Page 53 of Searching for Nova

“I’m not. I don’t watch much TV. We only have one and Ted hogs it so I can’t ever watch it.”

“You don’t have one in your room?”

“No. Even if I did, there’s nothing to watch. We don’t have cable or any of those streaming apps.”

He gets that look on his face, the one that kept showing up in the short time we were hanging out. The look that says he feels sorry for me, which I hate because it makes me feel like he’s looking down on me. It’s another reason I don’t want to be friends with him. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to have nothing. He’s had everything he’s wanted for so long that he can’t relate to me anymore. I don’t want him taking pity on me. We can’t be friends if he feels sorry for me.

“About tomorrow,” I tell him. “I changed my mind. I’ll take the ride but not dinner.”

“Why?”

I shrug. “I don’t have time. And I’ll just take the bus. I don’t need a ride.”

He walks up to me. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m not letting you do it again. There’s no way us showing up here today is a coincidence. There’s a reason we keep finding each other. I’ll be at the diner when you get off work. And we’re going to dinner. You can pick the place.” He walks off, not even giving me a chance to tell him no.

Easton says I’m stubborn, but he’s even worse than I am. He’s determined to spend time with me. I thought I finally got rid of him, and now this happens. He shows up at my new job.

Maybe thereissome force bringing us together, but why? Why would we be brought together only to be torn apart again? I don’t understand it. But I don’t understand anything in life. I’m just trying to survive, trying not to get hurt, trying to forget about my past and the boy I used to love. So why does he keep showing up?

15

Easton

“How was the coaching session?”my dad asks when I get home from the rink.

“Good.” I walk past him, my mind still on Nova. When I saw her in the locker room, I thought I was seeing things, like my mind was seeing what it wanted instead of what was really there.

But it really was her. Nova was at the skating rink. I didn’t even know that rink existed until today when Gordy texted me the address. When I put it in my nav system, I recognized the area because I’d just been there the week before, when I took Nova home. The skating rink is only a few miles from her apartment. But I never in a million years would’ve thought I’d run into her. I thought it’d only be Gordy and me at the rink. He reserved the place just for us. And then I go in the locker room and there she is, the girl who’s consumed my thoughts the past week.

“Good?” my dad says. “That’s it?”

I turn back and see the disappointment on my dad’s face. I’m sure he paid a fortune for the coaching session and was hoping for a better reaction.

“It was great,” I tell him. “Sorry, I’m just tired.”

“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.” He walks over to me, wearing his concerned dad face. “You feeling okay?”

I’m not tired, but it’s the only excuse I can think of to explain why I haven’t been myself lately. I don’t talk as much. I don’t hear when my parents say stuff to me. I’ve been forgetting stuff. It has nothing to do with a lack of sleep. It’s Nova. I can’t stop thinking about her, and sometimes I get so lost in the memories of us that I don’t hear what people are saying to me.

“I feel fine,” I tell my dad. “I just have a lot going on. You know how it is when the season starts. The hours at the gym and then all the practice.”

He takes a seat on the couch. “Tell me about today. What’d you think of Gordy?”

Dropping my duffle bag on the floor, I join him on the couch.

“He’s great. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought he might be really critical and yell at me if I screwed up, but he wasn’t like that at all. He was really patient and kept telling me I was doing a good job.”

“You think you’ll learn much from him?”

“Definitely. He had me trying things I’d never done before. He’s better than my other coach. I wish I could meet with him more than once a week.”

I say that not just because of Gordy, but because of Nova. Sundays may be my only chance to see her if she keeps blowing me off. I’m totally expecting her to cancel our plans tomorrow. She already tried today in the locker room.

“Gordy used to train at that rink back in the day,” my dad says. “It’s been closed for years. Almost got torn down, but they ended up finding a buyer.”

“Yeah, Gordy told me the story. Dad, I need to study. Could we talk later?”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

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