Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (76 page)

“I’m just talking to
people,” she says. “Why, is that a problem?”

“You can talk to whoever
you want,” I tell her. “That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

“What then?” she asks. “I
was kind of in the middle of a conversation there.”

“My dad kicked me out
last night,” I tell her. “It happened after I got in a fight with Rob—long
story. Anyway, I’m going to be bunking with Rob for a little bit, and—”

“Hold on,” she says, “you
got into a fight with Rob yesterday and now you’re staying at his place? How’d
you manage that one?”

“Sometimes the best thing
two guys can do for a friendship is take a few minutes and beat the shit out of
each other,” I tell her. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s a good enough
explanation. “I really couldn’t explain it if I wanted to, but it’s kind of a
bonding thing.”

“I’ve seen guys get in
fights and still want to kill the other person,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s different,”
I tell her. “This was just a spat—it doesn’t matter. Anyway, as screwed up as
that might seem, I’m free. I don’t have to worry about what my dad wants from
my life anymore, I can just start living it.”

“That’s great?” she says,
furrowing her brow. “I’m really happy for you?”

“What happened, Mia?” I
ask. “I know Rob talked to you, but that shouldn’t change what we have.”

“What
do
we have?” she asks.

I stepped in it there.
Now I’ve got to make a quick decision between something trite, but possibly
charming, or something more real, but also less inspiring.

“Potential,” I tell her.
“I don’t know about you, but I think we were pretty great together.”

“Yeah, we weren’t really
together long enough not to be,” she says. “Look, it wasn’t going to work out,
so why drag it out? Talk to your dad, maybe he’ll let you go back home. Guy
thing or not, it’s got to be a little awkward crashing with someone who made
your face look like that.”

“Yeah, I’m not
particularly attractive at the moment, am I?” I ask.

She looks away and
doesn’t answer.

“Whatever the problem
is,” I tell her, “we can work it out. I know you were worried about my dad
cutting me off, but he was going to do that anyway. I’m twenty-one, it’s time I
was on my own anyway.”

“Not really on your own,
though, are you?” she asks.

“It’s been less than a
day,” I tell her. “Give me at least a week to buy a house and get a staff
going.”

“I’m really not in the
mood for this,” she says. “We’re just too different. It’s not going to work.”

“We’re
not
different, though,” I tell her. “The
same things turn us on. We turn each other on, too. I don’t know where it’ll
go, but I’d like to find out; wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe we’re
too
alike then,” she says. “Whatever it
is, I’m sorry, Ian, but it’s just not going to happen. I don’t regret anything,
but I think it’d be best for both of us if we just move on.”

“Mia, come on, we can
talk about…” I start, but she’s already walking away.

I guess that’s that,
then.

Chapter
Thirteen

Giving up and Dropping In

Mia

The worst thing about
sitting in front of someone you were very recently in an almost-relationship
with is that it’s impossible to get the kind of space necessary to get past it.

Right now, I’m charging
Ian heavily for the fact that I can’t get away from him, and I don’t really
care that it’s not his fault.

Still, we have a project
to do, and I’m not going to be able to get all of this work done by myself.

So, I’m sitting here,
waiting—as usual—for Ian to show up. Today, I thought it would be a good idea
to go somewhere entirely neutral, somewhere we hadn’t been together.

Also, I’m a big fan of
frozen yogurt.

Ian comes in, and I’m
already halfway through my chocolate with cookie dough, but I get up and walk
over to him so I can stand in line for a refill.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I respond.

That’s pretty much it
until we’re at the counter.

The fact that I have to
meet with Ian is like the fact that I have to sit in front of him, and so I
decide to enact my own little bit of justice by ordering first.

“Yeah, could I just get
another one of these?” I ask. “Medium chocolate with cookie dough?”

“Sure thing,” the woman
behind the counter says and goes to reach for my cup, but I pull it back and
produce a spoonful of brown, drippy goodness to show her I’m not quite done
with my first.

Ian doesn’t say anything.

The woman comes back a
minute later with a new cup of yogurt, overflowing with cookie dough to the
point that I have to eat a few bits of it along the rim to make sure I’m not
going to pull a Hansel and Gretel on the way back to my booth.

I pay the woman and don’t
wait for Ian.

By the time he’s to the
table, I’m starting on my second serving.

“You just wanted a
drink?” I ask.

“Let’s just get this over
with,” he says.

“My, my, my,” I mock,
“someone’s in a mood.”

“If you were having a
problem with something, why didn’t you just talk to me about it instead of
breaking things off like that?” he asks. “I really liked you, you know?”

“I told you, it just
wasn’t going to work,” I respond.

I had this dream of
getting together with Ian and the topic of us as a sexual item not coming up
once. It was a nice dream.

“I don’t even know what
did it,” he says. “You won’t tell me. You won’t talk to me. When I’m walking
past you in class on my way to my seat, you won’t even look at me. I guess I
just never took you for the manipulative, stuck-up type.”

Even knowing full well
that he’s just trying to get under my skin, I’m shaking with adrenaline and my
face is so hot, it’s almost burning.

“I get that you’re butt
hurt that I dumped you or whatever,” I tell him, “but really? Name calling? Is
that how you think we’re going to get through this with the least possible
amount of bullshit?”

“Hey,” he says, “we’re in
public. Watch your language.”

With that, I’m flat out
pissed.

“You don’t listen,” I
tell him. “That’s your whole damn problem. You have open doors in every
direction, and if you’d just open your ears and your mind, you’d be doing just
the most amazing things, but all you can do is skate and hate on me. Well, you
can be mad if you want, but I’m not going to tolerate this sort of behavior,
even if we—”

“Hold on,” he interrupts,
“you’re not going to ‘tolerate this sort of behavior?’ Who are you, my mom?”

“It’s kind of hard not to
act like a mom when the person you’re talking to insists on acting like a
child,” she says.

“You know, maybe you were
right back at the park,” he says. “Maybe we
are
too different. You’re trying to live like your life’s already most of the way
over and I’m trying to live like I’ve got a little bit more of it in front of
me.”

I sigh and rub my
temples.

“Ian,” I start, “the
problem is that you’ve got every opportunity and you just blow it. Have you
figured out what you’re going to do in the vert competition? Have you even
managed to drop in yet, or are you going to hope for a game-day miracle?”

“Just get the hell out of
my head,” he says.

“What does that even
mean?” I shout.

It doesn’t really occur
to me until the shout, but we’ve been pretty loud for a while, now. This
appears to have drawn the attention of pretty much everyone in the frozen
yogurt shop.

Ian, however, doesn’t
seem so aware of the shift in the room.

“You tell me that you
don’t want to be with me, then you sneak into my room and we have sex three
times over the course of eight hours, and then you don’t want to be with me
again,” he says. “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the problem has
nothing to do with me?”

“I never said it was all
your fault,” I tell him, shielding the half of my face closest to the open
restaurant. “Let’s just talk about this later.”

“Excuse me,” a strange
voice says, and I look up.

A tall man with a
mustache and a tie is standing over the table.

“This is a
family-friendly establishment, so I’m going to have to ask the two of you to
take it elsewhere,” he says.

“You’re kicking us out?”
I ask, more confused than anything.

“I would like you both to
leave,” the man says, putting his hands on his hips. “Right now.”

“Whatever,” Ian says,
getting up from the booth. “We’re leaving.”

I get up, unable to close
my mouth, though I do manage to grab what’s left of my yogurt, and I follow Ian
out of the shop.

It’s not entirely clear
whether we’re still going to try to get the final bit of planning done tonight,
or if the smart move is to just go home and start cold-calling people to ask
them if they have any prejudices that might fit my study. That being the case,
I walk more near Ian than by him, just waiting for him to tell me to get the
hell away from him.

I don’t know what caused
me to curse like that in the yogurt shop, but it was actually kind of
liberating to just forget about everyone else and lace into somebody.

“I’ve got to tell you,” I
say to him, “I’m still pretty pissed at you, but it was pretty bad ass, us
getting kicked out like that.”

He doesn’t respond.

“I know we both kind of
flew off the handle back there, but I still think we can work together and get
this project done if we just sit down and do it and, you know, maybe try a
little extra hard not to piss each other off,” I say.

Oh, come on. I’m being
really conciliatory right now.

Finally, I get to the
point where I’m feeling really strange walking, and I ask, “Are we going to try
to figure some stuff out, or should I just give up for the night?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Hey, you’re talking to
me,” I say, falling a little short of the cuteness I was hoping to inject as a
diffuser. “That’s some progress.”

For a while, we just
walk.

The awkwardness dies down
after a while, and it’s actually a little cathartic walking. We’re not talking.
That probably has something to do with the peace of the moment.

“Where are we going?” I
ask.

“I’m picking up my board
and heading to the skate park,” he says. “I don’t think I’m going to be
bringing back the gold, but I at least want to try to make a good showing.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Is that
something you wanted to do on your own, or—”

“You can come if you
want,” he says. “I’m just on a schedule these last two weeks, and I have to get
my time in at the park every day.”

“Doesn’t really seem like
you scheduled much time for our little meeting of the minds,” I observe.

“I kind of figured it’d
go the way it went,” he says. “It’s been a while since I’ve been kicked out of
somewhere, though. It’s good to know I haven’t lost my chops.”

“It doesn’t really seem
that hard,” I say, faking a chortle. “All we had to do was sit down and try to
talk to each other in a civil way.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Have you thought about
maybe just backing out of the Midwest competition?” I ask. “I’m really not
trying to be mean here, but if you can’t get a score out of vert, are you even
going to be able to place?”

“It’s really not an
option,” he says. “I have to try for the sponsorship.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I know I’m not going to
win,” he says. “I’m not stupid. Even with time on the board like I have, you
can’t take up a whole new discipline and expect to have it down well enough in
two weeks to pass up some of the best unknowns in the country. It’s just—I have
to try.”

“Why?” I ask. “It’s going
to hurt you more than it’ll help you if you’re on ESPN, falling on your face.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m not
looking forward to that part.”

We come up to a house and
Ian says, “Wait here,” before going inside.

It’s funny, even being so
uncomfortable around Ian right now, while he was walking with me I didn’t even
notice that we’d ended up in a really bad part of town. There aren’t really any
parts of town where you’ll get shot just for going there, but when we’re on the
news for something violent, the vans and the cameras they bring are almost
always parked in this four-or-five-block radius.

Ian comes back out after
a minute and we start walking in the direction of the skate park.

“Don’t take this the
wrong way,” he says, “but what are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” I
ask.

“I know I’m not your
favorite person right now,” he says. “Why do you still want to walk with me?”

“It’s something to do,” I
tell him. “I blocked out a couple of hours for us to work on getting this thing
finalized before we start doing interviews next week. Really, we should have
had that done a while ago. Now we’re not going to have a lot of time to
extrapolate from the data.”

“Have you ever noticed
how scientists really love saying ‘these data?’” he asks.

“What?”

“Data is both the
singular and plural form of the word, right?” he asks. “Whenever any scientist
is giving a lecture or an interview or speaking casually with someone, at some
point, the phrase, ‘these data’ is bound to come out of their mouth. Do you
think it’s a status thing, like people who aren’t scientists don’t really use
it, therefore it’s a sign that you’re in the club if you do sort of thing?”

“Why
am
I still walking with you?” I laugh.

“Hey, I know we haven’t
really been getting together as often as we were going to and all that, but I
was wondering if you’d still be all right handling most of those interviews,”
he says. “With the competition coming up and everything—”

“No,” I interrupt. “I’m
not going to let you capitalize on how weird our situation is by making me do
your work for you. How about you do about half and I’ll do about half?”

“It’s just, this
competition’s different, you know,” he says. “There’s a lot more on the line. I
mean, you enter any amateur competition, there’s always a chance someone’s in
the crows that can do something for your career, but they’re flat out offering
a killer sponsorship here. That could be the boost I need to push me into pro
status.”

“I know that’s a big deal
and everything, but you’re acting like this is your last shot,” I tell him.
“Why not skip this competition and wait for one that’s not going to make you do
vert in order to get what you want?”

“I don’t know how much
time I have,” he blurts. Before I can respond or even fully process the statement,
though, he’s on his board and skating off ahead of me.

The park’s still about
half a mile from here, but I just keep walking after him.

I told my dad about Ian
and I breaking up. He was so thrilled that he took me out for a nice, fancy
dinner at the local fast food establishment.

There’s no good reason
for me to keep walking after Ian—he’s not turning around—but I just keep going.

I didn’t tell my dad that
I cried the night I broke it off with Ian.

Maybe it should change
things that his dad pulled the trigger and cut him off, but I’ve got to believe
there’s some way for the two of them to mend fences. Yeah, his dad’s a prick,
but he’s still family. That’s how it goes.

About ten minutes pass in
the cool evening air, and I can hear the sound of Ian’s wheels on cement before
the skate park comes into view.

Ian’s there, doing grab
tricks down the six-stair set, and I just watch him as I come closer, trying to
organize things in my head enough to at least be able to say something when I
get over to him.