After We Collided (The After Series) (63 page)

“Where are you taking me, anyway?” I ask him.

“To dinner. It’s a really nice place.” His voice is shaky. Nervous Hardin is my new favorite Hardin.

“Have I heard of it?”

“I don’t know . . . maybe?”

The rest of car ride is quiet. I hum along to the Fray songs that Hardin has obviously taken a strong liking to, and Hardin stares out the windshield. He keeps rubbing his hand over his thigh as he drives—a nervous action, I can tell.

When we arrive at the restaurant, it looks fancy and very expensive. All of the cars in the parking lot cost more than my mother’s house, I’m sure.

“I meant to open the door for you,” he tells me when I open the door to get out.

“I can shut it back and you can reopen it?” I offer.

“That hardly counts, Theresa.” He smiles his smug smile, and I can’t help the butterflies in my stomach that appear when he calls me by my real name.

It used to drive me crazy, but I secretly loved every time he would say it to annoy me. I love it almost as much as I love the way he says “Tess.”

“We’re back to ‘Theresa,’ I see?” I smile back at him.

“Yes; yes, we are,” he says and takes my arm. I can see his confidence growing with each step we take toward the restaurant.

D
o you know of another place you think you might like instead?” I ask her when we get back to the car. The man at the fancy restaurant I made reservations at claimed that my name wasn’t on the list. I kept my cool, careful not to ruin the night. He was such a fucking prick. My fingers grip the steering wheel.

Calm. I need to relax. I look over at Tessa and smile.

She bites her lip and looks away.

Was that creepy? That was creepy.

“Well, that was awkward.” My voice is unsteady and oddly high-pitched. “Do you have anything in particular you want, since we’ve apparently moved on to Plan B now?” I ask her, wishing I could think of another nice place to take her. One that might actually let us in.

“No, not really. Just somewhere with food.” She smiles.

She’s being really cool about this, and I’m glad. It was humiliating to be turned away like that. “Okay . . . McDonald’s, then?” I tease just to hear her laugh.

“We may look a little silly in McDonald’s.”

“Yeah, a little,” I agree.

I have no fucking idea where to go now. I should’ve come up with a backup plan ahead of time. This night is already spiraling, and it hasn’t even started yet.

We pull up to a stoplight, and I look around. A crowd of people fills the parking lot next to us. “What’s going on over there?” Tessa asks, trying to peer around me.

“I don’t know, there’s an ice-skating rink or some shit,” I tell her.

“Ice skating?” Her voice raises the way it does when she’s getting excited.

Oh no . . .

“Can we?” she asks.

Fuck
. “Go ice skating?” I ask innocently, like I’m unsure of what she means.

Please say no. Please say no.

“Yeah!” she exclaims.

“I . . . I don’t . . .” I’ve never ice-skated in my life and never intended to, but if this is what she wants to do, then it won’t kill me to try . . . maybe it will, but I’ll do it anyway. “Sure . . . we can.”

When I look over, I can tell she’s surprised—she never expected me to agree to it. Hell, I didn’t either.

“Wait . . . what’ll we wear? I only have this dress and some Toms. I should have worn jeans, it would have been so fun,” she says, almost pouting.

“We could always run to the store and get you some clothes? I have some in my trunk that I could wear,” I tell her. I can’t believe I’m going through all this shit to go ice skating.

“Okay.” She beams. “The trunk full of clothes comes in handy! Actually . . . Why
do
you keep those clothes in there, anyway? You’ve never told me.”

“It was just a habit. When I’d stay with girls . . . I mean, when I would be out all night, I’d need different clothes in the morning, and I never had them, so I just started keeping them in my trunk. It’s pretty convenient,” I explain.

Her lips are pursed slightly, and I know I shouldn’t have mentioned the other girls, even if they were before her. I wish she
knew how it was then, how I would fuck them with no emotion. It wasn’t the same. I didn’t touch them the way I do her, I didn’t study every inch of their bodies, I didn’t revel in their shallow breathing and try to match mine to theirs, I didn’t desperately wait for them to say they loved me while I moved in and out of them.

I didn’t let them touch me in our sleep; if I even stayed in the same bed as them, it was because I was too drunk to move. It wasn’t anything like it is with her, and if she knew that, maybe knowing about them wouldn’t bother her. If I were her, I . . . Thoughts of Tessa fucking anyone else cloud my mind and make me nauseous.

“Hardin?” she says quietly, bringing me back to reality.

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear me?”

“No . . . sorry. What did you say?”

“You passed Target already.”

“Oh, shit, sorry. I’ll turn around.” I pull into the next parking lot and turn the car around. Tessa has an obsession with Target that I’ll never understand. It’s just like M&S back in London, only more expensive, and the employees are annoying as shit in their stupid red polos and khaki pants. But she always tells me,
Target has great quality and a lot to choose from.
I can’t say she’s wrong, but “big box stores” are still one of the things in America that make me feel most like the foreigner that I am.

“I’ll just run inside and get something,” Tessa says when I park the car.

“Are you sure? I can come.” I want to go with her, but I can’t insist on my presence, not tonight.

“If you want to . . .”

“I do,” I answer before she can finish.

WITHIN TEN MINUTES
she has her basket nearly full of crap. She ended up getting a gigantic sweatshirt and some sort of spandex pants—she swears they’re not spandex, that they’re leggings, but damn if they don’t look like spandex to me. I try to stop picturing her in them as she grabs gloves, a scarf, and a hat. She acts like we’re going to fucking Antarctica; then again, it
is
pretty damn cold outside.

“I really think you should get some gloves, too. The ice is really cold, and when you fall your hands will freeze,” she says again.

“I’m not going to fall . . . but sure, I’ll get gloves if you insist.” I smile, and she returns it as she tosses a pair of black gloves into her basket.

“Do you want a hat?” she asks.

“No, I have a beanie in the trunk.”

“Of course you do.” She pulls the scarf out of the basket and hangs it back up.

“No scarf?” I ask her.

“I think I’ll be okay with all of this.” She points to the basket.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” I tease, but she ignores me and walks to the sock section. We’re going to be in this damn store all night.

Finally, Tessa says, “Okay, I’m done, I think.”

At the register, she tries to argue with me over paying for her stuff like she always does. But this is a date that I asked her on, so there’s no way in hell I’m letting her pay. To that sentiment, she just rolls her eyes a few times and takes out her purse and hands over her last bills to the clerk.

Is she running low on money? If she was, would she tell me? Should I ask her?
Fuck, I’m thinking way too much into this.

By the time we get back to the lot where the skating is, Tessa’s ready to jump out of the car, but we need to change first. I change my clothes; she keeps her head turned and stares out the window the whole time. Afterward, I tell her “We can find a bathroom for you to change in.”

But she just shrugs. “I was just going to change in the car so I don’t have to carry my dress around.”

“No, there are too many people. Someone will see you undress.” I look around at the area of the parking lot where we are and it’s pretty empty, but still . . .

“Hardin . . . it’s
fine
,” she says with a little annoyance.

I should’ve stolen that stress ball I saw on my father’s desk last night. “If you insist,” I huff, and she tears the tags off of her new clothes.

“Can you help me unzip this before you get out?” she asks me.

“Erm . . . yeah.” I reach across the center console, and she lifts her hair up to allow me access to the zipper. I have unzipped this dress countless times, but this is the first time that I won’t be able to touch her as she slides it down her arms.

“Thank you. Now wait outside,” she instructs.

“What? It’s not like I haven’t—” I start to say.

“Hardin . . .”

“Fine. Hurry up.” I get out of the car and close the door. What I just said was rude, I realize. I open the door quickly and lean down. “Please,” I add and close it again.

I can hear her laughing inside the car.

Minutes later she climbs out and her hands comb through her long hair before she pulls a purple beanie down over her head. When she joins me on the other side of the car, she looks . . . cute. She always looks beautiful and sexy, but something about the giant sweatshirt, hat, and gloves makes her look even more innocent than usual.

“Here, you forgot your gloves,” she says, handing them to me.

“Good thing. I wouldn’t have made it without them,” I mock, and she nudges me with her elbow. She’s so goddamned cute.

There are so many things I want to say to her, but I don’t want to say something wrong and ruin the night.

“You know, if you wanted to wear such a large sweater, you
could’ve worn one of mine and saved yourself twenty bucks,” I say, and she grabs my hand but lets go quickly.

“Sorry,” she mutters, and her cheeks flush.

I want to grab her hand again, but I’m distracted by a short woman greeting us. “What size skates?” the lady asks in a deep voice.

I look down at Tessa, and she answers for both of us. The woman returns with two pairs of ice skates, and I cringe. There is no way in hell this is going to go well.

I follow Tess to a bench nearby and remove my shoes. She has both of her ice skates on before I have half of my foot in one. Hopefully she’ll get bored easily and want to leave.

“You okay over there?” she mocks me as I finally lace up the second skate.

“Yes. Where do I put my shoes?” I ask her.

“I’ll take them.” The short woman appears out of nowhere. I hand her my shoes and Tess does the same with hers.

“Ready?” she asks, and I stand up.

I grip the railing immediately.
How the fuck am I going to do this?

Tessa fights a smile. “It gets easier when you’re moving on the ice.”

I sure fucking hope so.

It doesn’t get easier, though, and I fall three times within five minutes. Tessa laughs each time, and I have to admit that if I didn’t have the gloves, my hands would be ice by now.

She laughs and reaches her hand out to me to help me up. “Remember like thirty minutes ago when you said you weren’t going to fall?”

“What are you, some sort of professional ice skater?” I ask her as I climb to my feet. I hate ice skating more than anything right now, but she is beyond amused.

“No, I haven’t been in a while, but my friend Josie and I used to go a lot.”

“Josie? I’ve never heard you talk about any friends from back home.”

“I didn’t have many. I spent most of my time with Noah growing up. Josie moved before my senior year.”

“Oh.” I don’t know why she wouldn’t have many friends. So what if she’s a little OCD and prudish and she obsesses over novels . . . she’s nice, sometimes too damn nice, to everyone. Except me, of course, she gives me shit constantly, but I do love that about her. Most of the time.

Thirty minutes later, we haven’t even lapped around the rink once because of my fine footwork.

“I’m hungry,” she says at last and looks over to a food stand with dancing lights on top.

I smile. “But you haven’t fallen and pulled me down with you so you’re lying perfectly on top of me and staring into my eyes, like the movies.”

“This is so not like the movies,” she reminds me and heads toward the exit.

I wish she had held my hand while we skated; if I could manage to stay on my feet, that is. All the happy couples seem to be mocking us as they circle around me holding hands.

The second I leave the rink, I remove the horrendous skates and find the tiny lady and get my damn shoes back.

“You really have a future in sports,” Tess teases me for the thousandth time when I join her at the food stand, where she’s eating a funnel cake and wiping flakes of powdered sugar off her purple sweatshirt.

“Ha ha.” I roll my eyes. My ankles still hurt from that shit. “I could have taken you somewhere else to eat; funnel cakes aren’t exactly a nice dinner,” I tell her and look at the ground.

“It’s fine. I haven’t had one in so long.” She has eaten all of hers and half of mine.

I catch her staring at me again; her face holds a thoughtful
expression as she studies my face. “Why do you keep staring at me?” I finally ask, and she looks away.

“Sorry . . . I’m just not used to the piercings being gone,” she admits, staring again.

“It’s not that different.” Without realizing it, I find I’ve moved my fingers to my mouth.

“I know . . . it’s just weird, though. I was so used to seeing them.”

Should I put them back in?
I didn’t remove them only for her sake—it’s true what I told her. I do feel like I was hiding behind them, using the small metal rings to block people out. Piercings intimidate people and make them far less likely to talk to me or come near me at all, and I feel like I’m getting past that stage of my life. I don’t want to keep people out, especially not Tessa. I want to pull her in.

I got them done when I was only a teenager, forging my mum’s signature and getting wasted before stumbling into the shop. The dumb-ass could smell the booze on me but did the piercings anyway. I don’t regret getting them at all; I’m just over them.

I don’t feel that way about my tattoos, though. I love them and I always will. I’ll continue to cover my body in ink, expressing thoughts that I can’t bring myself to actually say. Well, that’s not really the case, seeing as they are random shit that have no meaning whatsoever, but they look all right, so I don’t give a fuck.