Icing on the Lake (10 page)

“S
ean called while you were gone,” Gretchen announced when I got home from lunch, and hanging out shopping with Emma and Jones. It was about five o’clock and they’d already left to go back home. “I told him you’d be home tonight, so he’s coming over around six.”

“He is?” I asked. The house seemed strangely empty without Brett around; he’d gone to his father’s for the weekend.

“Yes. Why do you sound so surprised?” Gretchen asked.

“Because…I don’t know,” I said. I wondered if it would be possible for me to hide in my room when he came over. Probably not. What if I ran to the bathroom and pretended to be violently ill?

I just couldn’t stand the thought of talking to him, after seeing him with that girl, in the warming—very warming—hut.

I’d completely made a move on him Friday night when we went sledding. Now it was Saturday night and I had no idea where we stood.

Did he want to be with me?

Or was he coming over to tell me he already had a girlfriend?

Maybe I wouldn’t have to
fake
being sick. I was getting nauseous just thinking about seeing him.

When I finally focused on Gretchen again, she was staring at me. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Tired, that’s all.”

“Come on. Let me freshen your look before he gets here.” She took my arm and started to pull me toward the bathroom, where she kept a tower of beauty products. She was using one crutch to balance herself as she walked.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You look tired. I don’t know what’s going on with you guys, but you seem stressed about
it. The last thing you want to do is actually let him
know
you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset,” I said.

“What are you, then?” she asked.

I didn’t want to tell her, but I had to tell someone. She knew Sean; maybe she could tell me something that made me feel better. Or maybe she knew something and wasn’t telling. Either way, I had to let her know what was bothering me.

“Confused,” I said.

She grabbed a compact of foundation powder and then some blush and gave me a mini-makeover while we talked. “Don’t make me look too made up,” I said.

“I won’t,” she said. “Don’t worry. Now spill.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not that big a deal, I guess.” I told her about the girl I’d seen with Sean, how she was all over him and how he could easily have been all over her, except that I closed the door and stopped looking.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” Gretchen said as she leaned over to select a lipstick color for me. “That doesn’t sound like much.”

“It doesn’t?” I said. “What if he’s already seeing someone?”

“Well…are
you
seeing him? Technically?”

“Technically? I don’t know about that,” I said. “No. I guess not. I mean, we haven’t known each other that long. But I felt like…” I didn’t want to tell her about the kiss. “Like we were sort of moving that way.”

“So maybe you still are,” Gretchen said cheerfully. “That girl might be nothing to him. You could have interpreted the situation all wrong.”

How many ways were there to interpret someone crawling on someone else’s lap?

“Come on, Kirsten. Cheer up. Don’t be so negative. Whatever happened, you two will work it out.”

Why had I confided in her, anyway? Now she’d be giving me advice, and coordinating makeovers, on a daily basis.

“You know, you can really sound like Mom sometimes,” I told her.

“I do not! God, don’t ever say that again.”

“Why not? You said the same thing she always used to say to me when I got in fights
with Tyler, or with my friends. You’ll work it out. Did we ever work it out? No. It didn’t work out then, and it’s not going to work out now—”

“I do not sound like Mom!”

“Fine. You don’t sound like Mom.”

“And you are being sickeningly pessimistic,” she said. “How do you know what’s going on with Sean and that bimbo? You don’t.”

“Bimbo?” I giggled.

“Whatever. Just
ask
him. Give him a chance to explain.”

Right. Just ask him. She made it sound so easy.

I thought about what I wanted to say to Sean about what I’d seen, or whether I’d say anything. For example, I could say: How could you do that to me, you pig? But he hadn’t really
done
anything, except let some other girl play Florence Nightingale, instead of me. Still, I didn’t like it.

The doorbell rang about half an hour later, as Gretchen and I were watching TV. I wished her leg wasn’t broken so that she could get the door. But no, it had to be me.

I took a deep breath and walked over to the door.

Everything I wanted to say, or even thought about uttering, vanished completely when I saw Sean, when he smiled at me as I opened the door.

His right eye was half purple, half black and entirely puffy. He looked terrible—well, as terrible as someone as good-looking as Sean could look.

“Hey!” he said. “Where’d you go after the game? I looked for you but—”

“Oh my gosh—your eye. Does it hurt? Did you get stitches?” I asked.

“No, it’s not that bad,” he said. “I mean, it’s not pretty. I’ll give you that.”

“But do you want to be pretty?” I asked. “Anyway, this will make everyone scared of you. They won’t mess with you because they know you’ll fight.”

“Actually, this was kinda weak as far as hockey fights go. A lot of the guys have some kind of cut or missing tooth—this is nothing.” Sean shrugged.

“Nothing, huh?” I stepped a little closer to
him, wanting so much to kiss his cut and make it all better—or make
me
all better, anyway. But no. That couldn’t happen until I found out what was really going on.

“So where did you go?” Sean asked. “One minute you were there, with your friends at the game, and then like—you were gone.”

“Well, after the fight broke out…” Let’s see, what should I tell him. I had to escape because I saw you with someone else? And then your brother started acting strange, so…that was pretty much a full day?

“My friends and I went to lunch,” I explained instead. “They were kind of in a hurry, so we didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”

“You should have called me,” he said. “I could have met you guys for lunch.”

He had a point. “I would have, but…” I was afraid you’d be out with what’s-her-name hockey nurse. “We had some private stuff to talk about. Girl stuff.” Normally I hate that expression, but in this case I thought it would make the topic just go away, which it did.

Sean leaned closer to me and asked softly, “Look, do you want to go somewhere?”

Yes…and no, I thought. I so much wanted to be close to him like this…but not if I wasn’t the only one who got to be. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Just for a walk.” Sean gestured to Gretchen on the sofa, watching TV. “Just for a couple minutes, so we can talk.”

I nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.” I grabbed my jacket from the closet by the door, and turned to Gretchen with a wave. “Be back soon!”

She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I really, really hoped Sean hadn’t been able to see that.

He put his arm around my waist as we walked down the sidewalk. I could just picture us walking past his house, and Conor pelting us with snowballs.

“So. Is, um, Conor working tonight?” I asked, just to make conversation. I wasn’t ready to ask the Big Question yet. Why would he have his arm around me if he wasn’t into me, though?

“Probably. He’s always working somewhere,” Sean said.

“I noticed.”

“Ever since he got cut from hockey, it’s like all he does is work,” Sean added.

“He got cut? Really? I thought he was so good.”

“He is. But, you know. Dan is better. Trey is better. We only need two goalies.”

I thought about how much that would suck, not making the team your younger brother was the star of. I knew Conor and Sean were competitive with each other. “So he plays club hockey instead?”

“Like today? Yeah.” Sean nodded and gave me a little squeeze, pulling me closer. “That was some fight, huh?”

“Yeah. Does that happen a lot?” I asked.

“No. Not usually,” Sean said. “Conor kept getting in my face. I was sick of it.”

Conor kept getting in his face? Really? I didn’t see how it would be up to Conor, considering he had to stay in the goal most of the game.

I remembered one of Jones’s cardinal rules: Whenever you need to have an awkward
conversation with a guy, have it outside. That way you won’t have a bad association with a particular place. I waited until we turned off Minnehaha Parkway, onto a smaller street, figuring I wouldn’t have to come back onto this block again.

We’d been walking in silence for a few minutes when I stopped and gently pulled myself out of Sean’s arm. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“What?” He laughed. “A girlfriend?”

“Do you?” I repeated.

“No.” He shook his head. “What made you think that? Haven’t you and I been sort of, like, spending time together?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But the thing is…I saw you,” I said. “After the game, the fight. I came to find you, inside? And that girl had her arms around your waist and—”

“No way. We were goofing around, that’s all. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Well, stuff usually means something. That’s the thing.”

“Huh?”

“I know, that sounds vague, but it’s true.
Whenever you see someone kind of checking out someone else? It means they’re interested. Period.”

“Well, she might be interested, but I’m not,” Sean said.

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t convinced.

“She came in to find me. She’s like—she comes to every game, she follows me around,” Sean explained.

“So what are you saying? She’s a groupie?”

“A what?”

“A groupie,” I repeated. Sean didn’t seem to know the term, though.

“She said she wanted to clean up the cut. I was wishing
you’d
come in and rescue me from
her
.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said.

“Honestly.”

“Yes.” He held up his hand, as if he were getting sworn in. “The truth and nothing but the truth.”

“She was pretty, though,” I mused out loud.

“So what? You’re prettier,” Sean said. He put his arms around my waist and pulled me
close, hugging me. “You know, I had a really good time the other night. Sledding. I wish you hadn’t left, just when things were getting good.”

Did he mean the kiss? Or the toboggan rides? Because when I left, he was hanging out with his friends, not me.

But how could I hold that against him? I was the one who’d answered my cell phone while we were kissing. If anyone had been rude, it was me.

“Me, too,” I said. “I’m sorry I took off. But Emma and Jones showed up, and I had to meet them.”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“But…do you understand why it looked kind of bad, when I saw you with…what was her name?” I asked.

“Melissa. She…really, she’s not my girlfriend.”

I looked into his eyes. He seemed completely honest. Not to mention completely hot.

Sean pulled away and looked at me. “Hey, I’ve been thinking.”

“What?” I was filled with anticipation.

“You want to go to Buck Hill after all?” he said.

That wasn’t exactly the sweet romantic thing I’d been waiting for him to say, but it wasn’t bad.

“Sure! Anytime,” I said. But I got this picture of me with my skis crossed, butt up, face down, in the snow. Then, the next day, Gretchen and I sitting on the sofa, side by side, staring out the picture window, waiting for something interesting to happen, for someone to fall on their way past. Spring would come and we’d still be there, immobilized, and both on diets…

“There’s this charity event on Presidents’ Day,” Sean continued. “Tons of high schools participate. It’s a mattress race.”

I coughed. “Excuse me?”

“Teams wear costumes and have themes and stuff. You slide down on a mattress, or on cardboard boxes, or on whatever you’ve made. We’ve all collected pledges at school. They give out awards for best costume, most money raised, all that.”

“Isn’t your mattress…full already?” I
asked, picturing Sean’s group of friends all piled on top of it.

“We need a girl,” he said.

I bet,
I thought.

“Our theme is Snow White and the Seven Hockey Players.”

I couldn’t even begin to think about how dumb that sounded. But then, a mattress race already sounded pretty stupid, on its own. “You’re kidding.”

“No.” He laughed. “But Snow White dropped out. She was dating Ian, but they broke up, so we’re, like…well, we’re sort of screwed. Please say yes.”

“Doesn’t some other girl at school want to do it?” I asked.

“Maybe. But who cares? I want
you
to do it,” he said. “And hey, if it sucks, we could just do this.” He kissed me, pulling me toward him. Then suddenly he was pushing my hair back behind my ear and saying, “Okay, got to go. Call me tomorrow—we’ll hang out.”

I was in kind of a daze as I watched him jog down the street toward his house.

As I walked into the house, I thought:
I
should have invited him to the cabin just then.
I’d missed a totally perfect opportunity. What was my problem?

I was so happy that I didn’t even mind being sent to buy groceries by Gretchen as soon as I got home and told her everything was okay. She was smart enough not to say “I told you so,” which helped.

I didn’t see Conor when I walked into Zublansky’s, so I figured he wasn’t there. I grabbed a basket and walked around quickly to collect the stuff we needed for dinner. As I stepped up to Lane 8 to check out, suddenly Conor appeared.

“I’ve got it,” he volunteered, walking over to the line where I was standing. “Paper or plastic?” he asked me.

“Plastic,” I said.

“How’s it going?” He tried to sound casual, but his voice sounded a little forced to me.
He could have avoided this—and me,
I thought. Considering the way we’d left things earlier in the day, that’s what I would have done. So why was he jumping over to my line to help me?