Bittersweet

by Sarah Ockler

  “I can’t do this,” he says. “This isn’t … where are you right now?”

  He asks me, but I can’t give him an answer—not the real one. The one that admits I’m back on the ice at Fillmore, watching Josh perfect those backward crossovers. Back in my kitchen on New Year’s, listening to the Addicts with him on the phone. Back at the game tonight, wrapped in that immense and secret hug while Will wasn’t looking.

  The spark returns, rushing through my veins, electrifying my entire body. Half-naked in the back of a car perched on the edge of Niagara Falls, I remember Kara’s warnings again, how they’d secretly filled my insides with prickles of fear and loss.

  But tonight, somewhere beneath this bone-white city of glass, my panic over the thought of Will ending things eroded, replaced by something much more lasting and intense:

  Disappointment that he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should get back. I have to get up early tomorrow and … anyway.” I turn away so I don’t have to see his face. His touch is light, first on my bare shoulder and then my cheek, but still I don’t move. He passes me my shirt and jacket. The back door opens, the dome light blinks on, and the roar of the Falls fills my ears, drowning the guilt, muting the confusion. The door clicks closed. He leans against the car while I dress, his back to me in the window.

  “Are you mad?” Outside, I tug on his jacket, desperate for him to tell me no. Or yes. I don’t know. Maybe that would make things easier. If he’s mad at me, if he tries to make me feel guilty or calls me a tease, then I could have something to hate about him. Something to cling to, some reason to tell myself I shouldn’t be messing around with a guy like Will. A guy who—no matter how technically perfect his kisses are—can’t chase the cold from the inside.

  “No.” He smiles without showing his teeth and kisses me on the cheek, just below my eye. “I’ll take you back. Come on.”

  Riding along the desolate I-190, I look at Will’s profile in the dark, the lines of his face lit only by the moon on the bright snow, the headlights passing by and vanishing in the northbound lane. My eyes are all over Will, his perfectly angled face, his wavy hair, his hands on the wheel, but I can’t stop thinking about Josh. Wishing he was here. Wishing this was us. Wishing I could kiss him under the moonlight as the water rushed past like the hooves of a thousand horses.

  “You know you have to tell him,” Will says, as if he can read my mind. He looks at me straight on, eyes so dark and sad that I can’t find the courage to argue. “Otherwise, what’s the point of anything, right?”

  I look away, vision blurring as the snow falls in white needles against the windshield and the long list of tonight’s revelations finally hits me.

  My gig training the Wolves is over.

  My best friend has a new crush and a new crew.

  And for all the time I’ve spent making out with hockey captain number seventy-seven Will Harper, I still couldn’t outrun the truth.

  I’m totally falling for Josh Blackthorn.

  And I have no idea what to do about it.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Perfect Storms

  Eggless white vanilla cupcakes topped with a thin layer of mashed blueberries and white meringue frosting; dusted with powdered sugar and served chilled

  Fillmore is empty and unblemished, the sky darkening to a dusty gray as I lean against the signpost and lace up my skates. They’re calling for a storm, and other than the seasonally confused seagulls, I’m the only one stupid enough to hang out on the lake. Especially since the only other person who knows about this place is the one I’ve been dodging for two weeks.

  In the wake of my championship make-out fail and subsequent realization at Niagara Falls, I’ve been too mortified to face Will or Josh. The morning after, Will sent out a group text announcing my retirement from special techniques coaching, and that was it. My time with the Watonka Wolves was over. Done. Since then, I’ve spent every lunch period alone with a PB and J and a cupcake magazine in the library. Beelined for the nearest bathroom whenever I caught either captain at my locker or truck. Ignored calls and texts and hockey party invites. Dove into the Hurley’s kitchen when Josh and Frankie showed up at the front counter, wolfing down hot chocolate and cupcakes with Dani while I hid behind the safety of my mixer.

  I still go to the games, but only as a spectator, sitting in the stands with the parents and siblings while Dani cheers with her new friends across the rink and rushes into Frankie’s waiting embrace after every win. I’ve tried to talk to her at the concessions stand, but always after the first greeting and awkward smile, the silence seeps in and pushes us apart again. Even at work we hardly speak—just enough to do our jobs and keep Trick, Mom, and the waitresses in the dark.

  Here at Fillmore, the wind whips against my fleece, and I lean back and shake out my arms and legs. Across the white expanse of the lake, the cold rushes me and that dead, desperate emptiness blows straight through my bones.

  I know what it’s like to miss someone. Despite how mad he makes me, I still miss my father. I miss the way things used to be in our family. Sometimes I even miss Kara, the way we’d calm each other before an event, laugh about it at the diner after, blowing endless bubbles into our loganberries. But I’ve never before missed someone that I’m physically with almost every day. Dani and I work side by side, sometimes for hours on end. We sit next to each other in French. We cross paths in the halls and at the hockey games. We’re not outwardly fighting anymore—things are quiet. Civil. Friendly enough, but not friends. Every day, she looks through me and I look through her and even though it’s like I’m watching her disappear right before my eyes, I can’t seem to make it right between us.

  After three inseparable years, my best friend and I don’t know each other anymore.

  I don’t know if things are serious between her and Frankie—they’re always together in the halls and after the games, but she doesn’t call me out for a smoke break to dish the romantic details. She has no idea that whenever I see Josh, my heart beats triple time, and that I’m still too scared to tell him.

  I’m clueless about Dani’s big photo project, and I never saw the pictures from her dad’s New Year’s Eve show. I didn’t get to confess my cupcake fakery, how guilty I felt when Trina raved about her Bubble-Gum Blings the following Monday in French class. She hasn’t seen my father’s last three blog posts from Utah, the ones I couldn’t bring myself to unsubscribe from. She didn’t get the in-person demo of RustBob SpareParts, the robot that Bug finally put together from all that old computer stuff.

  And Dani doesn’t know about the thing that’s tearing a hole in my heart, shredding my dreams. I try to ignore it, to let it pass, but it always comes back, standing on my chest, breathing against my throat.

  Doubt.

  Despite all my so-called natural talent, the unimaginable potential, my months of retraining, and an intense wanting like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life, some part of me believes that I’m really not good enough. That in seven days I’ll pour my soul out on the ice for those foundation judges, and sit in the kiss-and-cry room as I wait for the scores that will change my life….

  And the numbers won’t even come close.

  The wind shifts over the lake, pelting my eyes with frigid wetness. Storm’s coming. Fifteen minutes, tops.

  Just as I’ve done a hundred times this winter, I recheck my laces and slide out to the center of the runoff, but suddenly, it doesn’t seem far enough, daring enough, challenging enough to prove I have what it takes. The wind howls in my ears and I swear I can hear old Lola again, pushing me, reminding me how hard it is to stand out, to truly compete.

  Ignoring the warning in my head, I rush forward, faster, racing to the edge where the shallow meets the lake. The cold seeps through my clothes and I glide out farther, slipping over the border from safe to unknown. Across the lake, Canada vanishes beneath a white curtain. The forbidden thrill of imminent danger rises hot from my toes to the top of my head, propel
ling me farther still. I close my eyes and throw my head back, big impossible flakes landing on my face and blotting out the sound, and for a moment, everything is still. I’m trapped in a giant snow globe, bound to the surface of the ice, nothing left to do but wait for someone to upturn and shake the world, set me back on my feet, and watch the sky fall.

  Maybe I’ve always been waiting for that.

  “Hudson!” My name floats on the wind, but it’s far away, or maybe just an echo in my head from a time when things were better, and I ignore it, skating closer to the white wall of the storm against every ounce of logic in my mind. Hudson Avery, do you have what it takes? …

  “Hey—back! You’re—far and—I can’t—the ice …” The words are distant and broken; bright red berries dropped in the snow and carried off by the winter gulls. I barely comprehend that it’s not a memory, that someone is speaking to me. I close my eyes. My body wants to keep going, the ghosts of Fillmore beckoning me into the abyss like some evil thing.

  “Hudson!” It comes once more, then again, loud and distinct. “Hudson Avery! Come back here!”

  Josh.

  The words reach me deep inside, shake me out of my fog. I open my eyes and turn toward the sound of his voice, so suddenly grateful he’s here. Whatever we are now, whatever we aren’t, God I missed the sound of his laugh, the swish of our skates as we carved up the ice together.

  This is it. Now or never. I have to tell him. I have to skate right up to him, look into his eyes, and confess. I listen to your music every night. I close my eyes and replay that postgame hug like a movie and feel it even now, weeks later, my insides still buzzing with the memory. I smile when I picture you doing those crossovers, eating my cupcakes, making my brother laugh. I don’t care that you’re unreadable and I don’t care what anyone says about me and Will and you and Abby, because I can’t stop thinking about you….

  I take a deep breath and set my toe pick against the ice, ready to rush back to shore, back to safety and Josh and whatever comes next. But in that simple movement, the minuscule transfer of pressure from one foot to another, the whole world changes.

  I feel it before I hear it, ice moaning softly under my feet. Then there’s a crack, a quick snap like the breaking of a brittle bone.

  My stomach bottoms out and Josh shouts across the distance, his voice cutting through the pulse of blood, the whoosh of my life passing before me. The ice creaks again and I can’t move. Legs immobilized, breath a series of small white bursts as Josh skids to a stop on the lake, just out of reach.

  “Hudson, listen to me.” He’s close now, voice gentle. Soothing. The promise of a warm bath and a crackling fire. “You’re fine,” he says. “You have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I can’t come any closer. You have to come to me. As carefully as possible, lie flat on your stomach.” Josh gets to his knees and motions for me to lie down. “Do it now.”

  I hold my breath, certain that taking in any more air will upset the balance, that the weight of one more snowflake will send me plummeting. I kneel slowly. The lake moans and I stop, hands flat in front of me as the water rushes beneath, humming through solid ice.

  “Stretch out a little more. You have to get on your stomach.”

  “I can’t.” I mouth the words. Anything louder will shatter the ice.

  “Yes, you can. You’re okay. Keep your eyes on mine. Look at me. Look—Hudson—no, right here. I’m getting you out of this, okay? I promise.”

  “But my arms are sh-shaking. I c-c-can’t—”

  “Do it, Hudson! Stop screwing around! Just shut up and do exactly what I say!”

  The panic in his voice sets me on high alert. I take a deep breath, hold it, and press myself flat against the ice.

  “Use your arms and legs to inch forward. Go slow. Keep your eyes here.” He points to his eyes and I follow his instructions, moving a millimeter at a time, gaze locked on his for all eternity.

  “Reach, Hudson. Just a little more. Come on!”

  My resolve fades and I shiver again, inside and out. Cold and fear suffocate me from all sides. The ice cracks against my ribs like fingers reaching up through the cold and I start to cry and I wonder if the deep blue-gray eyes of Watonka Wolves varsity co-captain number fifty-six Josh Blackthorn will be the very last thing I see before …

  “Gotcha!” Josh wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls, dragging me as he inches backward. His grip is tight, energy seeping into my limbs. I rise to a crawl, slow at first, faster as we shuffle on hands and knees toward the safety of the runoff. When we reach the edge where the ice ends and the ground begins, Josh stands and tugs me so hard that he slips backward into the snow. I collapse on top of him. I know I should get up but my arms and legs won’t cooperate and all I can feel is his heart banging against mine like the first time we met, tumbling together on the ice. I’m still crying and he’s shaking beneath me as the wind rushes us, full force.

  “I just … I thought you …” He’s breathing hard and jagged, holding me firm against his chest. “Jesus, Hudson. What were you … why did … God.” He takes my face into his gloved hands and I close my eyes, cutting off the tears.

  The wind roars across the ice and chokes me with another gale, wet and sharp on my skin. Josh grabs my hands and pulls us up and together we fight our way through the swirling white gusts, collecting my backpack and boots, clomping through deep, heavy snow to the rusted outer building of the mill. We don’t stop until we’re inside, shielded from the bitter bite of the wind, thrown suddenly into blackness.

  “We have to wait it out,” Josh says, trying to catch his breath. He pulls off his hat and rubs the snow from his hair and we both look around, eyes adjusting to the dark.

  The ground floor is mostly empty. Steel bones jut out from walls lined with white veins, ever-widening cracks where the outside light leaks in. When the wind blows, puffs of snow slip through the gaps, piling up on the floor like loose powder.

  I sit on an old wooden crate and change out of my skates, grateful for my boots and an extra pair of wool socks stuffed in the bottom of my bag.

  The mill feels hollow and haunted, black inside, the faint clangs of old metal ringing like a ghost ship adrift at sea. The sadness of the place snatches at my soul and I shiver.

  Ten minutes ago, Josh saved my life.

  “Why did you come?” I ask. “I haven’t seen you out here lately, and things have been … we haven’t talked in a while.”

  Josh pulls off his gloves and blows hot breath into his hands. “Not since you stopped working with the team. Will isn’t saying anything about it, so I decided to stalk you today until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “So you are a stalker. I knew it.” I smile. I missed this—our easy and familiar banter, still there beneath the sparks.

  “I stopped by the restaurant but the pink-haired waitress—Nat, I think?—she told me you’d left already.”

  “Yeah, I asked her to cover my shift.”

  “I figured I’d find you here,” Josh says. “Only you’d be crazy enough to skate Fillmore today. Not that I expected to find you on the actual lake, but—hey, what’s wrong?” His eyes are soft and warm, two bright lights in all the darkness. My heart fills with a mixture of happiness and dread, the craziness of the last few weeks finally catching up. I open my mouth to speak, but my throat tightens, tears spilling from my eyes as I think about falling through the ice again. He wraps himself around me and presses my head to his chest.

  “You see the videos,” I say absently, “but you never think it’ll happen to you. If you weren’t out there today …”

  He kisses me on the forehead, caressing my cheeks with his thumbs. “But I was. And you’re lucky I’ve seen a lot of those survival shows.”

  “With the guy who eats bugs?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’re such a boy. No wonder my brother likes you.”

  “Your brother likes me? Score!”


  “Score if you like robots, army men, and hamsters.”

  Josh laughs. “Who doesn’t?”

  Grateful for the levity, I pull away from him and heft my backpack over my shoulder. “Just so you know, I have a granola bar, half a thermos of hot—well, cold by now—chocolate, and some slightly mashed cupcakes. I’m not eating any bugs.”

  “Good to know. Watch where you step.” Josh reaches for my hand, gingerly leading me across the building to another large room, where a bunch of desks and file cabinets line the perimeter, covered in junk and cobwebs. On one end, a rusty sign hangs over a doorway, crooked on a single hinge: DANGER—HOT ACIDS!

  “This place is so strange.” I swipe a finger over an old desk, leaving a clean line in the dust. “It’s like they all just got up and left. Nobody packed or took stuff away or knocked it down. It’s just …”

  “Abandoned.”

  The wind slams into the wall outside, and the entire building moans and shudders against the onslaught. I shiver and retie my scarf, memories slipping through my head like snow through the cracks in the walls. The horrible, slushy sound of the lake beneath the ice. The frozen expanse cracking against my ribs. Everything changing in an instant. How could I be so reckless? Ten more seconds and—

  “Hudson?”

  “Sorry.” I shove my hands in my fleece pockets, momentarily comforted by the familiar crinkle of Lola’s foundation letter. “I was just … do you think this place is haunted?”

  “Nah, it’s not like everyone died here. They probably thought it would reopen and they’d get their jobs back. There’s tons of places like this in Ohio, too. Welcome to the Rust Belt.” Josh picks up a weathered jar of something that looks like bright pink cat litter, but is probably one of the aforementioned HOT ACIDS.

  “Careful with that,” I say. “There’s a reason all the fish around here have two heads and no eyes.”