Read on for a special bonus epilogue to Fake Skating by Lynn Painter! (WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Fake Skating!)
Chapter One
Alec
I’d always been obsessed with the way Dani was all-in when she agreed to do something. Whether it was playing a prank when we were little or she was sending the written-in-code postcards we’d exchanged for years, my girl would get that resolved expression on her stubborn face and you could just see that she was fully-committed to the bit.
One might’ve thought that with time she’d lose a little of her verve or grow more cautious, but on this particular Halloween morning when it made sense to pump the brakes, Dani was tugging me into the Conte locker room, pulling me by the hand.
“Stop worrying. How bad can it really be?” she said with a smile, which was ridiculous.
Because it was going to be horrible.
And she knew it, too; she was just trying to make us both feel better.
Two weeks ago, at their annual Oktoberfest party, the guys had a massively competitive Party Foul tournament. Because Dani and I were spectacular at that game, we’d been locked-in. We knew we had a legit chance at taking home the trophy (golden toilet seat), and though that might not appeal to normal people, for us hypercompetitive freaks, it was all the incentive we’d needed.
That beautifully disgusting trophy had been as good as ours.
Only we’d been a little too cocky to see the magnitude of the stakes. Winners got the trophy, but the Ultimate Losers (the team with the least points overall)—if they were stupid enough to risk it and make the bet—had to take their punishment.
And because the table broke underneath us when I tried leap-frogging over Dani (which still seems unfair when it was the furniture’s fault but I digress), that was us.
We were The Ultimate Losers.
Our punishment? Not only were we going to have to spend every waking moment of Halloween dressed in the costumes predetermined by the Party Foul Board of Directors (which consisted of Gooch, Howard, Dabrowski, Wozniak and Nowak), but the PFBOD was LITERALLY going to costume us at 6am on Halloween morning.
“Costume” us, as in “costume” being a verb.
And the PFBOD was all about stupidity.
Absolute obnoxiousness.
They were five brilliant assholes, which was what made this wildly-concerning.
“How can you be so calm?” I asked, yanking on her hand and tugging her to a stop. I needed a minute before we went in, just a few more seconds of the quiet morning where the only person who existed in my world was little Miss Collins with the cute glasses. “You’ve hung out with Gooch more than most because of your roommate so you know how…intentionally diabolical he can be.”
“Yeah,” she said, her brown eyes softening around a little smile. “He’s definitely got a lot of weird going on under the surface, but I’m still unfazed.”
“That makes one of us.” I stepped closer, grabbing the bottom of her sweater and jerking her toward me. I liked the way her eyes always narrowed when I surprised her, like she was inventorying whatever unexpected move I’d made and was reaching a verdict on whether or not she approved.
Her lips curved a little higher.
Praise Jesus, she approves.
I leaned in to kiss her, because even though I’d been kissing her since last February the newness still hadn’t worn off, but as soon as my mouth hit hers, the door to the locker room flew open.
“What the fuck is this?”
Cooper Howard stood there, looking like he’d been shotgunning Red Bulls since the night before, and he scowled at the two of us.
“It’s six o’clock, we’re waiting for you, and you’re out here sucking face,” he said, half-bellowing but also looking like he could fall asleep on his feet.
“We’re here – calm your ass,” I said.
I turned back to Dani and asked, “Are you sure about this?”
“Of course she’s sure about this,” Coop interrupted, hitting all of his elongated Canadian vowels. “And it’s too late to change your mind anyway, Losers.”
“Will you shut up for a sec? If she doesn’t want to do it, I’ll still go along with it.”
“You’re not doing it alone,” Dani said, rolling her eyes and shrugging. “And it’s just a costume. I can handle wearing any costume for one day.”
Dabrowski popped up behind Coop and giggled like a demented clown. “Oh, honey, you’re so cute when you say things like that. Harvard’s gonna love to see you coming.”
“You followed the rules, right?” I asked, pointing at the power forward.
As losers, Dani and I had had zero room to negotiate, but the guys had been good with a few rules, rules that basically ensured Dani wasn’t going to have to bear her ass publicly or that I wasn’t going to do anything to get myself cancelled or kicked out of school.
“Of course we followed the rules, we’re not a bunch of lunatics. Now get your butts in here and let’s go,” Coop said, gesturing for us to go into the locker room. “We’ve got a lot of work to do and I can’t be late for my first class.”
I looked down at Dani and loved the grin on her mouth and the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when we were about to do something absolutely insane.
My girl was always all-in, and I fucking loved that about her.
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter Two
Dani
Some days are just destined to be different.
As in, they start out bizarre and never quite right themselves.
Halloween was definitely going to be one of those days.
Alec: My wings just got caught in the Maloney elevator and I had to wait for someone to free me.
I snorted as I read the text, finding it impossible not to smile as I remembered how he looked when I left him in his dorm room an hour ago.
I texted: Wish I could’ve seen that. Also, I’d kill for caught wings – I can barely move at all in my atrocious outfit.
Just existing in my current state felt like a hardcore workout. I was currently walking past my campus center, pretending I wasn’t aware of all the eyes on me as I sweated profusely and concentrated on my forward motion.
Alec: You look adorable, though, Collins. That face hole really makes your eyes pop.
That “face hole.”
I replied: Not helping. This costume weighs a hundred pounds and my first class is on the other side of campus. Also my head is way too hot.
Alec: Legit question – are we going to survive this day?
I looked down at my body and had my doubts.
Because the board had outdone themselves.
I mean, we’d known they were having multiple brainstorming sessions, complete with PowerPoint presentations and Zoom calls with friends back home as they came up with our costume concepts.
So we shouldn’t have been surprised by their unbelievable thoroughness and commitment to our torture.
Yet we were.
When we’d stepped into the locker room and they made Alec put on his breezers and a BC sleeveless warm-up, I’d foolishly thought we were safe. How bad could it be when Alec would at least have his torso covered with normal attire, right?
So, so wrong.
Because first, the guys covered all of the room’s surfaces with industrial-strength tarps. Then they came out with the sprayers, surrounding my boyfriend while twirling the gun-like paint-dispensing machines which ultimately covered Alec in a head-to-toe body glitter that put Edward Cullen’s sunshiney glow to shame.
My boyfriend sparkled from the tips of every hair on his head to the toes of his size 14 feet. Words couldn’t properly describe the thickness, the shine, the brighter-than-the-sun sparkling sheen of his full-body halo of 5K golden glitter glow.
And the stuff was at least an inch-thick, I swear to God.
Once it’d dried, the guys laced-up the knee-boots they’d somehow found in his size, platform boots that appeared to have been bedazzled by a fifth grader.
Then…then they began working on Alec’s wings.
Those hockey bros had constructed huge black feathered wings, wings that rivaled Heidi Klum’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show set both in size and dramatic effect. The bottom half of the wings reached the floor, and the top half added a good five feet to Alec’s already-towering 6’5” body.
And the span was massive.
Alec Barczewski looked like an enormous, mystical, beastly winged giant who was impossible not to spot from a mile—or two—away. I still wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be a bird or some sort of archangel.
They just called him THE WINGO as if that explained everything.
And if the guys had gone full-on extreme glam with Alec’s look, they’d gone the opposite with me.
I was a recliner.
A recliner.
They’d actually taken apart an old La-Z-Boy, just for me, and made it into the costume. Each piece that was strapped to my limbs felt like it weighed at least fifty pounds, and I was already tired of the way the headrest’s face hole felt around my cheeks.
But I had to give it to them – they’d slayed at punishment. I wouldn’t be taking risks on game nights anytime soon, that much was certain, because I’d already learned my lesson.
This costume was a freaking lesson.
When I was upright, I was basically just a furry question mark of a spectacle, like a velour-covered Transformer whose face was peering out from behind a hole.
But when I sat down, I was a legitimate recliner.
It was genius and awful and I had mad respect for the idiots who’d designed the costume.
That didn’t mean I was looking forward to wearing it all day, though. I had no idea what my professors were going to say about it.
I texted: I’m not sure we will.
Alec: I hate that you’re working tonight, for the record. It’s our first Halloween together and we’re not going to be together.
I hated it, too. I texted: How could I say no, though?
I’d been a part-time nanny for a month now, basically since we got to Boston, and the kids I watched were amazing. Ellie was five, Courtney was ten, and I adored those two little munchkins (who thought Alec walked on water). So when their mom texted that she had to leave for a funeral and had no one to take them trick-or-treating, how could I not volunteer? Those kiddos had been counting down the days until Halloween since I’d met them; they had to go trick-or-treating.
Alec: You’re too nice.
Me: You have plans with your cousin, anyway. Don’t guilt me, Barczewski.
Alec’s cousin Liz and her boyfriend were in town for a few hours. Apparently they were on their way to Europe for some impromptu trip, which was weird when they were our age and not wealthy, but since they had a big layover, Al was meeting them just to catch up since they hadn’t seen each other in a few years.
Alec: You’re mine after trick-or-treating, though, right?
I smiled in spite of my reclinerhood and the sweat I felt trickling down my back, because at least the day was going to end with me and Alec, hanging out together.
I texted: I’m always yours, Zeus. YOU KNOW THIS. 😉
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter 3
Alec
“So I don’t even understand. You guys are going to Europe for the weekend…?” I tugged at the wing straps that were cutting into my shoulders as I sat down on the park bench. It was getting dark and I was exhausted. “Is there a lottery you’ve won or a Bitcoin investment that paid out?”
Liz smiled and shook her head, and Wes – the boyfriend – met my eyes and gave me a look like he couldn’t believe it, either.
He seemed like a pretty good guy, for the record. I remembered him from when we were kids—he’d been the next-door neighbor—but at the time, he’d driven her to distraction with his obnoxiousness.
She’d hated the neighbor kid.
But she definitely didn’t seem to hate him anymore.
They were one of those couples where there was zero doubt that they were perfect for each other. Not only did they seem head-over-heels, but they couldn’t stop laughing together like they were in their own little universe.
It was slightly nauseating when I was missing Dani.
“I can’t believe it, either,” Liz said, her eyes wide in disbelief. “It all kind of came together in this weirdly organic way.”
“Her roommate is a Nepo baby,” Wes said, as if that explained everything.
“Not a Nepo baby,” she interrupted. “He’s a trust fund baby.”
“Regardless,” Wes continued, “Leo is flush.”
“And extremely generous with his airline miles and hotel points,” Liz said. “As soon as I mentioned the letter from my mom, he insisted I do this and basically threw all of his resources at us.”
“So tell me about this letter again,” I said, my head still spinning. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it totally sounds like something your mom would’ve done, but how is it that you just found this information now?”
Liz‘s mom died when she was a kid, and I didn’t remember much about my aunt, other than the fact that she’d always smelled like flowers and wrote love stories for a living.
“I never knew it, but I guess my mom – when I was a baby – wrote a letter for me and a letter for my dad. She obviously had no idea that she would end up in a car accident years later, but apparently she had a moment where she thought about what it would be like if I lost her and she wanted to leave behind a letter for both of us, to try to ease the grief if that happened.”
God, that was sad and also really fucking thoughtful.
“The letters weren’t found until years and years later – two weeks ago, actually – but they were mind-boggling.”
I took a sip of my beer and listened as Liz went into an elaborate detailing of European locations her mother had visited during college. Her mom had hidden something at eight different places, romantically wanting to leave them behind for when she returned someday, but her letter challenged Liz and her dad to try and retrieve those items if they managed to beat her there.
“So we’re going to hit the ground running when we land in Paris tomorrow, and hopefully find all the items before taking off forty-eight hours later.”
“Do you know how insane this sounds?” I asked with a laugh, trying to imagine navigating a city you’d never been to in a language you didn’t speak while looking for God-knows-what.
“Absolutely we do,” Wes said, but his eyes were on Liz when he said it, and it was obvious the dude would deny her nothing. If she told him she wanted to move to Paris and never come back, this guy was going buy a beret and move across the world.
“I made the best playlist for the trip,” she said, then proceeded to send me a link because that was what we did.
My phone buzzed as it hit, and I looked down at it on the bench.
“By the way,” I said, “Thank you for meeting here, in a place where there is a backless bench so I can take a load off my feet without getting my wings crushed.”
Once I realized I couldn’t drive because I didn’t fit in my car, Liz volunteered to meet me outside my dorm for an “impromptu beer picnic.”
It was so Liz.
“Yeah, they really went above and beyond with that costume,” Liz said, grinning and shaking her head as she looked at my outfit. “What are you supposed to be again?”
“The “Wingo,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But you have to see Dani. I think they did a better job with her, to be honest.”
I reached for my phone to show them, but before I could pull up Dani’s picture, I got a troubling text from her, instead.
Dani: I kind of have a problem and I need some help.
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter Four
Dani
“It’s okay,” I said, patting Ellie—who was dressed-up as Elsa from Frozen—on the back as we huddled together in the darkness. “We’re just resting here for a few minutes.”
“In a graveyard!” Courtney screamed, her voice a shriek of terror. She was dressed-up as a hockey player, so she basically looked the same as she always did because that kid lived for hockey.
“It’s not a graveyard – it’s a cemetery,” I corrected, although I really had no idea what the differentiation was. Graveyard, cemetery – both were places neither of us wanted to be locked into.
Yet here we are.
“There are no people here,” I said, halfway to convince myself everything was fine. “This is simply a park.”
“A park full of dead bodies,” she added, crossing her arms over her chest in a protective gesture as she gazed out over the huge grassy expanse that looked creepy as hell under the light of the full moon.
“Can you please try not to scare your sister?” I asked, glancing around in the darkness while I tried keeping my cool. Because no matter what I said, it was unnerving, sitting around in the cemetery on Halloween night. “Also that’s not true. Dead bodies decompose very quickly, so there aren’t even bodies here. It’s just soil, grass, worms, and headstones.”
“Really?” Ellie asked, her eyes wide.
“Really,” I said with a shrug. “You know how if you see a dead animal on the side of the road, it’s gone a couple days later?”
I seriously questioned my adulty judgment when I was bringing up roadkill, but desperate times and all that.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling, apparently thrilled by the fact the bodies were quick about their decomposition.
“Well it’s even faster underground,” I said. “No bodies left, just dirt.”
I am the worst terrible liar in the history of the terrible lying world.
“I cannot believe this has happened,” Courtney said with a scowl. “It is unbelievable.”
Yeah, hard same, agree, agree.
The girls had wanted to cut through the cemetery when we were trick-or-treating because it was Halloween night. How thrilling and scary, right, to zip through the graveyard? I, being the cool babysitter, had been more than happy to deliver on their holiday adventure.
Only during the course of cutting through, both sets of tall, wrought-iron gates had become locked and there wasn’t another human being to be found.
We’d walked all over, trying to find someone.
Any-freaking-one.
I would’ve been happy to see a frothing-at-the-mouth zombie, to be honest. Can I just use your phone for five seconds, Mr. Brain-Eater?
But we appeared to be the only living creatures in the place.
Normally I would’ve just climbed the fence—probably with the girls on my back because I was really good at climbing fences—but as it turned out, recliners cannot climb fences.
I tried, and quickly discovered it wasn’t remotely possible.
And there was no way to remove my costume without a team to help me.
Then my phone died, right after I started texting Alec.
Before I even had a chance to tell him where we were.
To be fair, I’d wasted time with textual shenanigans instead of focusing, so this situation was a little bit my fault and now I had major regrets.
I’d sent: BTW, no matter what I’m about tell you, you know you can’t take off the costume, right?
Even in an extremely fraught Halloweenian situation, I’d been committed to our costume situation and our agreement with the board.
His response had been nearly immediate. Tell me the problem first.
Still caught up in our silliness, I’d shaken my head and typed: NOOOOOOO! WE MADE A DEAL.
Alec: How am I supposed to help you when I’m an oversized human gargoyle?
I’d sent: We’ll figure it out but don’t you dare take off your wings.
Alec: Tell me the problem NOW, Collins.
I started typing: We kind of got locked in the–
That was when my phone died.
So not only did Alec have no idea that I was in a random cemetery we’d spontaneously decided to “pop into” without telling anyone, but I couldn’t call anyone else to rescue us, either.
My only option was to start yelling for help—which I was going to do momentarily—but that was going to terrify the girls and I wasn’t looking forward to their screeching, sobbing reactions in the least.
“Did you know that on Halloween, ghosts and spirits have a super-sized portal that allows them an easier exit from the evil underworld?”
I looked over at Courtney and wondered where she got her information. Is that true? She was just a fifth grader, but she also likely knew more about the “evil underworld” than me, since I knew nil, so a shiver of unease slithered down my spine.
I didn’t exactly believe in that stuff, but things felt really nerve-wracking as the harvest moon shone down upon this field of bodies whose trees were starting to look like a bit like tall, crooked creatures that wanted to hurt us.
“No way – not true,” I scoffed, throwing every acting skill I possessed into nailing the confidence of my statement. “Halloween is just a silly man-made holiday about candy, and dead people stay dead. No ghosts, no spirits, no monsters, no portals. End of story, and knock off the drama.”
But the second the words left my mouth, we heard a loud groaning noise, an inhuman rumbling growl that had me grabbing the girls as we turned in the direction of the terrifying sound.
Shit, shit, shit. Were they coming for us through the portal already??
“What was that?” Ellie whispered, her former relief over the decomposure rate of corpses replaced by sheer terror as her voice became more squeak than words.
“Nothing,” I said, wondering if she could hear the fear in my voice. “Probably a lost dog or maybe a–”
“OH, MY GOD!” Courtney screamed, her voice a blood-curdling shriek as she pointed into the darkness.
“What?!” I yelled, pulling the girls close as I tried seeing what she was pointing at.
“LOOK!” She screamed.
Oh, God, oh, God, I thought as I backed away from the direction of Courtney’s point, all ten of my fingers gripping the girls’ arms and pulling them closer. “I can’t see any–”
“IT’S MOTHMAN!” she shouted, her scream deafening. “It’s Mothman – and he’s got an axe!”
My eyes followed her extended arm, my heart racing, and I nearly fainted when I saw him.
There, climbing over the top of the high graveyard fence, was a gigantic, towering creature with a massive set of feathered wings. He did indeed look like Mothman, or something even more sinister, appearing ready to leap down into the cemetery and tear something limb-from-limb.
He stood to his full height, looking down toward the ground with a huge axe in his right hand, and the sparkles on his platform boots twinkled in the moonlight.
“Oh, my God – Alec?!” I couldn’t believe it. It was him. He was there. Even without me telling him where I was, he was here and rescuing me while shimmering like some kind of monstrous, terrifying, overly-bedazzled bird.
THE WINGO.
His head whipped in my direction, like he hadn’t seen me yet, and then a slow smile turned up his mouth. “Holy shit, you are here.”
“How did you know where to find us?” I let go of the girls and started walking toward the tall fence he was perched upon.
“Come on, the Black Dog, remember?” he said, reminding me of the night I’d shared my location and then he proceeded to sing every word of the song.
“A black dog told Mothman where to find us?” Courtney said quietly, looking less afraid than when she’d been shrieking but still guarded.
“It’s Alec, not Mothman,” I said, pointing. “See?”
“What is he supposed to even be?” Ellie asked, squinching up her nose like she found his outfit to be distasteful. “A chicken?”
“And what’s with the axe?” Courtney added.
I shook my head when he casually jumped down as if eight-or-so feet wasn’t high at all. He landed in a crouch—my superhero (with really great knees, apparently)—and popped back up effortlessly.
And it wasn’t an axe; it was a hockey stick.
Of course.
“Ellie, honey,” he said with a scowl, “Would I ever be a chicken?”
“Absolutely you would not, savior of mine,” I answered for her, beaming at my rescuer, so damn happy to see him. “Dear Lord, you are a sight to behold.”
“Are you an eagle?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know what I am,” he admitted with a shrug, his dancing eyes on me. He leaned closer and murmured, “It’s a little inappropriate, the way you’re staring directly at my wings with that filthy grin. Keep it in your pants, Collins.”
I started cackling while Alec turned his gaze back to El. He gave her a wink and said, “You look amazing, Elsa.”
“I know,” she said with a huge smile. “Dani told me you’d think that.”
“She’s right, but don’t tell her I said that because she gets a big fat head about stuff like that.”
That made her giggle, which made me roll my eyes, which made Alec grab the front of my shirt—er, La-Z-Boy fabric—and tug me closer to him.
“So how the hell did you manage to get yourself locked in a cemetery?” The glitter on his face shimmered in the moonlight as his dark eyes moved all over my face.
“I think the bigger question is how the hell are we going to get ourselves out?”
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter Five
Wes
“Why don’t you wait in the car while I cut off the padlock,” I said as I came to a stop on the gravel road, glancing at the clock and wondering how the hell we’d ended up in this insanely tight time crunch. “Just to speed things up. We’ve got zero time to spare.”
As soon as Alec realized Dani was locked inside the cemetery, the three of us leapt into action. Well, technically Alec hadn’t leapt into anything when the dude had to be shoved into the backseat by the two of us because he couldn’t drive or even sit normally in his own car while sporting those wings, but you get the point, right? We dropped him off at the gates because he insisted he could climb over and locate Dani while we sped to Lowe’s to purchase a pair of bolt cutters.
And as happy as I was to help, missing our flight was not an option, not when every little bit of Lib’s over-excited happiness was wrapped around this European adventure.
“No,” Liz said, shaking her head as I put Alec’s piece of shit car in park. “You’re going to wait in the car while I cut off the padlock, since it’s my cousin who got us into this mess, and then we’ll speed to the airport.”
“Does it matter?” I asked, wanting to laugh as she carefully pulled up her hood like she was about to commit the baddest of crimes.
“It does,” she replied, grabbing the bolt cutters with great intentionality. “And you’re the better wheel man, anyway.”
“Wheel man?” I repeated with a snort, loving the dramatic intensity on her face. “Just who exactly are you becoming right now?”
“The girl who’s about to cut the lock off a cemetery gate, then yell for you to get us to the airport STAT as I jump into the getaway car.” She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Are you up for this challenge, Bennett? Can you actually handle the baddie I’m becoming?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” I said, always ready to be her partner-in-crime. “Though I strongly object to the usage of the word “baddie.”
“Fair because I had regrets the instant it left my mouth,” she said as she opened the passenger door and got out. “Now let’s do this.”
“Without getting arrested,” I added, because she’d recited that line no less than ten times since we’d secured the bolt cutters.
“Without getting arrested,” she repeated as she came around the car and leaned down into my window. “Have I told you how much I love you for going along with my terrible idea to leave the airport during our layover and now destroying some crypt keeper’s lock while possibly risking jail time?”
“Nope,” I said, grabbing the back of her neck and gently pulling her toward me, breathing in the Chanel No. 5 that lived on her skin. “Tell me.”
“I love you so very much, Wheel Man,” she said, her retrograde red lips sliding into a grin that made me think of rain-soaked kisses and copper-penny rings that she knew nothing about.
Yet.
Her mouth found mine, but it was a quick touch.
Too, too quick, making me grab the front of her hoodie in an attempt to get her to stay a little longer.
“Sorry – gotta go while the going’s good, Bennett,” she said, her eyes sparkling mischievously as she pulled away. “Text Alec that the business is about to go down, okay?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I refuse to use those words. You’re cutting a lock, Buxbaum, not robbing a bank.”
“Oh, come on,” she said around a giggle. “Just let me have this moment, will you?”
“Fine,” I said, pulling out my phone to send the ridiculous text.
We’re here with the cutters and Liz says THE BUSINESS IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN.
And as I watched her sprint toward the gate with all the melodramatic flair of an action movie hero, I knew without a doubt that I’d happily let her have every damn moment she wanted for the rest of my life.
As long as we both shall live.
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter 6
Alec
“This is heaven,” I heard Dani yell from her shower stall. “After being an overstuffed reclining chair all day, this is absolutely heaven.”
“I’m never getting all this glitter off,” I said as I scrubbed my face. “Like for real, I’m going to be eighty years old and still shimmering like a fucking Edward.”
“Did you try the makeup remover wipes?” she asked.
I looked at the massive pile beside the floor drain. “All of them.”
I let the hot water pour over my head, in total agreement about the shower being heaven. Those wings had been heavy as shit, and my shoulders were aching after the long day.
The bright side was that the only shoulder issues I had anymore were wing-related.
“Are you sure I’m allowed to be in here?” Dani asked yet again, for like the tenth time since we’d entered the locker room.
“The PTSD from the Doug last year is never leaving you, is it?” I teased, picturing her looking so damn cute as she’d cried in the locker room that afternoon (which felt like a hundred years ago). “I have the door code, I’m on the team, and Coach said it was fine to come in here and retrieve our stuff post-punishment. We are good, I promise.”
“It just feels wrong, being in here after midnight.” I heard her shut off the shower and I was jealous of her glitter-free status. “Don’t you think?”
“It probably has more to do with the fact that you’re naked in the same stall where Gooch has showered than it has to do with the time of day,” I said, forcing myself to immediately forget that I’d just used the word “naked” in the context of Dani in the shower stall beside me.
The locker room, where countless other guys had 24/7 access, was no place for those thoughts.
“True,” she said. “Also ewww.”
“Ew, indeed,” I said, because Gooch was just that guy, the kind of guy who loved showing his ass and being obnoxious.
By the time I got out and dried off—still slightly sparkly but at a much more transparent and tolerable level—Dani had left the shower area. I wandered out into the locker room and there she was, sitting on a bench, wearing my old Southview hoodie and jeans while watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on the huge TV we used for game film.
“Holy shit, I almost forgot,” I said with a smile, obsessed with her sentimentality. We’d always loved the Snoopy Halloween cartoon and had agreed—way back in fifth grade—that it had to be viewed annually on October 31st.
And even though we’d never been together on Halloween, I’d always known she was watching it. There had never been a doubt, which had always fueled me to make sure I watched it, too.
“Thank God I’m here to keep you focused,” she said, her eyes still on the screen. “Come watch with me.”
I moved to cross the room, but then I got tripped up by her face, temporarily frozen by the sight of her.
Yet again, for like the hundred-thousandth time since she’d come back in my life.
But it wasn’t just that she was pretty. It actually had nothing to do with pretty. Like, lots of people were pretty and it didn’t make me forget to breathe or fucking lose every thought in my head.
No, with Dani it was all about the everything else.
The reflection of Linus in her glasses, glasses that were usually smudged but she never noticed until I offered to clean them, wherein she would grin unapologetically while I rubbed them on my shirt and she’d admit she didn’t feel remotely bad about being a glasses slob.
Not even a little bit sorry, Barczewski.
And the big brown eyes that were staring up at the TV? They were nice eyes, sure, but it was more about the length and curl of those lashes and how she blinked faster when she was annoyed, slower when she was amused.
The way those arched eyebrows scrunched together when I said something she thought was crazy.
How those lids got adorably heavy when she snuggled-in on movie nights.
The soft press of her apple-juice-and-flower-scented body against my chest when she dozed.
Constellations of tiny freckles stretched over soft pink cheeks.
Blonde curls that corkscrewed in multiple directions and were unbelievably soft around the tips of my fingers.
Curls that were damp at the moment and smelled like the Old Spice shampoo she borrowed from me when we’d hit our respective showers.
I sat down beside her on the bench, pulling her onto my lap as we watched Linus disappoint Sally once again, wrapping my arms around her as we watched Snoopy do his Flying Ace bit, kissing the top of her head as Lucy walked out the door to bring her little brother back inside after the Great Pumpkin debacle.
“I love that show,” Dani said, turning her body so she was facing me as the theme song played and the credits rolled. “The perfect way to end a perfect Halloween.”
“Perfect?” I scoffed, remembering nearly falling to my death as I scaled the top of that treacherous cemetery fence. “This was the perfect Halloween?”
“Think about it,” she said, setting her hands on my chest and basically setting me on fire with the press of her fingertips. Her voice was breathy as she looked in my eyes and said, “It started with you bringing coffee to my dorm, right? Then we got to play with your friends before school, I got to trick-or-treat with Court and El, and after that my boyfriend showed up like a character from a damned fantasy novel and rescued me from a nightmare.”
“When you put it like that,” I muttered, tugging on a damp curl and watching it bounce back into place.
“And now we’re finishing the night together,” she said. “The perfect Halloween.”
“Collins,” I said, leaning forward to rub my nose against hers because I needed to be closer. “You really know how to put a positive spin on things.”
“Speaking of positive,” she said, pissing me off by climbing off my lap and running over to her bag, which was on the floor in front of my locker.
On the other side of the room.
She said, “I stole something for you tonight.”
“Awww, my little felonious baby,” I said dryly, needing her to come back.
“Shut it,” she said with a laugh, crouching as she dug through her purse. “Look what Courtney got in her goodie bag.”
Dani rifled for another second, then held up a Charleston Chew, her smile so wide that her eyes were full-on squinting.
“Oh, shit,” I said, swallowing hard, so in love with the candy-wielding girl beside my locker that it almost hurt. I half-wanted to cry just looking at the wrapper in her hand, remembering that day at the hospital last year, and I fucking loved that I knew she was just as soft about it as I was.
“You want it or what?” she said, giving me a teasing grin that made my head spin. She straightened to her full height and went old-school Dani when she waved the Charleston Chew at me and said, “Come get it, Al. Unless you are a chicken…”
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
Chapter 7
Dani
“Bring it here, Collins.”
I swallowed and tried to seem unaffected by him, but it was impossible. I’d kept my eyes trained on Charlie Brown after Alec exited the showers, mainly because the boy was just too much to look at.
Because shirtless and shredded, with his wet hair sticking up everywhere, he was like the centerfold from a Hot Hockey Player pictorial or something. And the smell of his Old Spice body wash somehow wreaked havoc on my ability to keep my composure. He’d been messing with me since I first ran into him last February, but I swear to God it was getting worse every day.
I was addicted to every little thing about Alec Barczewski, from the sad girl playlists he was constantly curating to the butterfly-inducing flex of his rock-hard jawline.
“Don’t be bossy,” I said, distracted by the intense look in his eyes as he watched me from the other side of the quiet locker room.
“Honey, it’s not bossiness – it’s need,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Between the way your hair looks all wet and messy and the way you’re teasing me with that emo candy, you should consider yourself lucky that I haven’t thrown you over my shoulder and taken you back to the showers already.”
“We’ve already covered that anyone could walk in,” I said, feeling breathless and giggly as he took a step in my direction. “So the showers are off-limits.”
“But you forget that I’m more daring than you,” he said, slowly shaking his head as he came closer, making me feel stalked in the very best way. “I’m willing to take a chance.”
“Now, Alec,” I said, ruining my steadfast rule-following by giggling even harder as I held up a hand to stop him. “Remember where we are.”
He was on me in an instant, maneuvering his big body so I was trapped between the lockers at my back and his wide chest. His dark eyes sucked me in as his hands cradled my face and he lowered his handsome face to kiss me.
It was all-encompassing and overwhelming, which was the default when it came to kissing Alec Barczewski.
I’d once said that he kissed like he played hockey, and I was fairly certain I’d never described anything better in my entire life. He was hyper-competitive, everywhere at once, controlling the game with a combination of finesse, skilled technique, and brute intuition.
God, I could kiss him forever, I thought as his lips opened mine and his mouth rendered me weak. Alec made it impossible to remember what kissing anyone else had ever felt like. It was like he’d rewritten my brain so the only memories I had of kissing belonged exclusively to him.
“Dani,” he murmured against my mouth, sending a shiver up my spine. He did that sometimes, kind of grumbled my name offhandedly when we were getting lost in each other, and part of me wondered if it was a reminder.
If he was still in shock – because I still was – that it was me, Dani, kissing him, Alec.
That it was us—
The way we’d always been meant to be—
A constant continuation of the magic that began in our spot—
All those years ago.
It’d been so foolish, so incredibly stupid, for us to kiss that night when it could’ve ruined everything. In hindsight, I was shocked that either of us had dared to suggest it or that both of us had totally leaned into it.
I’d forever be grateful for our foolish stupidity.
…my advice is always ruin the friendship
Better that than regret it for all time…
🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃 🎃
