“You okay?” he asks. “I was getting worried.”
“I’m fine. I just need to get back to my brother.”
I say my good-byes to the boys and Will walks me to the truck, scraping the ice and snow from my windshield as I warm up the engine.
“Happy New Year,” he says again, leaning in through the open driver’s side window. He kisses me once more, slow and gentle, and when I finally drive away, he stands in the street and watches me go, shrinking in my rearview until he’s no more than a wisp.
Left too long without supervision, most kids would probably finger paint the walls, flush their underpants down the toilet, or, I don’t know, set the whole place on fire. Our little genius? He turned the entire living room into an airport, complete with a four-foot-high LEGO traffic control tower and a fleet of paper planes, plastic army pilots taped safely into their cockpits. From deep beneath the couch, a large utility flashlight illuminates some sort of … landing strip? I crouch down for a better look.
Oh. My. God.
Stuck to the carpet in parallel, unbroken paths from one wall to the other are two lanes of brand-new maxi pads. Plastic dinosaurs stand guard at every fourth pad—triceratops and T rexes on one side, brontosauruses and pterodactyls on the other—protecting the airport from enemy aircraft and/or heavy flow.
Clear across the room, blissfully content, Bug snores on the couch in an inspiring ensemble of safety goggles, pink earmuffs, blue zip-up pajamas, and one of Dad’s old hunting vests in bright orange camo.
“Happy New Year, sweet pea.” As quietly as I can, I slip out of my coat and boots and carefully remove Bug’s goggles and earmuffs. He stirs and mumbles something incoherent, then drifts back to la-la land while I get to work deconstructing the Blake Street Super-Absorbency Airport before Mom gets home. She’d freak if she saw me throwing these things out—pads are even more expensive than the Ziplocs the kid uses for his anthrax operation.
Landing strip destroyed, I’m about to start on the paper planes when my phone buzzes on the coffee table. Probably Dani. Things between us may be a few degrees below normal, but she always calls me after her dad’s New Year’s shows, ready with the full report on the food and the dresses and all the cute Canadian college boys roaming the hotel.
I grab the phone and sneak into the kitchen, checking the screen—not Dani. Josh. I stare at his number as it lights up my phone. Josh is calling me on New Year’s? Does that mean he’s not out with his cougar hottie?
“Happy New Year,” he says when I finally answer. His voice is soft and deep, muffled like he’s lying in bed and just on the edge of sleep.
“Hey! I missed you at—well, I thought you guys might show up at Amir’s.”
“You … guys?”
“You and … whoever.” Brilliant, Hudson. “What are you up to tonight, anyway?”
“I’m home with your ex-boyfriend, Dick. He says hi, even though you broke his heart tonight.”
I laugh. “He never really loved me, anyway.”
“Hey, no judgments here, Avery. You still partying it up?”
I peel a renegade maxi pad from my knee and stuff it in the trash with the others. “Oh, it’s a party, all right. I was home by one thirty. Does that make me totally old?”
“Not yet. But if you start eating dinner at four and watching Golden Girls, time to worry. Anyway, you near a computer? PBS is streaming the Addicts.”
“No way!” I sit at the kitchen desk and pull up the site. “Live?”
“It’s a replay of their tenth anniversary tour,” Josh says. “Some little club in Denver. They’re about to do your song—they were talking about it after the last set.”
I turn the speakers on low just in time for the opening chords of “Bittersweet.” It’s kind of a sad song, slow and mellow and haunted, none of that everything’s-gonna-be-all-right fairy dust crap they play on the radio these days, and that’s exactly what I like about it. It tells the truth. Sometimes life rocks so hard your heart wants to explode just because the sun came up and you got to feel it on your face for one more day. Sometimes you get the bitter end instead. Life is as gray and desolate as winter on the lakeshore, and there’s no way around it, no cure, no escape.
It was always my favorite skating song because it reminded me of the competition itself, how nothing comes without a price, and when you make sacrifices to get what you want, sometimes you screw up and pick the wrong thing.
But once in a while, you pick the right thing, the exact best thing. Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that’s what you hope for. The sunshine on your face, warm enough to make your heart sing.
Right now, quiet on the phone with Josh and the Addicts while the kitchen clock ticks softly and my brother sleeps on the couch behind his tower of plastic blocks, I know that this is one of those moments.
Those exact best things.
And then my e-mail notifier pings me with a new message, and the song fades out, and the sun disappears.
It’s an update from my father’s blog.
Watch out, Olympics! the subject says. Here she comes!
“Thanks for calling,” I whisper into the phone, not trusting my voice to come out right. “I should go. Happy New Year, Josh.” I hang up without waiting for a reply and, against every screaming warning in my head, click on the link.
Chapter Sixteen
Lights, Camera, Cupcakes!
Chocolate Coca-Cola cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing topped with buttered popcorn, peanuts, Raisinettes, and M&M’s
Two days into the new year, I’m back at Hurley’s for the pre-open cupcake shift, hands speckled with exploded chocolate goo, frosting clumped in my hair, and a killer stomachache.
“Hudson, what happened?” Dani asks. We haven’t spoken since our argument right after Christmas, but now she’s staring at me across the flour-covered prep counter with genuine concern. “Say something.”
I toss a spoon into a bowl of useless, runny batter, my own personal comfort food. I probably have salmonella now. “My father.”
Dani frowns. “Another e-mail?”
“A blog. A special one for New Year’s.” The words flash through my head. You should’ve seen my beauty out there on the ice!
Dani sighs and clears a few crusty bowls from the counter. “Wanna tell me about it?”
I close my eyes. At the other end of the kitchen, the big coffeemaker hisses, and I see the words again. Watch out, Olympics! Here she comes! Skiing, sledding, snowshoeing, snowman making, snowball fighting … of all the s-named winter activities my father could’ve offered his blushing she-Elvis, he picked the one that was supposed to be ours. The very last thing we had together. The thing that no one else could touch—not even my mother. Maybe I turned my back on the rink three years ago, but it wasn’t to go skate with another father.
“He took Shelvis ice-skating,” I say.
A metal bowl hits the sink with a clang. “That jackass! Sorry, but it has to be said.” She slams the faucet on, waits until the water gets hot, then soaks a clean dishrag. “Listen, I know it sucks, but you can’t let him get to you like this. He’s not even here, and he hardly ever talks to you, and—”
“Oh, he talks to me. Always has time to remind me how happy he is without us.”
“Hudson …” Her voice is soft, just a whisper over my shoulder. The light changes; she’s standing right next to me now, so close I can smell her coconut lotion. I close my eyes as her hand squeezes my shoulder, the warmth of it comforting and familiar.