6. Lucy
LUCY
THEN
Minnesota never surrendered winter without a fight. But spring finally had started winning. Slowly. Steadily. One drip-drop of melting ice at a time.
The snowbanks lining the student parking lot looked smaller than they had a week ago, their white edges stained gray from months of road salt and slush.
Water dripped steadily from the gutters outside the science wing.
Tiny patches of green had begun pushing through the dirt near the sidewalks, stubborn and hopeful beneath the last remnants of winter.
The air filled with damp earth. Rain. And something alive breaking out of hibernation.
Normally, I would have noticed all of it. Instead, I looked at the clock. Then I looked at it again three minutes later.
Which was ridiculous.
I was not one of those girls. I had never been one of those girls.
The girls who spent entire classes doodling hearts in notebook margins. The girls who counted down minutes until they saw their boyfriend again. The girls who rearranged their schedules just to accidentally run into someone in the hallway.
At least, I hadn't been.
Yet somehow, despite seeing Ty at lunch, having him walking me to fourth period, the kiss he'd pressed to my forehead, I still found myself watching the second hand crawl around the classroom clock like it was personally offending me.
The final bell couldn't come fast enough.
The first few weeks after we'd started dating had been full of nerves. Every text message felt significant. Every conversation got replayed afterward. Every time he looked at me, I found myself wondering if he was about to realize he'd made a terrible mistake.
But somewhere along the way, things had transformed. Similar to the way seasons changed.
One day you realized the snowbanks were smaller than they used to be. One day you realized you weren't nervous anymore.
Now I knew him.
Not hockey Ty. Not the version teachers rolled their eyes at. Not the version that spent half his life surrounded by teammates and noise and attention.
I knew the boy underneath all of that.
The boy who passed me terrible jokes on torn notebook paper during class. The boy who sang along to songs on the radio despite knowing maybe half the words. The boy who kissed me like he still couldn't quite believe I was his girlfriend.
I gathered my books when the bell rang and joined the familiar flow of students spilling into the hallway. Lockers slammed. Conversations bounced off the cinderblock walls. Somewhere behind me, someone shouted a goodbye loud enough to be heard three counties away.
The closer I got to the academic wing, the faster my feet seemed to move. I rounded the corner and immediately felt something warm unfurl in my chest.
The tutoring room door was already open.
A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it.
Ty had never successfully arrived early for anything before we started dating. Not class. Not practice. Not lunch. Not life in general.
I was fairly certain he viewed clocks as vague suggestions. And yet somehow, every Tuesday and Thursday, he managed to beat me here. Every single time. Like clockwork.
The room sat at the end of the nearly empty hallway, washed in the golden light of late afternoon. The overhead lights were still off, leaving most of the space illuminated by the tall windows overlooking the parking lot.
I stepped through the doorway. And there he was. Sitting sideways in one of the desks near the window. One arm hooked over the back of the chair. Long legs stretched into the aisle. The sunlight caught in the messy blond ends of his hair, turning them almost gold around the edges.
His head was bent slightly as he looked down at something on the desk.
For one completely ridiculous second, I forgot how to walk like a normal person.
Then my eyes dropped to the desk. And I stopped. A stack of note cards sat neatly in front of him.
I blinked.
Not hockey magazines. Not doodles. Not a worksheet he'd forgotten existed until ten minutes ago.
Prepared note cards. The kind that showed he'd spent time on this when nobody was making him.
Before I could fully process that, his head lifted. The second he saw me, his entire face changed. That smile appeared instantly. The one that still made me feel slightly lightheaded. "Hey, Shortcake."
I rolled my eyes mostly because smiling back happened automatically. "You're early."
His grin widened. "I know."
"You sound proud of that."
"I am."
I dropped my bag onto the desk beside his and pulled out my folder. "You ready?"
"As ready as I have ever been for class in my entire life." The confidence in his voice made me suspicious.
I narrowed my eyes again.
Ty immediately pointed toward the note cards. "I studied."
"You say that every time."
"I actually did this time."
"You also say that every time."
"Lucy."
"Ty."
He groaned dramatically as I sat down across from him and tried to focus on homework.
The faint smell of old textbooks. The way he automatically slid a bottle of water toward me because he'd noticed I always forgot one. The way he knew exactly where I liked to sit. The way his foot bumped mine beneath the table and stayed there.
Somewhere along the way, these afternoons had stopped being obligations. Now they belonged to us.
"Okay." I opened the assignment sheet. "Let's hear it."
Ty straightened immediately.
The debate topic had been assigned nearly two weeks earlier: Should high schools start later in the morning? Simple enough.
Except public speaking wasn't exactly Ty's favorite thing. He could skate in front of twenty thousand people someday without blinking. Put him in front of a classroom and suddenly he acted like he was facing execution.
"Whenever you're ready," I said.
He cleared his throat. Looked down at his cards. Then looked back up. And started talking.
For the first thirty seconds, I focused on the actual argument.
Then I found myself staring.
His points flowed naturally. His transitions made sense. His examples were thoughtful. When he stumbled over a sentence, he corrected himself and kept going.
No blank stare.
No desperate attempt to make something up.
Just prepared confidence.
I sat back slowly. Ty continued speaking. And for the first time, I realized he wasn't reading from the note cards anymore. He barely glanced at them. He already knew it. Because he'd practiced.
Ty didn't care about school. Not the way I did. Not the way most honor-roll kids did.
But somewhere over the last few months, something had shifted.
He cared about trying. He cared about showing up. He cared about not wasting the time I spent helping him.
The argument ended several minutes later. Silence settled over the room.
Ty watched me expectantly. "Well?"
I stared at him. Blinked once. Twice. Then lowered the grading rubric. "That was actually really good."
His entire face lit up. Not cocky. Genuinely happy. "You mean it?"
"Yeah," I murmured softly. "I mean it."
Something warm moved through his expression. A quiet pride.
For a second, all I could do was look at him. At the boy everyone else saw as a jock and nothing more. At the boy who made me laugh until my stomach hurt. At the boy who had spent two weeks practicing a debate speech because he wanted me to be proud of him.
"Wow." Ty leaned back in his chair, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "That's an A, isn't it?"
"Let's not get carried away. It's a solid B-plus."
His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
I smiled. "Fine. Maybe an A-minus."
"That's basically an A."
I laughed as he reached across the desk and stole my grading sheet before I could pull it away.
"Hey."
"You already admitted it."
I watched him fold the paper triumphantly and tuck it into his notebook like he'd just secured a major legal victory.
The ridiculous part? I was proud of him too.
The next hour disappeared faster than it should have.
We tweaked a few transitions. Practiced answering possible rebuttals. Got distracted twice. Once because Ty insisted one of his examples was "objectively funny." The second time because he spent ten straight minutes trying to convince me that a pop quiz qualified as cruel and unusual punishment.
By the time we finally packed up, the familiar after-school hum had settled over the building. The late afternoon sunlight had faded from gold to deep amber. Custodians were beginning to move through the hallways. Lockers slammed somewhere in the distance.
I zipped my folder into my bag and glanced toward the windows. "When did it get so late?" I asked.
Ty followed my gaze. "Probably while you were bullying me academically."
"I was helping you."
"Debatable." He stood, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. Then Ty cleared his throat. "You need a ride home?"
My head snapped up. "Why?"
His grin appeared immediately. "Because that's a completely normal reaction to a boyfriend offering his girlfriend a ride."
Heat crept into my cheeks. "That's not what I meant."
"Sure."
I pointed a warning finger at him.
Ty looked delighted by my embarrassment. "As fun as this is," he continued, "your car is not here."
I blinked. Dad had dropped me off that morning because mine was in the shop getting new brakes. I'd completely forgotten. Which probably said something concerning about my ability to function around him.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Oh."
I narrowed my eyes. He grinned wider.
"I hate when you're right," I sighed.
"You hate a lot of my best qualities."
The smirk tugging at my mouth refused to leave. "Fine."
"Fine?"
"Yes, Ty. I'll accept the horrifying burden of sitting in your truck for fifteen minutes." I tossed over a knowing grin before jabbing an elbow into his ribs lightly.
He pressed a hand dramatically against his chest. "Romance is alive and well."
"Don't ruin this."
"Too late."
I was still smiling when we stepped out into the hallway together.
The school felt different when it was mostly empty. The fluorescent lights reflected against polished floors while our footsteps echoed through the corridor. Somewhere near the front office, a vacuum cleaner hummed.