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“I don’t know. I haven’t been back since I left.” Belle turned her face to Chandler. “Does it look the same?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Probably hard to notice the changes when you’re there a lot, huh? I wonder if it would look smaller to me. You know how as you get bigger, but the buildings stay the same size, they end up looking smaller to you when you go back?”
“Yeah.”
“I bet it would be like that. The rink will look the same because I’m in a rink every day, but I bet everything else would look smaller to me.”
Chandler looked at her for a second and asked, “Do you want to go while you’re here? I can get you in.”
“Oh, no. I’m good,” Belle replied and turned to look out the windshield. “I left that place behind a long time ago.”
“You have good memories there, too, though, Belle.”
“Yes, I do. And I’d prefer to leave them there.”
“All of them?” Chandler asked her before she could think about it.
Belle cleared her throat and said, “Um… Yeah.”
Chandler nodded and said, “We’re here. They have a drive-thru now. Let’s just get whatever you want and go home. Cat will be up soon. We can eat on the way, and I can throw out the trash in the bins at the end of the driveway so she doesn’t know where we were. We’ll pretend we went for a run or something.”
“Does your sister have something on you? Did you kill someone, and she knows?”
“What? Of course not,” she said and turned into the doughnut place.
“You realize that she’s your coach, not your warden, right?”
“It’s easier to go along with it.”
“No, it’s not, Chandler. Park the car. We’re going inside.”
“Belle…”
“I’m going inside, so if you don’t park, I’ll just get out when you pull up to the window to order.”
“Then, I’ll just leave you here to walk home.”
Belle looked at her seriously and said, “No, you won’t.”
“No, I won’t. It’s still dark, and it’s cold, and you don’t even know where you’re going.” Chandler grunted, which made Belle laugh, and parked the car. “Fine. We’ll go in. But one doughnut.”
“Apiece.”
“What?”
“One doughnut apiece. That was the deal.”
“Why are you this annoying?”
“Why are you letting people run your life for you?” Belle asked back and didn’t wait for a response before she got out of the car.
“Hey!” Chandler followed her quickly, locking the car with her fob and hearing the two beeps as she hurried through the inch or so of snow on the ground that crunched beneath her feet. “That was rude.”
“No, that was true.” Belle opened the door for her.
“It was rude, Belle.” She walked in before Belle.
