Unraveling Josh

by Edie Danford

  Speaking of. As soon as I got inside the house, I heard the clack-clack of little doggie toenails and heard the little groaning growls that meant doggie happiness.

  “Hey, Todd,” I said as he came wiggling toward me, his tiny tail wagging so hard he could barely walk. I toed off my boots and shook the snow off my sweater.

  I scooped him up and got rewarded with warm kisses all over my chin. “Where’s Kelse?” I asked him. He groaned. I kissed his velvety ear. “Upstairs? Okay let’s go find her.”

  We tromped up the stairs and when we reached our hallway I put him down. He scurried toward Kelsey’s half-open door and wriggled his squirmy body inside.

  “Mr. Johnson!” I heard her scold. “Where have you been?”

  I pushed open her door and grinned. “He’s been hanging by the front door again. Panhandling for kisses.”

  She laughed and scooped him up onto her bed. He did a little scurry dance on the books and papers spread out on the comforter, then settled down on her discarded sweater.

  I sat beside him. His cinnamon-colored fur was so soft. Irresistible.

  Josh’s hair had been longish today. My favorite length—the waves long enough to curl up at the ends and make little doinks over his ears and his collar. He had a few cinnamon highlights, but mostly they were shades of gold. Depended on what kind of light was hitting it. One morning in bed I’d counted up the number of colors—

  “So how did it go?” Kelsey asked me.

  Shrugging, I kept my gaze on Todd’s head. I was trying for a neutral expression but I felt a smile slowly curve my lips.

  “Ha. Told you that he wouldn’t say no.”

  “I wasn’t worried about him saying no. I knew he’d let me add the class. What I’m worried about is whether I’ll piss him off or freak him out—and end up making it a miserable experience for both of us.”

  “No,” Kelsey said, settling against the pillows with her laptop. “What you’re worried about is that he’ll ignore you. Or treat you like any other student.”

  I scowled, feeling her zinger hit me right between the eyes. “If that happens, I’d be okay with it. It’ll just mean I have more work to do, is all.”

  Kelsey snorted. “You will so not be okay with it.” She nodded at Todd. He’d rolled on his back and I was rubbing his tubby little belly. “You’re like him. You want your pleasure and you want it now. You don’t want to work for it.”

  “I have until May,” I said. “Four months to show him I’ve changed. I’m giving myself until summer and then, if it doesn’t work, I’ll give up. I don’t want to make him hate me more, you know? And I want to work for it. I kinda need to work for it.” My fingers trailed gently over the ruffles of fur beneath Todd’s ribcage. “Todd,” I said. He stretched one leg outward and looked at me with one eye closed. “Sit,” I told him. He kept looking at me, unmoving.

  Kelsey laughed.

  “Sit,” I repeated more firmly. I slowly pulled a mini dog biscuit from my sweater’s pocket. I waved it in front of his nose. Todd rolled over, scattering papers on The Wealth of Nations with his tail.

  Cinnamon eyes on the biscuit prize, he sat with gusto.

  I fed him the biscuit. “See,” I said to Kelse over surprisingly loud crunching sounds. “He knows how to work for it too.”

  “I don’t think Josh Pahlke carries around Nick biscuits in his pockets,” she said wryly.

  “He does, though.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Good luck on getting another taste of that,” she said. “That’ll be the first and last thing he withholds. Posting his goods on the Internet took that dish right off the menu for you, Nicky.”

  Every muscle clenched as I stared into Todd’s expectant eyes—the awful internal and external wince that happened every time I thought of that Notch Spot post Josh had glimpsed the night of the bonfire.

  I took a small, sharp breath, trying to ease the tightness. The Notch Spot was no more. It had been taken down, erased, deep-sixed. Just like my friendship with Pete. I’d written him a letter a couple weeks after his Ellery visit—actual ink on paper—and sent it to him explaining why I needed a break, why I was hurt. I never got a response but when I’d checked the Internet a few days later, the Notch Spot group had been labeled as “no longer available”.

  While I was home over break I’d gone out for coffee with Mike and Jonathan.

  They’d been confused but concerned and kind about my predicament. Mike had been bummed by the Notch Spot’s demise but Jonathan had seemed secretly relieved. They’d both encouraged me to make things up with Pete—apparently he was taking things hard out in WeHo. And I knew I’d contact him someday, hash things out, make reparations. But for now I was concentrating on making things up with Josh.

  Kelsey—along with Lucy and Amelia (who now knew the sad ending to my cut-short fairytale with Prince Josh)—kept warning me that I needed to concentrate on other things too, that it was a mistake to throw my whole being and all my energy into showing some guy how much I’d changed and how much I loved him. But what they didn’t seem to understand was that this was more than a journey to find lost love for me. This was a journey to discover the answers to Josh’s questions that awful night in his tower. Come on, Nick. What did you find when you were fucking all those guys? What were you looking for? What huge thing was missing in your life?

  I wasn’t sure about the answers to those questions. Maybe I’d never figure it out. But I knew I had to start with a clean slate to find what was missing from my life. I mean, yeah, there was a big gaping hole with Josh’s name on it. But I was curious about all kinds of things I’d never stopped to consider over the last few years. What did I want? What did I like? Who did I want to be?

  Easy stuff like that. No problem figuring out all of that shit before the end of May, right?

  I exhaled a strangled laugh and Todd cocked his head at me. “Life is absurd, Mr. Johnson,” I told him. His head tipped the other way.

  I laughed again and when my face crinkled I realized I’d leaked a few tears. That happened frequently these days. A total, complete pain in the ass.

  I startled when a square box of tissues landed in my lap.

  Kelsey’s hand came down on my fuzzy purple arm. Her nail polish was almost the same shade of purple. Made sense that she liked it. The sweater had been a Christmas present from her. She’d been doing a lot of knitting lately—she was being coached by a Vegan House denizen named Jacob who was a master knitter and who was so mellow you wanted to snooze just looking at him—and I was happy to be the recipient of her cozy experiments. Wrapping myself in wool had felt like the perfect thing lately.

  “I’m sorry, Nicky. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I extracted a tissue and wiped my goddamn tears. “It’s okay—”

  “No. I know how crappy you feel about all that stuff. And I know how hard you’ve been working to make changes. And I admire your proactive approach. Because…it’s not about punishment, you know.”

  I looked at her and nodded. We’d both been working on the concept of punishment—self-punishment and the shit other people dished out too.

  She picked up her phone. “Have you looked today?”

  I shook my head.

  She passed it to me. “Have at it.”

  “Nah,” I said, putting the phone back next to her econ textbook. “I’m gonna wait until tonight.”

  One of the “blank slate” things I was trying out was to go without a phone. Also, I’d stripped my laptop of everything but the programs I needed for schoolwork. I let myself check email and other select outlets once a day for fifteen minutes. The challenge had been surprisingly fun—I’d seen a lot more of my environment (I was probably the last of the five thousand people on campus to realize that Ellery was beautiful in the snow) written a lot more letters (fountain pens were very cool) and made a lot more voice calls (my mom’s voice still grated but I caught a lot more emotion there than I did reading her texts and email
s—also, I couldn’t delete her voice, which meant I knew a lot more about family news lately). And I could go on.

  But, yeah, not having a phone could be weird and a big fat pain in the ass.

  “Did you tell Josh you wanted paper and voice notifications for class?” Kelse asked.

  “Um, no. I’ll talk to Pearlstein about it, though.”

  Most of my professors had seemed to think it was very cool I was going digital-free this quarter and they’d agreed—with amused looks on their faces—to giving me calls or giving me access to paper copies of things like syllabi and assignments and whatnot.

  Todd Johnson had begun to chew on one of Kelse’s books. I scooped a chew toy from the floor and gave it to him. He gnawed happily, not displeased with the replacement.

  “So when does phase two of The Plan begin?”

  “Um…”

  It was funny how when I thought about making the plan to revamp my life and get Josh back, I felt energized and hopeful.

  But now that I’d completed phase one and I’d entered phase two—the phase where I’d actually have to show up and do all that stuff—I was feeling nervous. And not so hopeful.

  I gulped. “Oh God, Kelse. He’s going to think I’m a loser. A lovesick idiot who can’t move on with his life. A Josh fanboy who lives for one of his smiles.”

  Kelsey snorted again. “Well, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want him to know that. It’s fucking embar—”

  “You do want him to know that, idiot!” She tugged my beanie off and bonked me on the head. “That’s the reason for the fucking plan!”

  I laughed and rubbed my shorn head. “Oh yeah. Right.”

  Kelsey dropped the beanie and rubbed my head too. After a couple moments she said, “It’s hard to shift gears from Mr. Cool, huh? To admit we’re fallible and fall on our asses frequently in life?”

  I nodded. “I don’t want to be Mr. Cool anymore.”

  “Then don’t,” Kelse said, making it sound simple.

  Todd started nuzzling my beanie, sticking his whole face right in there. “He’s like a little bear happily finding a nice, warm cave,” I commented. If I’d been the kind of guy who carried a phone around all the time, I’d snap a photo and upload the adorableness for everyone to see.

  Kelsey and I laughed harder as he tossed his head and the green wool encased his upper body. When it was obvious he’d started trying to eat the cave, I took the hat off him and shoved it back on my head, slobber and all. He looked up at me with astounded eyes.

  Kelsey laughed and then said in her puppy-talk Todd Johnson voice—a total dork-out tone that always made me giggle—“What for you put cave on head, Nick-Nick?”

  We kept laughing for a few minutes, playing with Todd. The nerves in my belly slowly fizzled out. I took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”

  Kelsey picked up Todd and made it look like he was nodding. “Okay,” she said.

  I shoved my hands into my big purple sweater. “Okay, I’ve been plotting this for long enough. And this is the pathetic yet hopeful part of the story in which our lame-ass hero must prepare to be snubbed, turned down and rejected like no boy has been snubbed, turned down and rejected before. But it will be okay. Because in the end—whether I win back my love or not—I will be harder, better, faster, stronger.” I said the last bit in a geeky Daft Punk voice. Just because. It helped to have a sense of humor about this shit. And, Jesus, I got the feeling I was setting myself up for a lot more tears before it was gonna be over.

  Kelsey held up her fist for a bump. I bumped her and then she reached for the wad of knitting on her bedside crate and held it up. “Harder, better, faster, stronger. And woolier.”

  I laughed. The rainbow scarf she was working on rocked. And her Daft Punk voice was a lot better than mine.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Josh

  THE SKY WAS azure blue for a gazillion miles up, the snow was pure sparkle-fluff and the trails on the Ellery golf course were groomed to their finest inch.

  The smile on my face felt like it was meant to be there. And I couldn’t wait to glide in the place where I’d learned all about what had become the biggest love of my life—Nordic skiing. Laughter sounded from the area by the lodge, echoing across the snowy rise. A group of freshmen and sophomores were treating each other to face-fulls of snow. One of them—a girl in hot-pink snow pants and a matching jacket—flopped down into an untainted bank of fresh stuff and enthusiastically flapped her arms snow-angel style. My smile got wider. I loved snow.

  Letting Frank Kozminski talk me into teaching a course on cross country skiing for beginners was looking like an excellent decision—a great way to shrug off the blues from last quarter.

  Frank and I had gone over details yesterday. I’d taken a couple of Ellery Outdoors courses back in the day but I’d never taught one. He’d said that if the weather stayed fine we’d forego the meeting space inside the club and meet at the outdoor lodge where both skaters and skiers congregated in the winter. The college provided rentals of all kinds of equipment and there was an awesome outdoor patio space with benches, tables, a fireplace and—on some occasions—vendors who sold coffee and hot chocolate and treats.

  I shoved my shades on top of my head, re-shouldered my gear and headed toward the small group. I recognized Frank’s shaggy white hair sticking out from beneath a bright blue Ellery knit hat and counted six students, including the snow angel. The class had a minimum-enrollment requirement of six. I really wanted to do this. It seemed like a blast and a good way to remember why I loved the sport and to keep from being too obsessive about my own damn workouts, so I was hoping to make a good impression today and keep anyone from dropping out.

  My legs felt loose and my Achilles was behaving. The hike over here from the tower had been a good warm-up, but I was going to have to go over some techniques to keep the newbies from being mega sore after their first trek.

  Frank caught sight of me and headed down the path to meet me.

  “Hey there,” I greeted him. “Hope I’m not late.”

  Frank grinned and approached me with an outstretched hand. “There he is! The star of the show. Let me help with that.” He gestured at the ski bag on my shoulder. “You’re not late. I had the kids come a bit early on the first day to get them outfitted with gear.” I slid the pack off my shoulder and he took it from me. “Pretty slick,” he said, looking down at the deluxe bag with a bunch of flashy logos on it.

  “Thanks,” I said, shrugging. “A perk of getting to work out with the guys I used to work out with.”

  He raised his brows. “Used to?”

  “Takes a lot of hours to keep up with those guys. I’ve got a plan to get back in shape after my last injury, but it’s going slow.” My teeth felt cold from smiling and I licked them and rubbed at my chin.

  “I’d love to hear more about that later…maybe over coffee after class?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great.” And it would be a good thing. Frank had been a mentor of sorts when I’d started skiing seriously. He’d been on the Olympic team in the seventies and he’d made a good life for himself as an instructor for some of the local clubs and an administrator for the college. He’d probably have good advice on how to transition from being a fanatic to…what would it be? An extreme hobbyist?

  “Come meet the kids,” he said.

  I followed him over to the small gathering.

  “So,” Frank said to the group, dropping my bag carefully and putting his arm around me. “I’m often telling folks from out of town that Ellery College kids aren’t as spoiled as people think they are. But in this case, I’d be wrong. You all are gonna have the best skier to ever graduate from Ellery as your instructor. So be good and listen hard! And say hi to Joshua Pahlke.”

  Frank winked at me. I tried not to do something stupid like blush or roll my eyes. It was quite the introduction. And totally untrue about being the best skier. God. Was it weird to feel pressure now?


  “Hi, everyone,” I said. “I’m Josh.” Four girls blinked at me, cheeks shiny and rosy from the snow facials they’d been giving each other.

  “Hi, Josh!” they said in unison. They laughed in unison too—the kind of breathy giggles that meant I might have to ward off some serious flirting. Which I was okay with. Over the years I’d had some practice and I could tell from the twinkle in their eyes that they were going to be fun and not a pain. They introduced themselves—all freshmen from the same floor in one of the newer dorms—two Hannahs, an Ashley and a Lexi.

  The fifth one in the group was a short, wide-set guy with some serious gear on. And a serious expression to match it. Even his name was serious. Aldrich. Hmm. Maybe he wouldn’t be as fun.

  And the sixth…I looked over to the patch of snow where the snow angel in hot pink was still lying. The angel’s hat had fallen over her face. It was a funky green slouchy beanie that clashed with her jacket and pants.

  The beanie looked weirdly familiar.

  The angel rose to a sitting position and the hat fell off.

  Holy shit.

  The angel smiled crookedly. “Hey, Josh.” He took off his snow-covered glasses and tried to wipe them on the fuzzy green hat.

  “Nick.”

  I took a big gulping breath. I was actually experiencing the thing where little stars prickled in my peripheral vision. Like I was about to pass out.

  Embarrassing to think of myself as the type to swoon over an ex, but I kinda deserved a break on this one. For one thing I totally wasn’t expecting him. Nick was the guy who’d said the only thing that sucked worse than lots of snow was being forced to hang out and do sports in it.

  For another thing he was wearing pink. A gouge-your-eyes-out shade of pink.

  And lastly—there were more reasons, but these were the ones I was stuck on—his hair. Oh God. His hair was gone. Not totally gone but, Jesus, he’d buzzed it. On the sides. It was longer on the top, I guess. And he’d bleached it. Nick—my Nick—had shaved off his thick, dark, wavy, amazing hair and gone platinum.