Winter Break (Chasing Chase London #6)

seven

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“Tonight, Tonight”—The Smashing Pumpkins

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” Oliver says in his soft voice that seems too quiet for someone so tall.

“Me?” I blurt out. “Really?”

I wince at how incredulous I sound, like he can’t possibly be serious. Now that we’re together again, waiting in line at the movies, I’m reminded how painfully awkward we are together, and I can’t remember why I wanted to come. We’ve basically been set up on a double date by default. Meghan’s already holding hands with his brother, who came right up and hugged us both, greeting us cheerfully and kissing Meghan square on the mouth while Oliver hung back.

“Yeah,” Oliver says, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and shrugging his shoulders. “When we walked on the beach.”

I want to say, “Oh my god, we did the same!” and laugh about it. That’s what Meghan would do. But the words don’t come, and then it’s too late to say it. It’s too late to say anything. So we stand there in silence, looking at each other and then deliberately not looking at each other.

But what does he expect? I just met him, and I’m not the type of person who just puts things out there. I’m not Meghan.

I glance at my cousin, who’s examining the movie choices over the heads of the group in front of us. I pretend I’m interested too, mostly so I can avoid eye contact with Oliver.

“We were thinking about Speed Demons from Hell ,” Meghan says, turning to us. “Y’all good with that?”

“Are you serious?” I blurt out before I can stop the words. “That looks terrible!”

The huge blockbuster is like, number twenty-something of a franchise that was only good for the first movie, but it kept making money so the studio kept making movies. The plots are nonsensical at this point, but everyone just goes for the car chases and explosions and big battle scenes where the world is destroyed at the end but somehow the heroes save the day anyway. The fact that only one member of the original cast remains tells me just how lame the latest installment will be.

“Not everything that’s popular is terrible, Sky,” Meghan says patiently. “Besides, there’s no scary movies playing.”

“What about that one?” I ask, pointing to a poster from the latest by a popular director.

“That only has two showtimes,” Meghan points out. “That means no one’s buying tickets, which means it’s not a good movie.”

The Rogue throws his arm around his brother. “Maybe you two can go see that, and we’ll see the good movie,” he says. “Ollie here has strange tastes too.”

“No,” I say quickly. “We can all see Speed Demons .” Just saying the words pains me, and I catch the grimace on Oliver’s face and think he’s in agreement with me until I realize he probably thinks I didn’t want to be alone with him. Which is true, but only to spare the world of the time-space continuum rupturing. I feel bad for being mean without meaning to, but I’m too anxious to correct myself since the guys have already turned away to buy tickets.

Meghan gives me a little grin behind her date’s back, which is the equivalent of positively giddy in Meghan’s world. I decide to just go along and try to get through the night. It’s not my date. I’m here for moral support, basically a third wheel. If they thought the pity-date setup with Oliver would make me feel less awkward, they shouldn’t have bothered, though.

“Here,” Oliver says, turning and handing me a ticket.

“Oh—thanks,” I say, feeling even worse for being so rude earlier. But it’s too late to bring it up now and try to fix it without being even more painful, so I leave it alone and add a lame, “You didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugs. “You shouldn’t have to pay to sit through this.”

“No one should have to pay for their own torture,” I say.

“Okay, movie snob,” Meghan says, rolling her eyes as we step into the concession line.

“Hey,” I protest. “Having taste doesn’t make me a snob. I watch scary movies, and most of those aren’t exactly Oscar winners. I just recognize that their inherent cheese factor is sorta the whole point and enjoy them for what they are.”

When no one answers, I realize I do sound like an insufferable snob.

Actually, I sound exactly like my father.

A wave of anger rolls over me. Maybe a brainless movie where the bullets never stop flying long enough to give me time to think, leaving a set strewn with corpses, is exactly what I need.

Dad wasn’t just cultivating superior taste in me all those years, like he said. He was cultivating a sense of superiority. He was smart, but did he really think I was smart or that we had so many things in common? Or did he just want his daughter to reflect his intelligence? Maybe he never loved us at all. He just wanted his whole family to reflect how successful he was, how he was the doting father and provider, so his wife didn’t have to work and his daughters were daddy’s little girls. When he called me “mini me” or Lily his “little princess,” did he see us at all, or just his own greatness reflected back at him?

He’s the one who bought me a black Nirvana t-shirt when I asked for a smiley face t-shirt in first grade because all the pretty girls had tie-dye pastel shirts with big yellow emojis on them. Maybe we were never mirrors of his cleverness, but creations of his own hand. Maybe his delusions of grandeur had no more basis in reality than Lily’s make-believe world where she actually is a princess. After all, if he was such a superior intellect, how come he got caught?

“For the lady,” Oliver says, handing me a heaping bucket of popcorn. “To drink?”

I stammer out a thank you and an offer to pay, but he insists, retrieving my drink from the concession worker a minute later. We make our way down the hall behind the happy couple, who toss kernels of popcorn into the air and laugh as they try to catch them, leaving a trail behind for the cleaner to pick up. I can’t even look at Oliver in my embarrassment. At least his brother is being as obnoxious as my cousin.

We step into the theater, Oliver holding the door for all of us.

“We’re going to sit at the back,” Meghan announces.

I remember her gross butter-hand-job comment and glance at Oliver. “We can sit in the front,” I assure her. He looks annoyed but doesn’t protest, and I wonder how much he hates me by now. We take our seats at the front railing in the second section while the other two climb the steps to the top row.

“Sorry about her,” I say when we’re settled into our seats. “She’s not normally like that. I mean, when it’s just us, she’s not. I guess maybe she’s always like that around guys.”

Oliver shrugs, frowning at the screen. “My brother’s always like that.”

Damn his accent.

I glance at him from the corner of my eye, nursing my straw as he stares straight ahead at the previews rolling. A while later, he reaches for the popcorn in my lap, and I jump a mile, but he doesn’t even glance my way. He seems completely absorbed in the terrible movie, and I guess I was too, since I forgot I was holding the food. Now I can’t stop thinking about it as his hand dips back into the bucket a minute later. It’s not the same torment of desire I get when I sit next to Chase, but I’m definitely hyperaware of his presence beside me. I find myself torn, half of me wanting Oliver to make a move on me and half of me wanting to pull away if he does.

Of course I would pull away. I have a boyfriend. Shit. Does he know that? I told Meghan to pass that along, but did she?

I twist around and glance back at them. When I only see one head in the back row, I want to die. I twist back around quickly, my whole body flushed, and pray Oliver doesn’t turn around and realize what my cousin is doing back there.

I keep watching him from the corner of my eye, wondering if he’s sneaking glances at me too. If he thinks is a date, he must at least think I’m cute enough to go out with.

Or maybe he thinks he’s the one throwing me a bone, that it’s a pity-date because he felt sorry for me and his brother needed a wing man. Am I the one he’s taking for the team, so his brother can go out with my cousin, who’s obviously more desirable since she can string more than four words together in their presence. If he looks back there right now, will he wish he was the one with her, getting head in a movie theater?

I have never felt more pathetic.

I comfort myself with the thought that his brother is the hotter one too. Oliver is definitely cute in his button up shirt and jeans, and he’s a fraction taller than his brother and has the beauty mark above his lip. But his brother has that chipped tooth, and his hair is a little longer and more unkempt, and he has a shade of stubble that adds to the roughness around the edges, the sexiness that made me call him the Rogue. Plus, he’s got an overabundance of confidence that made Meghan go for him and leave me Dimples, the one she said no one would want to sleep with.

He’s not so bad, though. If I didn’t have a boyfriend, maybe I’d sleep with him. He probably wouldn’t ask me about my lack of experience. He’s not much of a talker. I think he’s just shy, which in my very limited experience with guys is a totally foreign concept. Among my group of friends at school, there is not one person I would use that word to describe.

After the movie I have to find an excuse to escape without looking like a total loser who has to report home to Mommy. Which I am, but I don’t want guys to know that, especially since I’m kind of enjoying the picture Meghan painted of me being a cool college chick studying music. The last thing I need is for Oliver to see me climbing into Mom’s minivan when she comes to pick us up.

Luckily, Meghan’s date seems more interested in bending her back against his Jaguar and shoving his tongue down her throat than looking for our ride. When he’s done, he hops in and guns the engine, drowning Oliver’s protests about leaving us alone. Meghan points vaguely to a few cars parked a few rows over and tells him we have our ride, and he finally gets in. The car peels out with a roar and a squeal of tires, and I can finally breathe and stop having a minor stroke at the thought of Mom showing up and catching us on a date.

When we get home, I turn on my phone, hoping for a call from Lindsey. No word from her, but I have a message from Todd telling me to call before I go to bed. I’m immediately overcome with guilt over my non-date with Oliver. I crawl into bed, doing my best to ignore the haunted yearbooks, and hit call on my phone.

He answers even though it’s nearly midnight.

“Were you sleeping?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “I was waiting for your call.”

Aww.

“How is skiing?” I ask, unsure what to say now that I’m talking to him.

“It’s good. It snowed today.” He pauses. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Double aww .

An awkward silence follows. “So, how’s Faulkner?” he asks.

“I haven’t been back. We’re still at the lake. We just watched a movie.”

Guilty awkward silence.

“Sky, I really care about you a lot, you know that, right?”

A curl of dread begins in my stomach. “Yes,” I say slowly. “I like you too.”

My pulse has gone erratic, and my mind is racing. Does he know? Did Meghan post something online about our date, and tag me, and Todd saw it, and now he thinks I’m cheating on him, even though I didn’t so much as touch Oliver’s hand in the popcorn bucket?

I may not know much about relationships, but my brain is screaming, Red flag! Red flag!

“I’d never want to hurt you,” Todd says. “I have so much respect for you. So I have to be honest with you. You deserve that much.”

The curl of dread tightens into a knot. Despite having never had a boyfriend before, I know by instinct alone that I’m being dumped. Todd doesn’t say anything for a while, and I want to scream into the abyss like Chase, tell him to just spit it out and put me out of my misery. But I sit in silence and wait.

“I slept with Elaine.”

I don’t say anything. My brain is a total blank.

“Are you still there?” he asks, after an endless silence.

“I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you going to say anything? Aren’t you mad, or…?” His voice trails off.

“I don’t know.”

I need to do something to help me process, so I stand up and make my way out onto the balcony, needing to move.

“Is that it?” he asks after another long pause. I realize I’m supposed to say something, feel something, but I can’t seem to find the appropriate reaction. “Are we done, then?”

“I don’t know,” I say again. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but what does he expect me to say?

Why the hell do you keep sleeping with the coldest, most horrible person I’ve ever met?

Why do you seem like such a good guy when you’re not?

He’s worse than Chase. At least Chase only strings me along and flirts with me and makes me crazy. He never goes through with it.

“Okay,” Todd says, sounding so sad I think he might cry. “I guess I’ll see you next week. Have a good time at the lake.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I hang up and just stand there holding my phone. It seems so final.

Why do I feel guilty for hurting him and not saying that we’re still together, when he’s the one who slept with someone else? Maybe he wanted me to say it was okay, that I forgave him.

Do I forgive him?

Megan comes out a minute later, her phone in hand. “Listen to this,” she says, then glances up and sees me. Her face falls.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Why can’t I say anything else?

“Need a smoke?” she asks, waving her pack of cigarettes.

“Sure, why not? Not like I’ll be kissing anyone anytime soon.”

“What happened?”

I light up and cough when I inhale. “These things are disgusting. I don’t know how you smoke them.” I drag on it again. I’m suddenly lightheaded and tingling from head to toe. I blink hard to stop the waves of dizziness. “Okay, maybe I take it back.”

She laughs, lighting up too. “Don’t worry, you only get the buzz the first couple weeks. So was that Lindsey?”

“Um, no, that was Todd. I think we broke up.”

“That sucks,” she says, tapping her cigarette on the railing. I was hoping for a little more sympathy. But what can she say? It’s not like she can say anything that will change it.

“Yeah. He slept with Elaine. I can’t believe it.”

But even as I say it, I know that’s not true. Of course I can believe it. She told me it was going to happen. Some part of me was expecting it the whole time, waiting for it. I’m not even surprised. Maybe that’s why I don’t know what to say, how to react. Girls in movies always fly into a rage and burn all his clothes when they get cheated on, but I can’t have a big reaction to something I’ve known was coming all along.

“What are you going to do?” Meghan asks after a while.

I throw my cigarette over the railing, watching the orange spark tumble through the darkness and disappear when it hits the ground. Then I lift my face, closing my eyes and blotting out the millions of twinkling stars in the black over the lake. I used to look for constellations with Dad. He’d point at the sky and find horses and warriors and women, drawing patterns out of the random like some kind of magician. I don’t want to see them anymore, to look for them now, when he’s not here to explain the science behind the trickery.

I turn back to Meghan, wrapping my arms around myself against the cold, the ghost that haunts me everywhere I go—in my room, at the movies, in the night sky.

Maybe I’ve known the answer to her question all along too.

“I’m going to sleep with a college guy, of course. What else would a Connecticut girl do to get back at her high school boyfriend?”