Chapter 12 Harper
Sam clears his throat, shifting from one foot to the other and avoiding looking at us directly. “Sorry, did we interrupt something?”
Alex has no such shame, staring at Dawson with a wicked grin. “Interesting place for a hookup. Don’t mind us, we can just grab the ice and go.”
Dawson realizes his arms are still wrapped around me in the same moment I do.
We jump apart, and I’m shocked at how much I miss the solidity of his chest behind me, the warmth of his arm around my waist, the softness of his T-shirt against the suddenly hypersensitive skin of my arms. For a minute there, I thought he was about to kiss me.
And I’m kind of disappointed we got interrupted.
What is that about? I’m experiencing the same out-of-body sensation I get when I make a new piece, weirdly floaty and lightheaded, and I have to focus hard on the grinning hockey players before us.
My voice still comes out sounding far away.
“Trust me, it’s not what it looks like. We got trapped in here and had no idea when anyone would find us!
” Their raised eyebrows make it very clear they’re not buying my story.
I take a deep breath. “Seriously, thanks for saving us.”
Alex hums contemplatively as he holds the door open for us to walk out. “You didn’t really look like you needed saving.”
“Please. About to freeze to death with a jock? Not my idea of a good time.” But I can’t look at Dawson while I say it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dawson check his phone. Voice dry, he says, “We were only in there like twenty minutes.”
“Hey, you were the one who brought up the penguins. You’d reached Arctic Circle levels of desperation.”
The corner of his mouth twitches in a smile, and I realize I’m smirking at him too. I clear my throat, doing my best to ignore the way the guys are staring at us. “Don’t you have a party to get to?”
There’s much shuffling and nodding and elbowing of Dawson, but after a minute we get them headed for the door with a bag of ice apiece.
Then Dawson and I are left standing in the doorway of an empty restaurant, watching their car pull back out onto the road, headlights illuminating the deepening dark outside.
I glance sideways at him, and his eyes flick away as if he was looking at me too.
I rub my hands up and down my arms. I’m trying not to think about those twenty minutes in the walk-in and failing pretty miserably.
The weight of his arm. The warmth of his chest. No one deserves for their hard work to get messed up like that.
I whirl around to keep myself from acting on the idiotic impulse to get closer. “Think we can lock up already?”
Dawson nods in relief, and we fall back into our routine in a flurry of action.
Dawson queues up his horrible country music with a flourish, just like always—and I roast him that every song sounds the same, just like always—and it might be the fastest we’ve ever closed.
Before I know it, I’m huddled in my coat on the sidewalk outside while he fumbles with the keys, tugging the door to make sure it’s really locked.
It’s fully dark now, and the fluorescent light above the diner door casts Dawson’s face in harsh shadows. His dark hair flops over his forehead, and I get the weird impulse to pull a hat over his curls. You can’t tell me that boy doesn’t get cold.
Then he turns around, and I push the thought away.
“I better get to this party.” Dawson shoves his hands in his pockets, nodding down the sidewalk. “See you next week, I guess?”
He hesitates for a minute, and I hold my breath. Waiting for something I’m not even sure I can name.
But then he turns away, and I’m struck with a weird sense of disappointment.
Before I know what I’m saying, I blurt, “You want a ride?” He pivots back, eyebrows raised. I flush. “Lindsey stranded you, and it’s cold. I think you’ve had enough freezing for one day.”
I don’t know what I expect—probably some kind of insult to my driving skills—but he just smiles. “Thanks. That would be great.”
We’re both silent while we buckle up and I pull out onto the street. Downtown is empty today, everyone bundled up inside, exhausted from shopping and eating sandwiches stuffed with leftover turkey and cranberry sauce.
After a minute, Dawson clears his throat. “How’s your… skin?”
“Excuse me?” I whip my head to see his cheeks flushing a bright red.
“I just meant—the fridge—frostbite?”
The fridge. Dawson with his arm around me, tilting his head down toward me, eyes growing dark and heavy lidded. “I’m fine!” I focus very intently on the placement of my hands on the wheel. Ten and two, ten and two. “But it’s a good thing we got out of there when we did!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dawson slump against the window. “Yeah. Good thing.”
The ride to Ryan’s is very quiet after that.
Dawson and I don’t bicker like usual, but probably just because I’m doing him a favor and he has to be nice to me for a few more minutes.
I’m hyperaware of his presence in the passenger seat.
Arm on the windowsill, left thigh close enough to rest a hand on. If I wanted to.
I’m almost disappointed when we pull up in front of Ryan’s house, one of the new McMansions by the park.
We sit there for a long moment, and then Dawson turns to me. I don’t know why I hold my breath. His mouth twists in a funny way and he jerks his thumb out the window toward the porch. “You wanna come in? Since you drove all the way here and everything…”
Despite the casual tone, his eyes are intent on mine.
I know all sorts of people turn up for the hockey parties, but would it be weird for me to? After all the accusations and bad blood this fall? Even if Dawson didn’t leave the bad reviews, someone at this party surely did, and I’m not in the mood to be abused some more.
Dawson’s eyes dip to my mouth, and I realize I’m biting my lip from nerves. “No one will mess with you. I promise.” His voice is gruff and serious. Protective.
I draw in a shaky breath, do my best to let it out slowly and think rationally. What’s waiting for me at home, anyway? My English homework, my imbalanced budgeting spreadsheet now that my site’s shut down, the sense of being outside, on the edges like always?
The yes flooding my body surprises me. I want to go in. I want to keep hanging out with Dawson.
So I shrug, trying to keep my voice nonchalant, like I go to hockey parties all the time and have never said a bad word about the team. “Sure.”
Dawson’s eyes widen. “Really?”
My face burns. “Oh, sorry—if you were just being polite—”
“No, no,” he hurries to say. And he smiles, so high-voltage it could power the whole town. “I want you to come. For real.”
I pull out my phone, bending my head so he doesn’t see how red my cheeks get at that.
I shoot my parents a quick text saying I’m spending the night at Marissa’s.
Who knows how long I’ll be here, and I don’t want to have that conversation with them tonight when I barely understand what I’m doing myself.
There’s an unanswered message from Marissa waiting for me (we still hanging out this weekend?), which I ignore with a flash of guilt.
I can’t tell her where I am. She’d never get it.
But it’s just one night, right? Then we can go back to our own little bubbles.
“You ready?” Dawson’s holding the passenger door open, waiting for me with a tentative, almost nervous smile. It pushes all my misgivings out of my head.
I smile back and follow him inside.
The foyer’s littered with everyone’s cast-off coats and shoes.
In the living room, people are clustered in knots, sipping from Solo cups.
I spot half the football team and a bunch of the girls’ volleyball stars.
There’s an almost frantic relaxation in the air, everyone laughing a little too loud as they swap family holiday horror stories.
“What can I get you to drink?” Dawson asks, bending to my ear so he can be heard over the thumping of the bass. “Water, soda, something harder?”
His hand brushes the small of my back as he guides me toward the kitchen. With him curled around me protectively like this, I kinda get the hockey guy hype.
I blink hard at my own thought. “Something harder.”
Our fingers brush as he passes me a hard seltzer from a cooler, raising a questioning eyebrow as if asking if he chose okay. He opens his mouth, but just then a bunch of his hockey bros descend.
They’re a knot of arms thumping on backs, sentences started by one and finished by another, and I can’t follow anything that’s happening.
They remind me of puppies falling all over one another in a playful litter.
The one thing I can see for sure, though, is the tension ebbing from Dawson’s shoulders as he’s enveloped by his team.
Finally, they break apart to survey me. “The Harper deigned to come to one of our parties?” Ryan says with a grin.
I stuff down my nerves, doing my best to ignore the sense that I’ve walked into enemy territory and am about to be pounded into smithereens. At least there’s no sign of Noah. “Well, this guy was stranded, so I drove him here.”
“And I invited her,” Dawson says with an easy shrug. “So be cool, okay?”
It shuts down the conversation faster than I would’ve expected, and my shoulders relax a notch or two.
“We’re cool.” Alex smiles, accepting it like we’ve been friends forever. He’s always been nice—a smile for everyone, not into the cliquey stuff like so many of our classmates. “Your only job tonight is to have fun, okay? Can we borrow Dawson for a minute?”
“Nothing to borrow,” I say, trying to look casual and chill as I wave them off.
“Make yourself at home!” Ryan cries, slinging an arm around Dawson’s shoulders.
Dawson locks eyes with me as he gets towed away, a crease appearing between his brows. I smile back, trying to be as reassuring as possible. No way am I going to ask him to babysit me.