“There’s your ice cream.” Maggie points.
“I think it’s more of a cake kind of night after all, but where would it be?”
She taps her chin, and my gaze trails down to the Bruiser’s logo on her sweatshirt. My chest crackles.
I say, “I hear the chocolate cake in Concordia is world-famous.”
Sensing my eyes on her, she looks at me and then down, eyes widening.
“Nice hoodie.” Gripping the hem, I give it a little shake.
She bites her lip. “My best friend gave it to me.”
I nudge her with my shoulder. An invisible little flame grows between us, warming me through.
“Best friend, huh? Then I should know your favorite kind of cake these days. Is it chocolate? Vanilla?”
“Love and like, respectively, but they’re not favorite status, though I haven’t tried the Concordia chocolate cake yet.”
“How about black velvet?”
“Nope.”
My eyebrows crimp. “Those are classics.”
“I’ve only had that kind once.”
I rake through my memory, trying to remember us eating cake together. “How can you know that something isn’t your favorite if you’ve only had it once?”
She lifts and lowers a shoulder. “You might go to a theme park only once, but know it was your favorite.”
“Like Disney World?”
She goes still.
Having seen the viral video, I sense it’s still a sore subject, but we’re friends. We can talk about anything. “Mags, I saw the video when you fell into the fountain. You make a beautiful Cinderella, dry or wet. In light of that, I truly am sorry about the water guns and all that. It was bad timing.”
“I haven’t seen the video. I couldn’t bear to watch it after living it.” Her voice is small.
“If I’d let you hang onto my phone any longer, you’d have seen bloopers of me doing some ridiculous things on and off the field.”
Her frown goes deeper.
“I’m sorry someone captured that moment. Even though I don’t care that the world saw my rear end, it wasn’t like I wanted it to go viral, or be on the front page of every paper—physical or digital. So, in a way, I understand.”
She exhales through her nose. “I suppose you do. But that kid who fell in with me was a greasy, grubby, gross?—”
“Want me to track him down and give him a taste of vanilla and chocolate?” I ask, holding up my fists.
A smile peeks on Maggie’s lips. “No, he was just a kid.”
“I’m human, so I know it was probably embarrassing?—”
“How about humiliating, insulting, and dangerous?” Hurt laces her voice.
“All of the above, but if that’s the worst you have in the past, the biggest skeleton in your closet and you survived, I say you’re doing okay.”
She nods, but something about the way she shifts away suggests there’s something more. After all, we made a silent, but mutual agreement not to talk about our pasts. I’m certainly not proud of mine.
