Bittersweet (28 page)

“Your brother’s in the dining room,” Trick says. “You can see him right now. Last time I checked, Fresh ’n’ Fast don’t sell stand-in brothers, so get him while he’s hot.”

“Bug’s here? Perfect.” I poke my head out the dining room doors and wave him back into the kitchen. “Hey, sweet pea.
Want to learn some cupcake tricks and help me with an order?”

His eyes get huge. “You said I’m not allowed to work on customer projects until I’m older.”

“Well, now you’re older.” I steer him over to the sink to wash his hands, then set him up at the prep counter. Some people call it child labor. I call it … let’s not get technical.

“When I hand you the cupcake, dip it lightly, like this.” I roll the top of a cupcake in a flat bowl of edible silver glitter and set it in front of him. “See?”

“Yum.”

“Don’t eat it.” I squirt a pink buttercream heart over a new cupcake and pass it over. “Let me see you try one.”

He’s a little slow, but he gets the job done.

“Beautiful,” I say. “Congratulations, you’re my new Vice President of Glitter. Any questions?”

Bug crinkles up his face. “Can I be Glitter Czar instead?”

“Done.”

“One last thing.” Bug pulls the spiral notebook from his back pocket and tears off a strip of paper. “Can you give me a blood sample?”

I look deep into my brother’s pleading brown eyes and raise an eyebrow. “Bug, seriously … did Mom drop you on your head? Like, last night?”

“You can’t trust anyone these days, Hud. Even relatives. And I don’t want to go into business with someone who won’t submit to a basic drug test.”

“Give me that.” I snatch the paper from his hand and smear
on a sample with red frosting tint. “Does this work? Stabbing myself with a fork is probably a health code violation.”

“Good point.” The Glitter Czar takes the red-smeared paper, shoves it in his pocket, and gets to work.

With Bug’s meticulous help, we finish decorating relatively quickly. I add chocolate piping around a few dozen for a little flair and arrange them carefully into bakery boxes. Then I wrap ten metal trays in foil sheets and stack them together with the order. Some assembly required, but I think we pulled it off.

“Very classy, if you ask me.” Bug high-fives me with a glittery hand. “We make a good team.”

“The best.” I pass him the frosting gun, dinner of champions and Glitter Czars alike. “Couldn’t have done it without—”

“Trick?” Nat sticks her pink-haired head through the window over the grill. “Some lady’s here for a cupcake order. Did Hudson leave anything to—”

“I’m here, Nat. Tell her I’ll be right out.”

Operation Bake-and-Switch is a raging success. Back in the kitchen, I lean against the counter and untie my baker’s apron, Mrs. Dawes satisfied, cupcake crisis averted. Time to
wolf
down—pun intended—dinner and get to the game. Less than an hour till face-off.

Just as I bite into my chicken Caesar wrap, Mom’s office door flies open. “Hud, that you?”

I swallow and give her a half wave. “Hey, Ma.”

“Marianne’s got the flu. Can you stay for the dinner shift?”

“Not really. Did you call Dani?”

“Tried. She’s got plans tonight.”

“So do I.” As if to remind me, my phone buzzes with Josh’s number, but I silence it. What does she mean, Dani’s got plans? With who?

Mom crosses the kitchen and takes the stool across from me and Bug. “You going out with that Josh boy?”

“Is that the friend with benefits guy?” Bug swipes one of my sweet potato fries. “He’s funny. I like that guy.”

Under the table, I kick his foot.

“Ow! Hudson—”

“No,” I say. “I mean, I don’t have a friend with … I’m not going out with Josh tonight. I just wanted to go out. For coffee. With … um … a girl from my French class. Trina. It’s her birthday. Besides, I don’t have my uniform here.”

Mom frowns and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Hud. It’s only till about eight—Nat and I can handle it after that. It’s not a school night, so I’ll keep Bug here. You can scoot out after first shift. Sound okay?”

I shrug and jam a few fries into my mouth. Like I have a choice.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asks.

“Nothing.” I shake my head and smile through the food. I can’t let her see me crack. Trick, either—not after the cupcake disaster I so narrowly dodged. I have to find a way to handle this. It’s just a few more weeks, anyway. Once I nail that competition, no more Hurley’s shifts. No more scraping
by. Everything will change. “I really wanted to go out early tonight, that’s all.”

Mom stands and shoves her stool back under the counter. “Excuse me, darlin’, but there’s a lot going on these next couple of months, and most of the time, you come and go as you please. In return, I expect—”

“No, it’s fine, Ma.” She’s right. I should be grateful that she doesn’t bug me about my every move. I am. I know she does a lot to keep us all going. I just wish those expectations of hers had better timing. “I’ll stay.”

“Thank you.” She leans over and kisses me on the cheek, then swoops in for a Bug-hug. “There should be extra uniforms in the closet. I’ll be counting milk cartons in the walk-in cooler if you need me.”

I relinquish the rest of my fries to Bug, grab a spare uniform, and change in the ladies’ room. There’s an unidentifiable red streak crusted down the front of the dress like a jagged zipper. Who knows how many decades old it is.

Mad hot, Hudson. As usual.

My phone buzzes on the bathroom counter—Josh again.

“Hud, where are you?” he asks when I pick up. “It’s almost time. The crowd’s awesome. The news is here tonight—it’s crazy.”

I lean against the tiled wall, facing the mirror. “Will told me the news would be there.”

“Why aren’t
you
here?”

“Dude, I’m stuck at work.”

“You can’t be! That’s so lame!”

I scrape my thumbnail over the red streak—no change. “Seriously. You should see what I’m wearing.”

“Mmmm,” he says, his voice going low and smoky. “What are you wearing?”

I know he’s trying to be all cheesy porn star, but the way he’s breathing into the phone sends a squiggly shiver down my back. “Um … it’s … I’m … the Hurley’s dress … thing.”

“Kidding, Avery.”

“I know.” I shake my head at my reflection. Thankfully, Josh can’t see my bright pink face through the phone. “So, um, yeah. What’s going on?”

“Nothing now. I only spent
all
afternoon hooking up this Deaf Buddha mix. All imports. Guess I’ll have to find some other girl who digs—”

“Deaf Buddha? That is
so
not fair, fifty-six.”

Josh laughs. “You know I’ll save it for you. Just get here as soon—wait, hold up.”

He mumbles something to the other guys, all of them suddenly cheering in the background.

“Hud, turn on Channel Seven,” he says over the noise. “Hurry! They’re about to do a live shot!”

“Okay, I’m going. Hang on.” I run to Mom’s office and flip on the news.

“I’m waving at you right now!” Josh says.

“I know!” I wave back. I can’t help it. “I totally see you guys!”

Unlike Will’s solo interview last week, this one features all
of them, the camera closing in on each face, then panning out to the crowd. For the first time in recent history, the stands at Baylor’s are at least half-full. Tons of people are dressed in the Watonka blue-and-silver, waving homemade signs and banners plastered with wolf heads and puff-paint jersey numbers.

“Told you.” Josh tugs on Brad Nelson’s jersey and points to the camera. Both of them blow kisses, and on the other end of the signal, though they can’t see me, I smile.

The camera pans out again, up to the seats above the center line, where a dozen hockey wives and groupies whistle and cheer. Ellie’s standing on her seat, howling just like her boyfriend Amir. Next to her, Kara’s shaking a big glittery “Hungry Like a Wolf” sign, waving it over her head.

The camera shifts left and zooms in on the next seat, and my phone slips out of my hand and hits Mom’s desk with a thud.

Right next to the hockey wives sits a girl in a blue-and-silver Watonka hoodie, one hand holding a Nikon, the other tucking a fuzzy wolf-eared headband into a sleek, unmistakable fountain of corkscrew curls.

Chilled angel food cupcakes topped with white cream cheese icing and shaved white chocolate, dusted with silver and white granulated sugar

I smell like bacon. Again. I smell and my face is shiny and my arms feel like
Trick’s spinach fettuccine when he leaves it in the water too long. I missed all but the last twenty minutes of the game, which they won, and now I’m standing on the sidelines behind all the other Wolves groupies, staring at Kara’s glittery poster board and the back of Dani’s wolf ears.

She doesn’t notice me. I take a step closer and poke her shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

She turns around, completely unruffled. “Celebrating the win.
Hello
.”

“You don’t even like hockey.
Hello.
”

“Not true.” She raises an index finger. “I don’t like getting blown off
for
hockey. I never said I didn’t like the sport itself.”

“So now you’re all BFF with the wives?”

Dani pulls me aside and shakes her head, but not in a no-why-would-I-be-friends-with-them way. More like an I’m-disappointed-and-saddened-by-your-very-existence-I-wish-we-never-met way. My stomach hurts. Fighting with Dani is one thing. But losing my best friend to a new clique? One that includes my
ex
–best friend?

This can’t be happening.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she says, brushing a crumb of glitter from her shirt, “but they waved me over when they saw me sitting alone. And then we started talking, and they passed me some wolf ears and invited me to sit with them. Which I did. And now we’re down here, cheering for the team. Okay?”

“No! Not okay! Why didn’t you just … I don’t know. Ignore them, or something?”

Dani rolls her eyes.

“I don’t get why you’d come here alone in the first place,” I say, my voice low. “Don’t you—”

“Danielle! Pink! Hey, we tore it up out there,
mamacitas
!”

Dani’s entire face changes when Frankie says her name, eyes lighting up even more than they do for corned beef hash. She brushes past me, the sweet scent of her coconut lotion lingering in the air as lucky thirteen pulls her into a hug.

It’s clearly not the first time.

My best friend is hooking up with—or seriously en route to hooking up with—one of my hockey boys, and I’ve been totally blind to it.

It’s official. I live under a giant iceberg. And now, watching Dani smile and flirt, Ellie and Kara cooing behind her, all I want to do is crawl back beneath it.

“Hudson!” Josh waves from across the crowd, and my heart lifts. He climbs over the ledge that separates the ice from the stands, pushes his way through the tangle of bodies, and wraps me in a full-body hug.

“Sorry if I’m gross right now,” he says, “but Will’s in the back with Dodd and this might be my only chance to sneak in a decent celebration hug.”

A spark runs through me as Josh pulls me closer, starting in my chest and pulsing outward like a bright, warm sun.

“Three more wins,” he says, “and we’re in the semis. Believe that?”

“I’m … um … I’m really proud of you.” My voice is shaky despite the truth of the words. My knees turn wiggly and I know we should let go, untwist before any more mixed signals zap my brain. This superpublic display is so unlike him, so much more than just a hug. My heart speeds up as if it can feel that invisible line, that one we just crossed, and Josh must sense it, too, because he moans softly into my hair, almost a whisper. As the cheers of the crowd fade into an indiscernible din, I rest my head on his chest, his heart beating against the
wolf on his jersey as furiously as mine, and for the briefest second, I think this might be …

“Yo!” Brad hip-checks Josh and yanks me into a side hug.

“Um … hi,” I manage. While I’ve come to appreciate inappropriate aggressiveness as one of sixty’s endearing little charms, in this particular moment, I might kinda cut him with an ice skate. “Nice game.”

He smiles, big and bright. “Nice doesn’t even come close, Pink. I think we can finally shake you.”

“I’d like to shake
you
.” I give him my most intimidating stare-down, but that just encourages him.

“Time and place, baby.” He turns his head, spits, and then winks at me. Sexy
and
classy. “You name it, I’ll be there. On the ice or off.”

“Off,” Rowan says, skating closer. “Will promised we could ax the princess as soon as we got our winning streak on.” He breaks into this spazzy little dance number, arms flailing.

“Why are you trying to get rid of me?” I ask. “You know I’m your good luck charm.”