Keeping Casey (Keeping Him #1) - Amy Aislin Page 0,13

or repairs, and utilities.

Ethan still counted himself lucky that he’d gotten a room, although with twenty guys living here, he sometimes wished he’d gotten a smaller place off campus with Casey so that he wasn’t constantly running into one teammate or another.

On the whole, it was pretty cool. Four bathrooms, ten bedrooms, a kitchen that ran the entire back half of the house complete with a table that could fit their entire team. More if they really squished in. The front half of the house was open concept and was basically a very large lounge. The left side was divided into a seating area with couches and a coffee table on one half, and a long table that was more often than not used as a communal study area on the other half. The right side of the lounge had yet more couches, floor cushions, and armchairs, all placed around a huge flat-screen television. Next to it was a cabinet with an extensive gaming and entertainment console.

The not so cool part was that his teammates were loud. And, most of the time, all Ethan wanted was peace and quiet. Tonight was no different. Sadly, he had hours to go before the House quieted for the night. Given that this was the last Saturday they’d have off until mid-November, when they’d play their last game until the second week of January, his teammates had decided that tonight was a good night to throw a party.

Ethan hid in his room.

Unlike Casey’s dorm, the House had double beds for everyone. He and Theo had wanted more floor space to create a miniature seating area like Casey and Jasper had, so shortly after moving in, they’d rearranged their beds so that they were against perpendicular walls—Ethan’s against one wall, Theo’s under the window against the other. In the empty space where their headboards met, they’d put a tall bookshelf.

Sitting on his bed, legs crossed, Ethan used a felting needle to poke at pale pink wool that he’d rolled into a ball, to encourage it to keep its shape.

Almost everyone in his life had voiced their opinion on his needle felting hobby. More than one former teammate had called him a nerd—some affectionately, others with a snigger. April questioned why he bothered when he wasn’t selling them. His dad cautioned against it, claiming that the precision could make his RA flare-up.

But that could be true of anything. It was true of everything. He needed his hands for every task in his life—eating, grooming, showering, driving, typing, cooking. Even classwork, especially his chemistry and biology labs.

Truth was, needle felting was pretty easy. Yes, he occasionally had to contort his fingers into odd positions. So far, though, it had never given him a flare-up. He was more worried about hockey eventually fucking up his wrists and ankles.

Just not worried enough to stop playing.

On the carpet in the middle of the room, Casey was flat on his stomach, typing away on his laptop. Some kind of assignment for his intro to anthropology class, he’d said. Theo, just as uninterested in parties as Ethan, slipped off his own bed and knelt by Ethan’s.

“What are you making this time?”

“A fancy octopus for my sister,” Ethan replied, poke, poke, poking at the wool until it was a solid sphere. Next, he rolled more wool into eight separate itty-bitty balls for the octopus’s feet and poked those too until they were just as solid. Theo was still watching when Ethan took one of the smaller balls, positioned it on the larger one, and poked the bottom of the smaller one into the big one, setting it into place. Then he did the same for the rest of the smaller balls.

“You don’t need, like, glue or something to hold the feet in place?” Theo asked.

“Nope.” By the time Ethan was done, he had the octopus’s body with its eight tiny feet attached in a circular shape to its base, had plugged in eyes he’d picked up at the craft store, topped those with a miniature pair of felt glasses, and gave it a little bow he’d fashioned out of wool. The whole thing took less than ten minutes.

“Cute,” Theo said when he was done. “Can I have one too?”

In another ten minutes, he’d made a blue octopus for Theo, this one with a yellow mustache, a monocle he’d made out of polymer clay a few days ago, and a top hat. He even added a small piece of pink wool to its cheeks