I don’t analyze literature. I take what the author says at face value, because, hey, they’re not around to answer whether or not the color of the curtains symbolizes the main character’s stupid trauma or some shit. Essays are on par with exams, but at least I have a twenty-five-percent chance of getting a multiple-choice question correct on a test.
Staten’s lips wobble into a frown, and she pauses her journey to the center of her ice cream cone. “Don’t say that. If you set yourself up for failure, you’re going tomakeyourself fail.”
I think a sensible part of me knows that, but the truth still smacks me with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I guess fate’s finnicky dice roll operates the same way for hockey: if I go intoa game expecting to perform badly, I’m so demoralized that I don’t try as hard.
I laugh. “You’re working with a lost cause here, Ace.”
“Ace?”
“I don’t know, it suits you.”
Suddenly, there’s a micro-shift in her expression, and she levels a look at me that’s dead serious. “Would you be able to teach me how to play hockey?”
“Of course I would,” I respond, slightly offended.
“But I have no athletic ability whatsoever. I get winded going up a flight of stairs.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m a great teacher.”
“So am I,” she insists with fine-tuned confidence, the set of her brow similar to the way Coach glowers at me before demanding suicide drills across the ice. “None of my clients have ever been disappointed with their grades, and I intend to keep it that way. You have to trust me, but more importantly, you have to trust yourself.”
Damn. My colloquial coworker just handed me my ass, and I couldn’t be more impressed. I mean, I know that Staten would never steer me wrong. I’ve also come to acknowledge that she’s usually always right.
“You know, if this tutoring thing doesn’t work out for you, you could be a helluva good life coach.”
She preens, grinning smugly. “I do give pretty good advice, don’t I?”
“You’re different than anyone I’ve ever met before,” I tell her in a hushed voice, the words raking up my throat with the resistance of a dry heave. I knew it from the moment of our not-so-meet-cute, but saying it out loud gives it a certain kind of power over me.
“Different good? Or different bad?”
Warmth unspools in the safe house of my chest. “Different good.”
Staten doesn’t treat me like some hockey showpiece. She isn’t one of my blind yes men. She challenges me in a way that isn’t bound on diminishing my ego but is instead bound on strengthening my flaws.
“I guess I’m the only one impervious to your charm,” she teases before suctioning her lips around her concaved confectionary.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The wind begins to pick up and seethe, rustling through a neighboring copse of trees and rattling against the underside of the parlor’s roof tiles. Unlike other hangouts I’ve had with Staten, I don’t feel the need to fill every interval of silence with hollow sentences. Pressure doesn’t tighten around my neck like a pipe wrench. We’re just kind ofexistingnext to one another. Perhaps coexisting, if you will.
I take a break from my ice cream, a runoff of condensation from the cup drenching the palms of my hands. It’s my turn to watch her squirm. “I know you were pretty dead set on those rules of yours, but I think they’re subject to change with the new development.”
“New development?”
“This whole fake dating ploy?”
She sobers. “Right. We don’t—we don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty of it. It’s fake for a reason.”
I don’t think I do a good job of hiding my disappointment. “How are we supposed to make this thing believable if I don’t know anything about you?”
We assume a familiar rhythm—I poke around like a dental probe inspecting a dry socket, and she dodges accordingly, revolted by any form of intimacy.
“I don’t know. Make something up?”
“Leif’s dumb, but he’s notthatdumb.”
“Ugh,” she groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You have a point. I hate it when you have a point.”
