“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.