Dani wasn’t the one I hurt, but it still feels like a confession. Guilt creeps over my skin as I speak of my past failures as a best friend, and for the first time in the history of our relationship, I can’t look her in the eye.
“I deserve it,” I say. “I was a total jerk.”
“Honestly?” Dani squeezes my knee. “I think you’ve beat yourself up for too long. I’m not saying it wasn’t messed up—if you pulled that stuff with me, I’d kick your ass. The point is, it happened. It’s over. You were both younger, and you had a lot of bad stuff going on. She got together with Will and then she dumped him anyway.” Dani sips her mocha, kicking at the snow beneath our bench. “Whatever happened to forgive and forget? All that happy holidays, give peace a chance, can’t we all just get along stuff?”
“I never told her how sorry I was. Never even tried to explain. I wanted to, but … I lost it. I couldn’t. And now it’s been so long …”
“You could try to talk to her, though. I mean, I’m not telling you what to do. Just that if it’s really bothering you, and you want to tell her you’re sorry—”
“No. Sometimes it’s, like, too little too late.” I think back to that day with the cheetah bra, the drive home from Luby Arena with Mom and Dad and all that unspoken tension, the endless shouting match that exploded as soon as they thought Bug and I were asleep. I think back to the days that followed, my father’s bags piled by the door like some cheesy brokenhearted country song. The phone call that attempted to explain why this was better for everyone. The news of his planned move out west, the fairy-tale promises that we’d see each other for holidays and vacations and all the important stuff in between. The e-mails and blogs, detailing his perfect new life. And never once did I hear an apology. Would “sorry” have made any difference? Does it ever? It’s just a word. One word against a thousand actions.
A springer spaniel nudges my knee, cocking his head as if he’s waiting to hear my rationalizations, too. I scratch his ears and swirl the hot liquid in my cup until a thin curl of steam rises from the hole in the lid.
“I have to nail that scholarship, Dani.” My voice breaks when I say it, but I realize now how crucial it is, here in this place of truth on a bench beneath the trees. “Do you get it now? Why I have to focus on stuff with Will and the team? I have to keep training. I have to win. It’s my way out. Everywhere I look in this town, everyone I see, it just reminds me of the biggest screwup of my life.”
“The Empire Games?” she asks. “Kara?”
“That stuff, yeah, but even what happened before. I’m the one that showed my mom the bra. She must’ve already known Dad was cheating, but that’s what made it real. I knew. And the second I dropped it on her dresser, she couldn’t deny it anymore. Why didn’t I keep pretending for her? Maybe they’d still be together …” I shake my head and look over the path that leads to the silver maples on the western edge of the park. Their pale branches bend toward one another in a delicate archway, narrow and knobby like finger bones encased in ice. A cold breeze rolls through and the trees shift soundlessly, hardly moving at all.
Dani follows my gaze across the bright white park, eyebrows furrowing into jagged, thoughtful lines. “It wasn’t the bra, Hud. Come on. Even if your mom never saw it, she had to know what was going on. You said it yourself. Your dad was cheating on her. Things were already messed up, maybe for a long time before that. It’s not your fault.”
“I know it’s not my fault that he cheated. Just that he left.”
“No, that doesn’t—”
“You know what I remember most about that day? It wasn’t the bra, or even how pathetic my parents looked in the stands. It was what my dad said on the drive home. He kept telling me not to worry, that there’d be another chance. But it was the way he said it. Like he wasn’t really talking about skating. It was like he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t the end of our family, even though he obviously wanted out. And I kept thinking, all the way home while Mom wasn’t saying anything, and all night when I crawled into Bug’s bed and covered his ears so he wouldn’t hear them fighting … I kept thinking that if I’d stuck it out, if I’d just done my best and won that event, that maybe it would’ve given my father something to root for. A reason to stay.”
Dani and I sit in silence for a long time, watching a pair of dalmatians romp on the path, their tails flinging snow all around them.
“Hudson, no one can be your reason to stay. You have to want it. Your father wanted to leave, and you guys couldn’t be his reason not to. Harsh, but there it is.”
I down the last of my mocha. She’s right. And despite our friendship, despite my mother and my baby bird of a little brother, despite the town that’s all I’ve known my entire life, I want to leave, too. More than Will and hockey, more than the mistakes of my past, more than canceling ladies’ night, if anything can come between me and my best friend, it’s that.
I look out at the craggy silhouette of the steel mill that’s always visible in the distance—the backdrop of our lives. Behind our bench, the wind shakes the branches of the oaks, and an icicle dives from the top bough, spiking the snow like a dagger.
“We should head back,” Dani says, dropping her Sharon’s cup into the trash. “School locks up in an hour, and we’ve got cupcake flyers to hang.”
I toss my cup in after hers and we head out, ducking under the ice-coated finger-bone trees, walking arm in arm as the snow crunches like hard candy under our boots.
Chapter Twelve
Dirty Little Secrets
Vanilla cupcakes with crushed chocolate cookie crumbs, topped with Baileys cream cheese frosting and a light dusting of cocoa powder
Will lives just a few miles behind me on the other side of the railroad tracks. Not the movie version of “the other side of the tracks,” though—it’s still Watonka. Same dark alleys. Same tiny, plain houses. Around here, even the snow looks like an afterthought: a dingy, threadbare blanket thrown on and stretched thin in the middle, yellow-brown wheatgrass poking through the holes of it like the fingers of a dirty kid.
The guy who answers the door is dressed in stonewashed jeans and a Buffalo Sabres jersey with a white turtleneck underneath. He has the same broad smile and thick, blond hair as Will, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I assume you’re here for William?”
Well, I’m definitely not here for you, Mr. Serious Pants. “Yeah. Yes. I’m Hudson. We’re … friends from school.”
“Friends, huh?” He eyes me suspiciously. Something tells me he’s not the it’s-cool-to-have-friends-of-the-opposite-sex-over-for-no-reason type of parent.
“We have a group project for Monday,” I say. “I mean, the Monday after Christmas break. In English lit. The Scarlet Letter.” Too bad I only brought the paperback—a hardcover would be much better for smacking Will in the head, which he totally deserves for subjecting me to this.
“Upstairs. First door on the left.” The man closes the front door behind me and I head upstairs. From the top landing, I hear Will’s voice, low and muffled through his slightly open bedroom door.
“I’m trying. It’s not that easy. They’re better this year.”
Pause.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Longer pause.
“Don’t worry. You know I want to.”
Pause. Laugh. Pause.
“See you Sunday. Later, Coach.” Will closes the phone and finally notices me in the doorway, his face reddening and quickly recovering.
“Coach?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He tosses the cell onto his desk. “What a jackoff.”