Lauren’s head was still spinning when she turned back to Eddie and his mom, who were kneeling down in the snow, trying to take a selfie next to a lumpy snowman Eddie must’ve built. Lauren rushed over, reaching for Ms. Ramirez’s phone.
“Here,” she said. “Let me.”
* * *
? ? ?
After Eddie and his mom left, Lauren went everywhere, looking for Asa. He wasn’t at the rink where she’d last seen him. He wasn’t in the break room, or the gift shop, or the coffee stand. He wasn’t even outside, where some of the other employees took their smoke breaks and where he could sometimes be found if he was keeping one of them company. That was the last place she looked, so sure she’d find him there she could picture him—in the middle of laughing at something Marcus said, kicking at the gravel of the parking lot, looking up when he heard the door, his eyes turning to pinpoints of an almost black when he saw her. Would he be welcoming? Or distant, angry? She didn’t know. She just knew she needed to talk to him.
Lauren was checking out the break room one more time when Kiki came behind her.
“He went home.”
Lauren spun around. “What?”
Kiki reached to open the fridge, taking out a LaCroix she’d labeled with a piece of masking tape and a bold note written in Sharpie—KIKI’S—TOUCH UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH! “He left for the day.”
“But I thought his shift ended at eight.” Not that Lauren had memorized his schedule, double-checked it on the board earlier.
Kiki shrugged. “Said he wasn’t feeling well.”
That wasn’t like Asa. Lauren tried to remember a time when he’d called out sick to work, and couldn’t think of one. There’d been a flu going around—was it possible he’d caught it? Or maybe food poisoning? Personally, she didn’t trust the hot dogs at Cold World because she’d seen them get left in a vat of water all day and then reheated the next morning. “Is he okay?” Lauren asked. “I mean, does he need—”
Kiki snorted at the same time she took a sip of her LaCroix, which couldn’t have felt great for her nose. “What do you think? No, he’s not okay. You broke his heart, Lauren.”
“I didn’t.”
Kiki rolled her eyes so hard it looked like it physically hurt. “Okay.”
“He broke up with me!” Lauren said. How was it possible for her to break his heart when it had been the other way around?
“I’m really not looking to get in the middle of it,” Kiki said. “I want to be your friend, obviously I’m still his friend, but all I’ll say is that your stories don’t match.”
“He said he couldn’t do it anymore!” Lauren said, feeling the corners of her eyes burn even at the memory of those words. She didn’t know what Asa was telling his housemates, but she remembered that part very clearly.
“Oh my god.” Kiki set her drink down on the table, as if she needed full use of her hands to have this discussion. “It would be hilarious, what clowns you both are, if it weren’t for the fact that you’re both miserable to be around. He meant he didn’t want to hide with you anymore, Lauren. Think about it. He spent years hiding relationships from his dad. He loved you, he wanted to be with you, he just wanted you to acknowledge it.”
Lauren rewound through the conversation in her head. She was ashamed that it hadn’t even occurred to her, that part about his dad. He’d never seen any need for them to hide their relationship at work, but he’d gone along with it, because she’d said it made her more comfortable. He hadn’t said how uncomfortable it made him, but she should’ve seen it.
“Why didn’t he just say that?” Lauren asked, her voice small.
“Because you were rushing to tell him just how fine it all was! And how, by the way, his job isn’t going anywhere. And how you only dated for a week, so it should all be fine, right?”
Wow, Asa really had told Kiki everything. Thinking back on that conversation through that lens, she saw how awful it all sounded. How cold she’d been. How she’d shut down, and shut him out.
“I thought . . .”
Lauren wanted to finish that sentence, but Kiki was staring at her with such compassion that she had a hard time forming words around the lump in her throat. Kiki, who’d questioned her choice to keep the relationship secret in the first place. Kiki, who had loyalty to Asa before she’d even met Lauren, and who had every right to hate her now.