Icing on the Lake (17 page)

I
tiptoed into the house, holding my stiletto-heeled shoes, and wearing Conor’s wool socks over my stockings. I was carrying a little bag from the bakery, with a few donuts for Brett.

I closed the door as quietly as I could. I was hoping I could sneak upstairs—Gretchen would no doubt have gone to sleep hours ago.

But when I turned around, I saw a light on in the kitchen, and both Sean and Gretchen—even on crutches—jumped up when they saw me.

Bear started to bark when he saw me, and he raced and jumped on me, nearly knocking me over. I dropped the bag of donuts and he was on top of that immediately, but I managed to get them away from him.

“Is Brett up, too?” I joked as I shrugged out of my jacket.

“No, he’s asleep, but we stayed up half the night worrying about you!” Gretchen said.

“What?” I asked.

“I was worried sick about you,” she said. She stared at the socks on my feet. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me about them. I noticed tear stains on her cheeks and felt this sudden stab of very, very intense guilt. You always called. That was our parents’ mantra.

“So was I,” Sean said. “Are you okay?”

I laughed, trying to break the tension. “You were worried? I’m sorry.”

“It’s not funny, Kirsten.” Gretchen sank back down at the kitchen table. “You should have called.”

“Yes. Okay, I probably should have,” I said to Gretchen. “But I didn’t bring my phone. It wouldn’t fit into my purse, remember?”

“Well, I figured that out after I called it five times and I kept hearing this ringing coming from your room,” she said angrily. “How could you not bring your phone?”

“You’re the one who told me I wouldn’t need
it—you’re the one who said I should bring this itty-bitty useless purse.” I slammed it down on the counter. Why was she treating me like a twelve-year-old?

“I’m responsible for you when you’re here,” she said. “if you didn’t make it home, I’d have to call Mom and Dad and tell them you were missing, and—”

“Gretchen, don’t you know me well enough to know I can take care of myself?” I asked.

“Someone told me you ran out of the party by yourself. Why did you do that?” Sean asked. “I kept trying to find you.”

“I’m sorry, Sean. Really. I left because…I just wasn’t having a very good time. And you were, and I didn’t want to ruin that, so…”

“How did you get here? Did you walk all the way?” Sean asked. “That’s like ten miles.”

So he hadn’t noticed that Conor and I left at the same time. Didn’t he have a clue that the only other person I really knew here was Conor? He could be so slow sometimes.

“Actually, Sean…I know this is going to sound bad. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything,” I said. “But Conor and I sort
of, well, took off together. He gave me a ride home.”

“Are you
serious
?” Gretchen screamed, pounding the table with her fist.

“Shh! Brett’s sleeping. Anyway, what? I thought you’d be glad I was safe,” I said.

“Wait a second. You and Conor?” Sean looked a little exhausted, as he stood under the fluorescent overhead light, his tie hanging loosely from his collar, his suit jacket unbuttoned. “Since when?”

“Since…I don’t know,” I said. “Tonight?”

“Oh.” Sean sighed. “Well, I just wish you’d told me. I spent half the night looking for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was really thoughtless of me. You’re right, and I’m sorry, really.”

He looked at me for a second and then shrugged. “Whatever. I’m too tired to deal with it right now. See you guys.”

I hurried after him to the front door. “Sean, I’m sorry,” I said again. “I hope I didn’t ruin the night. I mean, it seemed like you were having fun and everything.”

“Yeah, it was okay. There’ll be another party
soon anyway.” He gave me a half-smile, then walked out the door, and I watched him start jogging up the block toward his house.

When I turned around, Gretchen was sitting on the living room sofa, waiting for me. Her body language and tone of voice said it clearly:
I hate you right now.
“Since when are you interested in Conor?”

“Since…a while ago. I mean, not that long, but he really, I don’t know, grew on me, I guess you could say. I kind of just figured it out myself,” I admitted as I sat across from her.

“Does everyone else know?” she asked.

“No. Why would you ask that?”

“Because! You tell your friends more than you tell me. You always have,” she said in a hurt tone.

“They don’t know either, okay? It’s private,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about everything with everyone. Some things should be private.”

She buried her face in her hands. “Private. That means you’re having sex, that’s why you didn’t come home until two in the morning—”

I felt like throwing a magazine from her
cutesy wood magazine rack at her. “No, it doesn’t! That’s not me at all. You don’t even know me.”

“I do,” she said. “And that’s why I think you should really consider staying with Sean.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“No. And I resent that. I think I know a little more about guys and relationships than you do, Kirsten.”

“Okay,
Mom
,” I said. “Spill. Tell me your wisdom.”

“I think things could really work out with you and Sean. He’s a great guy—”

“So is Conor,” I interrupted. “Do you know how many nice things Conor has done since I got here?” I told her about the times he’d made sure I was okay. I left out the bit about insulting me and running over my foot with a grocery cart.

“So he likes to follow you around,” she said. “Does that prove anything?”

“Yes. Actually, it does,” I said. “You don’t know Conor. You said so yourself.”

“But what’s wrong with Sean? And how could you just ditch him at that party? He asked
you to go with him, and you run out with his brother?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said.

“I bet.”

“Honestly! First of all, Sean and I were already, like, running on fumes. We didn’t have anything in common. And once we hit the party, that was so obvious. He kept hanging out with his pals, and these other girls—we danced together like twice.”

“He said you had a nice time, until you vanished,” Gretchen said.

“So you’ve never known two people to have different versions of the same events?” I just stared at her. “Sean barely knew I was there. But that was okay! Maybe I was keeping my distance, too, maybe that was part of the problem. Because I’d realized I wanted to be with Conor.”

“You went about it all wrong,” Gretchen said. “You made a mess of everything. And I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just break your date with Sean if—”

“I know, I probably should have,” I said. “In retrospect. But at the time, I felt like I had to go
through with it. Sean was counting on me,
you
were counting on me—”

“So now it’s my fault?” She shook her head. “Kirsten, you have a lot to learn about maturity.”

“So do you,” I shot back. “You sit around here doing nothing but telling me how to run my life and how I should look and what I should wear and who I should date. You know, I’m really sorry about your divorce and I’m sorry about your leg, but that doesn’t give you the right to tell me how to live my life, okay? ’Cause I don’t really admire the way you live yours. So why don’t you focus on your own for a change?”

I took a deep breath after all the words came out. I guess I’d been saving them up for a while.

Gretchen practically snorted. “You don’t know anything. The reason I’m so mad about staying up late tonight is that I have an interview tomorrow and I’m going to look like—like—crap, thanks to you!”

“What?” I asked quietly, still feeling guilty about my mini-tirade.

“I have an interview. For a job. It’s a second interview, actually,” she said.

“No way.” I started to laugh a little. Everything was out in the open now, and we were still talking. “Really? That’s so cool.”

“I don’t know.” She rubbed her cast with her wrist. “Do you think I can handle it after all this time off?”

“Gretchen. You can handle anything,” I said. “I’ve been watching you handle stuff since, you know. Forever.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. So tell me about it,” I urged.

“Well. Since you got here, I’ve been doing a lot. You probably didn’t notice, you were either too busy with Brett, or out with those guys. Maybe you were really focused on yourself, not me,” she said. “Did you ever think of that?”

I shrank down in my chair. She had a point. Whenever I focused on Gretchen, it was to find fault with her constant shop & spend & sofa mode.

“Anyway, first I went to a career counselor, and I found out what I really wanted to do.”

“You did? When?”

“The first week when you were here. I asked you to drop me at the doctor?” she reminded me. “And all those mornings that you went to the bakery, I was doing online job hunting, while Brett watched ‘Sesame Street.’ And whenever you took Brett places? I tried to do phone interviews, and work on my resume, send out letters and stuff.”

“So, wait a second. You’ve been doing all this over the past month while I’ve been here? Seriously?” I asked. “What’s the interview for? Is it a job you really want?”

She nodded, and smiled. “It’s retail management.”

“What else,” I said. “Of course that makes sense!”

“That day we went to the Mall of America, and you took Brett to Camp Snoopy, I went to a few stores. It wasn’t easy on crutches, but I managed,” she said. “Anyway, this would be to roll out and manage a new store, at a different mall.”

I just sat there, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It made complete sense: The woman who
was born to shop and spend would now help others do the same thing. And she was great at it, and now she’d get paid for it. And I’d helped, even though I didn’t know about it.
But, wait a second,
I thought. “Did Mom know about this?” I asked.

“Yes. It was her idea that having you here might help me get around to doing the job search. She said she’d give me a month to get my act together.” Gretchen leaned back on the sofa and sighed. “She was very un-Mom-like. She didn’t say anything about things working out—she said the only way to make that happen was to work them out myself.”

“But…you did break your leg, right? Or was that fake?” I asked.

“Of course I did!” She laughed. “But it’s not as bad as they thought. It should be okay in another couple of weeks. Then if I can just find a daycare that will work with my hours.”

“I’ll stick around until you do,” I said.

“But don’t you need to get back home?”

“Yes. And no,” I said. “We can work something out.”

“You are the best. Even if your waltzing
sucks. And your taste in boys is questionable at best. And you’re only staying so you can be with Conor.”

“That’s not the
only
reason,” I said. “You know that, right?”

“I think so.” She smiled. “Now what did you bring home in that bakery bag, because I could go for something sweet.”

“You wouldn’t like it,” I said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said.

“Okay, fine.” Before I went into the kitchen, I leaned down and gave Gretchen a hug. “I’m really proud of you. I’m sorry you were worried tonight.”

“It’s okay.” She hugged me back. “I’m sorry I’ve been a pain lately. Now
run.
”

W
hen I got up Thursday morning and looked outside to check the weather for our trip up north, I saw Sean sitting on the front steps. Maybe it was a mirage, I told myself as I looked again. I hadn’t slept much the night before, because I was so excited about the trip.

What was he doing here? This was awkward. Was his shovel broken or something? Or was he here to tell me that Conor couldn’t go away with me—that he and I were back on instead?

I opened the front door a crack. “So, did it snow?” I asked him.

“Oh, hey, Kirsten.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. He had dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept all that well either. “Good morning.”

“What’s up?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

He got to his feet. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Well, do you need something?” He wasn’t here to try and win me back or something romantic like that, was he? He had this serious, distressed look on his face, his forehead semi-creased with worry.

“I just wanted to talk to you for a minute,” he said. “Do you have time?”

“Clearly,” I said. I was standing there in my sweats, having decided to sleep in clothes that might not always look like pajamas from now on. “Do you want to come in?”

“Could we sit out here?” Sean asked. “I don’t really want to see Gretchen or Brett, if that’s okay.”

“That’s cool. I’ll be right out,” I said. I grabbed my jacket from the hook on the closet door and put on my boots. Looking at them reminded me of the Snow White costume. Hopefully Sean wouldn’t have the same memory.

I grabbed my mittens and went outside. Sean was sitting on the porch swing, so I went over to sit beside him.

“First of all, I want to apologize,” Sean said.

“No! I should be the one apologizing,” I said. “I know I should have been honest with you, when I felt like I was kind of, I don’t know. Like maybe Conor and I had more in common and…I just really liked you and I’d already said I’d go to the dance and the cabin with you, so…”

Ugh, listen to me
, I thought. I was sounding a lot like Emma Dilemma. I love the girl, but I didn’t want to emulate her dating style. “Anyway. I’m sorry if I was rude at the party, or worried you that night, or any of that,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too,” Sean said. “I was just…I liked you and everything. I mean, you showed up here in town and you’re funny and cute, I thought, well, I just wanted to hang out with you. And then I saw that Conor liked you, and when I realized there were like a hundred reasons to like you…I felt like I had to go out with you, instead of him.”

We sat there, swinging back and forth for a minute. I wondered if he felt as stupid about this as I did. There was no reason we couldn’t go out with each other, but there was no reason we should, either. We just didn’t have that intense
connection, the way you should if you’re going to spend that much time with someone and, like, make out with him.

“I guess what I want to say is that, despite everything that’s happened, I really like you,” Sean said.

I stopped swinging. What?

“That’s why I have to tell you something. It’s really, really important.”

“Okay…” I said slowly.

“As much as we argue, and fight, and criticize each other? Conor’s a really good guy. You can trust him.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah. For sure.” He nodded. “But if it turns out you can’t? And he’s awful to you? You know where I live.”

I laughed. “Are you seriously going to be that nice to me?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I think you’re too nice,” I said. “That’s why you have all those girls around you all the time. You have to be a little, you know, discriminating or something. Be mean to a few of ’em. Thin the pack.”

“Thin the pack? What am I, a wolf now?” Sean slid off the swing and caught the chain to keep it from whacking me. “I know we act like jerks to each other, but he’s still my brother. I’d stick up for him over anybody. Even when he does stupid things like walking out on a team.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I thought about Gretchen and our argument the night before. Maybe we’d never be that much alike, but I’d knock down any guy—anyone, period—who tried to hurt her.

“Aunt Kirsten likes boys, Aunt Kirsten likes Sean…”

“Conor,” I tried to correct Brett for the umpteenth time.

The four—make that five, counting Bear—of us were standing outside by Conor’s pickup. A light snow was falling, and we’d just spent the required five minutes discussing the weather as we prepared to take off for the Groundhog weekend.

Gretchen had tried to give me some advice over breakfast, in terms of how far to go with
Conor on our first weekend away together. I told her that one, I didn’t plan on sleeping with him or any guy until I was older, and two, we’d be sleeping in a cabin with a bunch of other people, so not to worry. That seemed to put her mind at ease.

“Don’t break your leg,” she said to me.

“I won’t!” I said. “Will you quit saying that already?”

All of a sudden, Brett stopped chanting my name, and got this big lower lip as I opened the passenger door to the rusty pickup truck. His eyes filled with tears and he started to cry.

I crouched down, wrapped my arms around him and gave him a big hug. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

“You’d better be,” Gretchen said. “I need a driver.” Then she smiled. “And a friend.”

We gave each other a quick hug, and then I climbed into the pickup beside Conor.

Gretchen leaned into his window. “Take care of her.”

“Got it,” he said.

“And drive really carefully.”

“No problem. It’s a light snow. I think it’ll taper off soon.”

“Okay, bye!” I called out as we pulled away from the curb. “Man,” I sighed. “I thought we’d never get out of there. Could you and Gretchen talk about cold fronts any longer?”

“Well, what else are we supposed to talk about?” Conor said. “Uh oh. I think we’ve got a problem.” He kept glancing in the rearview mirror. “Look behind us.”

I was afraid to look. I figured it must be Gretchen waving her arms, yelling “Stop! Stop!”

But when I finally turned around, I saw Bear. He was running at top speed, like an Iditarod sled dog competitor, bounding along the middle of the street after us.

“Loyal, isn’t he?” Conor remarked as we slowed to a stop.

By the time we got Bear back home and got on the highway, the snow had started coming down harder. Then it fell even more heavily. After a while, we were going so slowly due to ice buildup, and lack of visibility, that we had only
made it about ten miles in an hour.

“This has kind of turned into a blizzard,” I commented. “Did we even hit St. Paul yet?”

Conor laughed. “Yeah. We’re about fifty miles out of town.”

“We’re actually not going to make it to the cabin. Are we?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

I started laughing. After all that. After everything I’d gone through to get a date for this silly weekend, after all the money I’d spent, the risky deposit for two. Now we weren’t even going to get there.

“I think we should pull over here,” Conor said as he peered at the exit sign in the distance. “It’s only getting worse. We can sit for a while and see if the storm’s going to stop.”

We made it to a SuperAmerica gas station, where several other cars had pulled in to assess the situation. I went inside to buy us a few sodas and asked the clerk what the roads looked like, going north. “They’ve got a foot already in Duluth,” she said. “Lots of cars are stuck, and there’s this real icy section where people are going off the road, near Hinckley.”

That did not sound good. I pulled out my cell phone and called Jones, but she didn’t answer. I hoped she’d made it okay. I left her a message, then called Emma. She was already at the cabin with Donny, her latest, and Crystal and Eric were there with them. They had had a much shorter drive to the cabin, and they’d left home before the storm, so they were already settled in, sitting by the fire and watching the snow come down.

“Kirsten, it’s okay, you can admit it,” Emma said. “You didn’t find a date for the weekend. Come on up anyway.”

“I’m serious!” I said. “We’re stranded.” I looked out at Conor, who was scraping the ice off the windshield because the truck’s aging defroster was overwhelmed.

“Wait—here’s Jones! Hey, you made it!” I heard everyone laughing and talking, and then Jones picked up the phone.

“Where are you, Kirst?”

“We’re trying to get there, but the roads are awful,” I said.

“You are cursed, Kirst. You realize that.”

“I know. We’re going to stay here for a while
until it stops snowing and sleeting and whatever else. Hopefully we’ll make it later tonight, or else tomorrow.”

“You and…?”

Just then, Conor walked into the store, shaking the snow off his jacket.

I’d kept the secret this long. Why not a few more hours? “See you tomorrow, for sure. Okay?” I said to Jones. “Bye!”

Conor and I left the gas station shop and ran to the pickup truck. Just before we got in, I made a snowball and quickly tossed it at him. It was the perfect snow for making snowballs—wet, heavy and easy to clump together. We circled the truck, and the gas pumps, hiding out, tossing them at each other. Soon other people got out of their cars and joined in—soon the entire gas station was filled with people hiding behind their cars and pelting whoever dared come out from behind their car to walk into the shop.

We were laughing so hard when we finally got back into the truck to warm up. “Well. Should we settle in for the night, or what?” Conor asked.

“I guess so,” I said with a shrug.

We had our sleeping bags in the back, under the truck cap, and Conor made a little nest with blankets and some of our clothes.

We climbed in together, and snuggled up close. As I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, I scraped a little part of frost off the window.
K + C
, I traced with my fingernail. Then I drew a heart around it.

“Are you seeing things again? Hearts in the ice? Like you saw hearts in your lattes?” Conor teased me.

“Did you, or did you not, intentionally make a pattern in my coffee that morning?”

“I did not,” Conor said. “But I take full credit for it anyway.”

“That is so like you!” I giggled as Conor pulled me over toward him, taking a chunk of snow out of my hair.

“I can’t believe we’re spending the night in the truck,” Conor said. “I’ve never done something like this before. Well, except for the time I ran away from home.”

“When was that?”

“When I was sixteen. I got so mad at everyone
that I just left, you know? The problem was, I forgot the sleeping bag and blankets part.” He snuggled closer. “It was February.”

“You went home. End of story,” I said.

“No, I made a snow mattress,” Conor said. “You know, the way animals do? If you lie on the snow it’s really warm.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I’m just going to take your word on that. For a change.” I turned slightly so that I was lying on my back. “Though it would be cool to lie outside and look at the stars right now.”

“Yeah, but it’s still snowing,” Conor said. He turned over, too, and we laid side by side, holding hands. “So…what’s it going to be like tomorrow?”

“We’ll have to see, I guess,” I said.

And then I fell asleep, cuddled next to Conor, completely toasty warm in the cold truck in the middle of a snowstorm.