Fake Skating(2)

And then I saw it.

She had tears in her eyes.

Seeing anyone with tears in their eyes made me uncomfortable; I wasn’t good with serious. But seeing the most sarcastic person I’d ever met, looking sad?

It was a little gutting, to be honest.

“Collins,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine, needing to nudge her back to a comfortable spot. “If you cry, I swear to God I will toss you out of this shed and into the pond.”

She coughed out a laugh, and her voice was thick when she said, “Such a little badass, threatening me when we both know you couldn’t, come on.”

“You’re so mean,” I teased.

“And you’re so short,” she teased back, a painless joke because I wasn’t short; she was just taller than everyone else.

“You’re not a garbage person, by the way,” I said, noticing that her eyes still had that emotional shimmer that made me want to kick her grandpa’s ass for being a dick. “You’re allowed to be sad that you don’t get to stay.”

She swallowed and bit down on her lower lip, like she was trying to hold it together.

“I mean, I’m sad,” I admitted, my voice cracking because I was sad. How was I supposed to summer without running all over town with Dani?

“You are?” she asked, her voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. Her eyes moved all over my face. “Really?”

I nodded and felt a stabbing pain in my chest when I watched a tear escape, because Dani Collins couldn’t be crying.

She couldn’t.

Suddenly everything in the universe shifted, and I just needed her to stop. Immediately.

Everything was wrong if she wasn’t happy.

Because Dani was sparkling eyes and contagious laughter. Dani was happiness.

Before I knew it, my thumbs were on her cheeks, brushing away the tears, and I struggled to swallow as she stared at me like she was trying to figure out what was happening.

“I don’t know either,” I admitted, because we’d always been able to read each other’s minds, and I had no idea why I suddenly wanted to kiss her. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Same,” she said, nodding. Her eyes went down to my mouth, and in an instant my pulse was pounding.

“Should we?” I asked—no, breathed—as I realized my thumbs were still sliding over her soft skin.

Did I seriously just ask (without saying it) if we should kiss?

What the hell is happening?

“I mean, we have to have our firsts sometime,” she said, reading my mind about the kiss and getting that look of resolve in her eyes that meant she was all in on something.

No one committed to scheming like Dani. She was game to do nearly anything. I always wondered if that was just the “vacation” version of Dani, or if she was like that at home, too.

“So maybe we… should?”

She said it with a question in her voice, and I had no idea how we’d gotten here.

Holy shit.

“Are you serious?” I managed, my voice coming out a tiny bit strangled. Should my hands still be on her face?

What the hell?

Why did this sound like a great idea when it was Dani?

“I think I am,” she said, her eyes dancing, pushing away the sadness.

I might’ve been able to reverse it, to pretend for the sake of our friendship that we hadn’t contemplated it, but then she looked at me like that, and it was over.

She looked at me like she wanted me to kiss her. Like she was waiting for me to lean in.

And, God help me, I’d dreamed of kissing her far too long for me to be strong.

“Then come closer, Collins.”



* * *



I inhaled through my nose as my brain rewound crystal-clear memories of lying back on that blanket and losing my mind with her. The smell of the shed—a mix of dirt and cedar and nostalgic longing—wasn’t helping, either. The scents were so fucking familiar that it felt like I should follow the walls over to the tiny section in the corner where we’d written nonsensical bullshit with paint markers, just to see if our long-forgotten artwork remained.

But the second that popped into my head, I remembered the rest.

And then I didn’t want to remember at all anymore.

Because even though it’d been years, I was still pissed. Logically, it should’ve been water under the bridge by now. I should be over it.

But as I drove home, I realized that I wasn’t.

Like, at all.

We might be older, and it might be illogical, but I still hated Dani Collins for what she did after the night we kissed.

“Te quero bem” é o caralho

Eu vou acabar contigo



Or, in English:

“I love you” is bullshit

I’m going to end you





CHAPTER ONE February—Senior Year

Dani




“Wake up—we’re here.”

I opened my eyes, but instead of seeing my bedroom, I saw snow and gray skies through the cold window that my forehead was resting on.

The same things I’d stared at for countless hours before finally falling asleep.

Damn it—it’s real.

“Remind me again why we’re moving here,” I said, leaning down to shove my feet back into my Chucks. We drove seven hours in a moving truck full of our stuff (that’d been incorrectly shipped to our old address in Minot—thanks, Air Force) so we could now live in a place where there appeared to be multiple feet of snow on the ground and the windchill was subzero—like, make it make sense. “I mean, why not California?”