Breaking the Ice (Juniper Falls)

by Julie Cross

  “I’ll go to the pool.” Roger pushes up to a stand. “You stay here and hang out.”

  “You sure?” Tate asks. “I don’t mind as long as Livi doesn’t ask me to take her to the bathroom. I had to blindfold her last time.”

  I roll my eyes. Amateur child-watcher in the room. “Just ask another mom around to take her in the women’s restroom. I’m sure you can find someone you recognize at the only public pool in town.”

  “I’ll go, it’s fine.” Roger says to Tate, and then he looks over at me and scratches his head. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  I reach for Olivia and pull her in front of me. “Stand still. I’ll do your sunscreen.”

  “Get under my straps.” Her blond curls flop around while she manages to keep her feet planted but still bounces up and down. “Last time, Tate forgot and I got burned and now I’m all peely and itchy.”

  Tate lifts his hands. “I can’t do that. It’s creepy, right?”

  I try really hard not to laugh while giving Olivia a thick coat of sunscreen. Minutes later, she and Roger are climbing into the van, towels tucked under their arms. I finish off my water bottle and wait for Tate to say he needs to leave or something. But he’s relaxed in his chair, looking completely at ease.

  “So, the whole stepfamily adventure is going okay?” I ask. This is something I should have talked to Tate more about when we were together. We broke up literally days after he and I were witnesses to his mom and Roger’s courthouse wedding. We signed the marriage certificate and everything. I made a huge deal out of that, too. Well, a huge deal out of the fact that Tate didn’t think it was monumental and life changing like I had.

  Relationship problems due to getting upset over minor things.

  “I can’t believe she ate the black-eyed peas.” Tate shakes his head. “Those things are nasty.”

  “I see.” My eyebrows rise up. “So, you weren’t encouraging your little stepsister to eat healthy, you were daring her to swallow something nasty?”

  “When you put it like that…” He grins and reaches over to snatch an apple from my lap. “But yeah, things are okay with them.”

  I’m honestly happy to hear this. I know Roger really cares about Tate. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. He’s not in this family just to be with Tate’s mom. I set an empty water bottle on the ground and go for one of the cereal bars. I’ve recently developed a label-reading habit—not because of the calorie counter app I downloaded and rarely remember to use—but because of Fletch. Every time I eat something that has a label, I’m curious to see if it’s on his do-not-eat list. From what I’ve gathered, more is off-limits than on for him.

  Contains: wheat, milk, and soy ingredients.

  Soy is one allergy that was mostly cured when he did that trial thing. But I asked him about it the other day, and he said he still mostly avoids it, just in case. Soy is apparently in a lot of processed foods, and after much prodding, Fletch reluctantly admitted that he avoids processed food because he gets random unidentified reactions from them and can’t pinpoint the cause. I can’t imagine being scared every time you ate something.

  I squeezed all that out of him in less than ninety seconds before we began studying yesterday. But then he got uncomfortable and changed the subject.

  “So…what’s going on?” Tate says after I unwrap the cereal bar and begin eating it.

  I shrug. “Not much. Just running and, you know…doing stuff.”

  He looks me over and relaxes further into his chair, like he’s planning to be here a while. “I meant what’s wrong? You’ve got your pretending-to-be-okay look on.”

  Not a very good make-believe face, apparently.

  I pick at a loose string on my shorts, my eyes on my lap.

  “Haley?” Tate presses.

  I exhale and look at him again. “You look comfortable.”

  “I am comfortable.” He refuses to break this eye contact he’s got going on. “Why wouldn’t I be comfortable?”

  I shift in my seat. “I don’t know. It’s kind of a chore dealing with me now. Maybe it’s even a little weird.”

  “It was weird.” His gaze travels to the ceiling. Finally. “At first. But now that we’ve had time and…I don’t know, it’s just not weird, okay?”

  I laugh. “Okay. It’s not weird.”

  He flashes me a grin, and then next thing I know, he’s swiping my phone from my lap. “You’re about to reveal your deep, dark angst to me. If I know you well—and I do—then you took off running because you were stressed about something, and then you decided to make a playlist of whatever songs pop up that represent your current angst.”

  I glare at him and fold my arms across my chest. I don’t think he’s referencing the most humiliating playlist I’ve ever made intentionally, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind. And yes, I did this today, but I don’t remember what all I picked. However, it feels so random and displaced inside my head, Tate’s not going to hit anywhere near the mark. My secrets are safe.

  “Aha!” His eyebrows shoot up. “Playlist made Saturday, June twenty-first.”

  “‘Nirvana’ by Sam Smith,” he reads, then he pauses and eventually moves on. “‘I’m a Mess’ by Ed Sheeran, ‘Halfway’ by Parachute, ‘Crazy for You’ by Scars on 45, ‘Stolen Dance,’ ‘Sleeping With a Friend’…”

  I watch as his forehead wrinkles, his thumb scrolling farther down. Eventually, he sighs and tosses the phone back into my lap. “I got nothing from that list.”

  A satisfied grin spreads across my face. I’ll take it as a sign that Shallow Haley is still stuffed in a far corner inside my head.

  “Unless…” Tate says, assessing me again. “Sleeping with a friend…maybe you and Jamie—”

  I throw the box of cereal bars at him.

  “I’m kidding.” He retrieves the loose packages that spilled from the box and sets it all on the ground. “Jamie would tell me.”’

  “He would not.” Okay, maybe he would. Tate and Leo are kind of his people to go to when he needs to talk about who he’s sleeping with.

  “You could just tell me what’s going on,” Tate suggests. “Then I don’t have to make up false accusations.”

  We’ve come a long way since our breakup last fall, but I can’t lay all of this tangled web of things on Tate. I bring my knees to my chest and hug them. “Can I ask you something? And by that, I mean will you answer honestly?”

  The amusement drops from his face. “I’ll try.”

  “You and Claire…” I keep my eyes trained on the old lady across the street watering her garden. She’s in the Juniper Falls Women’s League. She’s probably going to tell all the ladies at bridge club tonight that I was hanging out with Tate in my bra today. “Do you ever think about, you know, like the future? Where you guys will be in several years?”

  He grips the arms of his lawn chair, looking less comfortable now. “You mean, like, separately or together?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “I think about all of that,” he admits. “More like, I worry about it.”

  “Because you’re here and she’s at Northwestern?” I ask. This is a side of Tate I’ve never seen before—attached, insecure…

  “That musical Claire was in this spring?” he says, and I nod. “A producer for a Broadway show that’s currently in Chicago saw her and wants her to audition for something new that’s being workshopped to maybe open up in New York City next year—”

  My feet drop to the ground, and I sit up straighter. “Oh my God. That’s incredible.”

  “Please don’t repeat that,” Tate warns. “Claire’s all worried about jinxing it. Anyway, I’m applying to Northwestern, but Claire might not even be there when I would start. And then there’s the Rangers—”

  My jaw drops. “The New York Rangers want to draft you? They want you to play for them?”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “For their junior team. I’d rather play college than juniors, I think. But some players go to juniors after
high school, and then college, and then pros.”

  “Can you imagine if you and Claire were both in New York City?” I sit back again and let this sink in. “Two kids from Juniper Falls making it big in New York. That’s just…wow.”

  “Or she could get really into her career and not have time for a relationship, especially with an athlete who lacks artistic integrity,” he says.

  “So, you worry about that, too?” The weight of all the impossible falls back onto my shoulders. “But you love her, right?”

  “Yeah.” He looks down at his hands. That can’t be an easy thing for him to tell me. “But I love her being out there, doing what she does best, too. So, I don’t know what will happen.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna lie,” I say. “I want to go to New York and see Claire on Broadway and tell everyone in the seats nearby that she’s my friend, so you’d better not do anything to stand in the way of my dream.”

  We sit in comfortable silence for several minutes, and then my mind drifts to one of the rehearsals we had for the ball. “I still get goose bumps thinking about Claire singing at the ball. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that.”

  “Like what?” Tate asks. “Sing? I’ve heard you sing; you’re not terrible.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not Claire, either. But not singing, just something—anything—where I put myself out there completely. Something uncalculated and from the guts, you know?”

  “You mean from the heart?”

  I shake my head. “The heart is pretty. Guts are raw and ugly. It’s different.”

  His eyes lift to meet mine, and he stares for a long moment, like I’m someone else right now. “Yeah, it is different.”

  “I should probably get going.” I untangle my headphones and start to stand up.

  “Haley?” Tate says, letting out a breath. “I just want to…I mean—”

  I adjust my shoelaces and then look down at him. “What?”

  “We never had that chat I promised you, and…” He rubs his hands together, and I’m already shifting, uncomfortable with where this is headed. “From your perspective, it probably seems like I never confided in you and then I went and told Claire everything…but honestly, it wasn’t like that.”

  I nod. “What was it like, then?”

  “What I’m trying to say is that I was happy most of the time with you. You made me happy. It was fun. We were fun.” He gives me that famous Tate Tanley smile. “I never got nervous around you. You’re competitive like me, not afraid of a challenge, you were always fine playing video games or touch football in my yard. It wasn’t all bad.”

  “It wasn’t?” A lump forms in my throat. How did he know that I really needed to hear this? Am I wearing a sign that says please tell me if I’ve ever done anything nice for you?

  “I think it was mostly good, if I’m being honest.” Tate has finally dropped those walls he’d put up during the last couple of months of our relationship. “You were kind of my best friend for a while.”

  I look down at my fingernails. “Maybe that’s what we should have done. Stayed friends.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugs. “But then everyone would have said we were dating anyway if we hung out all the time.”

  I shake my head. This is so true, but I’ve never thought about it that way. “Toss in some hormones and sexual curiosity, and basically we were doomed.”

  “Exactly.” Tate laughs, his cheeks flushed a little. “I don’t think we’d have any trouble with that now.”

  “Maybe not.” I take another drink of water. I’m going to need it for the run home. “Can I ask an extremely intrusive question?”

  He rubs the stubble on his cheek. “Sure?”

  “You and Claire…” My face heats up just thinking this question. “Are things better with her? Like, things.”

  “Oh.” His eyebrows lift. “Things.”

  “I mean have you guys—”

  “Yeah, we have.” He looks down at his lap. “I wouldn’t use the word better.”

  “You mean you’re afraid to use the word better,” I laugh.

  He lifts his eyes again, forehead wrinkled. “I’d say evolved. It’s evolved. Which has a lot more to do with experience than the actual person.”

  So most likely, a person who is awarded multiple pairs of panties on a weekly basis from various women and who can practically unravel me just by standing close and barely touching me would be considered sexually evolved.

  Though, now that I think about it, Fletch never actually answered my virgin question yesterday.

  “But I’d say it’s definitely a different experience than, say…” Tate pauses, searching for a word “…sleeping with a friend. In case you’re contemplating anything in that realm.”

  I snort back a laugh and toss my water bottle at him. Why is that even on my playlist? I’m about to throw a few choice words his way when Claire pulls up in front of the mailbox. My whole body tenses, my face flushing brighter. Why didn’t I wear a T-shirt? What is she going to think about me sitting here in a sports bra, laughing with her boyfriend?

  Claire is practically skipping up the drive. When she spots the two of us, she stops and then makes a big show of tiptoeing backwards. “I can come back later.”

  I jump to my feet. “It’s fine. I was just…” In the neighborhood? Which is the truth, but it’s way too cliché to say out loud.

  Tate looks over at me. “I told her that I wanted to talk to you. She’s probably thinking we’re in the midst of a serious chat.”

  Guess we sort of were, but I think he’s said what he needed to already. “It’s fine, Claire. Seriously, I’m heading home.”

  “She’s been going to my therapy sessions,” Tate explains, though I’m still hovering over the realization that Tate is in therapy. I didn’t know. But I guess it makes sense with all the stuff with his dad. “I just didn’t want you to think I sit around talking about you to other people,” he adds in a hurry.

  “Oh, well, I’m quite fond of being on everyone’s minds.”

  He rolls his eyes. “I’ve still got a lot of pieces to sort through. We’ve made good, bad, and gray-area piles. You’re in the good pile, by the way. Even my mom didn’t make the cut for that one.”

  My mouth falls open, but I have no idea what to say. Jesus Christ. Things were even worse for Tate than I realized.

  Claire is in the garage now. She’s heard Tate’s comment about his piles and his mom. She lays a hand on the back of his neck, rubbing it gently. The lump in my throat grows bigger. I don’t want them to end up apart somewhere. I don’t want Tate to feel the terrible weight of heartbreak after everything he’s been through. Or Claire. She’d have never gone through with that audition if it weren’t for Tate. And she was in a pretty bad place last fall, too. After her dad’s surgery and all the stupid town rumors about her and Luke Pratt.

  I’m about to turn around and take off, but a few tears leak from my eyes before I get a chance to. Which is just great. Now it’s gonna seem like I’m crying over them. I mean, I am, but not like people will think.

  I swipe the tears away with my hand, but Tate is already out of his seat, walking my way. “Haley? What?”

  “Nothing.” I shake my head. “Nothing bad. I mean, I was having a bad day, but this is good.” I take a deep breath, pulling myself together again. “Thank you. For what you said. I needed that.”

  “Yeah?” He looks skeptical still.

  “Yeah,” I say as earnestly as I can. Tate moves closer like he’s going to hug me, but I step back. “Don’t. I’m all sweaty.”

  Tate gets his arms around me anyway, and my cheek is suddenly pressed against his grease-smudged T-shirt. When I finally escape Tate’s hold, Claire looks like she might hug me, too. I say good-bye and leave before that happens. I don’t want to take a chance of breaking down. And with all those new developments, I really need to run again.

  Maybe I didn’t screw up my and Tate’s relationship? Maybe lots of people have a Tate. T
he question is, how many get to have a Claire? I’m not desperate to fall into an intense relationship or anything—quite the opposite—but I want to know if, by chance, it does happen, am I destined to ruin it? According to Tate, I didn’t ruin us. We just grew up. We became the people we’re going to be forever.

  Which brings me to another problem: Tate is destined for hockey greatness, Claire is headed for Broadway. Fletcher is…well, I don’t know what he’s going to become, but I’m sure it will be amazing. He’s really smart, and he works really hard. Jamie and Leo are headed off to play college hockey. Jake Hammond will be our next NHL star, probably an Olympian, too.

  And me? Well, it’s quite possible that I’m destined to be the girl who peaked junior year of high school when she won Juniper Falls Princess.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  –Fletcher–

  “What’s going on? Where’s Haley?” Jamie rubs his eyes, the red from a weekend of partying still hanging on.

  I have an hour between practice and Civics class this morning, and I tricked him into getting here early. I told him Haley had an emergency.

  “She’s probably running with the cheerleaders.” I open the door to the school building and wait for Jamie to walk through. “We’re working on a surprise for her, okay?”

  He grumbles but follows me toward the library anyway. “Love how you use my extra hour of sleep to make up for you being an asshole to Haley.”

  The lights in the library are off, so I switch them on before choosing a table in the center. Jamie sits beside me and leans on one arm like he might doze off again. I pull two cans of Red Bull from my bag and slide them his way. Then I spread all the test materials out in front of us.

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do…” I show Jamie my game plan and dive into teaching him the Civics-themed plays I’ve created. Haley said the other day that Jamie needs a C on this test to get his passing grade and head off for college glory. I tried texting and calling her over the weekend, but she’s kept her distance, which I get after that phone call we had, but I still wanted to help her study.