Playing Hurt

Chelsea

restrictions





What they say about absence isn’t true, Gabe writes. It doesn’t make the heart fonder—it makes the heart want to break, it hurts so much. Just like a compass, my heart keeps pointing me straight to you. If I didn’t have this stupid job, I’d be on my way to Minnesota …

I sigh as I balance the netbook on my knees, wiggling my toes on the front step of cabin number four. My cell phone reception might be iffy all the way out here, but Mom had to get the bright idea of bringing her netbook so she could check the incoming emails and orders at White Sugar. (It’s driving her crazy to be away from work this long … in addition to tweaking the annual cookbook, she’s already brainstorming ideas for an August wedding cake whose order came in yesterday.) And the stupid Wi-Fi connection in our cabin’s pretty rock solid. Which allows me no breather from Gabe.

Not that you need one, I remind myself. You love him as much as he loves you.

Right. Exactly.

I miss you, too, I reply, in what has become my daily exchange of emails to the guy who, according to his latest message, writes me at one in the morning when he can’t sleep for thinking of me. I wish I could come up with something beautiful to tell him. Something that would make his heart turn as sticky as a half-melted lollipop.

My mind drifts forward, wildly, like a raft on the rapids near the resort, as I imagine how it will feel to finally not just touch Gabe’s hand or his mouth, but experience the entirety of his naked body against my skin. I imagine the moonlight seeping in through a window of the Carlyle, playing off the golden curls on his chest. Imagine wrapping my entire body around his …

But I can’t write this down, can’t even begin to bring myself to type such a thing. So all I manage to come up with is, Carlyle: 15 days and counting …

After pressing send, I absentmindedly pick up a pair of binoculars Dad’s left on the front porch and hold them to my eyes.

The lenses fill with a head of black hair as Clint steps out of the lodge. I feel a gasp kick the inside of my throat as I’m forced to admit to myself, yet again, just how much I hate the idea of losing a day with Clint. He’s taking a group out kayaking today, and stupid me, I had to go and tell him that snotty stuff about thinking kayaking’s as dumb as an eight-track tape. Now I’ll lose the entire day. And the last two haven’t exactly been so great. Ever since that weird hike, when he yanked me away from an orchid and practically tossed me into his truck, things have been—uugh. Professional, of all things.

But kind of detached, too. He’s acting like the guy behind the counter in a fast-food joint who doesn’t really give a crap if I supersize or not. So when I said no to golf or waterskiing (I mean, really—waterskiing? ), he just sighed and shrugged. Hadn’t pushed back. Hadn’t tried to convince me I could do more, like he had when we were at Pike’s. We just hiked again; we went bird-watching.

One full week of my vacation is now gone. Another pyramid of sand is building at the bottom of another hourglass.

Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe I am wasting this vacation. (Bird-watching? Not exactly the outdoor adventure he and Mom had probably envisioned. But I have reasons. Stacks and piles of them. Right?)

I get tingly when I realize that Clint’s walking toward me. Because I start to think, maybe he hasn’t decided I’m the world’s biggest bore. Maybe he’ll ditch the kayakers so we can spend the day together. The idea makes my lungs burn with excitement.

Brandon comes banging out of the cabin behind me with his guitar case. I jump, lose the head of black hair in the distance.

“Don’t those guys have jobs?” I ask. Brandon’s been completely monopolizing Greg and Todd’s time, practicing with them incessantly. I jerk out of the way as he flops his uncoordinated, skinny body across the porch and down the front steps, banging the case against the railing and nearly knocking me in the head with it, too.

“We jam between their fishing runs,” Brandon says, so excited he’s actually out of breath. “And besides, Greg’s got a gig for us later on today. A real gig!”

“Where?” I ask through a frown. “Are you going back to Pike’s?” I shout after him, hoping he won’t be around to ruin things if Clint and I decide to grab a bite later.

What is wrong with you, Chelsea? Forget about that email you just sent … to your boyfriend? Hmm?

“Brand!” I shout again. But he’s too busy shuffling off, his case flopping against his calves, to answer.

“And what about you?” I call after Mom’s skinny back as she scurries along behind him.

“The oven in the cabin’s no good for baking,” she replies, tossing her words over her shoulder with a careless wave. “Chef Charlie’s going to let me use the kitchen in the lodge, in exchange for teaching him how to make a decent pie crust.”

“Don’t you think a chef already knows—” I start.

“He’s a chef, but definitely not a baker. Don’t you have something planned with Clint?”

I certainly hope so …

I glance down at the computer screen, realizing I’ve missed the P.S. in Gabe’s last email: Anytime you feel we’ve been apart too long, he’s written, just look for the Chelsea Keyes Star. I’ll be looking at it, too.

I’m not exactly in the mood for a guilt-fest. So I sign out of my email account and raise the binoculars again, easily zeroing back in on the head of black hair and the muscular jaw that clenched throughout our ride back to the cabin after the orchid hunt. Clint’s shoulders sway with each step he takes up the brown trail that leads straight to cabin number four. I aim the binoculars just low enough to get an up-close view of his slim sides, remembering how his skin warmed my hands through his T-shirt when I touched him on the patio behind Pike’s, challenging him to a dance.

There’s just something about him. It’s like he’s hotter than a steering wheel in August—he burns me every single time I get close enough to touch him. But the thing about a steering wheel in the summer is, even though it stings, you still have to touch it in order to get where you want to go. And besides, sometimes that burn feels kind of good against your hand, anyway.

I shiver. Where did all that just come from?

I put the binoculars and the netbook aside, try to act like my heart isn’t attacking my ribs.

“Just saw your dad up at the lodge,” Clint says, his faded hiking boots pausing at the edge of the bottom step. “I think I convinced him to try out the golf course at Oak Harbor. Seemed pretty excited about it.”

As soon as he mentions my dad, I can’t help picturing the way it might have been if we’d vacationed here last summer. I imagine Dad sitting next to me on the cabin’s front step; I picture him jabbering with Clint and me like he’s forgotten he isn’t actually eighteen anymore, dropping in the occasional awesome that must have been every other word out of his mouth in high school, judging by the way he’d lean on it. But I haven’t heard him say that word once since my accident. He hasn’t felt much about our situation has been awesome, I guess.

I feel myself tense up, my entire body turning so stiff I could practically pass for a brick wall.

“It’s tougher sometimes on other people,” Clint says, slicing into the sudden silence. “It’s—got to be hard on your dad—the whole basketball thing.”

I frown, not exactly in the mood for this conversation, either.

But Clint holds up a hand, stops me from telling him how wrong he is. “At Pike’s, when you said I was an athlete, you were right,” he admits. “I was—played hockey. When I had to quit, it hurt—my folks—as much as me, even.”

“Yeah, but I’ve seen you and your folks,” I mutter. “They—talk to you, at least. Not like him.”

“We were always pretty close, I guess,” he admits. “Only child and all.”

“What happened?” I ask, my stomach plummeting, like an elevator with a broken cable. Do we actually have this in common? “Did you get hurt?”

“You could say that.”

“During a game?”

“No, I didn’t … have to give hockey up. Not physically, like you did. But I couldn’t compete at the same level anymore. I tried, but my mind wasn’t in it. I wasn’t focused. They were beating me up out on the ice. Or avoiding me, which was maybe even worse. Like I wasn’t even playing. Like I wasn’t really part of the team. They ignored me. So I decided—no more team sports for me. Not just hockey, either. I still exercise plenty, but the only battle I get into anymore is between me and the occasional walleye.”

“Better to let them remember you when you were great.”

He shrugs and nods. “Yeah. Something like that.”

I try to picture what it would have been like if I’d broken my hip, but not as badly; if I’d been allowed to get back on the court, only to discover I was half the athlete I’d been before. I imagine college scouts trickling out of the gym before halftime. Rushing to the mailbox only to find the phone bill, checking my email only to find a message from Gabe. No news of athletic scholarships. No letters of intent. A heart that didn’t just break once, but had tiny pieces broken off with disappointment’s hammer hundreds of times, every single day.

“It’s a lady slipper,” Clint says, pointing to the picture of the orchid I loaded onto Mom’s netbook. “You got a terrific shot.” When he looks back at me, his eyes travel around my face the way fingers dart through the bottom of a drawer, searching for batteries in a blackout. I start to feel my excitement bubble over … this isn’t the passive way a guy looks at a girl he’s completely uninterested in. But Clint just shakes his head, clears his throat, points again at the computer screen.

“State flower of Minnesota,” he finally says, still just talking about the lady slipper, still not offering even a hint of an explanation for the way he’d flared up with—what had it been? Fear? Anger?—during our orchid hike the other day. And here I am just sitting on the step, not sure how to even broach the subject even though I’m dying to. “If you ever find another one, don’t pick it,” he says. “Protected by law.” As though this somehow explains why he was so rough about hauling me from the ravine. And we both know no one could ever care that much about a flower.

“Are we talking, Do not remove the tag on this mattress under penalty of law or Do not drink and drive under penalty of law?” I ask. I’m trying to tease, but the way Clint’s face clenches, I know this has hit him in the way the Chelsea Keyes Star hit me.

“Even if there wasn’t a law,” he says, “you shouldn’t pick them. They’re pretty rare. Takes them sixteen years to bloom.”

“Years? A late bloomer,” I moan, glancing at the screen saver. “How ironic.”

Instead of an orchid, I see bilious, neon-orange letters pulsing at the top of the picture: VIRGIN. VIRGIN. VIRGIN.

I imagine myself stepping onto the screen, throwing an enormous rock at the glowing letters.

“Where’d you go?” Clint asks. He tucks a piece of flyaway hair behind my ear.

I don’t stop him, or flinch, or pull away. I just stare up into his eyes, at the irises that are every bit as dark as his pupils, their depths swirling about me like an eddy. I’m afraid to speak, afraid I might scream out the words lying in wait beneath the touch of his fingers: I want more.

Gabe Gabe Gabe Gabe …

“Listen,” he says finally. “Since I know you don’t particularly like the idea of kayaking, I wanted to ask if you’d like to make up for a day off by going to a birthday party tonight.”

“Yes,” I say. His invitation reduces me to a giggly, romance-novel-reading pile of girly mush.