Page 20 of Wild About You
I nod and search the ice for him. He skates around the net and retrieves a puck. His gaze lifts and I hold my breath when he looks right at me. Of course, he knows where to find me, he bought the ticket after all.
“You come to all the games?” I ask.
“The home games.”
“And the away games?”
“I stay by myself.” Then she quickly adds, “Tyler calls to check in like every two hours and he sends people to pop in and make sure I’m fine. It’s really obnoxious.”
I tip my head toward the textbook in her lap. “Homework?”
“Yeah. I have to finish a chemistry assignment.” She scrunches up her nose.
“You don’t like chemistry?”
“Not really.”
I take the book from her and flip through it. “Yeah, it wasn’t really my thing in school either.”
“Are teachers supposed to admit things like that?”
I laugh. “I don’t know, but it’s the truth.”
She takes it and opens it back up. “Did you always want to be an art teacher?”
“Yeah. Always. My grandmother was a teacher. I would go over to her house and dig through her teaching supplies. My stuffed animals suffered through a lot of pretend school.”
She snorts. “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up yet, but I can’t imagine wanting to relive high school.”
“You don’t like school?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“What about your last school?” I ask tentatively. I let my gaze go back to the ice and pretend like I’m not dying to know what led her to living with her brother.
“High school sucks no matter where you live,” she says so definitively that it makes my chest hurt, and then she goes back to her homework.
Chris texts as the game is starting,Are we still on for dinner later?
“Oh, shi—crap,” I censor myself when Everly’s head pops up. I probably shouldn’t be cursing around a student.
“Everything okay?”
“I was supposed to have dinner with my boyfriend later. I forgot.”
“You forgot about your boyfriend?”
“I was distracted by my rage,” I say as I tap out a response to Chris letting him know something came up.
“How long did you two date?”
“Me and Chris?” I ask as I put away my phone.
“No, you and my brother.”
“Oh. Right. Eight months.”
“Huh.” She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t.
