Page 93 of Icing Hearts

“Sure. We can go back to our usual days and times. I need the money.”

“Got it. Thanks. See you after school. Bye Jack.”

We do our homework, mostly in silence. I ask her for help on a few things just as an excuse to hear her speak. Until I can’t take it anymore.

“What the hell is going on, Clara?” I blurt. “After everything that happened, why would you do this?”

She looks taken aback but quickly smooths down her sweater-vest and says, “I didn’t need your rescuing.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Then you better check your White Knight Syndrome. Because I don’t owe you anything, much less myself.”

“That’s not—”

“Look,” she interrupts, laying her hands flat on the table and looking down at the faux-wood grain swirling between her fingers. “I’m grateful for the help. But I just want to move on. Let’s just be friends. We decided on friendship a long time ago. Let’s not over complicate things.”

“We’re so far beyond that Clara. Seven years. Seven years you’ve been taking root in me. I finally do something right, and it’s now that you cleave me in two?”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“I wish I was. This isn’t over, you know.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It isn’t. The game has only begun.”

“Is everything a joke to you? One big game?”

“Only you. You are the prize. You are the game. You are the punishment. You vexatious, shrewish woman.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We’re painfully close, sharing air and more. I’m half expecting lightning bolts to spark between us.

“If I’m the prize, then what are you?”

“The winner.”

I never even got to tell her I love her. Just another regret in a very, very long list. I’m not sure what I was waiting for. No, I do know what I was waiting for. I didn’t want to seem like an opportunist. It was a horrible moment and, despite how raw and vulnerable we both were, I don’t want the first time I tell Clara I love her to be marred in pain. I certainly can’t do it now. She’d think it was a last-ditch effort to keep her around, call me desperate and send me on my way. Well, it’s Clara, so she’d call me loutish scoundrel or something like that.

Chapter 57

Clara

It’s wrong, but I blame him. I hold it against him. He’s undeserving, and it’s likely a byproduct of my own trauma. That’s what people like me do, isn’t it? The damaged. The broken. We lash out at the people—or, in my case, person—who we’re closest to. Our safe place. It’s a punishment for seeing us at our most vulnerable. Don’t get too close, because now you get the undo blame for something that has nothing to do with you. Why can’t I stop myself? Why am I so scared of being with someone who knows? Maybe it’s the way he looks at me—with pity.

Love, regret, anger, longing—any of those I can stomach. But it’s the pity that I can’t handle. The pity that brings shame. I haven’t fought this long and this hard to be pitied and seen as weak. I may be misguided in my strength, but it’s there, a soldier standing tall in rank beside my resilience. He said once he could handle my anger. I hope he meant even my undeserved anger.

And I hope he actually can.

But even if we were together, what chance would we stand? I’ll be in college, tied to a campus, and he’ll be in the NHL. Out of sight, out of mind.

He doesn’t realize I’m lashing out because I’m humiliated. And scared. My father told me he’d kick me out if I continued things with Tory.

Tory was supposed to be my only weakness. One of my choosing. One that I could handle. I thought if I could hold everything together, I’d end up being okay. So I focused all my energy on Tory and school and my image. It was all just a distraction from what was really going on, and now that he knows, there’s a crack in the façade. I’m grateful. But I can’t get past this.

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