Page 22 of Finding Her
She shrugged with one shoulder. “Just some drill.” Her brows knitted together. “Which one do you think is Crossy?”
“Who cares about Crossy?” Lilah asked. “I’m looking for Bear.”
I was a little surprised by the question as well, since she’d been so cold toward Crossy the other day at the beach. Sheseemed very annoyed that he came over to talk to us and had zero interest in talking to him.
“He’s the one in the back corner,” Saylor said dismissively.
“Bear or Crossy?” I asked as I looked over.
“Bear,” Saylor said. “Can’t you tell?”
I squinted as the boy came whipping around the side of the ice and went back to line up with the other boys. It was hard to tell any of them apart with their helmets and matching training shirts, but I guess I could see what she meant. He was taller than the rest of the guys, and he just had a certain build around him, a certain aura. I guess it was easy to see who he was without any identifying features.
“He does look fine in that uniform, doesn’t he?” Lilah sighed dreamily.
My stomach twisted weirdly at her words, hating that she was right. I mean, he was really hot and he did look phenomenal in the tight shirt. But I didn’t want her to be the one pointing it out. As the girl he was supposed to be falling for, shouldn’t I have been the one to say something? If Lilah liked him so much, why didn’t she step up for this bet instead of me?
Because he didn’t like her,a voice whispered in the back of my mind. It was a rude thing to think, although not entirely inaccurate. When Lilah had come by my locker the other day, he had barely even glanced at her—but he had spoken to me. And sure, we may have only had three interactions in total that could be counted as conversations, but it was still more than Lilah had.
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure why so much of the time I viewed her as my competition. It wasn’t fair to her. She was my friend, my roommate, and she had gone out of her way to be nice to me, to be friends with me. So why was it that I felt like I was just constantly pushing her away? We hadn't gotten off to a great start with her dumping water on my face to wake me up on the first day of school, but it only happened the one time. And even ifI didn’t appreciate that she had told everyone about Levi letting me call him Bear, and subsequently starting this whole mess, I had to admit that she was going very far out of her way to help me right now. So why did I hate that she found him cute too, just like every girl at school did?
A sharp whistle blew through the air. I slammed my hands over my ears belatedly, and watched as all the boys moved to stand in a line, facing their coach. We were too far up to really hear what was going on, but it was clear that he was giving them some sort of end-of-practice speech about something as they all nodded along and hit their sticks against the ice.
“Come on,” Lilah hissed to me. She started to lead the way down the steps, with me and Saylor trailing behind her. I was still worried about being seen, about how their coach would react to having us here, but nobody seemed to really notice as we reached the bottom step and sat down in the first row of seats—until the boys turned to skate off and Bear’s eyes locked with mine.
I’d already thought his brown eyes were darker than anybody else’s I’d ever met, but they looked black now as he narrowed his eyes at me. I just smiled and waved back. Bear looked like he was planning to skate off the ice as fast as his skates would take him, but then suddenly his coach grabbed his arm and started to pull him towards us.
“Busted,” Lilah said in a sing-song voice.
As they came closer, I recognized his coach from the first day of school. He was the one who had shoved Bear into the class. I grinned as I remembered the way he had looked so amused, while Bear looked like he wanted to die. It was very similar to their expressions now.
“Hello, ladies,” his coach said. Bear yanked his arm out of his coach’s grip, but he didn’t try to skate away as they both came toa stop at the boards. The coach tilted his head toward Bear. “You here to see this one?”
“Oh, we just came to watch,” I said awkwardly. “You know, wereallylike hockey.”
My voice sounded unconvincing even to my own ears, but the coach just smiled good-naturedly like he thought it was funny that we had randomly showed up and crashed his practice.
“You’re his partner, right?” he asked. When I blinked, he said, “In gym. Mrs. Dixon was telling me about it.”
“Uh, yes sir, I am.”
“Well, I just want to let you know that he’s not as bad as he seems.” He clapped a heavy hand on Bear’s shoulder. “He puts on a mean face, but he’s really a sweetheart inside.”
Bear scowled at his coach, but he ignored him with an ever-growing smile on his face. I had a feeling it was a learned skill.
“And I think it’s very commendable of you to be able to put up with him and not complain.”
That made me genuinely laugh. “Oh, I don’t mind. I’m curious to see how long it will take me to soften him up. I’ve been told it’s my superpower.”
His coach laughed. “I guess we’ll see. I can already tell you one superpower you have—I’ve seen the two of you on the track during your gym class, and he never seems to run faster than when he’s trying to get away from you. Maybe I should get you to come by all our training practices.”
Saylor and Lilah were in hysterics at this point, while I was trying to hold my laughter in. Bear looked like he was about to commit murder.
“Well, I’ll leave you kids to it. I’ve got some work to do.” He skated off, leaving Bear with us. Bear was a statue as he stood before us, his ever-present scowl on his face.
“Why are you here?” He asked in a gruff tone.
I shrugged. “Like I said, I just wanted to. I like hockey.”
