Meant for Now

15. Frankie

FIFTEEN

Frankie

“I’ve never seen you this nervous,” Mattie said from behind me as I franticly brushed out a curl that looked too curled.

“I am not nervous,” I snapped, tugging at the curl more. Should I spray it with water? The last thing I wanted was for Oliver to think that I had tried for this…for this…for whatever this was. Date, I guess. But when I thought of it like that, my stomach instantly rocked with nerves.

“If you tug at that piece of hair anymore, you’re going to be bald,” Mattie pointed out.

“I don’t want him to think I curled my hair!” I said, giving up and plugging in the flat iron.

“But you did curl your hair.” Mattie looked at me like I had completely lost it.

“Yes, but I don’t want him to know that. I want it to look effortless. Like bouncy waves I rolled out of bed with.”

“As if the beauty standard for women isn’t already high enough, now we have to pretend like we didn’t even try while also achieving perfection? ”

“Let me live,” I cried, finally flattening the piece successfully with the lukewarm flat iron. Mattie was right. This was out of sorts for me. I didn’t date often, but on the few occasions I had, I’d never been this much of an anxious mess.

The fact that Oliver and I had already established that we liked each other and shared more than a few kisses did little to quell my nerves. In fact, the reality that we’d already kissed left me even more nervous, because what was next? While everything in my body told me that I absolutely wanted this evening to progress beyond a quick peck, it didn’t mean I wasn’t any less in my head about it.

Oliver was like…incredibly attractive. And he was so extreme and outdoorsy and adventurous. And he was always so calm and collected and never seemed to have a care in the world. Why did he even want to hang out with me? I was an uptight mess of a human. Especially right now. At least when I had a thriving career, I could blame my bad personality on that. Now what did I have? I lived in my sister’s basement and could barely get a second interview.

Mattie must have sensed the nerves radiating off me, because she finally sighed and stood up before grabbing the tops of both my arms. We were almost the exact same height, so she stood behind me and angled her body so that her face would be next to mine in the mirror. “Chill, Frankie. You’ve already hung out with Oliver. This will just be like that except better.”

“No, this will be just like that but with the added pressure of the ‘date’ label being tossed onto it. What if it’s, like, thirty minutes away and we’re trapped in the car together and we can’t think of anything to talk about? What if I’m not dressed right?” I pulled at my navy sweater to examine it. I’d paired it with light-wash jeans, hoping the look was cute and casual enough to be appropriate for anything .

Mattie rolled her eyes and squeezed my arms harder before shaking me lightly. “First off, I don’t think ‘trapped’ is the correct verb to describe your date with a cute boy. And second, you two will fill the silence. Don’t worry about it. Oliver is the least awkward person I’ve ever met. He’s probably never met a silence he couldn’t fill.”

“Maybe I’ll finally be his match.”

“You’re being ridiculous. You’ve spent like twenty hours this week talking to random interviewers via video chats. How can you handle all that but are falling to pieces at the thought of spending a couple of hours alone with Oliver?”

“Because Oliver is different!” I cried, pushing past her out of the bathroom and looking at my outfit in the full-length mirror for the hundredth time.

“You look amazing and tonight is going to be great,” Mattie reassured me. “Stop stressing or you’ll psych yourself out.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Six fifteen,” Mattie said.

“He’s late,” I groaned. “I can’t stand it when guys are late.”

“He got here fifteen minutes ago,” Mattie said.

“What?” I could feel myself pale at her words. “What do you mean?” I hissed, creeping to the bottom of the stairs and straining my ears to listen. Sure enough, muffled sounds of two guys talking drifted down into the basement.

“Mattie!” I whisper-shrieked. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

She shrugged. “I figured I’d give you a pep talk.”

“Now he’ll think I take forever to get ready.” I shot her an accusatory glare.

“You do take forever to get ready.”

“He can’t know that! ”

“Breathe, Frankie. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

I took a deep inhale through my nose and blew it out slowly through my mouth. Regardless of how badly I was freaking out, I needed to get it together.

“Let’s go,” Mattie said, gesturing for me to lead the way up the stairs.

I took the steps slowly, breathing the whole time in order to get my heart rate under control.

“The conditions were unreal this morning,” I heard Oliver say.

“I can’t believe we got that kind of powder this late in the season. It was incredible,” Giles agreed.

“Hey,” I said, walking through the kitchen and dining room to the living room, where both the guys stood.

“Hey.” Oliver shot me a huge smile, which sent my stomach into a cartwheel.

Taking in Oliver made me gulp audibly. He looked good. Like really good. His hair was pushed back, but a few waves hung by his eyes and the ends curled up by his shirt collar. He wore a flannel button-down that made me want to tuck right into him. His jeans fit him perfectly and ended in his brown boots he always wore anytime I saw him off the ski hill.

“Sorry, I would have been up earlier, but Mattie didn’t tell me you were here.”

“I got distracted,” Mattie said sweetly. “Silly me.”

I desperately wanted to shoot her a glare but didn’t want Oliver to see.

“You ready?” Oliver asked.

“Uh-huh.” I walked over to him, stopping a few feet short. Was I supposed to hug him?

“Ladies first.” He waved his hand in front of him.

I stepped toward the door, grabbing Mattie’s green coat off the hook and slipping it on. “See you later,” I said to Giles and Mattie.

“Don’t wait up,” Oliver teased, winking at me.

I nudged him in the chest, and a sliver of my nerves were eased. Although a different kind of excitement brewed in my gut at the innuendo of staying out late with Oliver.

Oliver’s idea for a date turned out to be some sort of ice sculpture park. Apparently, it closed tomorrow and he had been meaning to check it out.

We had to take a gondola up the mountain to get to it, and the ride itself displayed some of the most breathtaking views I had ever seen. My nerves hadn’t completely gone away, but I was momentarily distracted as I pressed my face up to the glass and took it all in. Mountains, rolling in the distance for as far as my eyes could see. The surrealness of it all hit me on the ride up. There I was, sitting with a guy who was my opposite in so many ways, in the most picturesque setting I could ever imagine.

The layoff had felt like the worst thing imaginable, but could it have been so bad if it had led to this moment?

When we arrived at the top, Oliver placed his hand on the small of my back, letting me exit the gondola car first. It was somehow like twenty degrees colder up here, and I was grateful for the thick sweater and wool coat I’d chosen to wear.

There were a few small warming huts. One said Tickets above it and the others looked like food vendors. Snow sculptures and large castles were carved into the snow. Some lit up as people wandered through the mazes of structures. I was immensely grateful he hadn’t picked an activity where I would likely embarrass myself within the first fifteen minutes. Walk around and marvel at intricate ice carvings? Even I was capable of that.

Oliver paid for our tickets, and I insisted on a hot chocolate from the vendor before we started walking around. He asked me to take a picture of him on top of a giant snow fort castle. I even got in a selfie with him in front of one of the snow sculptures that looked like a giant elf.

As we moved through the displays, my anxiousness had finally started to subside. Every moment with Oliver was easy. Whatever pressure I had felt about tonight was gone as soon as he slung an arm around my shoulders. While I still wasn’t sure exactly what to make of us, I couldn’t deny how outright good it felt to be with him.

“Admit I can plan a good date,” Oliver said, smiling down at me as we walked through one of the larger light displays.

“I don’t know. I kind of wish you’d taken me snowboarding again,” I said.

We walked by a few other sculptures, one resembling a penguin eating an ice cream cone. “You’ll never let me live that down.” He chuckled.

“It’s okay. I’ve realized you like forcing me to do things I suck at. Snowboarding. Snowshoeing. You get a thrill out of me struggling while you breeze through the activity.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked sarcastically. “I could have sworn I was just trying to have some fun with you.”

“Fun with me or fun at my expense?” I teased.

“Can’t it be both?”

I stopped when he stopped. His eyes lit up at something in the distance.

“Speaking of fun.” He pointed.

I squinted to see a small ice-skating rink with people swirling around it .

“What? No way.” I let out a laugh of disbelief. “I was thoroughly enjoying how chill this was.”

He pouted and reached for my hand. “Come on, Frankie. Please? Ice-skating is easy. It’s nothing like snowboarding.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to mention that I also had never ice-skated before. He probably thought I was the lamest excuse for a date.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been ice-skating either?” Oliver’s eyebrows pulled together.

“I mean, growing up, we had these skating rinks made out of plastic they set out at malls in the winter. Does that count?”

Oliver gave a quick shake of his head. “Plastic? What? Absolutely not.”

“I’m from Florida,” I said defensively.

“Then we have a lot of catching up to do.” He pulled me forward, toward the skating rink, and before I could protest further, he was shoving a pair of ice skates at me. He practically dragged me to the bench where we were supposed to take our shoes off and put on the skates. There were little cubbies underneath to store our boots.

“You can’t sit still, can you?” I mumbled, but I was already putting on the skates to appease him. At this point, I was kind of convinced that he could talk me into anything. At least with this activity, the worst that could happen was falling from a standing position. There was no hurtling down a hill involved. But as I had that thought, I looked up to see another couple shakily skating around. The girl flailed her hands a few times before falling backward, right onto her butt. Ouch . That had to have hurt.

“I won’t let you fall,” he insisted.

I jerked my head around to see that he was watching me watch the couple. “I’ve heard that one before,” I said, lacing up my second skate .

He tapped his chin, already having put his skates on. “I don’t recall ever promising that you wouldn’t fall snowboarding. The very nature of learning that sport involves spending a good amount of time on your butt.”

“Well, I think it was heavily implied that I wouldn’t get hurt.”

“Oh yeah, the big wrist injury.” Oliver’s eyebrow raised in exaggerated skepticism. “How’s that feeling? Will you ever be the same?”

“It’s still sore,” I insisted, but the smile I couldn’t keep from spreading across my lips implied that I was completely full of shit.

“Okay. Sure.” Oliver winked at me. He did that a lot. I would normally find the gesture severely sleazy. But with Oliver, it somehow made me feel special. I swear each time he directed one at me, a new swarm of butterflies was released in my stomach.

“Let’s do this.” He reached for my hands, and I stood shakily on the skates. Walking in them was unnatural. The blade sliced into the padded black mats that lined the path to the rink. Oliver steadied me the whole way. When we got to the entrance of the rink, he let go of my hand to lightly grip my waist.

“Alright, easy does it. No falling on my watch.”

“No promises,” I said, although my eyes were glued to the ice. I was determined to prove to Oliver that I wasn’t completely hopeless at everything I attempted. If only he could see me in my element, back at my old job. The way I could command a room with ease. Though now that I thought about it, he probably wouldn’t have been impressed in the slightest by my slideshow presentations.

“Now, start walking but drag your foot a little. So back and forth. Don’t worry about gliding, keep the motions choppy at first.”

“Whoa.” My body jerked forward and then back as I took my first steps.

“I’ve got you,” Oliver said, tightening his grip on me.

I found my balance and continued moving forward. Once I got over the initial weirdness of the feeling, I managed to move a few feet forward. I had roller-skated eons ago, back in elementary school. It wasn’t like this was too terribly different from that. I could do this. Especially if Oliver kept his hands on me.

Oliver swung around with ease so that he was in front of me, and reached out to take both of my hands, helping me keep my balance as I gracelessly took a few strides forward.

“Did you play hockey or something?” I asked as he skated backward.

“Nope,” he said, watching my feet to make sure I was getting the hang of this and not tangling them up in each other.

“Then why are you so good at this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just came easy, I guess.”

“You’re one of those people who is obnoxiously good at everything they try, right?” I asked, letting out a frustrated huff when I clumsily almost lost my footing again.

Oliver, true to his word, took one hand away from mine and grabbed my waist, refusing to let me fall. “I am good at a lot of things,” he admitted. “Pretty much only physical stuff, though. Sports, stuff like this. Not so much everything else.”

He sounded almost self-conscious saying that, which really threw me off guard.

“So the opposite of me,” I said. “I’ve never successfully picked up a sport in all my years trying.”

That made him smile. “I had to be good at something. Nathan was always the insanely smart one. I had to have my thing, too, or I would have felt completely inferior instead of just slightly not good enough.”

“Your brother sounds like your opposite, huh?” I asked carefully.

The last time I’d tried to bring up his family, he’d changed the topic abruptly. But I was desperate to learn more about him other than the cheery, charming guy he was on the surface.

His eyes met mine before he looked away. He spun around so that he was skating in the same direction as me and held out his arm so I could thread mine through it for balance. He kept his pace slow so that I wouldn’t be left behind or forced to go faster than I was comfortable with.

“Nathan and I have never been anything alike. I’m not sure if we were born that way or if it was the product of how our parents raised us…” His voice trailed off. “But you have a sister. I probably don’t need to tell you about sibling rivalry.”

Something about the pain in his voice told me that his childhood was likely far from the typical sibling rivalry. I decided to tread carefully so that I wouldn’t scare him off.

“Mattie and I were competitive, sure. She was two grades above me and we’d compete over friends or sports. We were both on student government, but she would always be above me. I felt like I had to work twice as hard to get where she was, even though I should have recognized that she was older and it wasn’t a competition.” I licked my lips, glancing over to see him looking lost in thought, staring straight ahead. “But my parents always nipped any real rivalries right in the bud. They didn’t want us fighting or competing. They always told us they were proud no matter what and that we should be celebrating each other instead of challenging. Of course, we were still sisters so we didn’t always listen. I would still steal her clothes, and Mattie still always acted like she knew best, but at the end of the day, we knew we had each other’s backs. My parents too.”

I was oversharing, especially considering this was technically a first date. But this was Oliver. He’d already seen more of me than I’d let anyone see in a long time. I was desperate for him to feel comfortable enough with me to share something— anything —real .

“They sound great,” Oliver said softly. His voice was more cautious than it normally was. I wanted to push, but I also felt like I was two questions away from him snapping out of whatever this was, cracking a joke, and skating away from me.

“Were your parents…not great?” I asked, tired of dancing around the question I was dying to know the answer to.

“Let’s just say while your parents nurtured your relationship with Mattie, my parents pitted Nathan and me against each other.” Oliver’s eyes looked glassy.

My heart twisted at his admittance. “That’s awful,” I said.

Oliver blew out a pained breath. “It was just the way that they were. My dad is kind of an ass. He always only cared about work, and he saw Nathan as his prodigy or something. Nathan was basically a genius. Like, I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that he’s the most logical person you’ll ever meet. My dad always pushed the hell out of him.”

“And you?” I choked out.

Oliver shook his head. “I never had much of a relationship with my dad.”

The sounds of our skates scraping up the ice filled the air as I waited for him to continue.

“He’s just… He never cared about me. Never cared what I did. My grades were never all that good, and that was all he seemed to care about. My mom was always the one cheering me on. I was grateful for it, but it made me feel…weird. She was more standoffish with Nathan and my dad. It was like it was her and me against them. I don’t know. I didn’t realize how not normal that was until I moved out.”

“At least she supported you,” I said quietly, although it seemed like they’d had some kind of unhealthy codependent thing going on when he was younger.

He rubbed his free hand along his jaw and sighed. Our pace had picked up a little. Skating was even easier when I wasn’t thinking about it and was instead completely invested in whatever bits Oliver was willing to share with me.

“I don’t know if she supported me or just wanted me on her side. The whole thing makes me feel weird, and now our relationship is a little tense.”

“But you’re close with Nathan now, right?” I asked.

“I am. I didn’t know how to connect with him for years, but after he moved out here, we were finally able to talk and get to know each other without our parents breathing down our necks. I haven’t really figured things out with my mom, but at least I feel like Nathan and I are in it together now. And I might just have to be okay with who she is. Maybe she isn’t a perfect parent, but at least she still calls us, ya know? And it’s clear she’s trying harder with Nathan.”

“Your dad doesn’t try?” I guessed.

“He calls Nathan sometimes, but I think all of Nathan’s success almost irritates him. Like he wanted him to do well, but not significantly better than him. He divorced my mom a while back—honestly, we were shocked it took them so long, but I don’t think either of them wanted to deal with custody arrangements when we were younger. Anyway, I haven’t talked to my dad in over a year and I couldn’t care less.”

“That’s hard, Oliver,” I said, unable to keep the thickness out of my voice.

Something about my words seemed to snap Oliver out of his daze because he immediately shook his dark waves and threw a smile on his face. “Not as hard as ice-skating is, apparently. You look like a drunk baby giraffe out here.”

My cheeks flushed instantly. Not because I was offended—I knew I sucked at this—but because of the way he so smoothly returned to his lighthearted self. It was if I had imagined him opening up a moment ago.

“I’m doing fine,” I insisted. “Look.” I let go of his hand for a few glides. “See?”

He tossed his head back and chuckled. “You’re basically skating circles around me.”

“Now back to the conversation,” I continued.

His smile immediately dropped like a mask as he skated ahead of me. “You want to take a break? Get some more hot chocolate?” he asked.

“No,” I said, struggling to keep up with him. “You can’t run away from talking to me.”

“I’m not.”

But he continued to skate away from me.

Why did he have to be so impossible? Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing, but he knew me by now. I wasn’t carefree like him. I had been pushy with the questions the last time we’d hung out, and he should have known it’d only get worse if he asked me out on a real date. I didn’t have it in me to pretend that I didn’t care about who he was.

“Hey—whoa!” I had attempted to go too fast. My arms flailed as I tried to regain my balance so that I didn’t plop right onto my behind. I was about to lose the battle with gravity when strong hands encircled my waist, easily steadying me.

“I’ve got you,” Oliver whispered.

I breathed a sigh of relief as he loosened his grip, while still maintaining contact and moving away so that he was staring down at me.

I smacked him in the chest. “You abandoned me.” I glared up at him, eyes narrowed.

His eyebrows furrowed together before he let out a breath of a laugh. “I was right here.”

“Don’t do it again,” I warned.

“Never.”

We skated in silence for a bit after that. I badly wanted to ask him more, but I didn’t want him to shut down on me again.

My best bet was slow and steady with him. I didn’t know what we were or where this was going—likely nowhere fast. But what I did know was that I cared about Oliver. Probably more than I should. He was special. Maybe we were nothing alike, but there was nothing I wanted more right now than to understand him.