Текст книги " Bittersweet"

Автор книги: Sarah Ockler

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Three

No One Wants to Kiss a Girl Who Smells Like Bacon, So I Might as Well Get Fat Cupcakes

Double-chocolate cupcakes served warm in a sugar-butter reduction; piped with icing braids of peanut butter, cream cheese, and fudge; and sprinkled with chocolate chips

Saturday breakfast is in full swing when I get back, bacon popping on Trick’s grill like cholesterol was just recategorized as an essential nutrient by the food pyramid people. If I don’t already smell, T minus ten minutes to maximum porkaliciousness.

“There’s my girl,” Trick says as I throw my stuff into the staff closet and change into my kitchen sneakers. “Thought you went out lookin’ for a new man.”

“Nah. You know you’re the only man in my life.” I laugh, but it’s basically true, and not in a dirty-old-man way, either.

Trick smiles from beneath his Buffalo Sabres cap, dark brown skin crinkling around his eyes. “Hey, take that box in the office for your brother tonight. I found a bunch of computer parts for his school thing—he left before I could tell him.”

“It’s not for school.” I wash my hands and dig out my frosting gear. “He’s building a robot playmate. Says he—”

“Finally!” Dani pushes through the kitchen doors and sticks an order ticket into the strip over the grill. The top of her retro lavender Hurley Girl dress is splattered with the morning’s sludge. “You’re never that long on break. Where’ve you been?”

“Nowhere.” I tie a semi-clean apron around my waist and look at Trick. His back is turned for the moment, but his ears have multidirectional sonar capability and his mouth is even bigger than his heart.

“All right,” she says, taking the hint. “Get started on those cupcakes while I do a flyby on my tables. Smoke break in fifteen?”

I nod. We don’t smoke, but we break. It’s all very complicated.

Fifteen minutes later we’re out in the trash alcove otherwise known as the smoking lounge, warming our hands in the heat leaking through the propped-open back door.

She stamps her feet to chase away the ice-blue air. “Spill it,” she says. “Quick. My equatorial ass can’t handle this cold.”

“I ran into Josh Blackthorn from school. We sort of …” Pow! I slam my palms together like Josh did earlier, imitating our crash.

“Hold up—you did it? With the hockey captain? On your break? What the—”

“No! We crashed on the ice at Fillmore. I was skating. Fully clothed. Besides, I totally reek.” I pull my red-blond ponytail across my face for a whiff. “No one wants to do it with a chick who smells like bacon.”

Her brow creases. “Everybody loves bacon.”

“Not as a signature scent.”

“True, but some people—wait. You went skating with Josh Blackthorn?”

I play with the zipper on my jacket, yanking it up and down. Voop. Voop. Voop-voop-voop. “Not exactly.”

Her eyes narrow. When it comes to my on-again, off-again affair with the ice, Dani knows the highlights, but we don’t talk about it much. She and I got close during the post-skating part of my life, right after Mom, Bug, and I moved to the apartment near her house.

She taps my foot with hers. “Hud, why are you acting all, like, twitchy? What’s going on?”

I let out a long, slow breath, remembering how alive I felt today on the ice. I think about the Capriani Cup and the warmth that rises up inside when I land the perfect jump, make the hard turns, nail my favorite moves, even all these years later.

And then I remember Josh Blackthorn’s hand brushing the hair from my face.

“Hudson?” Dani asks again, her big, copper-penny eyes searching mine.

“Danielle!” Trick shouts from the kitchen. “Two steak-and-egg specials up for table three!”

“Get Carly to run it!” Dani shouts back. “Sorry. Talk to me, girl. I’m freezing my—”

“Listen.” I grab the front of her jacket, pushing out the words in a half-frozen jumble. “I got an invitation in the mail today … this thing … and after all that stuff from three years ago, and Dad, and Shelvis, and crashing into Josh, something hit me. I think I’ve been … I don’t know. Something’s just … missing. I might—”

“Oh no. Don’t even say it. You’re totally crushing on the hockey boy, aren’t you? Jeez. How hard did you hit your head?”

I swat her hand away from my forehead. “I’m not crushing—”

“Trust me. I know hot and bothered when I see it.”

“Bothered, maybe. By you. You read too many books, you know that? This isn’t How I Met My Half-Naked Pirate Hottie.” I look down at the pavement. “Not even close.”

“First of all, it’s called Treasure of Love, and there’s no such thing as too many books. And anyway, you’re totally blushing. What is it with you and hockey captains? First Will Harper, and now his number two? This is bad news, baby. Bad.”

“Will doesn’t count,” I say firmly. Will Harper became my first kiss when a rousing match of Seven Minutes in Heaven forced us into someone’s basement closet a million years ago—way before his hockey captain days. Honestly, it’s not like the stars aligned or anything. Before my brain could catch up to the breaking news of what was happening on my lips, the closet door opened, the light spilled in, and we broke apart. Some guy high-fived Will and everything smelled like Cheetos and root beer and that was pretty much it. “It was just a stupid eighth-grade party game.”

“That’s because he never spoke to you again.”

“Well, Josh isn’t like Will. Josh seems really sweet, and he’s—never mind. How did we get on Josh?”

“Who got on Josh? I certainly didn’t. Did you?”

I smack her arm. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Look, just because your father’s a grade A jackass—”

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” Dani tugs on one of her curls, wrapping it around her finger. “I mean, just because your parents’ relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean all relationships are doomed.”

“Crashing into someone on the ice doesn’t make a relationship.”

“No?” She smiles, her cheeks glowing like smooth red plums. “Maybe you just need to get—”

“Dani!” Trick again. “These cows are well-done, sweetheart,” he calls from over the grill, all sizzle-sizzle, scrape-scrape, metal-on-metal. “Ain’t gonna run themselves. Carly’s got her hands full.”

Dani waves him off. “As I was saying … wait, you’re bright red! Oh, if Josh could see you now. He’d be all over it.” She belts out a not-so-kid-friendly, not-so-in-tune rendition of the sittin’-in-a-tree song.

“Highly unlikely,” I say. The impassioned skating speech queued up in my head starts to lose steam, my thoughts getting stuck all over Josh and that sincere, post-crash, blue-eyed apology and hot chocolate fantasy.

“Highly likely. You look hot today, sweets.”

“No way. My ass is especially huge in my winter gear.”

“Shut up! You have a great ass. I’d kill for a piece of that.” She tries to grab a handful, but I dodge, zipping my jacket all the way up before I go hypothermic. She tries for another grab, but I slap her hand, and when she looks up at the sky and laughs, her shoulders shake and her breath puffs out in big white clouds. Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” comes on Trick’s radio, and I reach for her hands and spin her around, the two of us singing and dancing by the Dumpster under the bright gray November sky.

Even with her off-key voice and the subzero winter air, when it’s like this, I don’t notice the cold. I don’t hear the wind howling through the empty spaces. I don’t feel like a small, broken-winged bird trapped in a rusty cage.

I just feel … home.

But it never lasts.

“Let’s go, sweet tarts!” Trick shouts. Something crashes to the floor in the kitchen—sounds like a tray of drinks. “And I mean yesterday. Carly’s in the weeds.”

“Be right in!” Dani calls back. “Man, these new girls. Might as well be working the floor myself. Hey, seriously … you okay? What were you saying about an invitation?”

“Oh … junk mail from an old skating thing.” I wave away the words, ignoring the imaginary burn of the foundation letter in my jacket, hot against my ribs. “I’m good.”

Dani looks at me a moment longer, squinting as if the truth is as easily read as that Cupcake Queen article behind the register. “You know I didn’t mean to trash-talk your dad, right?”

“I know.” I slide my sneaker back and forth over a patch of ice on the ground. “Go ahead. I’ll be right in.”

She sighs, checks the bobby pins in her hair, and straightens the half apron beneath her coat. “Don’t freeze that sweet, bacon-lovin’ ass out here, ’kay?”

“I won’t. Smoke break’s almost over.”

“Good. And don’t forget about the rest of those cupcakes, either. There’s more buttercream in my future, and you’re not about to go messin’ that up. Sure you’re cool?”

“Totally.” I flash her my pearly whites to prove it.

Dani scoots back inside and I blow my breath into the air, exhaling all of life’s b.s. in a long white sigh. As Buddy Guy sings out over the grill, I close my eyes and lean sideways against the bricks and pretend I’m in some swanky nightclub, hip jutting forward, elbow on the bar, tapping out the long ash from my cigarette. Ladies and gentlemen, this next song goes out to Hudson Avery, the lovely lady who breaks my heart every time she walks through that door.

Guitar.

Horns.

Bass.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Cue those smoldering vocals.

I been downhearted baby, ever since the day we met …

The alto sax blows and the guitar moans and here behind Hurley’s, a few miles down the hill and across the highway, that old Erie Atlantic train starts up the track, light floating over the engine like some kind of fairy godmother. Ten-oh-five, right on schedule, far away and sad as the sound stretches and bends its way through the approaching storm. Who knows where it goes, but sometimes, when the wheels screech against the tracks and the red lights flash along the crossways, I think about hitching a ride on a coal car just to find out. Then I wouldn’t need a parallel universe and a skating scholarship to get out of here.

“Hudson? You out there?” Mom pokes her head out the back door, her static-ridden hair now pulled into an old scrunchie. “Third toilet’s clogged again.”

“Ma, we really need to have that thing fixed.”

She blows a loose strand from her face. “I know. But I’m in the middle of the dairy inventory. We’ll call the guy next week, okay?”

“No problem.” So now I’m a plumber? Awesome. The only thing that could make my life even more awesome is if Josh and the whole pack of Watonka Wolves march in for lunch just as I’m emerging from the bathroom in my little baker’s apron, shirt collar flipped up, hair tousled, restaurant-grade toilet plunger in hand, all kinds of black-rubber-gloves-to-the-elbows sexy.

The train whistle blows like a snowbird into the dead sky and I lean forward on my tiptoes, heels scraping up on the bricks. Whoooo. Whoooo. It’s not that far, those few miles. I can make it, I think, if I’m careful and the hill isn’t too icy. If not today, tomorrow for sure. I’ll pack my wool socks and wear my big snow-stompin’ boots and stash my stuff out here behind the Dumpster. When I come out for my nonsmoke break I’ll snatch up my backpack and ice skates and go, run, dodge, break, hit it, straight for the fairy godmother lamplight on the ten-oh-five, black coal train to nowhere.

Cue those smoldering vocals.

Ever since the day we met …

“Hudson, you still out there?” Mom rushes past the door again, a clipboard in her hand and a pen stuck behind her ear.

“Yeah! I mean, no! I … um … third toilet. Got it, Ma.” I stamp out the invisible cig with my standard-issue food service sneaker and hobble back through the doorway, careful not to put too much weight on my left hip, semi-throbbing from this morning’s two-part wipeout. If she sees me limping … no way. My former skating career was Dad’s project, and now that he’s gone, there’s an unwritten, don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in our apartment: Mom doesn’t ask me to share his dating narratives, and I don’t say anything that implies he was ever around in the first place.

“This joint’s about to get mad crazy.” Dani busts into the ladies’ room as I’m scrubbing toilet germs from my hands. “Carly’s having a meltdown. Girl can’t keep it together for five minutes out there.”

“What happened?”

“She dropped the F-bomb when that big party asked for separate checks, and now we’re comping their whole meal, so of course they all want more food. Their kids made a giant mess, half of them are screaming and eating crayons, and by the way, we’re in the middle of a bacon crisis.” Dani presses her fingers to her temples.

“You check the back freezer?” I ask, wondering how fast I can squeeze my so-called sweet ass out the little window over the first stall.

“We’re totally out.”

I close my eyes and magically transport myself to the rink in my parallel life, cool wind running its fingers through my hair as I pick up speed for a triple salchow. I whip my leg around and launch myself into the air over the ice, the world spinning away beneath me and back up again as I land like a feather on an eggshell.

Look at that landing! Incredible! And that form! Amazing!

Right. I shake off the impossible daydream and come back to reality. “Here’s what we do. Change the specials board to stuff with ham and sausage to get people off bacon. I’ll frost and box a bunch of Cherry Bombs for your big table—that should keep them from ordering off the menu and you can shoo them out before the lunch rush.”

Dani smiles, her shoulders relaxing. “Dude, this place would seriously self-destruct without you.” She reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “And it’s not just your cupcakes. You have—what’s wrong?”

“Cupcakes. I have a big birthday order tomorrow, and I just remembered I have to do two more batches for that stupid careers and hobbies thing in French. What are you doing for it? Photography?”

“Of course.”

“You figure out your final photo project yet?”

“Still thinking about it.” Dani hops up on the vanity counter, legs dangling over the edge. “The theme is passion, so of course everyone’s going for lovey-dovey.”

“Sounds right up your alley.”

“Nah, too predictable. Maybe I should bring in my nude self-portraits for French. Ooh la la! Madame Fromme would die!”

“It would serve her right.” I laugh. “I swear she only gave us that assignment so I’d bring her something from Hurley’s. I should do a plumbing demo instead.”

“That’d go over well.” Dani switches to a falsetto. “‘Mademoiselle Avery, où est les cupcakes? J’ai besoin des cupcakes!’”

“It’s les petit gâteaux. I looked it up.”

“Huh?”

“‘Cupcakes’ in French. Les petit—”

“Girls?” Mom barges into the bathroom, still clutching her clipboard. “I just sat three more tables, and Carly’s hyperventilating in the kitchen. Dani, I need you on the floor. Hud, Mrs. Zelasko called about her cupcakes—she wants to pick them up tonight instead of tomorrow. Can you stay late to finish?”

I reach over my batter-mixing shoulder to tighten my bra strap. I should just move in to this place. Set up a cot in back. Hang my clothes on the rack with the pots and pans. “Why not?”

“Thanks, hon. Oh, there’s a boy at table seventeen asking for you.” She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. “John something? No, Josh. Josh Black-something. Make it quick, okay?”

The ladies’ room door swishes closed behind her.

Dani smirks as I dig into my apron for some lip gloss and/or a cloak of invisibility. “Interesting development.”

“It’s a diner, Dani. People eat in them sometimes. Not that interesting.” I smear on the gloss and say all this like the inside parts of me haven’t turned into lime Jell-O. The prospect of talking to him was much less intimidating when he was driving away from me. “Maybe he’s just … craving the meat loaf?”

Dani hops off the counter and gives me the once-over. “Craving the meat loaf? Is that what the kids are calling it now?”

“This is really not funny.” I take another look at that window over the first stall, but my ass and I both know we won’t fit. “You have to cover for me.”

“You can’t hide in here all day.”

“I’m not hiding. Just go take his order and distract him while I break for the kitchen.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “All right. But if you’re not out in five, I’ll come out you myself.”

“Grilled cheese and tomato on rye, chocolate shake, and a side of you.” Dani breezes into the kitchen where I’m taking my sweet time boxing up those cupcakes for her big party. “Guess he wasn’t craving the meat loaf after all.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s not here to say stuff to me.”

“Dani—”

“Listen up, sugar smacks,” Trick says. I almost forgot he was here, standing at the other end of the prep counter with a butcher’s knife and his big sonar ears. “Better go talk to him before I do it for you.” He brings the blade down on an unsuspecting carrot with a thwack.

“You two suck, you know that?” I wipe my icing-covered hands on my apron and push through the doors.

“Heyyyy,” I say when I get to his table, clutching a notepad and pen as if his order isn’t already in. As if I’m a waitress. As if I even remember how to write stuff. Anyway.

Josh’s gaze slides up from the bottom of my apron, stopping to rest on my face. He smiles, but it’s different now—muted a little by the harsh lights of the diner.

I scratch a squiggly line onto the notepad. How many times has he seen me skate before today?

“I thought you were trying to escape back there,” he says, and I drop the pen.

“No! I was … um … on break. In the break room. There’s a lounge. Outside. Where we take our breaks. When we’re on break. I mean, we don’t have to go outside, but sometimes we do. Because there’s air out there and I didn’t … um … how are you? Everything okay?”

Where’s Dani with that milk shake? Why can’t that family in the next booth set their table on fire? I crouch down as delicately as I can to retrieve the pen.

“Oh, definitely,” he says. “I just … I feel bad about before. I wanted to check on you.” He rubs his head again, hair still messy and adorable. “No permanent damage, right?”

“Nah.” Just the temporary mental kind, causing my mind to wander dangerously into forbidden crush territory. “I’m totally okay, so enjoy your dinner. I mean lunch. Or … whatever.” I slip the notebook back into the pocket of my icing-smudged apron. I must look like a total freak show. “I’ll go find your waitress.”

“Wait,” he says, lowering his voice. “I wanted to talk to you about something before, but … can I ask a crazy favor?” He looks into his water glass and pokes the ice with a straw, shifting nervously in the booth.

“What’s up?” Need a kidney? Two of them? Where do I sign? I grab my pen again, just in case.

“When I saw you on the ice … you’re really good.” He looks straight at me this time, and the Jell-O formerly known as my bones wobbles. I wonder if he knows how amazing those eyes are. He must. That’s how he casts his magic, bone-wobbling spells on unsuspecting cupcake bakers.

“You used to compete, right?” he asks.

“Yeah, but I haven’t … it’s been a few years.” Now it’s my turn to shift nervously. I stare at the fresh Band-Aids around his index and middle fingers, knuckles undoubtedly scraped when we skidded across the ice this morning. His hands look strong and sure, clean but a little rough, and I imagine them sliding over the curves of my waist….

“Hud?” Mom calls from the front entrance, nodding toward the crowd that just piled in. “Can you help these folks, please?”

“Be right back,” I tell Josh. I seat three tables and cash out another while Dani delivers his lunch.

“How’s your sandwich?” I ask when I finally make it back. “Grilled cheese is awesome in the winter, isn’t it?”

“It’s awesome always.” He holds up half. “Want a bite?”

“I’ll make one later.”

“Cool. Listen, about that favor …” He bites his lower lip so lightly that I don’t think he knows he’s doing it. I stare. I can’t help it. I see the white edge of teeth against his lips, the thin shadow of stubble along his jaw, the blue sky in his eyes, and Parallel Hudson takes over.

What do you need, Josh? Just name it. Anything. I’m totally here for you.

I knew I could count on you, Hudson. The thing is … I don’t know if I’m a good kisser. It’s not the sort of thing you can figure out on your own, you know? So I was thinking, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, maybe you could kiss me, every day for a year, and then you can …

“Hudson?”

I meet his gaze, trying not to think about what it would be like to kiss him. Every day. For a year.

“Is it cool if we skate together sometime?” he asks. “Meet up at Fillmore, maybe you could show me some stuff?”

“What?” I laugh. “You’re the hockey captain. You could probably show me stuff.”

“Not technical moves. Why do you think the Wolves suck so hard? No technique. And don’t even get me started on our lame coach. Please? I’d owe you majorly.”

My brain starts to replay that cozy little café fantasy from before, but I shut it off. He’s not asking me out, he’s asking for skating lessons. Planning a solo program in my head was one thing, but skating with another person on my secret spot? Teaching him technique? Forming a team?

Josh folds and unfolds his napkin, and I click the pen inside my apron pocket. The foundation letter was like a seed that took root deep in my subconscious. Maybe I really am good enough to try again, I secretly thought. Maybe, with a little practice, I can get into shape and compete, score that prize. But Josh is asking for help, asking me to show him my moves, show him how it’s done. His favor isn’t a letter generated by a faceless machine, signed and sent out to an entire mailing list. It’s a real request, waiting for a real, face-to-face answer.

And I’m shrinking in the light of it.

He really could’ve asked me anything else—Can I have that kidney after all? Wanna give the kissing thing a go? Can you dismantle a bomb out on the thin ice of Lake Erie wearing nothing but a feathered bikini?—and it would’ve been easier for me to say yes.

I guess I’m not as ready as I thought.

“You doin’ okay over here, hon?” Dani appears like a rabbit pulled from a hat, setting a fresh glass of water on the table. The look she flashes me says it all: She heard our conversation, and now she’s waiting for my answer, just like he is.

“I’m good,” Josh tells her. He traces lines into the frosted edge of his glass with a fingertip, looking at me hopefully. “So it’s a date?”

“Sounds fun, but I can’t,” I say. Dani sighs behind me. “My schedule is kind of—”

“Hudson?” Mom’s voice cuts through the din again, this time from the window over the grill that looks out over the dining room counter. “What’s going on with Mrs. Zelasko’s order?”

“Coming,” I tell her. I turn back to Josh. “Sorry. I have to work. See you at school?”

“Of course,” he says. His voice is soft, but he flashes an animated smile. “I’ll try not to crash into you next time we meet.”

I laugh. “Thanks.”

I leave Josh with Dani and head back to cupcake central, the heavy doors swinging closed behind me. After checking Mrs. Z’s details in my order book, I set up fresh mixing gear on the prep counter and get to work.

Trick looks at me over his shoulder and winks. “What’s good, puddin’?”

I hold out a jar of Dutch cocoa for an answer, and he turns up the radio, letting Miles Davis do the talking as Team Diner spins into its bad-weather frenzy. Josh heads out. Other customers come and go. Mom, Dani, and a mostly useless Carly run back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room as Trick cranks out that home-cooked flavor, hot and fresh.

But me? I take my seat at the prep counter, lost in the solo pursuit of the perfect cupcake. It’s my place now, back of the house, out of the spotlight, exactly where I belong—no matter how adorable the hockey boy is.