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25
NOLAN
I’m trying to walk fast, but then I hear Mia’s voice. I hesitate. She’s calling out my name.
She probably wants to talk about what I blurted out back there, and I’m really not interested in “exploring my feelings,” or whatever she’s hoping to do. I start walking again. Then I hear Mia yelp in what sounds like pain.
“Shit,” I say under my breath. I turn and jog back, dodging patches of ice and snow as I round a corner and the bed and breakfast comes into view. Mia is slowly getting to her feet with a hand on her hip, wincing in pain.
“What happened?” I ask.
She brushes snow from her pants and shakes her head. “I promise, I didn’t just wipe out to lure you in.”
“Are you okay?” I reach for her leg, then pull my hand back.
“I’m fine. I just lost my balance on some ice and rolled my ankle a little,” she says, smirking. Only my pride is injured.” Her cheeks are already flushed red from the cold and there’s a snowflake on her long lashes. She looks so perfect, it almost hurts.
“Alright, well,” I say, turning to leave.
She stops me with a hand on my sleeve. “Hey,” she says. “I didn’t know.”
I frown. “I’m supposed to believe you never read my texts, then?”
“What?” Mia’s face suddenly goes white. “I changed my number, Nolan. Right after we broke up. Shit,” she says. “Look,” she fishes her phone out and pulls up her info screen, showing me the new number.
A block of resentment slides away from me, even if it stings that she took things so far when she broke it off with me. “So you never did see it. Huh,” I add softly to myself. “I was really pissed about that, you know. I texted you to tell you and thought you just didn’t give a shit. Honestly, it’s probably what ate at me the most. More than the breakup. I just didn’t understand how you could be cold enough to not give a shit about that.”
“God,” She breathes, hugging me suddenly. “I’m sorry, Nolan. I… I had to make sure I didn’t change my mind. Changing my number meant you wouldn’t be able to convince me to stay with you. To drop everything for you.”
“And that was a risk?”
She sniffles, and I realize she’s crying. Does she feel that guilty?
“I wanted to make sure I stuck to my plans. I knew what it felt like to watch a dream slip away. Figure skating was gone just like that when I hurt my ankle. It left a void that was so, so hard to fill. And then I had cooking, and you came along, and I worried—”
“You don’t need to feel bad just because of what my mom did,” I say. She’s crying and her voice is shaky, and I can’t stand seeing her sad like this. “You shouldn’t have to apologize for going after what matters to you. You don’t have to apologize for it,” I add, correcting myself.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you reached out. If Jake didn’t know… does that mean I was the only one you told?”
I chuckle humorlessly, nodding my head. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“I’m such a terrible person.” She buries her forehead in my chest, shaking her head.
“You’re not. You changed your number. You didn’t know, so stop feeling bad about it. It’s over and I figured it out on my own.”
“Did you, though? It’s okay to have wounds, Nolan. Not everything that happens to us has to get fixed or solved. Sometimes, people just carry the hurt around.”
I shrug. “I manage.”
She pulls back, folding her arms and giving me a disapproving look.
“It wasn’t your problem,” I try. “It still isn’t.”
“Just because we aren’t a couple, it doesn’t mean I can’t care about you, Nolan. Why can’t you get that through your head?”
I still feel frustration on the verge of boiling over. More and more, I’ve been so close to blowing up. I’ve been shoving my emotions down in what I thought was some kind of bottomless pit, but now it’s all rising out of the shadows. It’s fresh, painful, and I can’t figure out what the hell to do with it all. “I didn’t mean to talk about that back there,” I say. “I don’t want to burden anybody else with my problems. It just slipped out. I was tired of Jake riding my ass so hard, like he doesn’t think I’ll be able to block a puck if anything is on my mind.”
Mia puts her hands on my arms, rubbing up and down in reassuring lines. Her eyes are full of concern and worry. “Just because you can deal with something on your own, it doesn’t mean you have to.”
