“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?

I noticed he had a bruise near his eye, like Sean. “Ouch. Your face doesn’t look too good either,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“No! I mean, your face is fine, your face is great. Just a little beat up.”

“It’s nothing. It doesn’t hurt. Superficial scrape is all. What’s for dinner tonight?” Conor asked as he started to pack the groceries.

“Chicken.”

“Yeah. I kind of figured.” He dropped the package of chicken into a plastic bag and it landed with a loud thump.

“Easy. Don’t break the chicken,” I said.

“I think it’s been broken already,” he said dryly. “So, just chicken. Baked? Fried?”

“Chicken with onions, mushrooms, peppers and tomatoes,” I said.

“No kidding,” he commented as he bagged each item in the same order I listed it. He stopped when he got to the tomatoes, and shook the plastic bag so that three of them rolled out. He started to juggle them, saying “I’m all about the tomatoes.”

The cashier and I looked at him, and then at each other, and exchanged irritated, he-is-so-annoying-and-we-have-no-patience-for-this glances.

When he dropped one tomato, he swore, then quickly let the other two fall right into a waiting plastic bag. “So, Italian night or what?” he asked.

“I don’t know what we’re having, actually. It’s Gretchen’s list, but I’m guessing it’s some kind of Italian dish. If you must know.”

“Oh, I had to know. I’m very nosy when it comes to my customers’ meal planning.”

“You are?” I laughed.