Winter's Kiss (15 page)

He nodded shortly. His hair fell back into his eyes. “Right.”

“But you still haven’t apologized for calling me a bitch and dissing my contest win.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

Chloe had been right! When I let Nick control our conversation, we followed each other around, throwing insults all night. Yet the second I took control, I finally got the apology I’d needed to forgive him.

Or so I thought. Then he added, “But what you said to me in the sauna was really mean, considering.”

I folded my arms across my thick coat. “I understand that,
now
. But I know, and now you know, that I
didn’t
understand what was going on at your house when I said that.”

“Right.”

I studied his handsome face. Even now, the uneducated observer would say he looked happy. Only I saw his slightly narrowed eyes and heard the edge in his voice. “You’re still mad at me anyway,” I said. “
I’m sorry I called you a bitch, but
doesn’t count as an apology.”

He put up one hand to wipe away the tiny snowflakes sticking and melting in the stubble on his chin. “You don’t know how mad I was at you in the first place. I think I’ve done really well to back down as far as I have. Chloe and Liz say I should ask you out. Everybody in school had been telling me that, actually. But when it came down to it, in the hall last Friday, you made that comment about your lawyer. I thought you might say no and rub my face in it.”

Exactly what I’d thought. If he might lose, he didn’t want to play.

“My parents argued the whole weekend,” he said. “I was pretty much home for the entire thing, except when I was boarding. It’s been coming on for a while, but I couldn’t help thinking I’d brought it on somehow by making those divorce jokes to you in the hall on Friday.”

“Oh.” I might believe in a little karma to go with my yoga, but Nick hadn’t done anything to deserve
that
. I wanted to wrap my arms around him to comfort him. I didn’t touch him, though. I didn’t dare.

He splayed his hands on his jeans and rubbed his thighs like he could hardly stand to stay in his own skin any longer. “Then, in the sauna, I got a second chance to ask you out. I was really into what we were doing—or, as it turns out, not doing.”

“You never did ask me out,” I reminded him.

“I was
going
to. I thought we would get together. And then, when you said I never take you anywhere, and I take you for granted, and I ignore you except when it’s convenient, you sounded almost exactly like my mother yelling at my father right before she left.”

That hurt. I knew I hadn’t said those things to him. But coming off a whole weekend of listening to his parents bicker, that’s what he must have heard when I’d said he hadn’t asked me to the Poser concert, he hadn’t congratulated me on winning the boarding contest, and he only wanted to be with me now that our friends were together. I actually grimaced at a pain in my stomach at the thought I’d hurt him so much. “Nick—”

He waved away what I was about to say. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, and it’s definitely not sexy, but I wanted you to understand what happened. I’d told Gavin and Davis some of what went down with my parents, so I figured you could have known. If you were throwing that back in my face, you were a different person than I thought. I’ve probably never been that angry at anyone in my life. Except my dad.” He bit his lip, looking so unsure and so much younger, for once, than seventeen. “I know that’s not fair to you. I’m going through kind of a tough time right now, and I might not be thinking straight.”

“It’s okay.” I shuffled forward through the snow to hug him, whether he wanted to be hugged or not. As Chloe had said, Nick needed my support. As a friend. All our arguments seemed silly now, compared with what he’d been going through at home.

To my surprise, he put both his arms around me and hugged me closer, until I had to step toward him on the icy pavement. His body curved around me. I felt his hot breath in my hair, and I shivered.

“Are you cold? Here.” He unzipped his jacket, then unzipped mine—my heart was doing flips as his hands passed down my chest, unzipping me—and he pulled me even farther forward, into his body heat.

I’d been shivering from the feelings he stirred in me every time he looked at me, not from the cold. But I certainly was not going to clue him in if he wanted to share bodily warmth. Sometimes it was best to leave well enough alone. His 98.6-degree body was an 80-degree contrast to the cold night all around me. My heart sped up, pumping my confused blood so hard through my veins that I could hear it in my ears.

“So Chloe and Liz think we should make out.” He spoke just above a whisper. The low notes of his voice made my insides quiver.

I looked way up at him, into his dark eyes. “Well, last night we didn’t finish what we started.” I put my hands in his hair and drew his face down toward mine, enjoying every second of anticipation, feeling the aura of heat around him. I kissed his neck, just below his chin.

In yoga class, I could see when people started to let go of their busy schedules and relax into the stretches. Now I could feel Nick leave Mile-High Pie behind, and the snowy street, and the cold mountain, and relax into this little cloud of warmth with me. “God, Hayden,” he breathed.

I kissed my way across his neck. He blindly fumbled under my jacket until his hot hand slid inside my T-shirt. He took my chin in his other hand and turned my face toward his, looking me all over, my eyes, my hair, my lips. I thought for a moment he was going to tell me to stop.

And then he kissed me, softly at first, then more firmly and deeply. He was not going to tell me to stop. His second thoughts were gone. He was fully committed, at least to this make-out session. His tongue swept deep inside my mouth. He gathered fistfuls of my T-shirt on either side of my waist and held me tight. For long minutes, as the cold wind teased us outside our cocoon of coats, we warmed each other and breathed each other.

It went on for thirty minutes, I would say. I’m really not sure. Time flew when I was having fun, but my brain recorded every tiny detail of his mouth on mine like we were moving in slow motion in the hot air. Like I was falling off a cliff.

Finally, when I was absorbed in the sensations of my own body and his, and I’d totally forgotten anything but the two of us in this hot moment, he brought me back. He took his hands away, broke the kiss, and stood up straight. Snow squeaked under his boots as he shifted his weight. “Do you realize we’ve been standing here making out in the snow and the fifteen-degree weather for five minutes?”

“Five?” I asked in a daze, touching my tingling lips and staring dumbly up at him.

“Can we go to your house?” he purred in a sexy voice.

Boy, could we! I couldn’t wait to get him into my warm living room. I wasn’t ready for the tingles to end, and Nick’s lips on mine
plus
climate control sounded too good to be true. But I wanted to get one thing straight first. “Does this mean we’re calling off the bet?”

He frowned down at me. “Of course we’re not calling off the bet. You owe me a Poser ticket. Did you only come out here to get me to call off the bet?”

I sighed and looked up at the stars in exasperation. But I stopped short of walking away from him, just in case he came to his senses and decided to kiss me again. I found one of his hands and held it, gently stroking his palm with my thumb, toying with his signet ring. Feeling a little like Fiona or some other girl from my school whose voice seemed to pitch an octave higher whenever she wanted something from a boy, I asked, “Why do you want to be with me if you think so little of me?”

“I’m not sure I do want to be with you.” He slid his hand out of mine. Devastating as that was, he floored me with what he did next. He faced me again and gave me the brilliant smile with the movie-star expression he always wore around school. As if none of this had happened at all. He walked by me, away from the wall, through the deep snow to the sidewalk, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

I stared into the space where he’d been, an alley entrance filled with tiny snowflakes. My tummy still swirled with tingles like the snowflakes in the air. How could Nick and I be over as suddenly as we’d started? Sure, I’d wanted him to call off the bet now that we were together. I’d expected him to. But that’s not why I’d come out here with him. Truly wheedling something out of a boy, Fiona-style, required planning and organizational skills that I did not possess.

“Hoyden,” Nick called from around the corner.

I shuffled after him through the snow. He had one hand on the door of Mile-High Pie, prepared to open it for me.

“I’m going home,” I told him. No way was I sitting at a booth in Mile-High Pie again tonight. When I got home I would call Chloe and then Liz. They would ask if Nick and I had gotten together. I would say that for a second there, I thought we were going to, but … then I asked him to forfeit a challenge. I could explain all this to them on the phone, but I did not want to rehash it at the table, or in the bathroom. Mile-High Pie was a dangerous place.

“Got a ride?” he asked in exactly the polite but distant tone he would use on some ninth grader he hardly knew.

“Bus.” I gestured toward the familiar squeaks as the bus lumbered around the corner several blocks down.

“Okay, then. See you around, Hoyden.” He pulled the door open.

“Close the door!” called the couples as he stepped inside.

I watched him through the glass door as he hung up his puffy parka, then wove between the tables and slipped into the booth where we’d been sitting. He nodded at something Gavin said to him. But Nick’s shoulders were hunched, and he looked so defeated that I wanted to hug him again. I wished I didn’t feel so strongly that he shouldn’t have challenged me to this comp. I wished he would run back out to me, tell me it was all a joke, and make out with me against the wall like he was supposed to.

Watching Nick’s defeated pose, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. Nick might have enjoyed making out with me. He might even want to be with me. But more than anything, Nick wanted to win. And winning me over wasn’t enough.

“Hayden! Yoo-hoo, Hayden O’Malley! Are you and Nick Krieger finally hooking up?”

“How are these people recognizing me?” I muttered to Liz beside me. We’d just slid away from the top of a ski lift, one I could stand to ride because it never rose too far from the ground, when we were overtaken by sophomores. It was snowing—not a pleasant light shower with the sun occasionally breaking through the clouds, either, but a heavy, constant dump from overcast skies that made visibility almost nil. Without admitting it, I’d had an eye out for Nick all day, and I figured Liz had been looking for Davis, but we’d never recognized them in the thick white air. Yet these sophomores were the fifth group of boarders from our school to pick me out that afternoon. My hair must glow in the dark.

“Dish, Hayden,” exclaimed a gossip-seeking girl who skied directly into my path. “It would be sooooo cute if you and Nick got together after he sealed your backpack inside that plaster of Paris volcano last year.”

Liz giggled and elbowed me. “I’d forgotten all about that one!”

“But my friends say no way,” the girl went on. “Nick hates you. Which is it?”

I shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to ask Nick.” And if she found out, I hoped she’d pass that info along to
me
.

“Practice hard,” said another girl shooting past on her board. She called backward to me, “I’ve got a Poser ticket riding on you.”

“Me, too!” said another girl accelerating down the white slopes. “Me, too! Me, too!” more of them called, until the air was as thick with pressure as it was with snow-flakes.

Liz knew what I was thinking. “Let it go,” she advised me. “We’re taking the afternoon off, remember?”

We’d worked hard all morning at getting me to go off the jump, with no success, despite the “help” of Josh and his posse. On the bright side, if I never became a professional snowboarder and never opened that door for Josh, he already had a whole album’s worth of raps about me, my boarding, and my gastrointestinal issues. Maybe he could sign a record contract.

But Liz and I had made a pact that no matter what happened this morning, we would let loose this afternoon and have fun on the mountain. Much as I loved Chloe, she was a pain to board with, because I was forever slowing down so she could keep up, or helping her right herself and innocent bystanders after she crashed into the ski-lift line. To be honest, I was relieved she’d said she couldn’t board with us today because she had “a pressing matter to attend to,” even though her tone of voice made me suspicious she was meddling in my business again. Liz was a different story completely. On her skis, Liz kept up with me.

“Why don’t we go down Main Street?” She gestured to the enormous slope in front of us with the ski lodge a tiny dot at the bottom. “And then we’ll have time to take the lift up for one last run before it gets dark.”

“Race ya,” I said, getting a five-second head start on her before she could put her goggles down.

We crisscrossed the expanse of snow. She leaped over moguls and crash-landed on the other side, her falls cushioned by six inches of fresh powder. I used the moguls to launch me into lazy 360s. We giggled and shouted and nearly ran into each other a dozen times on our way down. Despite the slow powder conditions and the snow plastering my goggles so I had to stop and wipe them every few minutes, this was what snowboarding was really about for me. Speeding downhill in a race was fun, and I loved pushing my body to land new stunts with steeze. But the real joy came in messing around with friends, exploring, trying new things without worrying about how they’d look, and knowing I could come back and do it all again tomorrow.

“Boy alert!” Liz called as we reached the bottom of Main Street and passed the half-pipe. I stopped beside her, shook the snow out of my hair (gingerly, because the ends of my hair were heavy with ice), and pulled off my goggles so I could see. Sure enough, Nick, Davis, and Gavin stood in line on the side of the pipe, waiting their turns and watching another guy bust ass on a 720 attempt.