Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,80

be nice to be with a girl who’s known me such a long time. Maybe this’ll be just what I need …

I park the truck at the curb and rush to Kenzie’s porch, getting so sweaty you’d think I was going to a job interview.

As soon as I knock, I close my eyes to try to steady my nerves. My mind drifts, though, and I see a fleshy lady slipper and the green, tall grass that surrounds the resort. I see flashes of sun-kissed skin. My nose fills with the clean, peachy-sweet smell of soap; laughter rings in my ears.

When the door opens, a simple white dress fills the space. But I start to knot up inside when I see wavy brown locks trickling down the front of her chest. Not blond.

When my eyes trail up and I see Kenzie’s face, disappointment rattles me. I try to shove down my wish that it was Chelsea standing in the doorway instead.

“You okay?” Kenzie asks, tilting her head.

“Shoulder still aches a little,” I lie.

“Oh,” she frowns, using it as an excuse to touch my arm.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell her. I rush to open the passenger side door of the truck. I hope a little chivalry scores me enough points that she’ll forget about how weird I acted when she opened the door.

Chelsea

indoor sport

As Gabe checks us into the Carlyle, the man at the counter eyes us with the most suspicious look I’ve ever seen in my life. Gabe stares that check-in guy down like he’s just daring him to say something. But I don’t really have time to care what the guy thinks, not with all my seesawing …

Me and Clint steaming up the windows of his truck.

Gabe giving me a star in my own name.

Me and Clint at the bowling alley.

Gabe and the nearly two years we’ve spent holding hands.

Clint and the roaring excitement I got just touching his hand.

Gabe and the sticky goo he could reduce my heart to with any one of his romantic gifts.

Sweet, sweet Gabe, I think, just as every single moment of our history together starts to float through my mind: long talks on our cells at night, kisses on my doorstep, late nights at dances, shared lunches in the Fair Grove High cafeteria. Most of all, I think about my hospital bed, about his face being the first I saw when I opened my groggy, post-surgery eyes. I think about our plan to stay devoted to each other when we go to college.

Okay. So I’ve taken a slight detour from the plan. But it was only a detour. So I had a summer fling. Big deal. Everyone has summer flings. Everybody.

What am I doing, standing here trying to sort things out? Isn’t it all perfectly clear? Why would I ever throw someone as wonderful as Gabe Ross out the window over some guy I had a three-week fling with?

Gabe has been mine throughout the toughest year of my life. He loved me even as my whole world broke apart. And I loved him, too—love. I love him, too. Sure, it was different with Clint. But different isn’t necessarily better, is it?

Gabe is the future, I tell myself. Clint’s some blip in the past. Clint is over. Gabe is right now—and he’s waiting for me.

“Room 403,” Gabe says, as he slips my overnight bag from my hand.

Clint

between plays

The restaurant is so uptight and stuffy, I can barely breathe. Yeah, it’s nice and all—linen napkins and a guy whose only job, apparently, is to attack crumbs on the tablecloth. But the walls are closing in. And as the silence at my table beats in my ears, I start to wish one of those rescue buttons was close by, the ones on elevator walls—red in-case-of-emergency buttons. I wish I could press it, so that somebody could save me from the too-small dining room with no air at all.

Not just someone. My mind keeps drifting back to Chelsea.

“Dessert?” one of the stuffy waiters asks.

“No,” Kenzie answers. “Just the check.” And when he disappears, she says, “Not your style, Morgan. I thought it was weird that you wanted to take me here in the first place.”

“Trying a little too hard to impress, I guess,” I agree.

“It’s okay,” she says, running a finger over the top of her water glass. “I like that you’re trying to impress me.” The skin around her eyes crinkles as she smiles at me.

But this feels tight, too, this conversation. Uncomfortable as hell. “Guess—guess I’m