Winging It (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Toby

“Not everyone wants to worship at your little ice shrine, Toby.” Scott made it sound like he was some sort of hero, a freedom fighter daring to break away from the cruel hockey dictatorship. “And there’s just not that much to do in this shit hole of a town. So, yeah, I came over to see what was up at this rink. Big deal.”

“And it’s just a coincidence that Nat was playing here? That’s what you’re saying?” When I’d finally gotten away from the crowd and made it to the community rink, Nat’s team had already left the ice, and Scott had been sitting there right by the change rooms, waiting for her like a vulture.

“Yeah, it was a coincidence,” he said with a smirk. “That’s what I’m saying, and that’s what our moms will believe.”

“Did you honestly just threaten to tell my mommy?” I demanded.

“Hey, if you get violent, there’s going to be questions asked. That’s all I’m saying.” He took a half step away but didn’t take the smirk off his face. “It’s not my fault you’re insecure in your relationship. Not my fault you don’t think your girlfriend really wants to be with you.”

For the second time that night, I really, really wanted to punch somebody. But a hockey fight was one thing; beating up my cousin would be something else. Our moms
would
believe him, because he was perfect little Scotty who could do no wrong. Still, it would feel so good to smash his grinning lips right into his too-white teeth.

“Toby!” I heard from behind me and turned to see Nat hustling toward us. She’d dropped her equipment bag halfway up the stairs—I guess she must have been able to tell how tense things were getting. And sure enough, when she reached us she eased right in between, facing me, making it look like a hug when really she was putting a good bit of her weight into holding me back.

I wouldn’t ever tell her, but it wasn’t her strength that kept me from hitting Scott. It was the distraction of her body pressing into mine, and the way her big brown eyes widened as they looked up at me. Damn, I could think of lots of other ways I’d like to make her eyes go wide, and for a second I thought about at least kissing her. We were supposed to be a couple, after all. This was her game, so why shouldn’t I play it?

But I’d had enough of her kissing me just because she wanted to make someone else jealous. So I settled for keeping my gaze on her face, ignoring Scott completely. “Sorry I missed your game. You guys do okay?”

“We won,” she said, as if it didn’t really matter.

“Great. And you liked how you played?”

She’d stopped looking at me and was staring down at the ice instead. “I guess,” she muttered. There was obviously more to it than I was getting, but it wasn’t like I was dying to go into the details of my own penalty-filled game that night, so it didn’t seem fair to push too hard into whatever
her
issue was.

“You want to get out of here?” I asked her.

And, damn it, she half turned toward Scott, like she was going to check with him first. But she caught herself and turned back to me. “Sounds good,” she said with a firm nod. “See you later, Scott.” So at least I got that much.

I managed to make it to her equipment bag before she did, and it felt good to heft it up and carry it for her, like I was being chivalrous. I heard her make a weird noise behind me, and then she said, “I can carry my own bag, you know.”

“Yeah, obviously you can. You got it here, right? But I can carry it, too.”

“No, it’s mine. I’ll carry it.”

We were halfway to the end of the rink by then, and I sped up a little. “No, I’ve got it. It’s fine.”

“Oh my God, Toby, give me the damn bag!” She sounded mad, but this was Nat, and she and I had been play fighting practically our whole lives. I knew how far I could push her before she was
actually
mad, and we were nowhere close to that.

“You want it? Come and get it,” I said, and took off running for the doors.

It was late enough that the rink wasn’t full of little kids for us to knock down, but we still got a few dirty looks as she chased me through the lobby. She almost caught me at the main doors because I had to twist around a bit to get the bag through, but I lifted it up high so she couldn’t get a good grip on the handles and kept going. We tumbled out of the building into the dark parking lot, and she jumped on my back, reaching for the bag. And again there was the serious distraction of her breasts pressing against me, but I managed to keep my focus. Dodge left, trying to shake her off into a snowbank, but she hung on tight, practically choking me with her arm around my throat. Dodge right, hoping to ditch her onto the hood of a parked car, but she kept her grip and gave me a pretty good kick in the thigh for my efforts. A few more desperate steps and I was at the Corolla. I managed to get the bag in the air and drop it on the trunk with a roar of manly triumph, and Nat groaned and dropped off my back.

“I’m a
gentleman
,” I crowed, doing a little victory dance. “I
carried
that bag. Hell, yeah!”

“You’re a gear thief,” Nat corrected, and she hip checked me at a crucial step in my dance, just the right time to send me sprawling into the car. “I could have carried it.”

I bounced back and amped the dance up. “Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” I singsonged. “Point is, you didn’t. I did.” I stopped dancing and gave her a smug smile. “Because I’m a damn gentleman.”

“Because you’re a damn two-year-old,” she groused, but she was grinning back at me now.

It’s hard to describe how I felt. I mean, I was playing up the celebration, sure, trying to bug her, but I was pretty much genuine in just how happy I felt right then. It was like Nat and I were
back
. Like all the whatever-it-was that had gotten between us and made our friendship fade was gone, and it was me and Nat again, hanging out after a hockey game, roughhousing and teasing each other just like always. Sure, maybe I had a bit more interest in certain other Nat-related activities than I’d had when we’d hung out before—maybe I could still practically feel the warmth of her breasts pressed against me when she’d stretched—but that wasn’t the biggest part of it.

She leaned against the trunk of the car, and I leaned beside her, and we looked out over the parking lot toward the water as I tried to build up the nerve to kiss her.

Then she sighed and said, “Shit, Toby.” Not quite what I’d been hoping to hear, and from the way her shoulders slumped I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to get better. “This was a stupid idea, and I’m sorry for dragging you into it. Thank you for fake dating me, but we need to stop faking now.”

“Stop faking?” I stammered. Was it possible that she meant stop fake dating and start
real
dating?

She turned to look at me. “You were right—it isn’t fair to expect you to just sit back and watch Scott steal your girlfriend. I mean, who he
thinks
is your girlfriend. I didn’t really—well, as usual, I didn’t really work it all through. I didn’t realize he’d be so in-your-face about it, so public. My teammates were all giving me dirty looks before the game because they thought I was flirting with him, being disloyal to you!”

“So what you’re really saying is that it was fine to do all this when it was just going to make
me
look bad, but now that it’s going to make
you
look bad, it’s off?” I pushed away from the car, all the warm butterflies that had been flapping around in my stomach dying and making me feel sick. “So what’s your plan now? The
whole
thing is off? Like, you tell Scott you and I were never dating and see how you can do on your own?” I snorted when I saw her expression. “No. You want to keep pretending and just get rid of me so you can be with Scott. Right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. That was the whole idea, right? We could, like…stage a fight, maybe? Hey, are you going to Kelly Broadstreet’s party tomorrow night? That’d be a good spot, right? It wouldn’t be like one of us dumped the other, it would just be a breakup.”

And there I was, back to wanting to punch somebody. Not Nat, but
somebody
. “Do you need a ride home?” I demanded. “Is your car here?”

She frowned, apparently not quite ready for the topic change. “Uh, no, Mom’s got the car. I usually catch a ride with someone on the team.”

I pushed away from the trunk and headed for the driver’s door. “Dump your bag in the backseat. Let’s go.”

She did as she was told, for once in her damn life, and then climbed into the passenger seat and stared at me. “So, are you practicing for the fight? Is that why you’re being crabby?”

I snorted and turned the key. “I don’t think I need to practice. I think it’ll be really easy to act mad at you.”

She was quiet as we drove out of the parking lot and started down Main Street. When I turned into her neighborhood, she said, “I’ll still tell Scott about us faking it. Not right away, but I’ll keep our deal. Okay? I mean, nothing’s really changed. I’m just letting you off the hook earlier than we planned. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s great.”

And that was about all either of us had to say for the rest of the drive home.

Chapter Eleven

Nat

Guys don’t usually air out their hockey equipment between wearings. They take it off, stuff it in their bags, and leave it in there to just kind of rot until the next time they need it. It’s disgusting, but I think they actually kind of like how bad it ends up smelling. It’s like they’re proud of it.

When I get home after a game or practice, I pull my equipment out and hang it up in the garage, usually after giving it a few sprays of fabric deodorizer. I’m not saying my gear smells
good
after that treatment, but at least I can put it on without gagging. And it gives me a chance to think about whatever happened on the ice and what I could do better the next time.

That night, though, after Toby dropped me off, I wasn’t thinking about hockey at all. How could I, with so much else going on?

Mostly, I was feeling guilty. I’d known Toby didn’t get along with Scott, but I’d gone ahead and set up this situation where they’d be sure to antagonize each other. Like my stupid crush was more important than their family. And then I’d tried to give Toby a chance to get out of it and I’d somehow managed to piss him off even worse.
That
made no sense, but it was probably my fault somehow, too.

The whole situation was frustrating. My plan was working, and I still didn’t get any satisfaction from it. Scott Dakins had
kissed me
. I took a moment to let that fact sink into my brain. Scott Dakins, his lips soft and warm, pressed to the sensitive skin of my jawline. That had really happened. And he’d suggested that we go someplace else together, someplace “nicer.” Scott Dakins. Two days ago he hadn’t been sure of my name, and now he was inviting me to nice places. I should have been dancing around the garage, listening to peppy love songs and dreaming about kisses.

But I hadn’t wanted my happiness to come at Toby’s expense, and I didn’t seem to be able to ignore the frustrated expression he’d worn as he’d driven me home.

Damn it! Toby had agreed to the deal. He’d known what he was getting into, he’d taken my trophy, he’d negotiated the part where I’d have to eventually tell Scott the truth…he had no reason to be getting pissy with me!

I thought about calling him up to tell him that, but it had been a while since he’d dropped me off and the Raiders had an afternoon game the next day, so he was probably home asleep. Maybe I’d been hearing too many of Scott’s innuendos, but the idea of talking to Toby while he was in bed seemed more intimate than it had when we were kids. Way more intimate than our fake relationship justified.

So I dragged myself up to my room and fell asleep, and the next morning when I woke up it wasn’t Toby I called. It was Dawn.

“Things are getting kind of weird,” I told her after we’d exchanged slightly groggy greetings.

“Weird? You mean your great plan with Toby and Scott isn’t working?”

“Oh, it’s working. But it’s going too well, or too fast, or something. And Toby isn’t happy.” It sounded kind of stupid, when I said it, but it was true. “I want this to be okay with him. Like, I don’t want him to be mad at me.”

Dawn didn’t answer right away, and when she did, she sounded like she was choosing her words really carefully. “What do you think he’s unhappy about? Why is he mad at you?”

“Uh, because I’m making it look like Scott is beating him?”

“But we knew that was going to happen. He was prepared for that, wasn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know. Sometimes you
think
you’re prepared for something, and then when it actually happens, it kind of surprises you. But also…” It felt disloyal to say it, but Dawn needed to know the whole story if she was going to be any use to me. “Scott’s not exactly being subtle about any of it. You know? Like, he’s kind of rubbing Toby’s nose in it.”

“You mean Scott Dakins is being an asshole? How completely surprising!”

“Okay, I don’t think sarcasm is going to be part of the solution.”

“So what
do
you think the solution is going to be?” She sounded a bit too much like my mom, all patient and reasonable, like the answer was totally obvious to her and she was just waiting for me to catch up.

“I have no idea! I told Toby we could end it! Last night, after he almost got in a fight with Scott, I said we could break up. So then Toby would be out of it, right? But it was like he got
more
frustrated when I said that. So, yeah, I have no idea.”

Another pause before she said, “I don’t think you should end it. Not yet. I mean, Scott’s interested, right? But he’s not, like,
obsessed
. Is he?”

“Obsessed? Uh, no, I don’t think he’s that far gone. But do I want him to be?”

“Do you want more than one night with him? Do you want him to do you the favor of consenting to hang out with you, or do you want him to be crazy about you and
woo
you?”

“Woo? I’m not sure I’m up for wooing.” It seemed too much, somehow. Too big of a deal. Maybe because I’d know it was all based on a lie.

“Oh, okay. If you’re happy with him just using you and then moving on, great. That should be fine. You and Toby can break up, you and Scott can have, like, one night of awkward groping or even more awkward sex, and then everything can go back to normal. That’s fine.”

“I’m starting to regret having called you.”

“Well, I’m it, sugar britches. If you want to talk about this with anyone, it’s going to be with me, because nobody else knows about your stupid plan. So you can talk to me, or you can talk to your pillow.”

“I could talk to
Toby
.”

“
That
would be a brilliant idea. Except he’s the one who’s mad at you, right? So possibly he doesn’t really want to talk.”

I flopped back onto my pillows. This was all way too complicated. “It’s too early to stop faking,” I said, trying the words out to see if they sounded true. “I need to make sure Scott’s really hooked before I let go of my bait.”

“Exactly.”

“And what about Toby? Is that fair to him?”

“It’s what he’s already agreed to.” She sounded like she was getting a bit impatient with me. “Maybe
you
didn’t know Scott was going to be an asshole about it, but Toby absolutely did. So he’s got no right to try to weasel out of the deal.”

“No, he wasn’t trying to weasel out!” It seemed really important that I defend Toby’s honor in all this. More important than trying to persuade her that Scott wasn’t an asshole. “Breaking up was my idea. Toby’s been great—above and beyond the call of duty, for sure.”

“Okay, then. That’s good. Just stick with the plan, Natalie. It will all work out, eventually.”

Well, I wasn’t so certain, but she definitely had a point about needing to make sure Scott was really committed. And if I was being totally honest with myself, I wasn’t sorry about getting to spend more time with Toby. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until I wasn’t missing him anymore. Sure, maybe our
dating
was fake, but our friendship was still real, and I didn’t want to lose it before I had to. And if there happened to be a few more kisses, well, maybe that wouldn’t be too terrible. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“No problem. You want me to come over this afternoon and help you figure out clothes for Kelly’s party?”

“I’m working until seven. You think you might swing by then? And if you want, you could come to the party with us. With me and Toby. Would that be too weird?”

“Showing up at a party with my ex and his current girlfriend who just happens to be a friend of mine? Way too weird. Besides, it’s a hockey party—I’m not going.”

Dawn had been avoiding all Raiders-related activities ever since she and Toby broke up. She was trying to find her own identity, separate from Toby and all things hockey. It was a plan that would have worked pretty well in a big city, but in Corrigan Falls? It didn’t leave her with a lot of options for Saturday-night fun. “Maybe Toby and I don’t need to go, either,” I mused. “I mean, I thought we should show up there and do our big breakup scene, but if we’re not breaking up, then we don’t really need to put on a show. We could just stay in and watch movies, instead. You want to do that?”

“You totally should do that,” Dawn said. She sounded kind of excited. “That’s perfect. It’ll be great, because Scott will be looking for you all over town, and he won’t be able to find you and it’ll drive him crazy! That’s an excellent plan.”

“So you’ll come over?”

“No, Natalie. I’m not going to start hanging out with Cooper again. I’ve got other plans.”

“
Fun
plans?”

“Absolutely.” She sounded like she meant it. “So, you have a good time staying away from Scott. It’s brilliant.”

There was something else going on, something I couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe it was just strange to be getting this sort of help from Dawn, of all people. She was helping me use her ex to get the attention of a guy she thought was an asshole. I couldn’t quite figure out the motivation, except maybe she was willing to support me even when she didn’t agree with what I was doing. Which was the sign of a pretty great friend, I figured.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I told her. “Thanks for everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she answered. “Let’s wait and see how it all turns out.”

Kind of a weird answer, but I didn’t worry about it. I had to ref all day, I had to call Toby and ask him to
not
break up with me, and at some point I should probably mention to my mom that Toby might be coming over to watch movies that night. I didn’t have time to worry about Dawn being a little weird. I had weirdness of my own to deal with.