“You were?” I didn’t intend it to sound like a challenge. But the question of what Hartley thought about me was a heavy topic on my mind.
“Of course,” he said, his voice a warm rumble. “I thought you, of all people, probably couldn’t wait to see the ass crack of last year.”
I had to pause and think about that for a moment. The year of my accident was officially over. Celebrating was a perfectly sane idea, and just the sort of thing that one friend would consider for another on New Year’s Eve. “Good point,” I said. “Thanks, Hartley.”
“I just hope the next one treats you better. You deserve it.”
His words just hung there. They were nice words, but somehow they sounded like a dismissal. “Thanks,” my voice was quiet. “I’m sure it will be better. Yours too.”
“You never know,” he said. His voice sounded lost, somehow. “Look at the clock, Callahan. Happy New Year.”
I looked at the time on our cable box just as it rolled over from 11:59 to 12:00. “Happy New Year, Hartley,” I swallowed. And then I couldn’t stop myself from saying the thing that popped into my head next. “Don’t you have someone you need to go and kiss?”
He chuckled. “You Midwesterner, you. My New Year’s was an hour ago.”
Hell and damn. My little time zone blunder made me feel low. Because I was Hartley’s afterthought, the person he called when the real event was over. “I’d better go.”
“Take care of yourself, Callahan. I’ll see you next week.”
Ugh. Even those two minutes on the phone with Hartley worked their way under my skin. Even though I knew it was foolish, I spent the next day analyzing what I should or shouldn’t have said, and what I might have done differently.
Damien flew back to New York, and so I didn’t even have him around to distract me. I needed to stop thinking about Hartley, but my brain would not quit conjuring up his dimpled smile.
In my daydreams, Hartley snuck into my bedroom at night, pulling back the covers and slipping into my bed. There were very few words between us in my fantasies. In fact, there were only two. “I’m sorry,” Hartley whispered. And after that, there was only kissing and the hasty removal of clothing. And then…
Hell and damn.
Everything that happened in my dreams was something he did with Stacia and not with me. And when I tried to make sense of why, my heart broke into ever-smaller pieces.
The math just didn’t add up for me, because she was so awful. Beautiful and awful. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand why he’d want to undress the equivalent of a swimsuit model. But the investment seemed strange. Even during our brief New Year’s call he’d confessed to being at a very boring party with her. Why do that? The only logical conclusion was that the allure of her gorgeous body more than made up for the pain of spending time with her.
I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Hartley was hot. But it wasn’t just his body that I wanted. We had fun together — lots of it. We sparred and we joked. I knew he enjoyed my company. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind.
But obviously it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. And I couldn’t help blaming my disability. A whole Corey Callahan — with two working legs, and none of the baggage that comes with being broken — might have been enough to shift me from the kind of girl that he wanted for a friend, into the sort of girl he wanted in his bed.
But I was stuck this way. He was with her, and I was alone. Very, very alone. I needed to get a life, and I needed to do it fast. All the time I’d spent hanging out with Hartley had been wonderful, but it meant that I didn’t have other friends.
And now that felt like a big error.
When I’d departed for Harkness in September, I’d left the Student Activity Guidebook on my desk. Last summer, I’d only found the listings depressing. Nothing could replace hockey in my life, and I hadn’t imagined that anything else in that book was worth considering.
But now I read it avidly. I needed a new hobby, and a new set of faces in my life. It was the only way to get over Hartley. There would be no more Friday nights spent smiling across the sofa at him. Instead, Stacia would march him around to dances and parties, and he’d let her. Soon enough his leg would be completely healed, and he wouldn’t even have to ask which floor the party was on. He wouldn’t be a gimp anymore, not even a little. Even that little link between us would be severed.
It depressed the living hell out of me.