Heart Thaw (3 page)

I rub the sharp bits of sleep from my eyes and pull the thermals over my skin, still warm from the cocoon my body and Trent’s made. By the time I’ve layered up and washed, Trent has already rooted through my fridge and stands in the cold light of the open door, guzzling orange juice straight from the carton.

He holds it out to me, and I drink, my mouth echoing the damp outline his left.

“Ready?”

He picks the helmet up and walks over to me.

“Ready.”

I hold my head still as he buckles the helmet under my chin carefully.

“Hold on,” he mutters, his fingers picking and tightening at the straps that make it fit closer.

I watch the way his mouth pulls down in a concentrated frown, the exact same way it has since he was a kid building precarious Lego fortresses.

“The last girl must have had a big head,” I can’t resist noting.

His smile widens back past his canines.

“Big hair, smartass. Yours is so shiny and smooth, it doesn’t take up much room.”

He adjusts one more strap, then pulls at the blunt end of my bobbed hair and rubs it between his fingers before he jerks away and heads to the door.

Outside, the cold stabs my throat and cannonballs into my nose. Tears run from my eyes, half an involuntary reaction to the frigid air, half gut-wrenching despair at the knowledge I’ll be exposed to sub-zero temperatures at highway speeds for hours.

“Are we just leaving my car here all break?” I ask.

My car sits, a disappointing, unreliable hunk of champagne-colored metal, coated in salt and road sludge, lonely and forlorn in the deserted parking lot.

“It doesn’t exactly run, does it?” He gives it such a disdainful look, I feel like I have to come to its defense.

“I bought with a hundred thousand miles on it.”

“You should be driving something safe, Sadie. That’s beyond a piece of shit. It’s a hazard.”

“Huh. So you think I need a shiny new car?” I ask with a snort. “Why in the world didn’t I think of that? Can you drop me at the Lexus dealership off campus? I’ll pop in and just grab whatever they have on sale.”

“Point taken, smartass. We need to get Ella out here to see if she can get us whatever this hunk of crap might need. Maybe Lloyd can take her?”

Trent stands, legs apart and tries not to sneer so openly at my poor excuse for a car.

“Lloyd got laid off.” My voice is a dry husk in the unrelenting wind. “Monty too.”

“Sorry to hear that. Maybe they’ll be looking for something to keep them busy? Lloyd and Monty never seemed like the kind of guys who’d take to retirement.”

His hand slides under my elbow, and he leads me to the side of the apartment where he parked his bike.

His motorcycle is black, spattered with dirt and mud, gleaming, greasy and obviously constantly ridden and adored. He throws a leg over and crooks his finger at me.

“Hold on tight. I won’t be able to hear you unless you scream, okay?”

My nod is clunky under the weight of the helmet, and I sidle up behind him, awkward around my mass of layers. I wrap my arms around his body, feel the warmth of his skin through the thin layers of his jacket and shirt, and wonder how he manages to avoid pneumonia.  

“Do you want a scarf?” I yell next to his ear.

He chuckles and we spit gravel on our way to the highway and home.

Chapter Two

By the time Trent wedges me into my mother’s kitchen, I’m positive there aren’t enough steaming mugs of hot cocoa and electric blankets in the world to defrost me.

My mother is pissed.

“She’s frozen!” 

Trent unzips my coat and peels my layers off, because my hands are too numb to manage.

“You both are!” my mother cries. “Ella! Where’s the ceramic heater?”

“In the bathroom closet!” Ella’s voice twists down from upstairs. “Why?”

“Trent brought your sister home on that damn motorcycle! They’re frozen solid!” Mom screams. She puts one arm around me and the other around Trent. “I know you want to be a tough guy, Trent, but I swear to God, I worry every single minute that they’re going to have to scrape you off the damn road. Why not get some macho muscle car?”

“I won the bike in a card game,” Trent confesses.

Mom shakes her head. “Your life is like a fucking rock-and-roll song, you crazy little shit.” She stands on tiptoe and kisses his hair. “Ella! Bring that damn heater down!”

Ella’s already rushing into the kitchen, the heater cord trailing behind her.

“Sadie!” She rushes at me and clips me in the back with the heater when she swings her arms for a hug. “I was so bummed. Mom was thinking you wouldn’t make it home for Christmas.”

“Trent came to my rescue.”

I glance back at him and his eyes bind with mine for a second before he scoops up a handful of Mom’s chocolate-covered spritzes.

“Playing knight in shining armor again?” Ella plugs the heater in and puts it on full blast. I hold my hands and practically purr over the rush of warm air. “If I liked guys, I would wrap my legs around you and never let go.”

She flashes him a cocky smile. He tosses her a cookie and she opens her mouth, catching it by the corner with her sharp teeth.

“El, if you liked guys, I would’ve kidnapped you the day you turned eighteen and taken you straight to Vegas.” He tosses her another cookie with an easy flick of his wrist and this one lands right on her little pink tongue. “You sure you don’t want to give it a try?”

“Tempting.” My sister narrows her big brown eyes and flicks her short white-blonde hair back from her forehead. “But I’m kind of swooning over Antonia right now. Mmm. I
do
love Italian girls. Here’s an idea. Why don’t you and my sister just jump each other’s bones already? You’ve been making eyes at each other for years now, don’t even pretend you haven’t. We’d all have to be blind as fuck not to notice.”

“Ella!” my mother and I screech at the same time.

I cringe when I hear how similar our voices are.

“Where the hell do you get that dirty mouth from?” My mother swats my sister’s skinny butt with a spatula.

“Ow! I got it from you.” Ella laughs and arches her back to deflect a second swipe. “And I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking.”

“Trent, I’m sorry to subject you to this foul-mouthed little monkey. We’ve let her get away with murder for so many years, she’s like a wild animal in front of company.”

Mom shakes her gray-blonde shag and turns the spatula back to the cookies she’s alternating from the stainless steel cookie sheets to plates with dancing elves on them.

“No worries, Mrs. J. I’ve been listening to my sister and your girls my whole life. My innocence is officially gone.”

He pops a cookie in his mouth, and I clench my hands in my lap to stop myself from reaching up to brush the crumbs off his bottom lip. My sister exercises no such restraint, and swipes his mouth clean with one swift little hand.

“How
is
Georgia?”

Elvis pleads with Santa to bring his baby back to him, and the tempo of the song is suddenly the only jolly note in the kitchen. Trent slumps on a stool, and my mom goes over to him and rubs his shoulders with quick, sharp kneads of her floury hands.

“This can’t be an easy time for either one of you.” Mom’s voice hitches on the last words. “You know—and you tell your sister this—our door is
always
open. I mean, twenty-four hours a day. You hear me? And, on a related note, I don’t like you living in that little shithole your grandpa left you, all by yourself.”

  He grabs her hand by the tips of the fingers, the nails adorned with shiny Christmas trees, and shakes it. “It’s alright. I left out poison for the mice, like you said. I think I killed all the little bastards.”

“Let’s hope they didn’t chew through your electric. Eileen wouldn’t like you living there.”

My mom’s pink-lipsticked mouth puckers in a pout of distaste. At the mention of his mom’s name, Trent’s brow furrows.

“I was living out there until Mom got sick, rehabbing it back to new. She was alright with it.”

“You need people around you, kid.” My mom’s festive nails make little circles on Trent’s back through his tight gray t-shirt. “It must get lonely.”

Trent and I meet eyes over the countertop cluttered with red and green sprinkled cookies and avalanching piles of snowman-and-holly-leaf-and-nativity-adorned Christmas cards. I can read from the color of his eyes that he’s thinking of how the loneliness of his place once catapulted us into a situation that took us completely by surprise. All the years of being so close but surrounded by the people we loved meant things went unsaid, undone. The solitude is what unleashed all those feelings we’d covered with layers, over years, enveloped safe and secure and far enough away that we never had to deal with them.

But once they all rushed out, there was no stopping them up or putting them back. No matter how hard we tried. Because there were way too many other hearts involved to put our own first. We both knew that, and that’s why we had to step back. Why I ran. Even though it hurts with every beat of my heart.

“I can always come here and get my fill of home.” 

Trent gives my mom the easy, sweet hug of an adoring little boy, and she squeezes her eyes tight when she hugs him back. I watch, a lump in my throat.

“This will always be your home, honey. Don’t forget that.”

She squeezes him hard. Ellie and I look down at the cookies in our hands, choked up by all the emotion swirling thick in the room. Trent throws his coat back on.

“Thank you for the cookies, Mrs. J. I’ve got some stuff to do.”

“Anytime, sweetie. Thank you for bringing our Sadie home, safe and sound. And be careful on that fucking death-trap of a bike. I swear to God, if you get hurt, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

He kisses her temple, ruffles Ella’s hair, and pauses before he catches me in a quick hug.

“Call Georgia,” he says against my ear. “I’ll see you around.”

He pulls away and my body aches for him, but Mom and Ella are watching me closely, so I focus on carefully arranging sprinkles on the cookies mom dips into melted chocolate and listening to Elvis lament about why everyday can’t be like Christmas. I don’t even glance up when the wind slams the door hard behind Trent.

“I can’t tell if you’re all pink because you’re still cold or if you’re finally warming up.” Mom clucks and scoots around the island so she can press her sugary hands on my cheeks. I lean against the plump, doughy comfort of her and catch the dueling smells of Aquanet, musk, and cinnamon that are so perfectly Mom-at-Christmas. “Jesus Christ, are you warm from this heater or is it the beginning of a fever? I love Eileen’s boy, I do, but I’m going to beat the shit out of him if he pulls a stunt like this again.”

“It was sweet of him to bring her home.” Ella defends Trent the way she has for the entirety of our existence. “He had to do, what, ten hours on that bike? And I bet Sadie didn’t even thank him.”

She raises one blonde eyebrow at me, her pretty, fine-boned face set in a silent scold.

I didn’t. God, I’m such an ungrateful asshole. How did I let him go without a simple thank you?

“I…just forgot. I guess. But I will. I will totally thank Trent.”

I crush a cookie to crumbs, frustrated that, as usual, Ella feels the need to rub in my every mistake. I thought kid sisters were supposed to worship their older sisters, not detail their every miserable failure.

“You take him for granted.” She rolls her eyes and drops her voice so Mom, busy filling the teakettle with water, doesn’t hear. “He likes you, you idiot. You guys make sense. Seriously, you’re so lucky I’m gay, because I wasn’t kidding before. I would have snatched him up in a second.”

“You and I have never had the same taste when it comes to our romantic interests,” I hiss.

Mom is humming along with Elvis, but there’s no telling what she might be able to hear. Our mother is very good at pretending that she isn’t eavesdropping, silently, in the moment, only to drop a huge bomb out of nowhere later, when you least expect it.

“What’s wrong with Antonia?” Ella demands, folding her arms in tight, frustrated twists.

“Nothing. I didn’t say there’s anything
wrong
with your romantic interests.”

And I should shut my mouth right here, for the sake of peace in our little house on the holidays. But Ella was so quick to crow over my screw-up, and it’s not like she makes the best decisions when love is on the line. Before I know it, I’m saying things I probably shouldn’t say...

“Except that she’s totally possessive. Remember when that concert went longer than we expected over Thanksgiving break, and she flipped her shit and filled your inbox with deranged messages? And didn’t you hear somewhere that she was hanging out with her ex?”

My sister’s perfect little rosebud of a mouth goes flat and pale with defensive rage, and I regret even bringing it up.

“It’s called ‘
giving a shit
,’” Ella seethes, her eyes bulgy and her arms waving around with exasperation. “That’s why she called so much, okay? When someone loves you and can’t get a hold of you, it’s normal if they flip their shit. It was totally
normal
,” she insists.

“Forget I said anything.”

I try to go back to cookie decorating, but Ella’s hot for an argument now.

“And the whole thing with Karla? They’re
friends
, alright? We’re all adults, and I understand that you can have a friendship with someone who used to be your lover.” Ella’s wispy bangs fall into her eyes and tangle on her mascara-coated lashes.

“Fine. Drop it.”

But the words are hardly out of my mouth and she’s reorganized her troops for another barbed attack.

“Not everyone can be so mature and date Mr. Fucking Organized and Professional, who, by the way, was an
asshole
, and he left Jessy, like, a five percent tip after he waved his money around all night at the diner.” Ella dares me to look at her with a jab of her elbow. When I refuse, she hisses, “And Mom overheard him say the house was
tacky
. She cried about it after you guys left.”

I snap my head up. “
What?
”

Jace was this guy I dated after the fallout with Trent. He was the kind of person I thought I should be with, the kind of college-educated, cultured, driven guy I thought made sense. But, no matter how perfect he seemed, I never could manage more than lukewarm feelings for him, and we broke it off without a big to-do. I had no idea he’d stooped to the level of talking shit about my mother’s home, especially after she’d been a totally gracious hostess to him. The little prick!

The triumph on Ella’s face blanks when Mom whirls around, her eyes flaming. She’s obviously been listening the whole time.

“You keep your damn mouth shut, Ella. You always push everything too far, and now your sister is upset.” She jabs her finger at Ella’s scrawny chest, and my sister opens her mouth to argue. “I advise you to consider what the hell you’re about to say, miss. Consider it, because you are on my last goddamn nerve.”

Ella mumbles ‘sorry,’ and stomps out of the kitchen on her size seven high-heeled leather boots. I’m left with a handful of sprinkles and a heartful of anger.

“I don’t know what her problem is.”

Mom hands me a mug of piping hot tea.

“Jace said that?” I duck my head to see her face, and I can tell by the wide, high brace of her eyebrows that she’s trying hard to keep her expression neutral. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea. I would have told that little shit where he could stick it!”

I wrap my hand tight around the mug even though it burns my fingers.

Mom rotates the big, heart-shaped diamond on her finger. It was an anniversary gift from my father, who died when I was a little kid, before I got a chance to know him. God, I wish I could remember him. I sometimes wonder what hurts more: mourning someone you have no memories of, or attempting to move on after you lose someone you knew and loved.

I don’t know the answer. I miss the father I never got to know, and I miss the love and laughter Eileen filled our lives with. I’m not sure you can quantify different kinds of pain.

The bottom line is it all sucks. Hard.

“Sweetie, sometimes young guys say dumb things, okay? And you two seemed like you really meshed. Whether or not you stayed with him, I didn’t want one careless thing he said to change your mind.”