The Ex Games(16)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare.”

Liz’s eyes got big as she wailed, “Hayden, you can’t!”

“I want to call it off.” I took a deep breath before I warned them, “Otherwise, plan to buy Poseur tickets for the boys. There’s no way I’ll win.”

“Of course you’ll win!” Chloe exclaimed. “You’ll probably beat Nick in that race thing—”

“Boardercross,” I corrected her. Chloe owned a snowboard, and that’s about as far as her knowledge of the sport went.

“—and you’ll blow him away in the trick part.”

“Half-pipe. And then there’s the jump.”

They both just stared at me with their arms folded. They’d been pushing me to get over my fear of heights and go pro, so this was no way to argue myself out of my new corner.

I started over. “Okay, here’s the real deal. I regret what I lost with Everett Walsh—”

“Come off it,” Chloe said. “Tell us another.”

I swallowed. “—and I want to make sure y’all aren’t making a huge mistake. I mean, I’m mad, too, but I’m always mad at Nick. Maybe you’re blowing this out of proportion with Gavin and Davis. I know both of you looked forward to seeing them tonight. Your evening with them got off to an excellent start. And now you’re sending them home early, all because of this stupid challenge? I wish I’d never said anything.” At least that part was the truth.

“Gavin told me a dumb-blonde joke last week when he made a ninety-eight on the chemistry test and I made a ninety-seven,” Chloe said.

“That’s just Gavin.” I couldn’t believe I was defending that jerk, but I really did think Chloe was overreacting. “Gavin would make fun of you for a hair out of place. He’s just feeling around for material.”

“He can’t feel there,” she said vehemently. “He can make jokes, and I’ll giggle and pretend he’s actually funny, up to a point. But if he tries to tell me I’m less of a person because I’m a girl? Or you are? That’s where I draw the line.” She pulled her bag from a locker and slammed the metal door.

“But you can’t blame Davis,” I reasoned, turning to Liz. “He didn’t start it.”

“He didn’t stop it,” Liz said, not looking up from tying her boots. “He was so disrespectful of you on your big day.”

“But he didn’t mean anything by it,” I pointed out, “unlike Gavin, and definitely unlike Nick. Davis is naturally a sweet-natured person. He’s just been hanging around Nick and Gavin too long. It’s a wonder they don’t have him stealing candy from babies, or blasting rap music out of his car stereo in front of the retirement home.”

Liz stood, shaking her head. For a moment I hoped some water had dripped down her face from her damp curls—but no. She had tears in her eyes. “My boyfriend can’t treat my friends that way.”

“Oh God!” I exclaimed, really desperate now. “Look at me.” I stood in front of both of them. To Liz I said, “You and Davis are adorable together.” I moved to Chloe. “And you and Gavin are—”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“—interesting together. You can’t let my fight with Nick ruin your relationships with your hot boyfriends. Come on, now. My fight with Nick has been going on for years. It’s like this black hole, with gravity so strong that not even light can escape, sucking in winter breaks and dates and whole relationships, until the world—are you listening to me?” When I’d started waxing poetic, Chloe’s attention had wandered around the room. I grabbed her chin and turned her face to me again. “Until the very world is devoid of love!”

“It’s not that bad,” Nick’s voice came faintly through the locker room wall.

We all looked at one another.

“Let’s go up to my apartment,” Chloe said. “Forget them. I have something in my room that will cheer us up, and it’s much better than boys.”

Chloe was serious about putting the boys in Time Out for the time being, and Liz seemed serious, too. Now that I knew Nick was in the locker room next door, I listened for him and wondered whether the boys would eventually follow us to Chloe’s family’s apartment at the back of the building, overlooking the ski slopes. Chloe and Liz clomped up the stairs like they weren’t giving the boys a second thought.

I slowed on the steps. Chloe and Liz reached the top of the staircase and pushed into the hall above me, leaving the door to close slowly and bump shut behind them. I was alone. I turned around and watched the door at the bottom of the staircase, waiting for Nick to appear. Wishing he would mate rialize so I could yell at him and get this weight off my chest.

I’d been so in love with him for that magical month in seventh grade, and I was so devastated to find out I was a joke to him. He must have sensed that I still liked him more than I was letting on, and now he was acting mean about it. Why? What had I ever done to him? I wanted to be furious with him about the girl snowboarder comments, the jump challenge, everything, but it just didn’t make any sense.

I stood there so long, staring a hole in the closed door at the bottom of the stairs, willing it to open and Nick to walk in and explain himself to me, that I got dizzy in the long white room. The dread of snowboarding off that jump came back to me in a rush. I clung to the railing to keep from falling down the stairs.

“Hayden,” Liz called from the hall.

“Coming!” I shook my head to clear it, then ran up the stairs to my friends without looking back again.

When I reached Chloe’s bedroom, she and Liz sat up on Chloe’s fluffy pink king-size bed, waiting expectantly. Uh-oh. Sure enough, the second I closed the door behind me, they both squealed, “Did you and Nick make out?”

I sighed. “For a second there, I thought we were going to.”

“But you didn’t?” Chloe wailed.

I flopped onto the foot of the bed and stretched out on my back. “No. We had an argument, and he called me a bitch.”

“What!” Liz exclaimed. “That’s so disrespectful!”

“That doesn’t sound like Nick,” Chloe said. “What exactly led up to this?”

Thinking back, I sat up with an enormous groan. The whole evening had been so confusing and frustrating and mortifying. Not like the seventh grade, but close. “I walked in on him in the sauna. We joked around. You know how we do.”