Heart Thaw (17 page)

“Totally agree.” I shrug. “Sometimes I guess you can’t appreciate a good thing even when it’s right in front of you,” I say, echoing my mother’s advice.

Which I’m positive she did
not
say hoping I’d start wondering if I was guilty of doing that with Trent.

Georgia’s sigh moves a curl of hair out of her eyes.

“We’re probably going too hard on her anyway. She’s young. She’s passionate and she wants to explore a little.You only live once, right?”

There’s no bitterness woven in that last statement, even though Georgia has ever damn right to be bitter.

“Right.” I lean over and kiss her forehead. “Sleep tight, mama. Maybe we can go cruising tomorrow?”

Georgia nods around a yawn.

“Did you hear that Mark Rodnicky got a job as assistant principal at Newton?”

“Mark Rodnicky,” I say, shaking my head. “Assistant principal? Are you allowed to be an assistant principal when you got expelled your senior year?”

Georgia shrugs.

“Maybe they figure he knows the ins and outs of the disciplinary system firsthand?” She raises her eyebrows. “Anyway, I remember how you wanted to date him so badly when he came home to visit from college.”

“Mark Rodnicky?” I repeat like a stupid broken record. “Did I really? That must have been years ago.”

“I just think he’s a really good example of someone from Vernon who got his shit together, did the college bit, and came back to put down roots in his hometown. Sounds like an interesting life plan, right?”

“You’re such a dork.” I walk to the door. “I haven’t thought about Mark in years.”

“That’s because you haven’t seen his arms.” She hugs herself in her sleep. “Mmm. He’s the captain of the boys’ swim team or something, but his arms are like tree trunks. And his shoulders? He could pull a plow with those shoulders.”

I’m not about to tell Georgia that I find it way more attractive when a guy is lanky and long, shoulders just broad enough to be strong, but not muscle bound. How could you paint breath-taking murals on train trestles if your arms were too big and muscled?

“It sounds like
you
might have a thing for him,” I point out from the doorway.

“Um, yeah. Only even if I
did
want him for myself, I’m sure a successful, hot guy would be
so
into a dental assistant pregnant with someone else’s baby.”

This time there is a little bitterness in her words.

“Georgia,” I begin, but I can’t think of where to go.

“Nevermind. I’m just being grumpy. You, me, spying on Rodnicky sometime this month.” She rolls over and gives a huge fake yawn. “Go have fun. Keep an eye on the juvenile delinquents. You need to get out, Sadie. Experience new things. Before you become a petrified old biddie with a houseful of cats.”

I want to tell her that she’s going to meet an amazing guy. One who will love her and her baby. But she gives a fake snore, and I respect her need for privacy. We’ll be able to talk this month. I pull the door shut and press my ear against it.

This time it takes a few seconds before I hear the muffled sob of a woman I love more than anyone on earth.

My heart frosts over in my chest.

Chapter Eleven

A party is the last place I want to be tonight.

I feel a frigid sadness when I think of Mom and Georgia curled up crying in bed. I also feel a strange envy.

I don’t want to be brave, putting on a smile and acting like everything is great when nothing is. I don’t want to dance and mingle when I’d much rather crumple into the fetal position and cry. And there’s no way I want to be this close to Trent Toriello while I’m dealing with the fact that I’m going to have to give him up for good.

Even if he might be that good thing right in front of me I never bothered to notice.

Well, I’ve noticed. Damn, I’ve noticed.

“Now
this
is sexy,” Ella proclaims as I struggle to breathe.

She’s dragged me into her room and is pouring me into an outfit that’s too small, tight, and shiny for me to wear.

“Ella, there’s nothing wrong with what I was wearing,” I protest.

But I’m tired and Ella is relentless. She exhausts me into submission.

She snorts. “That shirt? I wouldn’t wear that to change tires at the shop.”

“Um, I hope not. It’s way too low cut and kind of fancy,” I say as she tosses shoes my way. “Your feet are smaller than mine,” I remind her.

“I know that,” she mutters, tugging at something in the dark recesses of her closet. She yanks twice, then falls out and onto her ass. “Ow! But look!”

“Cute, I guess,” I say, eyeing a pair a high-heeled thigh-high boots that look like something a low class call girl would wear.

“Cute
and
big enough to fit your monstrous feet!” Ella shakes her head back and forth, making the bells on her hat jingle. “There was this massive sale, and they didn’t have my size, so I just figured I’d stuff my feet into them or whatever. By the way, that doesn’t really work. Anyway, they’re like new.”

“They’re like death-traps,” I moan, but Ella is already pulling my sensible black flats off and pushing my feet into them. “El, how come you get to go looking like a normal sexy person, and I have to go looking like a street walker?”

“We’re both going as our own sexy selves,” Ella says, yanking me up by the elbow and marching me to her disaster of a dresser. She drags open the top drawer and starts pulling out tubes of mascara and lipstick. “Look, Ant’s gonna be there, and she digs the whole ‘soft butch’ thing. I’m a tiny bit more lipstick than her tastes run—”

“Wait a minute.” I put a hand up and grab Ella’s wrist as she’s about to coat my lashes with thick, black mascara. “Antonia wants you to change for her?”

I feel a hot, rageful fury bubble up from low in my gut.

“No!” Ella exclaims way too fast, indicating for me to shut my eyes so she can line them in some incredibly smoky eye pencil. “Not change as in change who I
am
. It’s just, you know, as dominant as she can be personality-wise, she likes to be super-lipstick looks wise, and she’s attracted to me and all, but—”

The second Ella pulls the eyeshadow brush away, I pop my eyes open so I can glare at her.

“Are you freaking kidding me? Are you
kidding
me? After the shit you gave me about Jace? Are you seriously going to put up with this from Antonia?”

Ella presses her lips tight and grabs a blush. She starts to put way too much on my cheekbones, using such aggressive strokes, I’m positive I’ll look like an enthusiastic circus clown did my makeup.

“It’s not putting up with shit, Sadie, okay? It’s just doing something you know your partner will like. Like if your boyfriend liked you to wear heels or your hair long.”

“Um, if my partner liked either of those things, I’d definitely only do them if
I
wanted to,” I say, but she stops slathering on mascara and makes me shut up by waving a bright red lipstick in my face.

I sigh in advance over how I’m going to have to wipe half of this off my face before we leave.

“
I do want to
,” she hisses, swiping the color on my lips and plugging in the curling iron she finds next to a Nerf crossbow and what may or may not be a pink metallic vibrator. I don’t look too closely. “I want to wear leather pants and boots and a tight, sexy shirt to turn the woman I love on, Sadie. See, I’m willing to change little things about the way I look. What I’d
never
do is turn my back on who I am and where I grew up like I think I’m better than everyone else.”

She bites her bottom lip in between her teeth after she says those words.

I guess I should feel a little more sucker punched than I do. What I actually feel is my sister just nailed the sentiment that’s been running laps in my own head pretty much since I walked through the door of our mother’s house.

“I’m sorry, Sadie,” Ella says, her voice dipping low. “I didn’t...that was out of line. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t apologize,” I interrupt. “I’ve been thinking about what I’m doing. What I want to do. Where I want to be and who I want to be with. You’re not saying anything I haven’t thought to myself a thousand times.” She tests the iron gingerly against her fingers, which always makes me wince, then winds a strand of my hair, waits a few seconds to let it set before moving onto the next piece. “Just...if I’ll agree to think about what you said about me being an uptight asshole, can you promise me to think about the way you are around Antonia? I’m not asking you to break up with her or anything—”

“Um, good, because I never would,” Ella says with a snort. Her fingers tug at a piece of my hair in the back. “And, look, maybe what I said was true, but it was only half true, okay? The full truth is, I miss you. I miss having you here, I miss hanging out on the weekends with you and George and Trent. And I did hate Jace. Hated his guts. I want better for you. And to see you more.”

“I get that.”

I turn to smile at her and feel the intense heat of the curling iron almost singe my face. Ella yelps and jerks back.

“Okay, enough mushy shit. You’re gonna give yourself third degree burns! But you look
fucking smoking hot
.”

She spritzes me with some kind of delicious smelling perfume from a bottle shaped like a glass star, claps her hands, and watches as I stand up, wobbly on my heels, and totter over to the mirror draped with sparkly scarves and silky ties.

I expect to be kind of horrified, but Ella has worked intense magic and actually made me look sexy.

I turn from side to side, surprised by how not-hookerish the whole thing is once it’s been pieced together.

“I heard Jeremy Stinson is going to be there,” Ella singsongs behind me, fluffing my curls. “And you look Marilyn sexy. He’s gonna wish he never dumped you.”

“Is tonight officially haunted by the ghosts of boyfriends past?” I grumble, tugging on the hem of the tight black lace dress Ella poured me into. “For the record, he didn’t dump me. We broke up because we didn’t want to do the long distance thing in college.”

And after we got into a massive argument because I yawned during his ‘last bang’ sexathon. It was fun. It was. It was just too long.

And maybe a
tiny bit
boring.

Also, I have a really hard time getting into sex with someone who’s not willing to commit to a few phone calls a week and some long distance drives. It’s not sexy, no matter how much Jeremy tried to convince me it was adult and daring of us.

Yawn
.

Ella slaps my hand away from the hem and tugs on the bodice, setting the dress back in place.

“Well, he brought his Beamer into the shop, and he was looking mighty fine. Maybe he’s ready to patch things up.”

I roll my eyes and squeeze her in a quick hug.

“Look, I’m not going to stick around because of some hot ex or crush, okay? I’m sticking around because of you and Mom and George. Period.”

My glaringly obvious omission hangs in the air between us.
Damn it
. I should have just mentioned him. But saying his name while I look like this, in front of my sister, feels like I’m revealing too much.

Stupid, since she’s peering at me with hard, cold eyes, like she knows. Or wants to ask. Before she can dig in, I clear my throat.

“We should go. Didn’t you say the party already started? Do you have a jacket I can borrow? My parka doesn’t exactly go with this dress.”

I’m just jabbering, and her look tells me she knows it. She pulls a dove gray wool peacoat out of her closet and hands it to me, then tosses a matching gray hat and scarf. I take them and attempt not to acknowledge how deafening her silence is. I walk out of her room, relieved when she follows me, and rush down the stairs, flustered all over again when Trent is sprawled on the couch.

Lucky for him, his tight black t-shirt, dark jeans, and boots rock the whole spectrum of hot: sexy, casual, so insanely doable.

Damn! I’m not supposed to be thinking about him this way. I need to stop.

But it’s hard to put a cork in thoughts like that when he sits up slowly, his eyes wide, and whistles low and long.

“I know,” Ella says a little too brightly, putting her hands on my shoulders and squeezing with a force that makes me flip a look her way. She narrows her eyes at me. “We’re the two hottest girls you’ve ever seen, and I’m a magician for turning my sister from a mousy librarian into a stone fox. You can say it!”

“You two are the hottest girls I’ve ever seen,” Trent says, his voice uncurling things low in my body. My skin feels fevered, and I have an urge to throw the peacoat off. I resist. “And you are a magician, El.”

“Yes I am! Let’s get in the car now. We’re just about to be fashionably late.”

She races out the door, and Trent takes my arm, pulling me back for a second.

He breathes heavily, leaning close to smell me. I tense, waiting for him to—
wanting him to
—lick my skin slowly so he can get a good taste. He almost barely brushes his lips against my skin, but pulls back at the last second.

“You look just as hot as in your mousy librarian getup, by the way. But...
damn
, Sadie. You’re doing crazy things to me tonight.”

My heart flutters hard, like a trapped bird in my chest. He stalks out to the car, where Ella is already half-hanging out the window, waving her arms around. I’m about to go to the passenger side, when I feel him like a sentinel at my back. He grabs around me and yanks the door open, holding it wide so I can slide in, then closing it before he settles in the back.

Ella looks over at me, then back at him, her eyebrows pressed low. The silence in the car buzzes. Trent leans back and I catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, looking cocky and relaxed. I’m too keyed up to open my mouth, afraid I’ll blurt out something I shouldn’t be talking about. Ella finally gives up, shakes her head, and jams the key in the ignition.

“Away we go,” she says flatly, flipping the radio onto some blaring holiday station and keeping her eyes straight on the road, right where I keep mine.

Trent keeps his bored into my neck. I don’t have to check the rearview or turn around to know. I can feel them. And I wonder how the
hell
I’m going to end what keeps getting hotter and more out of control by the second.