The Ex Games(25)
Author: Jennifer Echols

And then my mom called, “Have fun on your date, Hayden!”

Another step down and I thought, Good. Mom is mistaken and has led Nick to believe I’m going on a date.

One more step down and I thought, Oh no, Mom has led Nick to believe I’m going on a date! No matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise, obviously I still held out hope for Nick and me getting together this winter break. I turned around on the stair, wondering what I could say to let Nick know I was still unengaged, without letting him know I wanted him to know.

Nick ran smack into me.

“Ooof!” he hollered, grabbing me around the waist to keep me from falling down the rest of the staircase.

That’s when I realized Mom thought Nick and I were going on a date together.

Quickly Nick let me go. He looked huge, frowning down at me from the step above. “Why are you stopping in the middle of the stairs?”

“Why are you tailgating me?”

He put his hand behind me, at butt level, without touching me. “What is that?” he demanded.

I bent a little and slapped my butt. “Something the heir to a meat fortune should know all about. USDA grade A prime, baby.” I straightened. “Just kidding. Really, it’s my butt.”

He put his hands on his hips, and from below I noticed his strong superhero chin again. He grumbled, “Why do you have ‘BOY TOY’ written across your butt?”

“Oh!” I put my hand behind me over the words, realizing that I probably should have been embarrassed about this sooner. “These are my little brother’s jeans. He wrote it to annoy me. Or to get me a date. Speaking of which, what did you say to my mother to make her think we’re going on a date?”

He shrugged. “I just told her we’re both going to Mile-High Pie. Aren’t you meeting Chloe and Liz there? I’m meeting Gavin and Davis.”

More of Chloe and Liz’s matchmaking, no doubt.

“Did you tell my mother that you called me a bitch last night, too?” I asked him. “Because that’s the best way I know to win parents over.”

For a split second, he looked uncomfortable. Almost immediately, he recovered and went back on the offensive. “You shouldn’t wear those jeans. People might think something.”

I stamped my foot on the stair. “Like what? I want to show off my fire-crotch? What do you care? God! Stop following me.” My hair was down now, and I felt it smack into his chest as I whirled around and flounced down the rest of the stairs, across the lobby, and into the cold night.

I mean, really cold. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees since I came off the slopes that afternoon. The formerly slushy snow on the lesser-used sections of the sidewalks had frozen over and now crunched under my boots. I tucked my nose deep into my scarf against a sudden gust of freezing wind. Mile-High Pie was only a few blocks away, but this walk seemed to stretch in front of me forever. Cold and anger were not a good mix.

“Hayden,” Nick called from behind me.

Oh, good! Just what this walk needed: a double-shot of ex to go with that cold and anger. Shaking my head, I crossed the icy street.

“Hayden.” His voice was sharper, angry now, and it echoed against the two-story storefronts closed for the night. I could tell from the direction of his voice that he was crossing the street after me.

“Don’t you mean Hoyden?” I called over my shoulder.

Heavy steps cracked behind me, closer and closer. Nick rounded in front of me and stood in my path, his breath puffing white into the black night. “I never called you that.”

“You call me Hoyden all the time!”

He frowned at me and said, “Fire-crotch.”

“Take a number.” I tried to walk around him.

He caught me by the elbow. “Would you hold up for a minute and listen to me?” His dark eyes focused on me, hardly blinking when the wind gusted in his face. He put on a very convincing act of disbelief and outrage. “I mean, I did not call you a fire-crotch. I was afraid you overheard that in the lunchroom last week. Everett Walsh called you a fire-crotch as you walked by. I told Everett Walsh that he should watch his mouth. Then Everett said, ‘Oh, you’re one to talk, you say stuff like that about Hayden all the time,’ and I said, ‘I would never make a comment about her crotch. No.’ We nearly got into it right there in the lunchroom, but you conveniently missed that part.”

I certainly had. And I wasn’t buying it. Nick, standing up for me? “Let me get this straight. Your lunchroom speech went a little something like this.” I put my hands out in front of me like I was a Roman orator enunciating for the crowd. “‘I, Nick Krieger, defender of women, would never denounce the crotch. I am above the crotch.’”

He gaped at me. Other boys might not look so hot while gaping. Nick looked adorable in the soft light of the streetlamps, against a backdrop of small town and snow.

I put my hands down.

He watched me silently for a few moments more. “You don’t think very well of me,” he finally said.

I shrugged. “I don’t blame you for being confused and thinking, ‘Gosh, I called Hayden a fire-crotch and she’s mad? What’s up with that?’ There was a time in my life when you could have called me a fire-crotch in front of a bunch of people, and I would have just laughed. I wanted any kind of attention I could get from you. In eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, when you insulted me and other girls said it was just because you liked me, I believed it. But I guess everybody reaches a point when they’re done with that, and they want to be respected. This is definitely unfortunate for the purposes of teen love—I mean, look at Gavin. But there it is.”

“You don’t want to be with me because you think I don’t respect you.”

“I know you don’t respect me.”

“Because you don’t believe me that I didn’t call you a fire-crotch?”

“You don’t have a good track record for telling me the truth.” I walked around him and nuzzled my nose into my scarf again, heading into the wind.

His boots crunched behind me.

“And stop following me!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“I’m not following you. Stop walking in front of me.” The crunches sounded louder and louder again until he jogged past me and kept jogging until he was fifty feet ahead of me on the sidewalk. He disappeared around the corner. I was left with nothing but my anger and the cold again.

When I finally reached the restaurant and swung open the door, of course the first thing I saw was Nick hanging his parka on the coatrack, revealing how adorable he looked in his sweater and scarf underneath. And Fiona Lewis was calling to him from the ancient Galaga arcade game. His other ex. Drat!