Bittersweet (6 page)

I nod. We don’t smoke, but we break. It’s all very complicated.

Fifteen minutes later we’re out in the trash alcove otherwise known as the smoking lounge, warming our hands in the heat leaking through the propped-open back door.

She stamps her feet to chase away the ice-blue air. “Spill it,” she says. “Quick. My equatorial ass can’t handle this cold.”

“I ran into Josh Blackthorn from school. We sort of …”
Pow!
I slam my palms together like Josh did earlier, imitating our crash.

“Hold up—you
did it
? With the
hockey
captain? On your
break
? What the—”

“No! We crashed on the ice at Fillmore. I was skating. Fully
clothed. Besides, I totally reek.” I pull my red-blond ponytail across my face for a whiff. “No one wants to do it with a chick who smells like bacon.”

Her brow creases. “Everybody loves bacon.”

“Not as a signature scent.”

“True, but some people—
wait
. You went skating with Josh Blackthorn?”

I play with the zipper on my jacket, yanking it up and down.
Voop. Voop. Voop-voop-voop.
“Not exactly.”

Her eyes narrow. When it comes to my on-again, off-again affair with the ice, Dani knows the highlights, but we don’t talk about it much. She and I got close during the
post
-skating part of my life, right after Mom, Bug, and I moved to the apartment near her house.

She taps my foot with hers. “Hud, why are you acting all, like, twitchy? What’s going on?”

I let out a long, slow breath, remembering how alive I felt today on the ice. I think about the Capriani Cup and the warmth that rises up inside when I land the perfect jump, make the hard turns, nail my favorite moves, even all these years later.

And then I remember Josh Blackthorn’s hand brushing the hair from my face.

“Hudson?” Dani asks again, her big, copper-penny eyes searching mine.

“Danielle!” Trick shouts from the kitchen. “Two steak-and-egg specials up for table three!”

“Get Carly to run it!” Dani shouts back. “Sorry. Talk to me, girl. I’m freezing my—”

“Listen.” I grab the front of her jacket, pushing out the words in a half-frozen jumble. “I got an invitation in the mail today … this thing … and after all that stuff from three years ago, and Dad, and Shelvis, and crashing into Josh, something hit me. I think I’ve been … I don’t know. Something’s just … missing. I might—”

“Oh no. Don’t
even
say it. You’re totally crushing on the hockey boy, aren’t you? Jeez. How hard did you hit your head?”

I swat her hand away from my forehead. “I’m not crushing—”

“Trust me. I know hot and bothered when I see it.”

“Bothered, maybe. By
you
. You read too many books, you know that? This isn’t
How I Met My Half-Naked Pirate Hottie
.” I look down at the pavement. “Not even close.”

“First of all, it’s called
Treasure of Love
, and there’s no such thing as too many books. And anyway, you’re totally blushing. What is it with you and hockey captains? First Will Harper, and now his number two? This is bad news, baby. Bad.”

“Will doesn’t count,” I say firmly. Will Harper became my first kiss when a rousing match of Seven Minutes in Heaven forced us into someone’s basement closet a million years ago—way before his hockey captain days. Honestly, it’s not like the stars aligned or anything. Before my brain could catch up to the breaking news of what was happening on my lips, the closet door opened, the light spilled in, and we broke apart. Some guy high-fived Will and everything smelled like Cheetos and
root beer and that was pretty much it. “It was just a stupid eighth-grade party game.”

“That’s because he never spoke to you again.”

“Well, Josh isn’t like Will. Josh seems really sweet, and he’s—never mind. How did we get on Josh?”

“
Who
got on Josh?
I
certainly didn’t. Did you?”

I smack her arm. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Look, just because your father’s a grade A jackass—”

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” Dani tugs on one of her curls, wrapping it around her finger. “I mean, just because your parents’ relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean all relationships are doomed.”

“Crashing into someone on the ice doesn’t make a relationship.”

“No?” She smiles, her cheeks glowing like smooth red plums. “Maybe you just need to get—”

“Dani!” Trick again. “These cows are well-done, sweetheart,” he calls from over the grill, all sizzle-sizzle, scrape-scrape, metal-on-metal. “Ain’t gonna run themselves. Carly’s got her hands full.”

Dani waves him off. “As I was saying … wait, you’re bright red! Oh, if Josh could see you now. He’d be all over it.” She belts out a not-so-kid-friendly, not-so-in-tune rendition of the sittin’-in-a-tree song.

“Highly unlikely,” I say. The impassioned skating speech queued up in my head starts to lose steam, my thoughts getting
stuck all over Josh and that sincere, post-crash, blue-eyed apology and hot chocolate fantasy.

“Highly
likely
. You look hot today, sweets.”

“No way. My ass is
especially
huge in my winter gear.”

“Shut
up
! You have a great ass. I’d
kill
for a piece of that.” She tries to grab a handful, but I dodge, zipping my jacket all the way up before I go hypothermic. She tries for another grab, but I slap her hand, and when she looks up at the sky and laughs, her shoulders shake and her breath puffs out in big white clouds. Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” comes on Trick’s radio, and I reach for her hands and spin her around, the two of us singing and dancing by the Dumpster under the bright gray November sky.

Even with her off-key voice and the subzero winter air, when it’s like this, I don’t notice the cold. I don’t hear the wind howling through the empty spaces. I don’t feel like a small, broken-winged bird trapped in a rusty cage.

I just feel …
home
.

But it never lasts.

“Let’s
go
, sweet tarts!” Trick shouts. Something crashes to the floor in the kitchen—sounds like a tray of drinks. “And I mean yesterday. Carly’s in the weeds.”

“Be right in!” Dani calls back. “Man, these new girls. Might as well be working the floor myself. Hey, seriously … you okay? What were you saying about an invitation?”

“Oh … junk mail from an old skating thing.” I wave away
the words, ignoring the imaginary burn of the foundation letter in my jacket, hot against my ribs. “I’m good.”

Dani looks at me a moment longer, squinting as if the truth is as easily read as that Cupcake Queen article behind the register. “You know I didn’t mean to trash-talk your dad, right?”

“I know.” I slide my sneaker back and forth over a patch of ice on the ground. “Go ahead. I’ll be right in.”

She sighs, checks the bobby pins in her hair, and straightens the half apron beneath her coat. “Don’t freeze that sweet, bacon-lovin’ ass out here, ’kay?”

“I won’t. Smoke break’s almost over.”

“Good. And don’t forget about the rest of those cupcakes, either. There’s more buttercream in my future, and you’re not
about
to go messin’ that up. Sure you’re cool?”

“Totally.” I flash her my pearly whites to prove it.

Dani scoots back inside and I blow my breath into the air, exhaling all of life’s b.s. in a long white sigh. As Buddy Guy sings out over the grill, I close my eyes and lean sideways against the bricks and pretend I’m in some swanky nightclub, hip jutting forward, elbow on the bar, tapping out the long ash from my cigarette.
Ladies and gentlemen, this next song goes out to Hudson Avery, the lovely lady who breaks my heart every time she walks through that door.

Guitar.

Horns.

Bass.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Cue those smoldering vocals.

I been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met …

The alto sax blows and the guitar moans and here behind Hurley’s, a few miles down the hill and across the highway, that old Erie Atlantic train starts up the track, light floating over the engine like some kind of fairy godmother. Ten-oh-five, right on schedule, far away and sad as the sound stretches and bends its way through the approaching storm. Who knows where it goes, but sometimes, when the wheels screech against the tracks and the red lights flash along the crossways, I think about hitching a ride on a coal car just to find out. Then I wouldn’t
need
a parallel universe and a skating scholarship to get out of here.

“Hudson? You out there?” Mom pokes her head out the back door, her static-ridden hair now pulled into an old scrunchie. “Third toilet’s clogged again.”

“Ma, we really need to have that thing fixed.”

She blows a loose strand from her face. “I know. But I’m in the middle of the dairy inventory. We’ll call the guy next week, okay?”

“No problem.” So now I’m a plumber?
Awesome
. The only thing that could make my life even
more
awesome is if Josh and the whole pack of Watonka Wolves march in for lunch just as I’m emerging from the bathroom in my little baker’s apron, shirt collar flipped up, hair tousled, restaurant-grade toilet plunger in hand, all kinds of black-rubber-gloves-to-the-elbows sexy.

The train whistle blows like a snowbird into the dead sky and I lean forward on my tiptoes, heels scraping up on the bricks.
Whoooo. Whoooo.
It’s not that far, those few miles. I can make it, I think, if I’m careful and the hill isn’t too icy. If not today, tomorrow for sure. I’ll pack my wool socks and wear my big snow-stompin’ boots and stash my stuff out here behind the Dumpster. When I come out for my nonsmoke break I’ll snatch up my backpack and ice skates and go, run, dodge, break,
hit it
, straight for the fairy godmother lamplight on the ten-oh-five, black coal train to nowhere.

Cue those smoldering vocals.

Ever since the day we met …

“Hudson, you still out there?” Mom rushes past the door again, a clipboard in her hand and a pen stuck behind her ear.

“Yeah! I mean, no! I … um … third toilet. Got it, Ma.” I stamp out the invisible cig with my standard-issue food service sneaker and hobble back through the doorway, careful not to put too much weight on my left hip, semi-throbbing from this morning’s two-part wipeout. If she sees me limping … no way. My former skating career was Dad’s project, and now that he’s gone, there’s an unwritten, don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in our apartment: Mom doesn’t ask me to share his dating narratives, and I don’t say anything that implies he was ever around in the first place.

“This joint’s about to get
mad
crazy.” Dani busts into the ladies’ room as I’m scrubbing toilet germs from my hands. “Carly’s
having a meltdown. Girl can’t keep it together for five minutes out there.”

“What happened?”

“She dropped the F-bomb when that big party asked for separate checks, and now we’re comping their whole meal, so of course they all want more food. Their kids made a giant mess, half of them are screaming and eating crayons, and by the way, we’re in the middle of a bacon crisis.” Dani presses her fingers to her temples.

“You check the back freezer?” I ask, wondering how fast I can squeeze my so-called sweet ass out the little window over the first stall.

“We’re totally out.”

I close my eyes and magically transport myself to the rink in my parallel life, cool wind running its fingers through my hair as I pick up speed for a triple salchow. I whip my leg around and launch myself into the air over the ice, the world spinning away beneath me and back up again as I land like a feather on an eggshell.

Look at that landing! Incredible! And that form! Amazing!

Right. I shake off the impossible daydream and come back to reality. “Here’s what we do. Change the specials board to stuff with ham and sausage to get people off bacon. I’ll frost and box a bunch of Cherry Bombs for your big table—that should keep them from ordering off the menu and you can shoo them out before the lunch rush.”

Dani smiles, her shoulders relaxing. “Dude, this place
would seriously self-destruct without you.” She reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “And it’s not just your cupcakes. You have—what’s wrong?”

“Cupcakes. I have a big birthday order tomorrow, and I just remembered I have to do two more batches for that stupid careers and hobbies thing in French. What are you doing for it? Photography?”

“Of course.”

“You figure out your final photo project yet?”

“Still thinking about it.” Dani hops up on the vanity counter, legs dangling over the edge. “The theme is passion, so of course everyone’s going for lovey-dovey.”

“Sounds right up your alley.”

“Nah, too predictable. Maybe I should bring in my nude self-portraits for French.
Ooh la la!
Madame Fromme would die!”

“It would serve her right.” I laugh. “I swear she only gave us that assignment so I’d bring her something from Hurley’s. I should do a plumbing demo instead.”

“That’d go over well.” Dani switches to a falsetto. “‘
Mademoiselle Avery, où est les cupcakes? J’ai besoin des cupcakes!
’”

“It’s
les petit gâteaux
. I looked it up.”

“Huh?”

“‘Cupcakes’ in French.
Les petit
—”

“Girls?” Mom barges into the bathroom, still clutching her clipboard. “I just sat three more tables, and Carly’s hyperventilating in the kitchen. Dani, I need you on the floor. Hud, Mrs.
Zelasko called about her cupcakes—she wants to pick them up tonight instead of tomorrow. Can you stay late to finish?”