Rolling Dice (24 page)

He hates it, I think. I don’t know why that thought makes me feel so … so disappointed.

But I sit and wait, and eventually he speaks.

“Ike.” Dwight says the name like he’s tasting it, feeling the way it rolls off his tongue, concentrating on the sound of it. “Ike and Dice: partners in crime,” he jokes, but there’s something in his eyes, in his voice, that leads me to believe his heart’s not really in it.

“Partners in
physics
,” I correct, and earn a chuckle; then, when he lifts his head to look at me again, his sea-green eyes are soft and that quirky lopsided smile of his is back once more. I take that to mean:
Okay, you can call me Ike
.

I’m already beaming back at him, and he gives a barely perceptible shake of his head, the kind that says he just doesn’t know what to do with me.

School is closed on Tuesday for some kind of electrical inspection. But hey, I’m not complaining: I have a day off! And the best thing is that Dr. Anderson was going to have a “word” with me today about the pop quiz he gave us last lesson (needless to say I got, like, 52 percent, disgracing the good record of his AP class), but I’m hoping that by tomorrow, he’ll have forgotten all about it.

I plan on sleeping in, catching up on the sleep I missed out on Saturday night.

Somebody phones me at seven in the morning, though, so all hopes of getting rid of the bags under my eyes go up in smoke.

Groggy, I fumble for my cell phone. At first I think it’s my alarm going off, so I stab my finger at the screen a couple of times until I realize what’s going on. “Bryce,” I groan, “it’s seven in the morning.”

“Your morning voice is very sexy,” he replies with a chuckle in his voice.

I collapse back onto my pillows. “What do you want?” I rub my eyes, and the light streaming stubbornly through my closed drapes refuses to let me even think about going back to sleep.

“I thought we could spend the day together,” he says brightly. “We haven’t spent quality time together in ages, so I thought we could do something.”

“Like what?”

“I have a plan.” He doesn’t elaborate.

I sigh. “Don’t tell me—it’s some kind of surprise, isn’t it?”

“Yup. Now, go eat breakfast and get dressed. Nothing too fancy, though. I’ll be there at eight to pick you up.”

As I shower, I think about having Bryce as my boyfriend. He makes me feel wanted. When I’m with him, I forget that the old Madison ever existed.

My parents know my life back in Pineford was far from okay. “Bearable” might be stretching it, even. But I didn’t want them to know how bad it really was. I guess I got so used to hiding from the people at school that I started doing it at home too. Now I’m with Bryce, my position in the popular clique at school is secure—no need for pretending. So why do I feel like I’m still pretending?

Bryce turns up on my doorstep at eight on the dot. I open the door to find him in some clean, only slightly battered white sneakers, jeans and a gray T-shirt that hugs his muscles comfortably. The sunlight catches his hair and makes his eyes bright, and he flashes me that heartbreaker of a smile.

“Ready to go?”

“I think so,” I tell him. “Come on in a sec—I just need to grab my purse.”

“Okay.”

“So where did you say we were going, exactly?” I call down as I hurry to my room.

“I didn’t!” he shouts back, laughing.

“Darn,” I mutter, but I laugh too. I’d half hoped he’d tell me—although I’m totally excited that he’s planning some surprise. I pause in front of my dresser to touch up my makeup before finding my purse and hurrying downstairs again.

We get in Bryce’s car and he tells me, “You can be DJ today. Feel honored—I don’t usually let people touch the stereo.”

I laugh. “Thanks. So, how long will it take to get where we’re going?”

He thinks for a moment. “Maybe half an hour, forty minutes? I know where I’m going, though. Pretty much.”

“Pretty much? Why does that not comfort me?”

He laughs and reaches to squeeze my knee instead of moving the gear shift. Then he leans over to kiss me before starting the engine and pulling out.

We talk about all kinds of things on the drive over—shreds of gossip from Bryce’s party, the soccer match on Friday.

The Hounds have already played a couple of matches. They were mostly away, or they weren’t very important because they were right at the beginning of the season, but this one, for some reason or other that I can’t remember, is important. The entire school is abuzz with anticipation. It’s against one of our main rival schools, Buchanan High, so there’s even more of a competitive edge.

“I’m really excited about this game. I really think we can win it.”

“You haven’t lost a game so far this season,” I remind him.

He pauses before saying, “They’re all counting on me. They don’t always say it before the match ’cause they don’t want to freak me out. But I know they are. And my parents. Coach said he heard a college scout might be at the match.”

“It’s a bit early in the season, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, maybe, but they’re just scouts, finding out if there’s anyone worth really
keeping their eye on.”

He doesn’t usually talk about soccer and his scholarship like this. It’s more like, “I’m hoping to get a scholarship,” or maybe, “My mom’s really hoping I get a scholarship to this college.” Sometimes he says, “I need to figure out my backup plan in case the scholarship falls through. Everyone needs a safety school.”

But this is different.

I can tell he’s worried that he won’t get it. I can’t imagine the kind of pressure he’s under from everyone. And on top of that he’s got to keep his grades up.

He doesn’t say anything more on that subject for a long minute, which I track by the song on the radio. Then he bumps the dial a little, turning the music up.

He parks the car on a small square of gravel at the bottom of a hill. It’s thickly wooded and steep, but clear paths are marked out by beaten tracks in the dirt and grass. There are wildflowers too that brighten it up.

We climb out of the car and I don’t regret wearing my Converse. Bryce pops open the trunk and hauls out first a blanket, and then a giant cooler bag that looks full to bursting.

“Do you want me to carry anything?” I ask first.

He laughs. “I can handle it, don’t worry. I’ll carry you on the other shoulder if you want,” he offers with a chuckle, and pats his right shoulder, since the cooler and blanket are over his left.

“I’m good. So. A picnic, huh?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

I laugh again, and take the three steps toward him, going on my tiptoes to kiss him.

We start walking up the hill—I don’t have to be a genius to figure out we’re going up. We don’t talk much. Not because we’re out of breath, just because we’re both letting our thoughts wander. It’s not until we’re almost at the top that it really hits me: my boyfriend has brought me out for a picnic.

Just four months ago, if you’d suggested this could ever happen to me, I’d have laughed and told you that you were completely crazy. That would never, not in a million years, happen to Fatty Maddie. The notion of any boyfriend was simply laughable, let alone one who did cute things like this.

I glance at Bryce out of the corner of my eyes, and I grin. The thought that he went to all this trouble gives me a warm feeling in my stomach. He didn’t have to do anything
special. We could have hung out at one of our houses; maybe seen a movie or gone out to dinner … But he decided to do something special.

We stop at a little clearing. The trees have thinned out and the hill dips down, but there’s a semicircular area in which Bryce sets out the blanket and then dumps down the bag.

I walk over to the edge of the hill and look out. You can see the sea from here. And over there, you can just about make out the mall, with traffic zipping by. It’s an amazing view. And there are birds singing somewhere. The sun is bright and it makes the trees cast a yellow-green haze around us. It’s a nice kind of warm, and I hug my elbows, smiling to myself for no reason at all other than that I’m happy.

Familiar arms wrap around my waist, and I lean back and rest my head against Bryce’s shoulder. He kisses my temple.

“This is nice,” I tell him quietly. I’m almost afraid to speak too loud in case it ruins the peace that has settled here. I turn around in his arms and show him my smile. “You’re amazing.”

He kisses the tip of my nose, and it makes me giggle. “You’re really wonderful, Madison, you know that?”

I don’t know if it’s him or me who initiates the kiss, and I don’t know how long it lasts, but it’s fantastic.

When we finally break away, I can’t help but let out a sigh because I didn’t want it to end, and then we’re both laughing, because we hear my stomach growling.

Bryce pokes playfully at my belly. “I guess we’d better get some food in you before you waste away, huh? What do you want? I have a bit of everything. There’re sandwiches and chips and salad and pasta and chicken wings and—”

“Whoa, slow down! It sounds like you’ve packed a feast fit for the entire soccer team in there.”

He laughs and we sit on the blanket, which is a thick fleece thing, worn with age. I run my fingers over it. Bryce starts to pile food out around us, and I see that, if anything, I was underrating the size of this picnic lunch. There’s just so much food!

“Well, dig in.”

And I do. We eat from plastic plates with matching blue plastic cutlery, loading whatever we want onto our plates and stuffing ourselves. I usually don’t eat this much, but I can’t help it. I’m suddenly ravenous, and the food is too good to just leave.

Bryce brings out a bowl of strawberries and a bottle of chocolate sauce—the kind you put on ice creams. “Dessert?” he asks with a grin.

I eye it for a moment, knowing my stomach can’t take much more—the waistband of my jeans is cutting in a bit—but I see the look on his face and say, “Of course,” because you can’t say no to those big, hopeful, happy brown eyes.

He opens the pot and then drizzles the delicious gooey chocolate all over the strawberries, which are a bright, succulent red. I take one in my fingers and pop it in my mouth, holding the stalk.

I let out a small groan of appreciation. Bryce chuckles at me and eats one himself. I’m about to reach for another when he picks it up for me, holding it out. I look at the strawberry for a moment before leaning forward, opening my mouth and giggling slightly.

He moves the strawberry at the last moment, touching the tip of my nose with it. I feel the chocolate sauce on my nose, and then see that he’s eating the strawberry himself. I wipe the chocolate off with a finger and lick it, just giving him a stunned look.

“What?” he says defensively. “It needed something extra sweet.”

I laugh. It’s not my usual laugh: I snort and throw my head back and let out this loud, long laugh that I have no control over. Eventually I calm to helpless giggles, before stopping and just grinning foolishly at him.

“I like your laugh,” he tells me.

“I like you,” I reply, and he chuckles. Then he pushes the food away and pats the space beside him; as I crawl closer he grabs my waist and pulls me over.

Bryce draws me into a long, slow kiss. His lips are gentle and soft against mine. I shimmy a little closer to him, and at some point he pulls me onto his lap, and from there we just let gravity take over until we’re lying on the grass. I’m half on top of him, and our legs are tangled together.

I pull back from the kiss, but leave our noses touching. He brushes my bangs back and replaces his arm around me.

The whole time I’m looking into his warm, piercing brown eyes and thinking how perfect this day is, how wonderful it’s been, how—

“I love you,” he says.

My world stops turning for a moment. At least, that’s what it feels like. It feels like my heart’s not even beating, and my breath is frozen in my lungs, and the birds have stopped singing, and that thin white cloud over there isn’t floating away anymore.

Then somebody presses play again, and I’m staring at him. Our breath mingles and my heart is surprisingly calm in my chest.

And I tell him, “I love you too,” because I don’t know what else to say.

I think I love him. It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it. I’ve lain awake at night sometimes, thinking about Bryce and smiling about something, and then I wonder if maybe that’s what love feels like. But I’ve never been sure. It’s not like one day I just decided that I love him.

Maybe I don’t.

Maybe I don’t, and I’ve done the wrong thing and messed everything up.

But he makes me smile and he makes me happy. And he loves me.

And so I say it back to him, and there’s a mixture of relief and glee that consumes his calm expression, and he kisses me.

And as we kiss, I let all my thoughts drift apart, scattering themselves until they aren’t even there any longer, and I let myself feel: feel the grass prickling against my bare shins and the warmth of Bryce’s neck under my palm; feel the sunlight bathe the nape of my neck and my arms; feel his lips, so soft against mine. And I don’t even give any conscious thought to the simple act of kissing him, as I usually do; instead, I just enjoy it.

There are those rare moments in life that you want to capture in a bottle, to hug close on a rainy day and cherish when nostalgia hits you.

And this, I think, would be one of those moments.

Late that afternoon we’re packing up our stuff. “We can go back to my place, if you want,” Bryce offers. “I mean, my parents are both going to be at work …”

“Sure,” I say.

There’s a slight pause and then he clears his throat. “Madison, I meant—well, we’ll have the house all to ourselves, and …” He raises his eyebrows a little, and then I get the implications of what he’s trying to say and my own eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh. Right. I see.”

There’s another pause. I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say to that. I’m tongue-tied. Then Bryce’s arms come around my waist from behind and he starts kissing my neck. I can hear his breath heavy in my ear. His hand starts to trail up from my waist, sliding beneath my top, and up …