, Cordelia and Rylla are younger than us, so they're all going to be the alphas of this season's AAA Empresses.
Celia went all the way to Boston U on a hockey scholarship, Ella is at Stanford, Madeleine is at NYU (with Glimmer), and everyone else is scattered across Canada. Allegra, Sadie and Hannah are the only people from my team that came to UBC, and none of us wanted to stay in a dorm, so we're all chipping in to stay in a townhouse about twenty minutes from campus. There's two bedrooms and two bathrooms, so Allegra and I share, as do Sadie and Hannah. It's been nice to be independent like this, but of all my classmates from Bear Lake, no one I know came to UBC, and only Madge and Cato stayed in British Columbia, Madge at Royal Roads and Cato at the University of Victoria.
I've been going home every other weekend, and since Cato is somewhat close, we've been taking turns taking the ferry back and forth to see each other, which takes just over an hour and a half.
When I was in the middle of the two-week-long crisis that was packing to come here, I got a call from Cato in the middle of the night, and he was out of breath and super anxious because Marvel had been grilling him on whether or not we'd had the whole staying-together-or-not talk for when we left for university, because apparently he and Glimmer almost called it off because she was going to New York and he's going to Washington and they would be 41 hours apart, but they figured it out and they're staying together.
I asked Cato what he thought. He said he hadn't even realized it was a talk we needed to have, because he would have wanted to stay with me if I was heading thousands of kilometers away rather than a hundred and fourteen. I told him I was glad I wasn't, and we promised to do whatever we could to see each other. We've been texting and calling every day, and whenever I go home, I FaceTime him so he can say hi to my brothers, and we spent a lot of time together when we were home for Christmas, but we went right back to school five days ago, the day after New Year's.
It's 11:30. My birthday is tomorrow. Cato called me ten minutes ago and told me to look out the window at the end of the hall, and there he was, standing on the seat of his car with the top half of his body sticking out of the sunroof, holding balloons and two hot chocolates from Starbucks.
He climed halfway up the trellis at the front of the house with all that in his hands, and finally, I leaned out and grabbed the drinks and the balloons, put them in my room, and came back, and now he's stuck in the window because he tried to just shove himself in instead of climbing in like a normal person.
"You have got to be quieter! Hannah and Sadie are sleeping!"
"Well, they won't catch us then. You should be grateful they aren't awake."
I roll my eyes. "They're about to be."
Finally, he gets himself through the window. "Nice hoodie," he winks, and I glance down sheepishly at the navy blue UVIC hoodie he gave me at the beginning of the September that is already tattered from being worn so much, the ends of the strings frayed (I chew on them, It's been a habit of mine since seventh grade.) He puts his hand on the side of my neck and looks me in the eye. "Have I ever told you how stunning you are?" he says quietly. I can feel the colour rushing into my cheeks as I smile. "Aaaaand... there's the dimples," he grins.
I put one hand on his cheek and the other on his neck, rubbing his jawline with my thumb.
"You're going to be nineteen in thirty-six minutes."
"At twelve-oh-nine," I smile.
He leans down and kisses me.
"You're not as short as you used to be."
"I know. Mom measured me at Christmas. I'm five-five now."
"Don't get taller. My hugs fit you like a glove right now," he says, wrapping me in his arms. My arms curl around his neck.
He picks me up and starts walking. "Cato!" I laugh in his ear. I smack the side of his head. "Put me down!" He doesn't.
He opens the door to my room at the end of the hall and drops me on my bed, which is so spingy I almost bounce off.
We drink our hot chocolates and talk about school for awhile. He tells me about hockey and his history classes, and I tell him about the poetry slams I've been going to and my English classes, and when we're finished our drinks, I set up a bunch of pillows and lie down in the corner.
"Come here," I say, and he curls up next to me, one of his legs over both of mine. I bury my head in his neck.
He checks his watch, and 12:09 flashes up. "Happy nineteenth," he whispers.
