Page 23 of Finding Her
“Then come to our games.”
“Why not both?” I asked innocently.
We stared at each other, neither one folding, for almost a full minute. Then he suddenly pushed away from the boards and said, “I need to shower. I’ll see you in class.”
It was a clear dismissal, and if I had any hopes about seeing him after he got changed, I was dead wrong. Good thing I hadn’t been hoping too much.
Lilah looked at me and said, “He issointo you.”
CHAPTER 16
bear
“Who were those girls watching you?”Mako asked as soon as I got into the locker room.
“They weren’t watching me,” I said as I sat down on the bench and started pulling off my gear.
Crossy snorted. “Please, they totally were.”
“It’s not fair,” Mako said, sighing and shaking his head. “All the girls want you and you don’t want any of them.”
“They want me because I’m the best on the team,” I muttered as I took my skates off. “Can’t think of why anyone would want your ugly face.”
He threw a towel at me, but I lobbed it right back at him.
“Seriously, though,” Tino said. “No girls ever come to watch practice.”
I shrugged. “They say they have a deep appreciation for hockey.”
“Saylor hates hockey,” Crossy said.
I frowned, both at the fact that he knew that so easily off the top of his head, when our meeting on the beach made it clear Saylor wasn’t interested in him, and that he was obsessed with a girl who hated his beloved sport.
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, but I know for a fact that she hates it. When she first found out that I was a hockey player, she was not impressed.”
I was tempted to ask him what was going on between him and Saylor, but he was already dressed and set up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can go catch up to them.” And then he ran out of the room.
Mako snorted. “He’s obsessed.”
All the other boys left before me, since I was trying to wait long enough that I wouldn’t run into the girls when I went out. From experience, I knew girls sometimes waited outside the locker room for us and I didn’t want to risk it. But when I finally did walk out, I immediately regretted not going with the other boys, because although the girls were not waiting for me, somebody worse was.
“Claire,” I said stiffly, trying to walk past her. She just fell into step with me.
“How’s it going?” she asked in a high-pitched voice. I think she thought it was flirty. I just found it grating.
“Fine,” I said, keeping my eyes on the exit.
She tucked some hair behind her ears, and then said, “I was wondering if I could get you to take me out to dinner tonight.”
It was an odd way of phrasing it. Like she knew that I wasn’t going to ask her, but she also didn’t want to be the one asking. She just wanted me to know that she expected it.
“Can’t,” I said. I pushed open the doors to outside and squinted in the bright sunlight. After being inside the arena for hours, the sun felt blinding.
“You have plans?”
“Something like that.” Actually, I didn’t have any plans at all. I just couldn’t stand to be around her one-on-one like that. I was worried that if I took her out for dinner, she would consider that as a date and take it the wrong way.
