The Accidentals(46)

“I can’t help it,” Aurora claims. “I’m very teecklish.”

There’s a knock on our door.

“Come in, Jake!” Aurora calls.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asks, opening the door.

“X-ray vision,” I supply. But who else would it be?

The smile he gives us is devilish. “Looks like I’m interrupting something kinky.”

“Oh, you wish,” Aurora scoffs. “Rachel, that looks fine. Really.”

“Well, you don’t make it easy.” I cap the polish and Aurora swings her legs onto our makeshift coffee table.

“Have a seat, Jake.”

He climbs past Aurora and sits in the middle. His T-shirt reads: Insufficient Memory. “Anyone have plans tonight? Hot dates?”

“We were going to look at the movie listings,” I say. My phone rings, and I get up to answer it.

“Don’t smear the polish!” Aurora calls.

I walked four steps on my heels while the phone continued its trill. “Hello?”

“Rae,” a soft voice says.

“Haze?”

He lets out a breath. “I just really needed to hear your voice.”

“Are you okay?” My friends are watching me from the couch.

“Yeah. I just really miss you.”

I give up on heel-walking and hurry into the bedroom. “I miss you too,” I say as I close the door.

“Liar.” He laughs gently. “You’re busy.”

“I have been busy. I should still have called you, though. But it’s good not to think too much about last year.”

His sigh is heavy. “Okay. I guess it would be. I could have called you too.”

An excellent point. “What’s new with you? How’s the job?”

“I found it, by the way. The worst job at the theme park.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Remember the race cars in Tomorrowland? I’ve been refueling them. No shade anywhere. And at the end of the day you smell like both sweat and diesel.”

“Oh Haze, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not so bad. The pay is awesome and my pass gets me into any park. I’ve been on Tower of Terror about a thousand times.”

There’s a knock on the bedroom door.

“Just a second.” I open it.

“We’re thinking of going to the hockey game instead of a movie,” Aurora says. “Is that okay with you?”

“Hockey? I guess. I’ll be right there.”

“Hockey?” Haze repeats. “That sounds fun.”

“Does it? I thought they fight.”

He laughs. “At your school? That would be some serious nerd-on-nerd violence. That I’d like to see.”

“When you put it that way, I guess it doesn’t sound so bad.”

“So. Do you have a boyfriend yet?”

“No.”

“You hesitated.”

“I did not.” But I don’t want to have this conversation.

“I know you’re far away, Rachel. But I think about you all the time.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s the only reply I can give that’s both true and also kind.

“Naw. Don’t be. Have fun at the hockey game. And call me sometime.”

“I will,” I promise, hoping I’d follow through.

When I come out of the bedroom, Jake’s eyes follow me across the room.

“Who was that?” Aurora asks.

“My best friend from Florida.”

Jake stands up. “I’m going to get my coat. Face-off is in half an hour.”





“Come, on, SHOOT! Aw!” Jake collapses back into his seat.

Aurora and I exchange amused glances. Who knew that our favorite astronomer could get so worked up over sports?

There are two minutes left in the game. When Jake told me there were three periods, I didn’t believe him at first.

“Of course there’s three,” he says. “Why is that weird?”

“I’m from football country. We like even numbers.”

“Hockey players have enormous backsides,” Aurora points out.

“That’s padding. They’re basically, like, bubble wrapped in there— NOOO!”

Jake, and half the other people in the student section, stand up to peer at our goal. “Phew. That was close. Our goalie should get the Medal of Honor.”

“I need some of that padding,” Aurora complains. “My derriere is cold.”

“We’ll have to toughen up the girls from Spain and Florida,” Jake says, his eyes trained on the ice.

“Women,” corrects Aurora.

“Right, just like I said. GET HIM!” Jake shouts.

I’m enjoying the view, and I don’t mean the game. Jake’s cheeks are flushed, and there’s a solidness to him that appeals to me. Sometimes when I look at the sturdy slope from his neck to his shoulder, I wondered how it would feel to rest my hand there.

Aurora catches me watching him. She winks.

Oops. I turn my attention to the rink. “It’s probably a bad sign that most of the game has been played in front of our goal, huh?”