Page 16 of Finding Her

poppy

“Are you sure we’re allowed to be in here?” I asked Lilah as we made our way through the long hallways of the second athletic building. I’d been here a few times last year to go to the pool, but I’d never been on this end of the building, where the ice rink was.

“Of course we are,” Lilah said. Her blonde ponytail swung as she led the way confidently. I glanced at Saylor, who was walking just behind me, but she just shrugged.

“I don’t know if we’re supposed to be here, but I don’t think we’ll get in trouble either,” she said. “If they don’t want us here, they’ll ask us to leave no big deal.”

I guess she was right. What was the worst that could happen?

Lilah had come up with a brilliant plan that to win Bear over, I needed to show him that we have the same interests.

So she decided that I should go to his hockey practice and watch him.

I found it a little bit bizarre to make him think that I had the same interests as him when really I didn’t understand hockey in the slightest, but she insisted, and as always, what Lilah wanted, she got.

It was starting to feel like everything in Lilah’s life was about getting me to win the stupid bet that she had started.

I still couldn’t believe that I’d let her egg me on until I agreed to the bet with Claire, when it was the last thing I wanted to do.

But it wasn’t like I could completely blame her, either.

I’d had the chance to step away and I didn’t take it, so now I was stuck living with the consequences.

“Lilah, are you sure about this?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t want to make him think that I’m someone I’m not.”

“You’re not making him think you’re someone that you’re not,” Lilah sighed. “You’re just showing him that you could be interested in hockey if that was something he wanted.”

“He doesn’t want a girlfriend at all,” I insisted. My voice echoed through the empty, cavernous hallway, and Lilah glanced back at me, looking very unimpressed.

“Every boy wants a girlfriend,” she said. “And if they don’t, they just don’t realize that they want a girlfriend yet.”

It just seemed rude to assume that. Like she thought he was too stupid to know whether he wanted a girlfriend or that he couldn’t make up his mind on that himself.

But maybe she wasn’t wrong about him wanting a girlfriend.

Maybe, he did want one and he just hadn’t found the right girl yet.

But did that make what we were doing any better?

I was still trying to trick him into asking me, full well knowing that I wasn’t interested.

Sure, he was hot, a hockey player, and very eligible—but none of that could account for romantic chemistry, right?

Even if I did find myself staring at him sometimes, it wasn’t like it was actual attraction.

I was just curious about him. Curious about what he was like. That didn’t mean anything at all.

“What do you think about this, Saylor?” I asked, glancing at her. But her gaze was fixed on something far off in the distance and it seemed like she hadn’t heard me at all.

Lilah pushed open the double doors that led to the bleachers of the ice rink. She pushed it open slowly, her face all scrunched up like she was terrified that if it made a single creak then we would be busted, then waited for Saylor and me to go ahead before closing it silently behind us as well.

She didn’t need to worry so much, though.

Nobody could hear us over the hockey practice, with skates slicing through the ice, pucks hitting the boards, and coaches yelling.

Still, we stuck to the upper levels of the bleachers, deciding that it was probably best that nobody noticed us until closer to the end of the practice.

Of course, Lilah’s hope here was that Bear would notice me watching and like me because of it, but we also didn’t want to be seen too soon if his coaches didn’t want us here.

It would be mortifying to get kicked out.

I crossed my arms, trying to keep myself warm as I got used to the cold temperature of the rink.

I’d never been into skating so I never really spent much time in ice rinks.

I wasn’t used to the unnatural cold of them, especially when we just came from outside, where it still felt like summer.

I’d worn a sweater and jeans, but it wasn’t really warm enough for this.

“I never understood the appeal of hockey,” Saylor said. I had to agree with her, although I would never say it out loud. Canadians took hockey very seriously, Hartwell students even more so than the average citizen, and I didn’t want to be torn apart for having the apparently wrong opinion.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked her.

Her dad was a hockey coach—which I thought was heavily correlated with her hatred of the sport—so she probably had a leg up on us understanding anything that was going on, because I couldn’t make heads or tails of the way they were all maneuvering on the ice.

She shrugged with one shoulder. “Just some drill.” Her brows knitted together. “Which one do you think is Crossy?”

“Who cares about Crossy?” Lilah asked. “I’m looking for Bear.”

I was a little surprised by the question as well, since she’d been so cold toward Crossy the other day at the beach. She seemed very annoyed that he came over to talk to us and had zero interest in talking to him.

“He’s the one in the back corner,” Saylor said dismissively.

“Bear or Crossy?” I asked as I looked over.

“Bear,” Saylor said. “Can’t you tell?”

I squinted as the boy came whipping around the side of the ice and went back to line up with the other boys.

It was hard to tell any of them apart with their helmets and matching training shirts, but I guess I could see what she meant.

He was taller than the rest of the guys, and he just had a certain build around him, a certain aura.

I guess it was easy to see who he was without any identifying features.

“He does look fine in that uniform, doesn’t he?” Lilah sighed dreamily.

My stomach twisted weirdly at her words, hating that she was right.

I mean, he was really hot and he did look phenomenal in the tight shirt.

But I didn’t want her to be the one pointing it out.

As the girl he was supposed to be falling for, shouldn’t I have been the one to say something?

If Lilah liked him so much, why didn’t she step up for this bet instead of me?

Because he didn’t like her, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.

It was a rude thing to think, although not entirely inaccurate.

When Lilah had come by my locker the other day, he had barely even glanced at her—but he had spoken to me.

And sure, we may have only had three interactions in total that could be counted as conversations, but it was still more than Lilah had.

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure why so much of the time I viewed her as my competition.

It wasn’t fair to her. She was my friend, my roommate, and she had gone out of her way to be nice to me, to be friends with me.

So why was it that I felt like I was just constantly pushing her away?

We hadn't gotten off to a great start with her dumping water on my face to wake me up on the first day of school, but it only happened the one time. And even if I didn’t appreciate that she had told everyone about Levi letting me call him Bear, and subsequently starting this whole mess, I had to admit that she was going very far out of her way to help me right now.

So why did I hate that she found him cute too, just like every girl at school did?

A sharp whistle blew through the air. I slammed my hands over my ears belatedly, and watched as all the boys moved to stand in a line, facing their coach.

We were too far up to really hear what was going on, but it was clear that he was giving them some sort of end-of-practice speech about something as they all nodded along and hit their sticks against the ice.

“Come on,” Lilah hissed to me. She started to lead the way down the steps, with me and Saylor trailing behind her.

I was still worried about being seen, about how their coach would react to having us here, but nobody seemed to really notice as we reached the bottom step and sat down in the first row of seats—until the boys turned to skate off and Bear’s eyes locked with mine.

I’d already thought his brown eyes were darker than anybody else’s I’d ever met, but they looked black now as he narrowed his eyes at me.

I just smiled and waved back. Bear looked like he was planning to skate off the ice as fast as his skates would take him, but then suddenly his coach grabbed his arm and started to pull him towards us.

“Busted,” Lilah said in a sing-song voice.

As they came closer, I recognized his coach from the first day of school. He was the one who had shoved Bear into the class. I grinned as I remembered the way he had looked so amused, while Bear looked like he wanted to die. It was very similar to their expressions now.

“Hello, ladies,” his coach said. Bear yanked his arm out of his coach’s grip, but he didn’t try to skate away as they both came to a stop at the boards. The coach tilted his head toward Bear. “You here to see this one?”

“Oh, we just came to watch,” I said awkwardly. “You know, we really like hockey.”

My voice sounded unconvincing even to my own ears, but the coach just smiled good-naturedly like he thought it was funny that we had randomly showed up and crashed his practice.

“You’re his partner, right?” he asked. When I blinked, he said, “In gym. Mrs. Dixon was telling me about it.”

“Uh, yes sir, I am.”

“Well, I just want to let you know that he’s not as bad as he seems.” He clapped a heavy hand on Bear’s shoulder. “He puts on a mean face, but he’s really a sweetheart inside.”

Bear scowled at his coach, but he ignored him with an ever-growing smile on his face. I had a feeling it was a learned skill.

“And I think it’s very commendable of you to be able to put up with him and not complain.”

That made me genuinely laugh. “Oh, I don’t mind. I’m curious to see how long it will take me to soften him up. I’ve been told it’s my superpower.”

His coach laughed. “I guess we’ll see. I can already tell you one superpower you have—I’ve seen the two of you on the track during your gym class, and he never seems to run faster than when he’s trying to get away from you. Maybe I should get you to come by all our training practices.”

Saylor and Lilah were in hysterics at this point, while I was trying to hold my laughter in. Bear looked like he was about to commit murder.

“Well, I’ll leave you kids to it. I’ve got some work to do.” He skated off, leaving Bear with us. Bear was a statue as he stood before us, his ever-present scowl on his face.

“Why are you here?” He asked in a gruff tone.

I shrugged. “Like I said, I just wanted to. I like hockey.”

“Then come to our games.”

“Why not both?” I asked innocently.

We stared at each other, neither one folding, for almost a full minute. Then he suddenly pushed away from the boards and said, “I need to shower. I’ll see you in class.”

It was a clear dismissal, and if I had any hopes about seeing him after he got changed, I was dead wrong. Good thing I hadn’t been hoping too much.

Lilah looked at me and said, “He is so into you.”