Holly remembered a movie that she and her grandma used to watch back in the day—The Journey of Natty Gann. There was this scene where the main character had to yell at her wolf friend to send him away, because she couldn’t travel with him anymore. The same kind of thing also happened in Harry and the Hendersons. Oh, and a few other movies she could think of. It was apparently a fairly well-worn trope.
And it was what Holly was doing to Danny right now. For her own self-preservation, she was sending him away.
“I know your type.” She stood, and he had to hop away from the video game to let her out. “You’re popular, but insecure. People like you can’t stand it if someone doesn’t adore you.”
He blinked, like no one had ever dropped a truth bomb like that on him before. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Holly shrugged. “Maybe not.”
She was nearly back to the pizza parlor when he shouted after her. “Well, you’re mean and angry and you never even gave me a chance. From day one, you looked at me like you hated me.”
Holly turned around and held her hands up. This had to be done. “Well, congratulations to both of us then. We don’t like each other. Let’s stop pretending we have anything left to discuss.”
Chapter Ten
DANNY: Okay, so, I think your cousin hates me.
ELDA: I guarantee she doesn’t hate you.
DANNY: Holly said, and I quote, “I don’t like you.”
ELDA: Trust me. She doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t “not like” you. I know for a fact that she thinks you’re nice.
DANNY: Too nice. She thinks I’m a puppy dog.
ELDA: I think she has a hard time talking to guys like you.
DANNY: Guys on crutches?
ELDA: No.
DANNY: Guys who used to play basketball?
ELDA: Don’t make me say it.
DANNY: Well, now you have to say it.
ELDA: Guys with your…considerable good looks and charming personality.
ELDA: And now I’m blushing.
DANNY: So am I. Isn’t it great?
Chapter Eleven
Thursday, December 21
“I went to a bunch of your games last year,” Dr. Jackson said as he paid for his coffee. “You have so much talent.”
Danny opened the register and took his time gathering his doctor’s change. Dr. Jackson was wearing a wool stocking cap that looked like a Santa hat, something that definitely would’ve been out of place anywhere else in the world. And this was the man charged with making sure Danny’s leg healed okay. At least it was December. If it had been any other time of year, Danny might have found himself in the market for a new orthopedic surgeon.
“How’s the leg doing, by the way?” Dr. Jackson asked. “It was such a strange injury. We don’t normally see tibia breaks on the basketball court. You’re a special guy, Dan.”
Yay. Just another way Danny was “exceptional,” though he would’ve preferred to be totally average in this situation, spraining an ankle or something instead of a compound shin fracture. Of course, he had to go and shatter his leg in spectacular fashion. He couldn’t do anything half-assed, not even injure himself. He wondered what Holly would have to say about it. She’d probably think Danny was just trying to get attention by breaking his leg. Danny handed his customer sixty-seven cents, which the doctor promptly added to the reindeer-patterned bowl they used as a tip jar. “My leg’s fine,” he said.
“It’s gonna heal well, Danny. You’re a strong young man, and athletes do come back from these injuries. I have every reason to believe you’re going to be back on the court in no time.”
The last time Danny had seen the doctor, for a post-surgery checkup, he’d given Danny a timeframe of four to six months. That was no one’s definition of “no time.” Besides, it didn’t change the fact that Danny was missing his entire senior season, or that the recruiters who’d only discovered the North Pole Reindeer because of Danny were now there to watch Kevin instead. It wasn’t fair.
But at least Danny was starting to think about his future in terms other than basketball, thanks to Elda.
He handed Dr. Jackson his to-go cup and waited until he’d heard the tinkle of the bell over the door, signaling that Santabucks was finally empty, then he pulled out a notebook.
Danny was working the early morning “rush hour” today, but it was pretty slow. Christmas was only a few days away, and the people who were normally up and caffeinating themselves before work were in no hurry. At first Danny had been grateful for the slow pace—he’d planned on working out a timetable for completing his showstopper over the final days of the competition—but he was finding it hard to concentrate. His mind kept wandering back to Holly and what she’d said and whether or not she was right. The uncomfortable truth was that he still found her incredibly attractive, even though she saw him as a dumb jock who needed everyone to like him.
Well, someone did like him. Elda. And they were going on their first date tomorrow. She’d even sent him a pink heart emoji about it last night.
He got into a bit of a groove, not on his showstopper to-do list, but on a list of ways he could stop being so pathetic in front of Holly. He’d just written “Stop whining to her about how she doesn’t like you,” when the bell above the Santabucks door jingled, and in came Elda all by herself. Danny immediately shoved his notebook under the register and scanned the counter in front of him for something to do. Straighten napkins. That was a thing.
This was the first time the two of them had been alone together, at least since the time he asked her out. He’d been preparing himself mentally for their date tomorrow, but he had not expected to see her out in the wild this morning. This was risky and terrifying.
She gnawed on one of her long, pointy nails as she stepped up to the counter. “Hi.” She kept trying to peer through the door to the back room as if looking for something, or maybe someone, like Jamison or Brian—some buffer to guide their conversation. Danny may have been wishing for another customer to walk through the front door himself.
“We missed you at the gingerbread contest yesterday.” His voice cracked a tiny bit. Pathetic.
“Oh my God. My dad and uncle tried to change out the basement toilet by themselves, and they forgot to shut the water off, so there was this huge mess.” She clamped her mouth shut for a second, then said, “It was…um…yeah.”
Back at the beginning of the year, his friends Oliver and Elena had been in kind of a similar situation to what he and Elda were going through. They’d started accidentally chatting online with each other while playing this augmented reality game, but they didn’t know who it was they were texting. The two of them absolutely hated each other in person. It was kind of how things were with Danny and Elda right now, minus the passionate loathing. Texting Elda was the highlight of his day. She made him think about things in a way he hadn’t in a long time. For too long, he’d shut off the more intellectual side of himself, at least from the public. On the phone with Elda, he could talk about geeky things, like how he thought Corinthian columns were due for a comeback, and it was an asset, not a liability. But, in person, somehow their conversations always came back to plumbing.
“So,” he said. “Did you fix it?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”