Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,12

wouldn’t be like me if I didn’t outdo you in the gift department, would it?” he asks, locking the door behind us.

Of course it wouldn’t. The birthday poetry in my dresser memento box, the framed ticket stub from our first movie (given to me last Valentine’s Day), and the anniversary, sepia-toned photo of our two hands intertwined proves that Gabe Ross definitely outshines his girlfriend in the romance department.

“Just wait until your birthday,” I say, wagging a finger at him.

“Think you can take me?” he asks, then snares my gift box from the stool before I can start shredding the white tissue. “Uh-ah,” he says. “Not yet. This takes a certain … unveiling.”

I put on a fake pout as I slip behind the front counter. “Your graduation gift, kind sir,” I say, hoisting the heavy glass lid off Gabe’s cheesecake. “Made by yours truly. I only have to work seventy-three-thousand indentured servant hours to make up for all the cream cheese I blew on my first attempts. No crummy cracked top for you.”

Gabe chuckles as he folds his arms across the counter. Leans in to get a good look at my—okay, slightly slanted—creation. “Forget the fork. I’ll eat it with a spatula.”

He’s still leaning over the counter when he raises his grass-green eyes. The way he looks at me, it’s like his stare has fingers—it pokes its way into my eyes, then my head, and starts rifling around in the contents of my soul. It’s way too intense, but I can’t quit staring at him. I lean to meet him halfway across the counter; his lips barely graze my own. He pulls back slightly, still close enough for his breath to warm my cheek, but his mouth just half an inch out of reach.

“Tease,” I snap.

I start the espresso machine up as he slides onto a stool. Every once in a while, a half-drunken senior’s shout filters into the shop. But this is life, as it’s been for nearly a year—me and Gabe closed in, huddled together, while the rest of the world passes by, their shouts muffled, distant. This is life as it has been ever since I peeled open my post-surgery eyes to see Gabe at my bedside, his face clear while the rest of the room looked blurry. This is life, as it’s been since I’d first returned to school after the accident, the rest of our classmates speeding by us in the hallways while Gabe carried my books and held my hand and murmured as I plodded along, babying my hip, Just take your time.

Now, though, in the relative quiet, all I can think of is that box in my purse, the one with the stupid warrior on the cover. And the blinds on the front window, which could easily twist shut. And knocking the tulips to the floor while Gabe and I stretch out on the counter, and running my fingers through Gabe’s curls and ripping his shirt right in two …

“I’m going to miss you when you’re in Minnesota,” he mumbles, making me jump high enough to practically take flight.

I glance over my shoulder. He’s picked up one of the hundred or so Lake of the Woods brochures Mom pummeled me with last Friday, after I’d taken my very last Fair Grove High final exam. “Up there almost to Canada,” I say, mimicking Mom’s high-pitched, breathless excitement. “An outdoor adventure before you head off to college!”

“You have to promise me you’ll be careful up there,” Gabe says. “I mean, hiking, rafting …” He keeps talking, flipping through the slick pages of the brochure. But all I can think about is the blond hair down his forearms, the tan on the back of his neck, the way it would feel if he pole-vaulted over this stupid counter, grabbed me, and backed me into the kitchen. What it would be like if, blinded by sheer passion, we tumbled in a whirl against the shelves, knocking confectioner’s sugar all over our naked bodies, our mouths leaving sweet, sticky trails behind as we kissed each other’s …

“Chelse.”

This time, when I jump and turn toward Gabe, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest and his green eyes look like combination locks—closed up tight. “No,” is all he says.

“No, what?”

“No, not tonight. Not now. Not in your parents’ place. Not rushed through and not on the night before you leave for your summer vacation. No.”

I frown, shake my head like he hasn’t just gotten all ESP on me, reading