Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,77

living timidly—so I force myself to keep forging ahead, like a moron.

“It’s—taken me a long time,” I stammer. “To even think about dating. And now I’m finally asking if you—you want to have dinner?”

“As in—dinner,” she repeats.

“I’m really bad at this,” I say. “Can I just take you someplace nice? This Friday? To make up for all the time it took me to get here?”

She sighs, her shoulders falling. But her scowl is gone, and a smile slowly starts to spread.

Chelsea

switch

Found my camera!” Brandon calls as Gabe and I step inside with two enormous, piled-high pizzas.

“Nothing formal,” Mom adds from the living room. “We’re eating in the comfortable chairs tonight.”

Gabe opens the two pizza boxes on the coffee table and we all help ourselves, each of us insisting that Hank at Hill Toppers’ is in fine form tonight. Everyone but Brandon, who’s thrusting his digital camera in Gabe’s face.

As he starts to yammer on about the Dwellers, I stare at the browned cheese on my slice and remember graduation night all over again. I think about the me who stood on the sidewalk outside of the pizzeria, bidding her former teammates an awkward goodbye. About how she had no idea what she would discover in Minnesota. My ears fill, for a moment, with the pulse of a waterfall.

“Here’s Pike’s,” Brandon says, pointing at the back of the camera. He tosses his hair away from the rim of his glasses. I notice he’s stopped trying to gel the hair into place, letting it go all wavy around his ears; apparently Kenzie really did tell him she liked his crazy hair. I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes at him.

“So we were kind of a cross between Kings of Leon and Fall Out Boy, but we had our feet firmly planted in the roots, you know?” Brandon brags as Gabe keeps pushing the button on the back of the camera to view the photos. Brandon’s talking like he’s being interviewed by Rolling Stone. “Sex Pistols and the Stones, and I can see myself really branching out. I’ve been writing a few songs—”

“Who’s this?” Gabe asks. “He’s in an awful lot of these photos.”

My face falls when he pushes the camera under my nose. In the picture, Clint and I are standing on the dock—open-mouthed, obviously laughing. When Gabe flips backward through the stream of photos, there we are again, on a hiking trail. Or climbing into his GMC. Here Clint is, helping me out of his boat during our first fishing trip. My stomach starts doing somersaults. Brandon, you moron, I want to shout. Why on earth would you take so many pictures of the two of us?

I watch Gabe in horror, wishing I could read his mind. What is he thinking? Good God, are Clint and I looking at each other in a telltale way in any of those photos? Can Gabe see in our faces what we’d done?

Worse yet—what if Brandon snapped a shot of me and Clint holding hands? Or kissing?

“Just my personal trainer,” I say, yanking Brandon’s camera out of his hands.

“Chelsea,” Gabe says, frowning.

“Sorry—sorry. Just wanted to show you my—my—enormous catch—my walleye,” I lie. “It’s got to be here somewhere. I’m not such a bad fisher,” I add, trying like hell to seem nonchalant.

“Chelsea found out she’s good at lots of things over vacation,” Dad says from behind a mouthful of mushrooms and pepperoni. “She rescued that trainer when he wrecked his ATV.”

“Chelsea?” Gabe says, impressed. “No kidding?”

“I shouldn’t have been racing him,” I say, and instantly regret it. Why would you race your trainer? Someone you work with? Isn’t that something you do when you’re goofing off? You don’t goof off with a trainer. You goof off with the guy you’re fooling around with behind your sweet boyfriend’s back …

“Well, I tend to think Chelsea’s pretty good at anything she tries.” Gabe smiles at me as he adds, “I’d believe she spent the summer catching great white sharks, or rescuing shipwrecked tourists from deserted islands.” But his smile quickly gives way to a concerned frown. “Are you hot? Your face is all red.”

“Hot,” I agree, stupidly, fanning my face with my hand. “I think I got overheated this afternoon in the Explorer.”

“Get real. We had the air on full-blast,” Brandon argues, rolling his eyes at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“Scratches!” I shout, scooping him into my arms. “Scratches, I missed you so much.” I squeeze him to my chest, bury my nose in his