Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,75
delighting in the way our fingers look like saplings that have grown entwined around one another. Trees you couldn’t pull apart if you tried.
I don’t want to leave Minnesota, I dreamed of breathing into Clint’s neck.
Then don’t, I dreamed he answered, just before leaning in to kiss me. Don’t.
I’m still imagining what paradise that would be when Brandon reaches down to grab my phone from the front pocket of my green handbag.
“Hey!” he says. “Yeah, it was so cool. Met a couple of guy who played, too—yeah—no, I took Annie with us. So we formed our own band—the Bottom Dwellers. And we had a steady gig at this kind of bar and grill, Pike’s Perch—No, I’m serious. Yeah—”
“Wait,” I mumble as I unfold my legs. My entire body feels stiff and cramped after an entire day on the road. “Who called you on my cell?” I ask.
“Nobody,” Brandon answers with a shrug. “It’s Gabe for you.”
Noises of disgust rattle in my throat as I hit Brandon on the back of the head. “Give me my phone,” I snap.
Offended, Brandon holds the cell just out of my reach. “No.”
“Brandon! It’s my phone!” Our struggle actually rocks the SUV on its axles.
Mom turns around in the front passenger seat, a tired scowl etched into her face. “Listen, you two. What do you think you are, three years old? I know we’ve been in the car a long time, but we’ll be home in an hour and a half. If you don’t start behaving like grown-ups, you can walk the rest of the way.”
“Fine,” Brandon says. “Ask me nice.”
“Give me my phone, you nasty, smelly bottom dweller.”
“That’s more like it.”
I snatch the cell and take a deep breath. I haven’t actually spoken to Gabe since the day I bought all those postcards—the day he asked if something was up. I’m not exactly sure how this conversation will go, and to add insult to injury, it’s going to play itself out with Brandon and my parents listening in. “Hey,” I say quietly.
“Hey, Chelse. Sorry—couldn’t wait for you to call me. I knew today was the big day. Your homecoming.”
Before vacation, this probably would’ve melted my heart. Today, it hurts for a hundred different reasons. Mostly, talking to Gabe makes Clint already seem like a whole world, an entire lifetime away. And only this morning I’d watched him waving sadly from the dock as we shut the door of cabin number four for the last time. Tears start to bubble. What am I going to say?
“Good to hear your voice again,” I offer weakly.
“Thanks for the postcards,” Gabe says. “I loved seeing your handwriting waiting for me when I got home from work. Mostly, though, I was just happy you were thinking of me every day.”
I force myself to swallow a bitter sob as I remember automatically dropping a new, pre-written postcard in the lodge mail slot every morning. “Mom said we’ll be home in about an hour and a half,” I blab, for lack of anything else to say.
“Really? Tell you what—I’ll be getting off work soon, so why don’t I just meet you?”
“Well, I … don’t know for sure … I mean, it could take longer.”
“That’s okay,” Gabe says. He suddenly seems so needy to me—clutchy, almost. But then again, why would it bother me that he wants to see me? This is the longest we’ve ever been apart. If Gabe had left for vacation, wouldn’t I be anxious to see him?
“See you soon,” he says, just before clicking his cell off.
My heart fills with lead.
Two hours later, as the evening haze glistens on Fair Grove’s horizon, we pull into our driveway. Gabe’s sitting on the front porch—though I’d hoped the extra thirty minutes it took us to get here would have discouraged him, would have sent him back to his own house. He waves and hurries across the lawn to the car door.
What are you going to do, Chelsea? I ask myself. He’ll know. He’s got to know …
But Gabe just throws his arms around me like I’ve never gone away on vacation at all. Like we’re just picking up where we’d left off on graduation night, the two of us standing in a field staring at my star while the rest of the senior class woo-hoos at us from the street.
“Man, you got strong,” he says. “I forgot what it was like when we met and you were so full of muscle.”
“I guess I did beef up a little,” I babble.