Bittersweet (15 page)

“You’re not paying attention.”

“I’m busy!” I reach behind her and grab a clean towel from the shelf.

“Hud, listen to yourself.” She sets her tray down on the counter, louder than necessary, if you ask me. “You sure you know what you’re getting into with all this?”

“I said I can handle it.” I toss the towel over my shoulder and scoot around her, marching off to greet the Karens et al with my best birthday grin.

Two, three months tops.

Red velvet cupcakes with warm raspberry center and cream cheese icing, topped with mashed mixed berries and served on a chocolate-drizzled plate

Tuesday afternoon. Four p.m. Four below zero.

I bombed my eighth-period government quiz.

I’m behind on the reading group questions for
The Scarlet Letter
, and Hester Prynne is totally mad at me.

My tray-carrying shoulder is about to go on strike.

And twelve seconds into Will’s emergency extra practice, Chuck Felzner’s already starting with me.

“Aw, man,” he says when I skate forward. “She’s here
again
?”

I take in an icy breath and yank my gloves off. Sure, I could definitely do without the whining, but I’m not here to be anyone’s bestie. I just need to show up, get them to improve their
game. Show them how much they need me, just like Will says. In exchange, I get the ice time. Quid pro whatever.

“Stuff it, Felzner,” I say. “We don’t have time for your antics today.”

“Ooooh!” Brad Nelson whistles from the front of the line. “Looks like Princess Pink got her balls back. Bring it, baby!”

Josh elbows him in the ribs, which I totally would have done myself if Brad would kindly stop looking like Tyson. Refreshingly, Felzner takes the hint, and in the momentary silence, I plow ahead.

“The other day, you guys asked me if I had a point,” I say. “Here it is: Somewhere under all that trash talk, you love this game. You’ve got a crazy losing streak, but there’s no reason you can’t end it. Josh and Will say you’re good. You could be better. You
will
be.” The boys are so quiet I can hear the hum of the cooling machines under the ice, ticking and whirring.

“I
know
skating,” I continue, “and I know I can help you. But you need to let me. And I need to see what you’ve got.”

I take a chug of water. When no one protests, Will smiles at me and I press on. “We’ll start with drills. Who wants to go first?”

Silence. Eye rolls. One sneeze, two spits, and a cup-adjust.

Just when I begin to sense that my ability to “bring it” has been severely overhyped, Will skates forward.

“Since none of you wolf pups wanna man up,” he says, “
I’ll
go.”

I send him up and down the rink twice, goal to goal with
his stick and a puck. It’s like there’s an entire eighties
Jock Jams
soundtrack pumping through his head—all those songs the cheerleaders play at the basketball games to psych up the crowd, electrifying his stride. He’s hard, fast, and more than a little showy, and the prone-to-swooning part of me flashes back to that kiss in the closet all those years ago. I shudder. He’s good.
Really
good.

Thankfully, the objective, focused, professional-skater-type part of me tips her head sideways and dumps that dirty little thought right out on the ice, stabbing the life out of it with a toe pick.
Aaaand, movingrightalong
.

“Aggressive,” I tell him on his last return. “Looking good, especially on the straightaway. Watch the right foot near the net—it drags a little on the hard turns in the goal crease.”

“Goal crease?” Josh asks as Will skates to the back of the line. “Where did you—”

“YouTube. And Google.” I don’t admit how many hours I logged on the sites last night, totally blowing off my homegirl Hester Prynne and all that government class stuff about how a bill becomes a law, but that’s not important. “Oh, the NHL site, too.”

Josh laughs. “You probably know more about this sport than most of us put together.”

“Probably. But hey, the Internet is a democracy. Check it out.”

I call on Micah Baumler next. Issuing only a minor protest growl, he pulls a pair of goggles over his glasses and follows my instructions. Then DeVries. Nelson. Jordan. Torres. Even
Felzner. One by one, they do as I ask. Not without a lot more eye-rolling than should be legal for a boys’ varsity team, but somehow we get through it, and I wave them back to the sidelines for a water break.

“Nice work, guys. Looks like we can skip the basics and start with—”

“You do
figure
skating, right?” Nelson again.

I think I liked him better when he was just grabbing himself and winking at me in silence. “That’s right.”

“I’m not trying to be a dick or anything—”

“Not trying? So dickness just comes naturally for you?”

For a second nothing happens. I cross my arms over my chest, bracing for his next comeback, but he doesn’t say a word about it. Suddenly he doubles over, a smile splitting his formerly too-cool-for-school face.

“Damn, I like you. For real.” He holds up his hand for a high five, and I concede, smacking his palm.

“You’re starting to grow on me, too.”

“Look,” he says, softer this time. “I’m not saying your kind of skating isn’t hard work, but twirls and jumps can’t help us against a bunch of Sharks or Bulldogs or Hawks. We need speed, strength, balance, raw stuff like that. So unless you know how to dodge a two-hundred-pound center comin’ at you like a freight train, you’re wasting your time.”

I consider his point. Ten percent valid. Ninety percent I-spent-too-much-time-watching-Rambo-as-a-kid macho bull—

“You guys aren’t giving this a chance,” Will says. “All those
other teams got the same basic training, right? The same stuff Dodd used to give us when he was still around. But who else has a secret weapon like this? She can teach us tons of crazy stuff. They won’t even see it coming.”

I skate to the center again, buoyed by Will’s vote of confidence and the fact that no one has called me Princess Pink for at least five minutes. These practices will be a lot more productive for all of us if I can just get them to see what I’m made of—to see that they really
can
trust me on the ice.

“Will one of you guys try something with me?” I ask.

“
I’ll
try something with you.” Luke Russet, number twenty-two, defense. Dangerously good-looking in that my-motorcycle-will-definitely-piss-off-your-dad kind of way. He rubs the stubble along his jaw and wiggles his eyebrows at me. Will claps him on the shoulder before his hands complete whatever lewd gesture they were about to make, and I continue.

“Give me a helmet,” I say.

Will passes his helmet and skates up behind Luke, nudging him forward. “Go on, Russet,” he taunts. “Show her what’s up, dude.”

I tighten Will’s helmet under my chin and point to the net at the other end of the rink. “I’ll start down there. Luke, pretend you’re the two-hundred-pound center and I have the puck for the opposing team. What do you do?”

“I steal it from you or knock you down trying. Not that I’d mind knocking you up. I mean, down.” His eyebrows are still propositioning me, but I ignore them. Honestly, my father
is clear across the country—way out of pissing-off-with-a-motorcycle range. Luke’s particular charms are lost on me.

“Do it,” I say. “Knock me down trying.”

Josh steps up. “Hudson, come on—”

“It’s okay.” I smile. “Trust me.”

Luke pipes up again. “Baby, you’re just gonna get laid out. I can’t do that to a girl.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t.”

He laughs and licks his lips. “Look at you, Princess Pink, tryin’ to be badass. Wanna bet?”

“Fine, bet me. If you knock me down, you get free dinner at Hurley’s every night for a week.”

“You’re on.”

“And if you
don’t
knock me down, you shut up. All of you.” I turn to face them. “Let’s get something straight, wolf pack. I have my own reasons for being here, and they have nothing to do with your sparkling personalities.”

“Point?” Felzner says.

“I’m not leaving.”

Felzner laughs. “If you say so.”

“I say so.” I tug my gloves on and skate down the line, beatdown-avoiding, territory-claiming eye contact all the way. “When I’m done kicking Russet’s ass, that’s
it
. No more whining about who’s tired and who’s hungry and who needs a diaper change. Got it?”

Nelson oohs again, Josh shakes his head, the rest of the boys laugh, and Luke’s eyes lock on mine, smirk erased as he
skates backward to the net. “You’re on, sweetheart. I like my burgers well-done, fries extra crisp. Vanilla shake, hold the whip. And I’ll take one of your mint chocolate chip cupcakes, too. Make a note.”

“Noted. Now … try to keep up, okay?”

I’m sure his response is laced with more ice than the expanse under my feet, but I don’t hear it. I glide to the net at the other end, stop, take a deep breath, and push forward on my toe pick. I zoom across the rink, cold air snapping my face, two hundred pounds of motorcycle-riding hockey god heading right for me.

Slash-slash, slash-slash …

A train leaves Los Angeles for New York at eight o’clock, traveling at a hundred miles per hour.

Slash-slash …

In New York, a train leaves on the same track at nine-oh-five, traveling at seventy-five miles per hour toward Los Angeles.

Slash-slash … slash …

At what time will they collide inside Baylor’s Rink, causing an explosion of silver blades and hot-pink dust where the girl formerly known as Hudson Avery used to be?

As Luke fast approaches my personal space, my brain checks out and my body takes over, shifting weight to my left leg and bending like a ribbon in the wind. He zooms past me and I pick up speed, pumping harder until I reach the other end of the rink, crossing over into a seamless turn and heading back toward him. His blades grind on the ice and I know he’s
coming at me faster this time, the rest of the team whooping and shouting from the sidelines. Even Marcus, the ponytailed rink manager, has joined the pack, pumping his fist with the others.

On our second high-speed face-off, I lean into a twist, turning just as he stretches forward and hugs the wind between us. We whip around the rink for another go, and though he’s fast and determined and rock steady on the blades, he misses me again, and after the fourth miss, the boys still laughing and whistling on the rails, I signal to Luke that it’s over.

I skate fast and furious for the edge, skidding in on my blades, spraying the wolf pack with a shower of ice as I come to a graceful halt.

Marcus winks at me and disappears behind the stands.

No one speaks.

That’s right. And you boys haven’t even seen my triple/triple!

Luke slides up next to me, panting as he unfastens his helmet. He doesn’t say anything or meet my eyes—just pats me on the back once, skates to the rail, and punches Will in the shoulder like he means the hell out of it.

“After today, we’ve got one more practice before Friday’s game,” I say to my newly captive audience. “Can I assume we’re done with the theatrics?”

All of them nod, speechless. A warmth radiates from my stomach, the tension floating out of my limbs. It’s like every air molecule in the rink has registered the change, and now that I have their attention—and maybe even their respect—I
want
to be here. Not just for the ice time, but to help them. To really make a difference, just like Will and Josh always believed I could.

“Excellent,” I say. “Now strap on your helmets. You’ve got drills to do.”

Will glides over to me. “I guess this means you’re in.”

I look out over the boys, all muscle and sweat and swagger, momentarily brought together as they harass Luke about his inability to, in the parlance of our times, “grow a pair.”

I turn back to Will, his eyes fixed on mine, and mirror his radiant smile. “Princess Pink, at your service.”

Once hockey practice ends, it’s time for round two: Capriani Cup training. Certain the Wolves have all filed out into the parking lot, I soar back to the center of the rink alone, and with all the confidence of a girl in a hot-pink zip-up who just kicked about two metric tons of hockey-player ass, launch into a double-axel, double-toe-loop combo jump, landing flawlessly.

Ladies and gentlemen, Princess Pink has officially
brung
it.