“Hartley!” I shrieked, shoving his hand away and clamping my arm against my side.
“You think you’re so sneaky.” He reached for my arm again, but it was a fake-out. I had an older brother, and I knew all the tricks. Even as he dove for my waist instead, I wrenched my elbow down, protecting myself. But Hartley only rose up on his good knee and dove for my vulnerable left side. I shrieked again when he pressed my shoulder against the sofa, his free hand finding two tickling places at once.
Above me, his brown eyes laughed. As I looked up into them, I felt a rush of warmth, and then something else too. His expression changed, growing more serious. It looked almost hungry.
A giggle died on my lips as our eyes locked.
“What is going on out here?” Dana came out of her room, fastening an earring.
Releasing me, Hartley tossed himself back onto his own side of the sofa and picked up his game controller.
And the moment was broken. Or maybe there was no moment, and I imagined the whole thing. As Dana smiled at us, I looked over at Hartley, but he looked the same as always. “Somebody got shelled,” I answered Dana to cover my own confusion, “and lost his cool.”
“Somebody needs to be taught a lesson,” Hartley argued, restarting the game.
“Bring it,” I said.
Dana put on a jacket. “Should I have called in a babysitter for you two? No fighting, okay?”
But we didn’t even answer her, because the game was back on. Hartley won the face-off this time, and I couldn’t get possession. But with a stroke of luck, my goalie evaded him, falling on the puck.
“Whew,” I said. “That was close.” I looked around for Dana, but she had already gone. “So, we’re still at one-zip, Pittsburgh’s lead.”
“Now you’re bragging?” Hartley asked. “I’m going to wipe that smile off your face.”
My fluttery little hope fairy put a word in then. I can think of a few ways to do that, she simpered.
RealStix Video Hockey became our thing together. The Bruins vs. Puffins rivalry grew into my favorite obsession. Sometimes we’d play a quick game before dinner on a weeknight. Dana would just shake her head and call us junkies. These games were fun, but we were often interrupted by phone calls for Hartley. He’d pause the game and answer, because at that hour of the day Stacia was just retiring to bed. “Sorry,” he said the first time it happened. “But I can’t call her back later. It’s eleven o’clock over there.”
“No problem.” Only, it was a problem. Because the phone calls were excruciating.
“Rome for the weekend? That sounds like fun,” Hartley would say. The indulgent tone he took with her sounded wrong on him. “I bet you’ll give your credit cards a workout. You’d better buy some extra luggage while you’re at it. You’ll never get all your designer booty home.”
I sat through these conversations with gritted teeth. Not only did they interrupt my new favorite hobby, but they drove my mind into alleyways where I didn’t wish to go. “Hi, hottie,” Hartley often answered his phone. Or, “hi baby.” It was hard to say which term of endearment bothered me more. Because nobody had ever called me by either one.
The truth was that my blazing attraction to Hartley made me start to measure out the distance between girls like Stacia and me. Before my accident, I’d always assumed that a passionate romance would eventually come my way. But listening to Hartley butter up his gorgeous girlfriend niggled at me. Was there a guy out there for me, who would refer to his wheelchair-bound girlfriend as a hottie?
I really didn’t think there was.
Part of the bargain I’d made with my parents was that I would continue physical therapy at Harkness. My new therapist was a sporty-looking woman in a Patriots cap. “Call me Pat,” she said, shaking my hand. “I spent the weekend with your file.”
“Sorry,” I said. “That sounds like a dull read.”
“Not at all,” she smiled. I noticed she had freckles everywhere. “Your trainers seem to have found you refreshing.”
I laughed. “If ‘refreshing’ is a euphemism for ‘bitchy,’ then maybe I’d buy it.”
She shook her head. “You’ve had a very challenging year, Corey. Everyone understands that. So let’s get started.”
First, Pat stretched me. That’s how therapy always began — with the unsettling sensation of someone moving my body around as if I was a rag doll. Pat worked my legs around the hip joints, followed by knees and ankles. Before asking me to sit up, she hesitated. “Can I take a peek at your skin? Nobody will see.”
I looked around. The therapy room door was shut, and there were no faces outside its window. “Just quickly,” I said.
Pat lifted the back of my yoga pants and took a peek down the back of my underwear. The concern was that I would get pressure sores from sitting in my chair all day. “No problems there.”
“I’m not high risk,” I said. “My parents asked you to check, didn’t they?”
She smiled. “You can’t blame them for caring.”