AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Andi eases herself down and I kneel, undoing the laces on her left skate first. I think I see Andi making a face at Mia, who is standing behind me. I try not to imagine what unspoken, womanly bullshit is passing between them. I pull the skate off and Andi wiggles her pink sock-clad toe in my face. “Are they stinky?”
I grin, swatting her foot out of my face. “Terribly.”
I take my time with the right skate, but Andi doesn’t argue or ask me to let her do it. She just waits quietly while I get the laces as loose as I can and grip the skate with two hands.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Should you be doing all this with your shoulder thing?” she asks.
“It’s my rotator cuff. Overhead motions are bad. The follow through on swinging a stick is bad. Most other stuff is fine. Now shush and let me do this.”
She takes a big breath, nodding.
I give it the first bit of a tug and she cries out in pain. “Not ready, not ready!”
I pause. “We need to get this off.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. I think it looks great on me. Let’s just leave that bad boy on. I’ll get married in it someday. Honestly, it would probably make my getaway even faster if I have this skate on. The skate-away bride.”
“Alright. That’s it,” I say, standing. “We’re going to see Dr. Knight.”
“No! Just take me back home. To your cabin, I mean,” she says, correcting herself.
“Sorry, Andi,” Mia says. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come. Didn’t mean to get you killed.”
“It’s okay.” Andi smiles up at me. “It was Jesse’s fault, anyway.”
I throw my hands up in helpless surrender. “Can we get moving? I don’t want you out here in this cold right now.”
She tilts her head at me, showing the faintest smile. She wraps her arms around herself and plays up her shiver, blowing out a breath through suddenly chattering teeth. “You know, I am cold now that you mention it.” She tips over, laying sideways on the bench and curls in on herself, one skate still on her leg, which is sticking straight out. “So cold.”
I roll my eyes, but smile a little as I scoop her up, ignoring her laughter and the way she’s swatting at me. My amusement fades when I see the look on Mia’s face. She’s watching us both with a knowing smile.
“When did you two start dating?” she asks.
“What?” I stammer. It’s not exactly a world class defense, but her question catches me completely off guard.
“We’re just friends,” Andi says. The sentiment rings a little hollow considering she’s pink cheeked from laughter and currently cradled in my arms like she was built for them.
Mia purses her lips. “So how long have you friends been fucking, then?”
“Mia!” Andi laughs. “I’ll have you know, I just ran away from my wedding not so long ago. Do you really think I’d be letting some rogue put his hands on me at night so soon?”
“If you ran away from the wedding, then, uh, yeah? People don’t usually run away from weddings they want to be part of. Who says you can’t be a runaway bride gettin’ busy?”
“I need to get her inside,” I say, hoping to change the subject.
“I didn’t know you had dyslexia, Jesse,” Mia says. “You just said ‘I need to get her inside’ by mistake. Judging by the look in your eyes, I think you meant, ‘I need to get inside her.’”
Andi and Mia both cackle with laughter. I feel less amused.
“She’s going to freeze out here,” I say, ignoring her jokes.
“Right,” Mia says. “Because rolled ankles cause sudden hypothermia? You just want to get her back to your place so you can dote on her. Admit it, big boy.”
“We’re leaving,” I say, mostly because I know Mia well enough to see she’s just gathering momentum with this. A few more minutes, and she’ll be even worse.
“Caroline is going to love hearing about this,” she says, almost as if she’s just thinking aloud.
