Page 19 of Finding Her
Why wasthis girl everywhere I went? I’d agreed to come to the beach today because I thought it would be a good break from school—not to see everyone at school, just in a new place.
“Dude, you look like you’re about to murder someone,” Crossy said. I snapped my gaze toward him and he shrunk back a little. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” I muttered. I grabbed a bottle of gatorade from the cooler next to my beach drawer and took a swig. I tried to keep my focus on the lake, rather than on the girls sitting down the way, but some movement caught my eye and I couldn’t help but look over.
Poppy and her brunette friend were standing up now. My eyes immediately drifted down to Poppy’s hands where she was brushing the sand off her shorts and legs. I was frozen in place as I watched her, until I realized how creepy I was being and tore my gaze away. But when I looked at Crossy, I realized he was staring too.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped, as if I hadn’t just been looking too. It wasn’t fair of me to be mad at him for it, but I hated to see him watching her. Who was he to think that hecould check her out? He didn’t even know her. “Don’t stare at her like a creep.”
“But she’s…” He sighed dreamily. “But she’s perfect.”
I slapped him upside the head. He yelled,“Ow!”and rubbed the back of his head like he couldn’t believe I’d done that.
“Stop being a creep,” I repeated.
And then, because I was a total hypocrite, I went back to watching them. Poppy was standing with her back to us now, talking to her blonde friend, who was the one who I’d seen at our lockers the other day. I was pretty sure I could have stared at her for hours, if my phone hadn’t vibrated in my pocket right then. I regretfully tore my gaze away to pull my phone out and glanced at the text on the front.
Dad: How’s school going? Staying on top of everything?
I shoved my phone back in my pocket, deciding I would deal with that later. On the surface, it seemed like an innocent enough question, but I knew the follow-up questions he would ask, even once I answered. He would ask me if it was interfering with hockey, if my grades were high enough to get into the colleges he had pre-selected to be good places for me because of their good hockey teams, if I was spending too much time with my friends and getting distracted from what really mattered, and more. No conversation with my dad ever lasted les than an hour, because he would always grill me. To him, there was nothing more important in my life than hockey. Everything I did was to support my future career in hockey. And any distractions needed to be terminated—immediately.
If he knew I was at the beach right now instead of on the ice, or doing my homework so I would have time to go to the rink tomorrow, he would flip his lid. It was one of the many reasonsI’d been happy to go to Hartwell when he’d suggested it. He saw it as me following in his footsteps and putting my hockey goals first.
I saw it as freedom from him.
Not that I didn’t care about hockey. It was definitely important to me and I did think he had a point about avoiding distractions. It was that reasoning that had led me to reject every girl who wanted to go out with me. I understood perfectly well that love was just a distraction from what mattered more in this phase of my life. But he could also go a little overboard with it. When I still lived at home, everything was about hockey. I never got to go to my friend’s birthday parties because it would cut into training time and couldn’t go out for dinner unless it was to celebrate a winning game. I had no room to even think about anything else, because I had to live up to everything he had been at my age, and more.
“I feel like a milkshake,” Crossy announced. “Let’s go.”
Just the thought of a milkshake made my stomach growl, but I hesitated for two reasons. Number one, the text from my dad meant that he was top of mind right now, and I knew he would not be pleased if I had sugar. Number two, and strangely what was the stronger force in keeping me seated, was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to step away from where I could see the girls.
Only, when I looked over at their spots on the beach, I realized they weren’t there anymore. They were halfway down the beach... headed straight for the milkshake stand.
Now, I was of two minds here. On one hand, I wanted to keep Crossy away from Poppy. I didn’t want him to think that I was okay with him staring at her or that I was going to help him make a move on her. But on the other hand, I couldn’t let him go on his own and sit here wondering what they were talking about. And in this blistering heat, a milkshake did sound really good.
I stood up and cupped a hand over my eyes to see where Tino and Mako had gotten off to, thinking they might want to come with us. But they were both swimming, so even if they did want to come, it would take them a while to come back onto the beach and dry off, which we didn’t have time for if we wanted to catch up to the girls. Crossy seemed to get to that conclusion sooner than me, because he was already headed off. I rushed to catch up.
I glanced at Lilah as we walked by, curious why she wasn’t with the others. Apparently, subtlety wasn’t my strong suit today because she immediately saw me and smirked.
“She went to get a milkshake,” she told me without me prompting her. “If you hurry, you can catch her.”
“I’m not trying to catch up to anyone,” I said. And I told myself that was true, even though a part of me knew it wasn’t. I could tell myself all I wanted that I was just going for the best milkshakes in town, but I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. And if the smirk on Lilah’s face was anything to go by, she knew it too.
We made it to the milkshake stand just as the girls were moving off after ordering their own. Crossy clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Get me a cookies and cream milkshake, would ya?” He didn’t even give me the chance to say yes before going off to talk to the girls. I bristled, hating that he was trying to push me out of the way so he could talk to her. But because going after him would only make it obvious that I wanted to talk to Poppy, I got in line, though I glared daggers at the back of his head the entire time I waited.
When it was my turn to order, I spoke so fast the girl could barely keep up, and then I practically just threw the cash at her and moved off. She called after me that there was change, and I just ignored her, hoping she would get the point that she couldjust keep it. As I got up to the girls, I pretty much ignored them as I looked at Crossy and said, “I got what you wanted.”
He just nodded, then put an arm around my shoulders.
“Bear,” he said and I immediately tensed up, knowing he was planning to use me as his wingman and hating that I had no good reason to say no. “Have you met Saylor?”
CHAPTER 14
bear
While I likedto think that I had independence at boarding school, I knew that it wasn’t exactly true. When I started at Hartwell, my dad made a big deal about how he was letting me spread my wings and fly, but then the monthly check-in’s started. And then they quickly became more frequent than once a month.
Of course, he didn’t call them a check-in. He would talk about how he missed me, how he needed to make sure I was doing okay, how kids needed to see their parents. But I knew what it really was: he was making sure that I wasn’t straying too far from what he wanted me to be.
