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His phone shows the dreaded three dots for a minute, and then they disappear. They reappear and disappear, but only when we pull up to the diner near our house does my phone finally buzz again with his text.
ZEKE: Nah, it’s good. What are friends for? :)
“You coming, Faye?” Aly asks.
Caro is wedged between the doorway to the diner, holding it open with all the strength and might she has in her ass.
“Yep,” I say, tucking my phone away along with the bitter kernel of something sweet and dangerous that clenches with unmistakable disappointment.
6
zeke
“Why the hills?”Pasha groans as we run up a four percent grade in direct sun on the side of an active volcano.
If you ignore the fact that we’re both complaining like the Golden Girls in a 5K, it sounds fucking badass.
“I hate hills,” Pasha moans, clubbing me on the back hard enough to knock the wind out of me. “I feel the need. The need for—”
“Fucking A, man.” I move to the side of the road and hunch over my knees, panting for air. We’re in good shape. Especially considering it’s mid-season. We should be in good shape. But we’re in skating shape. Not let’s-run-uphill-both-ways-just-for-shits-and-giggles shape.
Pasha tumbles to the ground next to me and rolls onto his back, pulling his knee into his chest and massaging his hamstring.
“I hate you,” he grumbles between what I assume are Russian insults.
“Would you rather have done the stairs?” I mumble between pants.
The stairs in the park are gnarly, spanning a solid four hundred feet of elevation gain. Pasha doesn’t answer in English, and from what little Russian I know, he has nothing nice to say about that idea.
Stretching, I take in the view toward the city. From where we stand in Mt. Tabor Park, I can see across the reservoirs to the west hills where rain clouds hover. For right now it’s sunny and warm. But up on this hill, it will get windy and wet and awful if we don’t beat it before it’s too late.
“Can’t we just hike it back to the car?” Pasha moans, sitting as he stretches his other leg.
We’ve already done a full loop in the hilly park. Which is more than enough. And it feels good to run on pavement instead of being exclusively on the ice. Not that I mind. I love being on the ice. I love the feel of my blades carving into the ice, the cut of the wind against my face, the way a tiny shift left or right can alter my trajectory.
But it’s nice to do something different. To see the world go by. To do something that requires some thinking so I can get a certain brilliant blond bombshell out of my head. I felt like such a dick when I was a little too close to her after the game the other day and Caro called me on it. I only hope I didn’t make Faye uncomfortable.
Pasha moans again, glaring at me.
“It’s like you’re not even here,” he says, batting his eyelashes. “Can we go?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“The first smart thing you’ve said all morning.”
We cut back down the trail past the reservoir and toward the neighborhood full of pristine, historic mansions where we parked.
“Are you at least feeding me now?” Pasha asks.
“You need me to feed you?”
He glares and I pull out my phone to text Faye and see what she’s up to.
“You texting Faye?”
“Yeah,” I say, pulling up the text window from before when she so delightfully told me that if I was texting her at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning without coffee, she was going to punch me in the tit.
“What’s up with Faye?” Pasha asks.
