Everything I wanted to say, or even thought about uttering, vanished completely when I saw Sean, when he smiled at me as I opened the door.
His right eye was half purple, half black and entirely puffy. He looked terrible—well, as terrible as someone as good-looking as Sean could look.
“Hey!” he said. “Where’d you go after the game? I looked for you but—”
“Oh my gosh—your eye. Does it hurt? Did you get stitches?” I asked.
“No, it’s not that bad,” he said. “I mean, it’s not pretty. I’ll give you that.”
“But do you want to be pretty?” I asked. “Anyway, this will make everyone scared of you. They won’t mess with you because they know you’ll fight.”
“Actually, this was kinda weak as far as hockey fights go. A lot of the guys have some kind of cut or missing tooth—this is nothing.” Sean shrugged.
“Nothing, huh?” I stepped a little closer to him, wanting so much to kiss his cut and make it all better—or make me all better, anyway. But no. That couldn’t happen until I found out what was really going on.
“So where did you go?” Sean asked. “One minute you were there, with your friends at the game, and then like—you were gone.”
“Well, after the fight broke out…” Let’s see, what should I tell him. I had to escape because I saw you with someone else? And then your brother started acting strange, so…that was pretty much a full day?
“My friends and I went to lunch,” I explained instead. “They were kind of in a hurry, so we didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”
“You should have called me,” he said. “I could have met you guys for lunch.”
He had a point. “I would have, but…” I was afraid you’d be out with what’s-her-name hockey nurse. “We had some private stuff to talk about. Girl stuff.” Normally I hate that expression, but in this case I thought it would make the topic just go away, which it did.
Sean leaned closer to me and asked softly, “Look, do you want to go somewhere?”
Yes…and no, I thought. I so much wanted to be close to him like this…but not if I wasn’t the only one who got to be. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Just for a walk.” Sean gestured to Gretchen on the sofa, watching TV. “Just for a couple minutes, so we can talk.”
I nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.” I grabbed my jacket from the closet by the door, and turned to Gretchen with a wave. “Be back soon!”
She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I really, really hoped Sean hadn’t been able to see that.
He put his arm around my waist as we walked down the sidewalk. I could just picture us walking past his house, and Conor pelting us with snowballs.
“So. Is, um, Conor working tonight?” I asked, just to make conversation. I wasn’t ready to ask the Big Question yet. Why would he have his arm around me if he wasn’t into me, though?
“Probably. He’s always working somewhere,” Sean said.
“I noticed.”
“Ever since he got cut from hockey, it’s like all he does is work,” Sean added.
“He got cut? Really? I thought he was so good.”
“He is. But, you know. Dan is better. Trey is better. We only need two goalies.”
I thought about how much that would suck, not making the team your younger brother was the star of. I knew Conor and Sean were competitive with each other. “So he plays club hockey instead?”
“Like today? Yeah.” Sean nodded and gave me a little squeeze, pulling me closer. “That was some fight, huh?”
“Yeah. Does that happen a lot?” I asked.
“No. Not usually,” Sean said. “Conor kept getting in my face. I was sick of it.”
Conor kept getting in his face? Really? I didn’t see how it would be up to Conor, considering he had to stay in the goal most of the game.
I remembered one of Jones’s cardinal rules: Whenever you need to have an awkward conversation with a guy, have it outside. That way you won’t have a bad association with a particular place. I waited until we turned off Minnehaha Parkway, onto a smaller street, figuring I wouldn’t have to come back onto this block again.
We’d been walking in silence for a few minutes when I stopped and gently pulled myself out of Sean’s arm. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What?” He laughed. “A girlfriend?”
“Do you?” I repeated.
“No.” He shook his head. “What made you think that? Haven’t you and I been sort of, like, spending time together?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But the thing is…I saw you,” I said. “After the game, the fight. I came to find you, inside? And that girl had her arms around your waist and—”
“No way. We were goofing around, that’s all. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Well, stuff usually means something. That’s the thing.”
“Huh?”
“I know, that sounds vague, but it’s true. Whenever you see someone kind of checking out someone else? It means they’re interested. Period.”
“Well, she might be interested, but I’m not,” Sean said.
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t convinced.
“She came in to find me. She’s like—she comes to every game, she follows me around,” Sean explained.
“So what are you saying? She’s a groupie?”
“A what?”
“A groupie,” I repeated. Sean didn’t seem to know the term, though.
“She said she wanted to clean up the cut. I was wishing you’d come in and rescue me from her.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said.
“Honestly.”
“Yes.” He held up his hand, as if he were getting sworn in. “The truth and nothing but the truth.”
“She was pretty, though,” I mused out loud.
“So what? You’re prettier,” Sean said. He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close, hugging me. “You know, I had a really good time the other night. Sledding. I wish you hadn’t left, just when things were getting good.”
Did he mean the kiss? Or the toboggan rides? Because when I left, he was hanging out with his friends, not me.
But how could I hold that against him? I was the one who’d answered my cell phone while we were kissing. If anyone had been rude, it was me.
“Me, too,” I said. “I’m sorry I took off. But Emma and Jones showed up, and I had to meet them.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“But…do you understand why it looked kind of bad, when I saw you with…what was her name?” I asked.
“Melissa. She…really, she’s not my girlfriend.”
I looked into his eyes. He seemed completely honest. Not to mention completely hot.
Sean pulled away and looked at me. “Hey, I’ve been thinking.”
“What?” I was filled with anticipation.
“You want to go to Buck Hill after all?” he said.
That wasn’t exactly the sweet romantic thing I’d been waiting for him to say, but it wasn’t bad.
“Sure! Anytime,” I said. But I got this picture of me with my skis crossed, butt up, face down, in the snow. Then, the next day, Gretchen and I sitting on the sofa, side by side, staring out the picture window, waiting for something interesting to happen, for someone to fall on their way past. Spring would come and we’d still be there, immobilized, and both on diets…
“There’s this charity event on Presidents’ Day,” Sean continued. “Tons of high schools participate. It’s a mattress race.”
I coughed. “Excuse me?”
“Teams wear costumes and have themes and stuff. You slide down on a mattress, or on cardboard boxes, or on whatever you’ve made. We’ve all collected pledges at school. They give out awards for best costume, most money raised, all that.”
“Isn’t your mattress…full already?” I asked, picturing Sean’s group of friends all piled on top of it.
“We need a girl,” he said.
I bet, I thought.