Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (68 page)

I give him a sideward
glance. “You know, for someone who’s sat through what I can only imagine must
have been a few days’ worth of tattoos, I’d really think you’d have developed a
pair of balls somewhere along the way,” and I dump a little hydrogen peroxide
straight into the wound, and I laugh a little as Ian’s mouth gapes and his
hands are just above his leg as he wants to try something to take the sting
away, but doesn’t want to contaminate the wound and end up having me do that
again.

“Totally different
thing,” he says. “Tatts can hurt and everything, but they’re not dripping
poison into open wounds.”

“It’s not poison,” I tell
him. “I wouldn’t drink it, but…” I pour a little more over the wound and Ian
has his eyes closed and he’s banging the back of his head against the wall.

I’d be lying if I said I
wasn’t enjoying this maybe just a bit too much.

“You know,” I tell him,
“with as much blood as you left on the ground, I was expecting something a lot
deeper.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I bleed
a lot when my heart is racing.”

I look up at him with a
smirk. “You’re really hung up on dropping in, aren’t you?” I ask.

“It’s kind of the only
thing standing between me and that fat sponsorship they’re offering the winner
of the Midwest Comp.,” he says. “As much as I know my dad would love for me to
just quit boarding and be a lawyer like I’m supposed to, I’d really hate to
actually end up working a regular job.”

“Is that all it is?” I
ask. “You don’t want to end up in a nine-to-five?”

“I wouldn’t say that’s
all it is,” he answers, “but you’ve got to admit that’s some pretty strong
motivation right there.”

“I guess,” I tell him. “I
always thought it was more important to actively do something you love rather
than just trying to avoid the stuff you think might bore you.”

“I love to skate,” he
says. “That’s kind of the point. I’m always going to love to skate, but the
question is how far can I take it? I’ve spent a lot of time getting good,
trying things I haven’t seen other guys try and all that. I’d still skate if
there was never any money on the line, but I
would
like to be able to move out of here and not end up on the
street as a result.”

“I know you’re not going
to like this, but there’s some dirt and what looks like a couple small bits of
gravel in your cut and I’m going to have to get those out of there before we
can bandage it,” I say.

“Maybe we should go to a
hospital,” he says.

I look at his face and
then back down at his leg. The cut really isn’t all that bad. He’s not going to
need any stitches. There’s no real reason to go to a hospital, unless he thinks
they’re going to shoot him up with something to take his mind off of the pain.

“If you think you need to
go to the hospital, we can get you to the hospital,” I tell him. “Really,
though, it’s just a matter of cleaning it out and dressing it. There’s not a
whole lot more anyone’s going to be able to do about it. It’s a fairly long
cut, but it’s not deep at all.”

“Okay,” he says,
clenching his fists, teeth and I assume just about everything else on his body
that can be clenched. “Just do it.”

I savor the sight of him
preparing for some terrible affliction to land a few seconds and then I bend down
to get a better look at what I’m dealing with.

“I’m going to try to get
the gravel with a cotton swab,” I tell him. “This is going to take just a
second. I’ll try to be quick.”

He doesn’t answer in the
normal sense; he just grunts and nods his head.

I dip a clean cotton swab
into the hydrogen peroxide and set about cleaning the wound. It takes a minute
to get every little piece of gravel out, but before long, the wound is cleaned
of foreign matter.

“Thank you,” he says when
I remove the cotton swab and don’t put it back in his cut.

“Oh, we’re not quite done
yet,” I tell him and, before he has another chance to clench, I irrigate the
wound with a generous amount of hydrogen peroxide.

“Ah, fuck!” he grunts and
his hands grip the side of the counter.

From there, I dry the
wound with a cotton ball, apply the antibiotic ointment and place a large
bandage over the cut.

He’s still waiting for
the final shoe to drop out of the sky and land hard on his leg, but I’m all
done.

I pat the wound lightly
with my hand just to be a jerk and Ian grabs my wrist. He grabs my wrist, but
he doesn’t remove my hand from his leg, he just moves it away from the bandage.

There’s a rush of
something I hardly have time to process through my body and his dark eyes are
intent on mine, his eyes dilated.

“You know,” he says, “I
really appreciate you trying to help at the park and getting me cleaned up
here.”

“It’s not a problem,” I
stammer.

He’s leaning forward a
little as sits there, his head cocked a little to one side, and we just stare
at each other for a little while.

Finally, I pull away from
him, shaking my head and chuckling. “Well, if you wanted to pick a way to get
me to stop messing with your cut, you did a pretty good job,” I tell him.

“What cut?” he asks and
pulls me back toward him.

“The cut on your leg,” I
tell him, knowing full well he hasn’t actually forgotten about it.

“Yeah,” he says.

This came on rather
unexpectedly and I haven’t even had time to really sift through everything and
decide how I feel about Ian. I know exactly how I’m feeling now—the weakness in
my knees is making it particularly difficult to forget—but do I really want to
do this?

He brushes a strand of
hair out of my face, his fingers lingering as he secures the strand behind my
ear.

The things I was really
worried about with Ian, they’ve turned out not to be actual problems. He’s
cocky and a bit brash for my taste, but as his hand comes to rest on my
shoulder, I feel myself naturally leaning in toward him.

We’re both watching one
another for signs of retreat, but the space between us continues to narrow. My
eyes begin to close, and I can almost feel Ian’s lips on mine when there’s a
loud crash from somewhere outside the room and a man is yelling, “Ian! Get your
skateboard and the rest of your peasant shit out of my living room!”

My eyes are open now.
Ian’s leaning his head back against the wall.

“Sorry,” he says. “Mind
if I…?”

I move out of his way and
he hops down from the counter. He quickly puts his pants back on, though
they’re wet with his blood, and he walks to the bathroom door.

“Wait in here for a
minute,” he says. “I really don’t want to have a conversation explaining what
we’re doing in here with my dad right now. If I play this right, I think I can
get us both out of here in five minutes or less. You up for it?”

“Sure,” I answer, having
no idea what he’s planning.

He walks out of the room
and closes the door behind him. Just to be on the safe side, I lock the door.

While I’m waiting for a
reasonable amount of time before I emerge from the bathroom, I take a minute to
clean everything up, taking off my gloves and disposing of them very last. By
the time I’m done, the bathroom doesn’t show any signs of what happened, other
than a few drying blood drops on the floor that I’m not going to clean without gloves.

Blood freaks me right
out.

When a minute or so has
passed, I come out of the bathroom to find Ian and his father, a tall, tan man
with intense features and what looks like a permanent scowl, coming into the
living room just off the bathroom.

“You’re going to clean
all this up, right?” Ian’s dad asks.

“Yeah,” Ian says. “I was
just about to when you came in yelling.”

“Well, worry about that
in a minute,” Ian’s dad says. “There’s some stuff in the car I’d like you to
bring in for me.”

Until now, Ian and his
father have been looking at each other, either unaware or unaffected by my
presence, but as I go to sit down on the same antique chair I sat in earlier,
as if by instinct, Ian and his father both turn toward me.

“Don’t sit in that,”
Ian’s father says. “That chair is over two hundred years old.”

My legs straighten and
lock, saving the chair from my apparently destructive touch.

“Dad, this is Mia,” Ian
says. “She’s my partner for our final project in psychology.”

“Charmed,” Ian’s dad
says, giving me the briefest of glances before looking back at his son. “If you
could grab the stuff from the trunk and the backseat, I’d really appreciate
it—and go around the back so you don’t get blood all over my carpet,” Mr.
Zavala says to Ian, all but shooing him out of the house. As soon as Ian’s out
the door, his dad turns to me and asks, “The two of you are working on some
kind of project, huh?”

All I can get out is the
“Y—” before Mr. Zavala is talking again.

“I’m not stupid,” he
says. “I know the kind of people Ian likes to hang out with and you’d fit right
in.”

I’m not sure why he seems
to be mad at me.

“We were assigned as
partners for—” I start again, but am, again, interrupted.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mr. Zavala
says. “You and Ian were assigned as partners for your psychology class and yet
there doesn’t seem to be any sign of books or notes. What kind of a project is
it: human sexuality?”

“That’s not what—” I
start.

“It doesn’t really matter
whether the two of you are actually working on a project for school or not,”
Mr. Zavala interrupts. “What matters is that people like you are sucking my son
into that ridiculous life of skateboarding and you need to stay away from him.
He’s a bright kid with a bright future as long as he gives up the stupider
hobbies of his past, and I’m not going to have some barely-legal Jezebel coming
in here and helping Ian to destroy his future.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

The guy came off as a
jerk the moment I laid eyes on him, but I wasn’t actually expecting him to talk
to me like that.

Mr. Zavala seems
frustrated by my silence just as much as he did by my voice, and he shakes his
head, saying, “I’ll never understand what it is about people like you and him
that makes you think that you can just go through life like it’s some kind of a
big game.”

“I don’t think it’s a
game at all,” I tell him. “I don’t know what kind of person you think I am,
but—”

“We can stand here going
back and forth until the cows come home,” Mr. Zavala interrupts. “I think
you’ll find that you’ll get the same result and save a lot of time if you just
go.”

What is this guy’s
problem? Yeah, I look like a punk/skater chick because, well, I
am
a punk/skater chick, but that doesn’t
mean I don’t have goals or priorities. It certainly doesn’t mean that I’m out
to stop his son from being successful.

I open my mouth to speak,
but before I can give voice to breath, Mr. Zavala says, “One of these days,
Ian’s going to grow up, and if he doesn’t get his act together, he’s going to
be pretty disappointed at what he finds around him. I’m sure you’re a nice
girl, but he’s not
for
you, so I
think it’s best if you just go.”

I don’t know what to say.
I’m shocked and hurt as much as I am angry and offended and there are no words
I can conjure to adequately respond in any other way than by simply doing what
he told me to do and walking out the front door.

Behind me, I can hear the
sliding door open and Ian’s calling after me, asking where I’m going, but I
don’t stop. I just shut the door behind me.

Chapter
Eight

The Silver Tongue

Ian

It’s been about a week
since Mia up and left my house without a word and I haven’t yet been able to
pry an explanation out of her.

At least I’m in the one
place where she can’t ignore me entirely.

Class starts and I’m
writing in my notebook, still trying to figure out some way to get Mia and me
back to where we were before my loudmouthed father had to crash the party. I
tear the page out, fold it once, twice and I use it to tap Mia on the shoulder.

She turns her head and
sees the paper. Rolling her eyes, she whispers, “Really?”

I nod.

She sighs and takes the
note, unfolding it.

I wrote, “We should get
together again, soon.”

The professor’s
discussing something that would probably make a lot more sense if I had paid
attention at the beginning, so I just give up and tune out entirely.

I still haven’t been able
to get past my vert problem and I’m starting to lose hope.

It’s the stupidest thing,
having the sponsorship hang on how good you do in three different categories.
Not everyone does vert. Not everyone does street. The best trick competition
seems fair enough as everyone does that shit with their friends for fun anyway,
but I never wanted to be a vert skater.

This is bullshit.

Sadly, none of those
arguments have changed anything yet.

Mia passes me back the
folded piece of paper and I open it up.

She wrote, “You mean for
our project? We should probably get going on those interviews.”

I don’t know if she can
hear me scoff, but if I had to guess…

I write, “I don’t mean
for the project. We should hang out, get to know each other. You look like you
could use some fun.”

She turns before I can
tap her on the shoulder and takes the note.

I can actually see the
skin of her neck turn red as she reads the note and I can’t remember hearing
someone write so loudly. I didn’t even know it was possible
for
someone to write loudly.

About fifteen seconds
later, she’s holding the note behind her head before dropping it on my desk.

I have to cover my mouth
as I chuckle at how easily I can irritate her.

Her new addition to the
passed note reads, “I just love how you assume I never have any fun, like I’m
some sort of spinster freak who’s afraid of a good time.”

This is too easy.

I write, “So you’re up
for a night out, then?” and pass it up to her.

After a hasty rustling of
paper, Mia groans loudly enough for the professor to stop mid-sentence to look
at her.

“Sorry,” Mia says, “just
clearing my throat.”

The professor goes on
talking whatever voodoo she’s talking and Mia hunches forward to respond.

She’s so much fun to
torment.

Mia tosses the note over
her shoulder, now crumbled into a ball, and it bounces off my desk before going
off onto the floor.

I lean over, pick it up,
open it and read it.

She just wrote, “Does
this approach ever work?”

I smile and write, “You
tell me. There’s a skate exhibition tonight. Nothing big, just some kids whose
parents are particularly proud of them. They’re not great or anything, but it
might be fun to watch.”

I pass it forward.

“Ian?” the professor says
as soon as the note has left my hand, and I’m having a flashback to third-grade
English class when I used to pass notes to my friend Bobby—he goes by Rob, now.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“What do you think we can
make of the placebo effect?” she asks.

I love it when professors
try a gotcha question when you’re not paying attention, but then don’t bother
making it difficult. It’s so great watching that smug superiority drain out of
them and then feel it entering me.

“I think we can make of
it that the mind is a powerful thing and that when it comes time to test a
drug, much less treat a patient, it’s important to take all aspects of that
patient, including that power of their mind to heal itself when it believes
it’s being healed, into account,” I answer.

“What does it tell you
about the nature of the mind, though?” she asks.

“I’m not quite sure what
you’re asking,” I return, but before she can clarify, I make a guess. “If
you’re asking what it means that the mind can be fooled through nothing but its
own perceptions regarding medicine and the authority of doctors, I’d say it
means that the mind is easily manipulated. When a person wants to believe
something, they’ll construct their entire reality around making that belief a
reality. The problem comes when that belief and objective reality don’t
coincide and a person is either unable or unwilling to recognize it. That’s
when people become delusional.”

“So you think that the
placebo effect is just a delusion?” the professor asks.

“Of course it is,” I
answer. “Patients believe they’re taking medicine, given to them by a doctor in
order to cure or at least treat a condition they have. That belief can go a
long way. The problem with a delusion is that it never goes all the way,
though. If it did, anyone who experienced the placebo effect, assuming nothing
shatters the illusion for them, would be cured of whatever was wrong with
them.”

“So you’re saying that
the body knows how to fight illness, even mental illness, it’s just—I don’t
know, lazy?” the professor asks.

In front of me, Mia tears
up the note we’d been passing and she starts writing on another paper. If my
posture was better, I might even be able to see over her shoulder enough to
read it.

“No,” I answer. “I’m
saying that delusion isn’t a cure. A person isn’t actually getting better,
their symptoms merely improve for a little while as the belief holds out.
Eventually, though, even if the delusion isn’t shattered, their body will
return to its natural state and, if it’s not being treated by a treatment that
actually works, they’re going to go back to where they were before the event
and just continue to degrade.”

“I think Mr. Zavala
brings up an interesting point…” the teacher says and I can finally ignore her
again. While she’s waxing poetic on something I said or something she inferred
from what I said, Mia passes me back a new folded piece of paper.

I open it up and read,
“When and where?”

Sometimes, actually
coming off as if you know something can be a positive thing.

*
                   
*
                   
*

I ride down the sidewalk,
weaving in and out of pedestrians as I go.

I’d suggested that I pick
Mia up—with a real car and everything—but she insisted that we meet up at the
exhibition.

The First Annual Peewee
Skating Demo is the result of a few parents who were bugged relentlessly by
their six or seven year olds to build them some kind of ramp. The demo itself
isn’t so much a testament to the skill of the kids on their boards as it is an
exhibition of the fathers’ various works of wooden art.

It’s always kind of
bothered me when people tag the word “peewee” onto a kid’s sport. I just
remember playing soccer when I was in first or second-grade and never wanting
to tell anyone about it for fear that word would come up at some point.

I get off my board about
a block away from where they’re setting everything up and I look around the
crowd for Mia.

Something small and blunt
goes half an inch between my ribs and I pull back, spinning around.

Mia waves, saying, “Hey,
so what is this exactly? I didn’t know there was anything going on tonight.”

I rub my side and I’m
almost angry until I get a good look at her.

She’s dressed the same as
always: Skater garb with that same pair of Converse that she always wears, but
something about her is different.

“You look happy,” I say.

She furrows her brow, as
that wasn’t really a solid answer to her question, saying, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You look good,” I tell
her.

She looks down at what
I’m pretty sure are the same clothes she had on earlier, saying, “Thanks.”

“So,” I say and we start
walking together toward the growing crowd, “what did it?”

“What do you mean?” she
asks.

“What changed your mind
about coming out with me tonight?” I ask.

“I never said I wasn’t going
to,” she answers.

“Yeah, but you’ve been
avoiding me, and before you wrote that new note, you didn’t seem too thrilled
to be near me at all,” I tell her.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“I was going to say no.”

“Why didn’t you?” I
persist.

She rubs the back of her
neck, avoiding my gaze, and says, “I guess I thought it couldn’t do much harm.”

“Why would it do
any
harm?” I ask.

“Let’s just forget about
it,” she says. “I’m here. Now, who’s skating tonight?”

“Kids,” I tell her. “I
think there are four or five of them and they’re all under ten.”

We get a little closer to
where they’ve set up on the blocked off portion of the street, and it’s just
what I’d envisioned: A couple of plywood kickers, one actually decent
quarter-pipe, and what I can only assume are objects to be avoided.

“Where’d you hear about
this?” she asks.

“Tonya’s kid’s skating
today,” I tell her. “She knows I skate and she wanted to know if I’d like to
come and show my support.”

“Stop doing that,” she
says.

“What?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“Forget it.”

“What?” I ask again. “Is
something bothering you? You’ve been avoiding me since that night at my house
and now you’re acting all weird.”

“It’s nothing,” she says.
“Let’s just watch the kids skate.”

We stand there quietly
for a little while as a surprisingly large group of people gather to watch
these kids tear it up on what are, for the most part, the sketchiest jumps,
rails and pipes I’ve ever seen.

Someone comes out and
gives a little introduction, explaining how the whole thing started and what it
means to have so many people come out to cheer the kids on and so on and so on.

“It was my dad, wasn’t
it?” I ask. “He wouldn’t tell me what you two were talking about, but I know
what kind of mood he was in. I hate it when he’s like that.”

“It wasn’t him,” she
says. “I just think that it might be best if we only got together to focus on
our project from now on.”

“You have me a little
confused then,” I tell her, but have to wait for the crowd to stop cheering as
the kids come out and start to skate.

“What do you mean?” she
asks loudly, still clapping her hands until one of the skaters, a little blond
kid with bits of curly hair coming out through the bottom of his helmet goes
racing straight into the wrong side of one of the kickers and does a rather
impressive, though clearly unintentional, flip and lands with one leg on the
slope of the kicker and the other knee coming up to hit him in the forehead.

I don’t know how nobody
expected any injuries tonight.

The kid cries loudly for
a minute, but just as his mom comes out to help him off the course, he grabs
his board and skates off, his face still almost maroon with embarrassment and
wet with tears.

“You said I confused
you,” Mia says when the whole scene is over and the mother wanders back off the
course, looking back repeatedly at her son, unsure whether she should let him
continue or not.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “You
told me that you think we should only see each other when it’s regarding our
project and yet here you are.”

“Yeah,” she says
distantly.

This isn’t how I saw
tonight going. I figured she’d be a little annoyed with me at first, then she’d
spit out whatever’s bothering her and we’d move on. So far, she only seems to
be concerned with being annoyed.

“Tell me about yourself,”
I say, hoping a different approach will do the trick.

“You know,” she says, “a
couple of those kids aren’t half bad. That one’s over there doing kick flips
and the one wearing the Spider-Man costume just did a nose manual.”

“Why don’t I ever see you
on a board?” I ask.

She turns and looks at
me, her mouth open a little. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well, you’re so into
skating, but I’ve never seen you on or even near a board,” I tell her. “Are you
just a fan girl or have you actually given it a shot?”

“A fan girl?” she asks.
“You think I’m a fan girl?”

“Aren’t you?” I ask.