Cold Hard Truth

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  “Yeah, well, you know I’m going to be prickly.”

  Max stared into Emmie’s face, then he lowered his eyes and rubbed his thumb back and forth over her knuckles. A second later, Emmie pulled him closer. She hesitated there, and he reveled in the feel of her warm breath on his lips. He hoped this was the right thing. It felt right. He wanted it to be right. And he knew that it was when she crossed the divide and kissed him.

  This time, it wasn’t the same frantic rush of emotion. Instead it was warm and slow, highlighted by the snowflakes melting on his cheeks and her eyelashes. When the kiss ended, she did not pull away from him, but kept her forehead pressed to his. Max savored the moment for however long it would last.

  Then, when she finally pulled back, a small smile on her lips, Max felt his face go hot. Hot, because there was no good way to switch from all this seriousness into the comparatively trivial thing he’d been planning to ask her in the warming house the night before. It was a question he thought he knew the answer to, but he had to ask anyway because that was the kind of masochist he was.

  Emmie could apparently tell his mind had shifted. She leaned back and looked at him hard. “What?”

  “So…Snow Ball is next weekend…”

  Emmie narrowed her eyes, then fell sideways away from him as if he’d told the joke of the century. “Are you for real?”

  Her reaction was worse than he feared. “Last time I checked, yeah.”

  “You can’t take me to the dance, Max.”

  “Why not?” he asked, though there were plenty of potential reasons why. For instance, she didn’t care about such cliché things as high school dances and winter courts. Or could someone else have already asked her. Like one of those soccer players who’d been eyeing her at the Happy Gopher. That possibility caused Max’s jaw to clench involuntarily.

  “Because this is high school,” she said. “They can’t even change the cafeteria menu without the whole student body going ape shit, like it’s the Second Coming or something. Max Shepherd, hockey superstar, taking the girl who got knocked up to the school dance? Are you kidding me? Their world would fall off its axis.”

  Max stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for the punch line. It took him another two seconds to realize she was being serious. “And what? You don’t want to be responsible for all their bumps and bruises?”

  She snorted. “It’s not that. It’s just—”

  “I know it’s not because you’re afraid,” Max said. “You’re not afraid of anything. And last time I checked, you didn’t care what anyone thought of you either.”

  Emmie’s lips tightened, and she banged her heel against a thin layer of ice that had crusted at the corner of the step. It shattered like a potato chip. “So, you’re asking me on a date?”

  “I am.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “And you’re saying…?”

  “I’m thinking about saying yes.”

  A stupid-ass grin broke out over Max’s face, even though he knew that with her, it might do him more harm than good. “I’ve been getting more yeses than noes out of you lately. I don’t deserve it, but I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t mess this up, Shepherd.” She picked up the tiny flecks of broken ice and flicked them at his cheek. They melted on impact.

  “Just give me a little time,” Max said. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”

  “If we do this, I’ll have to meet you at the dance. Is that okay? I promised Marissa I’d go with her.”

  Max fought back the flicker of disappointment and stared at Emmie for one long moment. He could tell it wasn’t exactly the truth. Maybe she and Marissa had talked about going together, but he doubted it was a promise she needed to keep. Still, he bet that school dances were not high on Emmie’s things-I-love-to-do list. If she wanted to take baby steps, he could take them right alongside her.

  “If that’s the way it’s got to be,” he said, “then that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  Emmie leaned into him and laid her head on his shoulder. He thought maybe she could begin to trust him again. It felt good to be trusted, even if it was just trickling in.

  The door behind them opened again, reminding them of where they were and what they were supposed to be doing. “If you two got yourselves sorted out,” Dan said, “I’ve got some books that need shelving.”

  Emmie stood obediently and reached down toward Max. His hand wrapped around hers, and she pulled him up. The significance of it was not lost on Max. She was always pulling him up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  SNOW BALL

  “I still don’t understand why you’re going to this thing with me instead of with Max,” Marissa said as she drove to the high school. “He’s your date. He should have picked you up.”

  “It’s not his fault. I told him I’d already promised to go with you, so don’t tell him different.”

  Marissa jerked her head to look at Emmie. “Well, that’s just great. He probably thinks I’m some needy, dateless wonder. Was he mad?”

  Emmie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m with you. I’ll see him there.”

  Marissa made an exasperated sound in her throat and switched on the windshield defoggers, while Emmie checked her lipstick in the visor mirror. She didn’t typically wear a lot of makeup, and she wasn’t sure about the color.

  She dug a napkin out of Marissa glove box to wipe half of it off, but her hand froze midair when she saw the napkin bore a Taco Bell logo. Nick.

  Just like him to ruin her night by jumping into her head. It had been nine months since she’d helped him rob the downtown Taco Bell, but she could still feel the adrenaline pumping in her ears.

  “Everything okay?” Marissa asked.

  “Yeah. Great,” Emmie said. She wadded up the napkin and rubbed furiously at her lips.

  Marissa parked, and they made their way into the school. They were some of the late stragglers, the dance having started an hour earlier. White Prairie students apparently weren’t familiar with the concept of being fashionably late.

  As Emmie and Marissa handed their coats off to the coat-check girl, a freshman who looked a little too excited about being at an upperclassmen event, Emmie marveled at Marissa’s sense of style. She always thought Marissa looked amazing, but tonight she was wearing a one-shouldered navy dress, with layers of pearl bracelets crawling up her left arm. Her long, blond hair lay smooth and silky against her back. It was not a look Emmie was ever going to achieve, and she sighed in envy.

  Emmie’s hair was in its natural state in big, loose curls that ended just below her shoulders. Marissa had loaned her an ivory lace headband that went well with the vintage dress her aunt Bridget had helped her shop for. It was strapless and robin’s-egg blue. Emmie liked how the crinoline made a rustling sound when she walked, and the body-hugging top made her feel like a princess (though she’d never admit that part out loud).

  She also had a matching drawstring bag that was small enough to wear on a strap around her wrist and just big enough for a phone and few essentials. But her shoes…her shoes! If Emmie could get through the whole night in them, it would be a miracle. Five inches of crippling agony, but man, were they beautiful.

  When she and Marissa stepped into the gym, it took a while for Emmie’s eyes and ears to adjust. The usually cavernous room was packed, and there was a heated haze of sweat and cologne. The only light filtered in from the hallway or came from the small light on the DJ’s table and the spinning disco balls that hung from the ceiling. Emmie couldn’t make out any faces, only dimly outlined forms jumping in unison to the pulsing music of Gucci Mane.

  As they stood in the doorway, a guy drew closer on his way out. He was tall and broad-shouldered with a thick mane of blond hair. A hockey player, no doubt. If his body didn’t give it away, the splint on his nose was the deciding factor. Chris.

  His eyes first went to Marissa, giving her a nod of recognition, then quickly darted to Emmie.

  “If you
’re looking for Shepherd, he’s sitting on the bleachers in the back corner.”

  Marissa elbowed Emmie and made a high-pitched whistle, which had become her signal for what she called the singing snail. Emmie rolled her eyes but thrilled at the idea that Max wasn’t dancing without her. Maybe he was even disappointed because she was late.

  The blond guy passed through the doorway, and a second later, Sarah came bouncing up to Marissa and Emmie. “You’re here! You’re here! Finally!” She reminded Emmie of Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Marissa gave Emmie a little shove. “Go find Max. Remember. You’re on a date.”

  Emmie fumbled a smile. It felt surreal as she took her first steps into the gym, then followed the edge of the bleachers. She was walking away from her best friend to go find Max Shepherd, varsity hockey jock, with looks that rivaled anybody in a Calvin Klein ad.

  Uh…no she wasn’t. Emmie made an about-face. There was no way she was going to go march into Max’s circle of friends. How incredibly awkward would that be? If he wanted to be with her, he’d find her…

  No. Wait.

  This was freaking high school. These were privileged Daddy-Has-Enough-Money-to-Put-Me-in-Hockey kids, not a bunch of knife-hiding junkies tweaking in a dark alley. She’d faced way worse than this. Well, never knife-hiding alley dwellers, but close enough.

  Emmie turned around again and marched toward the back corner of the gym.

  Who were these hockey players to make her feel all kinds of awkward? No one, that’s who. Max Shepherd had asked her to be his date. That’s what he was going to get.

  “Cute dress,” said a voice coming up alongside her. It was Katie. Emmie groaned internally when she remembered what Lauren Schafer had told her at the hockey rink. Katie was Jade’s cousin.

  Katie’s red hair was pulled to one side in a smooth spiral that draped over her shoulder. She looked like she’d just walked off the runway in a skintight, black scrap of Spandex. Emmie looked around at some of the other girls on the dance floor and, for the first time, noticed that Katie’s look was the one to have.

  Nick’s voice rang out in Emmie’s head without warning. Have you ever thought about straightening your hair? You’d look way hotter if your hair was straight. That…and if you took off a few pounds. Got to cut you off from the cheeseburgers, hey, baby?

  “Thanks,” Emmie said, rubbing the fabric of her full skirt between her fingers.

  “Are you looking for Max?” Katie asked. Before Emmie could respond, Katie added, “He’s pretty down. Tonight’s going to be a rough night for him. He brought Jade as his date the last two years. I think it’s stirred up a whole lot of stuff for him. They were such a cute couple.”

  Katie’s face flickered with pain, but Emmie didn’t know how to decipher it. Was it empathy for Max, or for the loss of her cousin? Maybe both.

  “Of course,” Emmie said. So Max wasn’t moping on the bleachers because she was late. He was in pain. He was grieving. Of course he was. Why shouldn’t he be? Emmie’s heart squeezed at the agony the memories must be causing him. She couldn’t imagine.

  “You came with some friends, right?” Katie asked.

  “Yeah,” Emmie said absently. “Marissa Cooke.” Then her thoughts returned to Max. He needed some time alone. If their situations were reversed, she’d want the same from him.

  “From the restaurant, right?” Katie asked.

  “Yeah.” Emmie suddenly felt very hot. The crinoline under her skirt made her legs itch.

  “I think I saw her over there,” Katie said, pointing into the crowd. Emmie glanced over her shoulder and spotted Marissa by the refreshments. “Thanks.”

  Emmie turned around and retraced her steps, feeling mortified and about the size of that freaking singing snail Marissa kept going on and on about. Except that she didn’t exactly feel like singing.

  She had to push her way through the crowd that was now rushing onto the dance floor because the DJ was playing “Despacito.” More than once, Emmie was knocked sideways through a cloud of Axe and body odor, as if she were in a pinball machine, ricocheting off one person or the next.

  When she finally made it to the refreshments table, she grabbed Marissa’s elbow and exhaled with exhaustion. “Hey.”

  “Hey?” Marissa asked, taking Emmie’s shoulders in both hands and giving her a little shake. “What do you mean, ‘Hey’? What are you doing here? You were supposed to go find your man.”

  “He’s not my man.”

  “Of course he’s your man. He asked you to be his date.”

  Emmie shrugged and glanced over her shoulder. “He needs some time to himself.”

  Marissa’s hands dropped from Emmie’s shoulders, and her eyes looked in the direction from which Emmie had come, then back to Emmie. “Time to himself?”

  “It’s okay,” Emmie said, not wanting to see her own disappointment on Marissa’s face.

  “I don’t get it,” Marissa said.

  Emmie shrugged. “I’ll explain later.”

  Olivia came back with two glasses of punch and looked surprised to see Emmie. She handed one cup to Marissa, then said, “Girl, here. You take this.” She gave Emmie the one she’d intended for herself, then, after leaving Emmie with a sympathetic look, left to get another cup.

  Emmie tossed back the punch, hoping it would dull her disappointment. She couldn’t allow herself to feel any self-pity when Max was hurting. Unfortunately, unlike every teen movie she’d ever seen, no one had spiked the punch. She frowned down into her empty cup, then looked up when she realized Marissa was studying her—hard—with her head tilted to the side.

  Emmie squirmed under her scrutiny.

  “Okay,” Marissa said. “Who got to you?”

  “Huh?”

  Marissa shifted her weight and folded her arms. “You were heading straight for him. If you hadn’t been wearing those shoes, you would have been running. And then thirty seconds later, you turn around and end up with me. Who got to you?”

  “His friend Katie said that—”

  “Katie Hines?” Marissa asked with an eye roll. “The one with the permanent resting bitch face? She’s been working her angle on Max for six months. Everyone knows it, even those of us who don’t run in that crowd. It’s pathetic.”

  Emmie took a second to consider what Marissa was telling her. Had Katie been playing her? Was Emmie really so naive to believe that Katie had been genuinely worried about how Max was feeling? “You really think—?”

  Marissa’s expression flickered to amusement, and her eyes focused on something beyond Emmie’s shoulder. Emmie never finished her sentence.

  “Yeah,” Marissa said. “I really think.”

  “Emmie?” Max’s voice said, and Emmie felt the warmth of his fingers slide around the right side of her waist. “How long have you been here?”

  Emmie turned around, and his eyes dipped from her face to the top of her dress. She felt her skin flush and hoped it was too dark in the gym for him to notice. “A couple minutes ago.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you. I thought you stood me up.”

  Emmie felt Marissa slip quietly away and wished she had another glass of punch in her hand. The room was blazing hot. Max was too, in a crisp white shirt, a black jacket, and a skinny tie. He didn’t look sad. If anything, he looked relieved. And maybe a little annoyed. Emmie fidgeted under his stare.

  Emmie’s attention was pulled off Max, however, by the sudden appearance of his friend Lindsey from the skating rink and her date, the kid with the curly top fade Emmie had seen in the hallway with Max her first day back. They pulled up alongside Max and flashed Emmie happy smiles—all teeth. They looked beautiful together.

  “Emmie, you remember Lindsey?” Max asked. “And this is Jordy.”

  Jordy smiled broadly and adjusted his glasses. He looked smooth in a burgundy jacket and black pants, but he was wide-eyed and excited—so much so that he reminded Emmie of a little kid riding a perpetual Christmas-morning high.

  Li
ndsey looked like a real-life Barbie doll, except that she still had both her shoes.

  “Oh, and Quinn,” Max said as another couple joined them, “and my friend Brock.” Brock was wearing a black shirt and red bow tie to match Quinn’s red dress. Quinn looked shorter without her skates.

  “Hey,” they all said, practically in unison.

  A flutter of unease trembled through Emmie’s belly. She couldn’t help noticing how well they all matched, despite their differences. She wasn’t reacting to their clothes. All of them matched in the easy smoothness they had about them, a comfortable grace that had to come from years of friendship.

  Emmie and Max were two jigsaw pieces that were never going to fit. Hell, they came from completely different puzzles. But Max was still looking at her with a certain sense of relief, and Quinn and Lindsey seemed genuinely happy that she was with him.

  “Are we going to dance or what?” Quinn asked when a John Legend song started. “I didn’t get this dressed up for nothing.”

  “I don’t know,” Max asked. “Are we going to dance, Emmie?”

  Someone bumped into Emmie from behind. It was enough to push her off balance, and she fell against Max’s body, his arms quickly circling her.

  “Guess so,” he said, and he chuckled, sending a low vibration through his chest that Emmie could feel against her own. Max led her onto the crowded dance floor. He might have even carried her, for all she knew. She had no sensation of her feet on the floor. Jordy and Lindsey, and Brock and Quinn danced nearby. The whole room swayed.

  In her shoes, Emmie had gained a little height on Max. Her head now reached his shoulder, but he still had to bend his body to get his mouth level with her ear. “You,” he said, “are crazy beautiful tonight. Definitely worth the wait.”

  A shiver of excitement ran through Emmie’s body and curled her toes. She had no response.

  “For a second though,” Max said, “I thought you weren’t coming. I was heading out when I saw you.”

  Emmie’s head jerked back in surprise. “You were going to leave?” She took a moment to play that idea out in her mind. What would she have thought if she’d arrived and he wasn’t here? Probably that he’d changed his mind about them being together. She wouldn’t have blamed him for that.