True (True Believers #1)(53)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Come on, guys, get some warm clothes on,” Tyler told them. “We’re going sledding.”

“Really?” Jayden asked eagerly. Then he frowned. “Sledding is for little kids.”

“No, it’s not. I’m doing it.”

That was all the permission Jayden needed. In five minutes, he and Easton were wearing sweatshirts and coats, their hands crammed into gloves. Tyler and I had retrieved two sad-looking sleds out of the garage, and when we went into the kitchen, Riley appeared.

“Why does everyone look like they’re about to cross the Bering Strait on foot?” he asked, leaning against the kitchen counter with a disposable gas-station cup of coffee in his hand.

“We’re going sledding. Want to come with us?” I asked. It didn’t seem like a Riley kind of activity, but I was being polite. Besides, I wanted the chance to get to know Tyler’s older brother a little better.

He stared at me, then at his brothers. Finally he shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

“Woot!” Jayden said.

Riley plucked his flannel shirt off the kitchen chair, and we filed out. I rode in the backseat between Jayden and Easton and listened to Tyler and Riley banter in the front. It felt good, warm, cozy. The best I’d felt since I had gotten that text from Nathan on Friday. When we got back to the apartment, our friends were waiting for us on the hill, tossing snowballs at each other. Kylie looked like the pink abominable snowwoman, dressed from head to toe in fuchsia fur. I wasn’t even sure where each piece stopped and started. It was just one giant fluffy assault on the senses.

“Is that a Care Bear?” Riley asked.

He and Tyler laughed.

“Ladies and children first!” Kylie declared as we all hiked up the hill.

“That’s Rory and Easton then,” Tyler told her with a smirk. He handed me the sled he was carrying and kissed me.

Kylie smacked him.

Jessica was busy amassing a snowball stockpile, so she didn’t look like she cared about getting first dibs on sledding. So Easton and I lined up next to each other, my feet awkwardly jutting out in front of me, gloves curled around the handles. That hill looked steeper from the top than it did from below. The lamplight of the parking lot cast a harsh glow over the sparkling snow, fresh flakes falling gently on us.

“Race ya,” he told me with a smile.

“You’re smaller than me,” I told him. “My weight will slow down the pull of gravity.”

To which his response was “Go!” as he pushed off.

“Hey!” I wiggled back and forth until I finally shot down the hill after him.

Holy crap, immediately I was going faster than I would have thought possible. Yet instead of being scary, it was exhilarating. The wind swept past my cheeks, my hair whipping back behind me, cold air filling my lungs. I could hear the guys up on the hill, cheering us on, and the whoosh of my plastic sled over the crystal snow. It was cold, only in the twenties, so it was perfect snow for sledding, crisp and icy, not wet and heavy. Enjoying the freedom, I only panicked briefly when I got to the bottom and realized I was careening straight toward the parking lot. Easton was already standing up, having beat the snot out of me in our race. I hurled myself sideways off the sled into the snow with a clumsy but effective dismount. The sled kept going and hit the concrete speed bump at the edge of the parking lot and flipped up into the air.

Standing up and smacking the snow off my butt, I high-fived Easton.

“That was awesome!” was his opinion.

“Totally!” I grinned at him as we collected the sled and trudged back up the hill. My butt was wet, but it was worth it.

“My turn!” Kylie said, and this time, she took the sled directly from me, not waiting to hear anyone else’s opinions.

She and Jayden squared off, and Riley gave them both a shove to get them going. Both shrieked the entire way down the hill, Kylie’s pink hood flying off her head and flopping on her back.

Tyler gave me a grin. “Damn. I’m not sure who screams more like a girl.” He pulled me into his arms. “By the way, sorry again for puking on you.”

I snuggled into the warmth of his chest. “I told you, it wasn’t on me. It was the floor. And it’s no big deal, for the third time. You took care of me when I was hungover. I’m just sorry I had to go to class. I felt guilty for leaving you.” I did. I’d gone back at lunch with some soup from the food court, but Tyler had still been sleeping, so I had headed back to campus for my afternoon classes.

“There wasn’t anything you could do but let me sleep off that whiskey, which is what I did. I did eat the soup eventually, at seven.” He shook his head. “So stupid. I can’t believe I had to call off work. Lost fifty bucks for no reason.”

I was about to tell him he was entitled to get drunk after the weekend he’d had, when I heard Jessica’s voice rise.

“Your opinion is meaningless to me since I don’t even know who you are,” she said, voice haughty as she glared at Riley.

He seemed to be offering her a suggestion on snowball packing, given that he was squatting down on his haunches and had a handful of snow. “Fine, have shitty snowballs,” he told her, standing back up and letting the half-formed ball fall out of his hands. “And I’m Riley, Tyler’s brother. Who are you?”

“Jessica. Rory’s roommate.”

Neither one said it was nice to meet the other, as it apparently wasn’t. Tyler shot me an amused look when Riley rolled his eyes and moved away to take his turn, which he did by running and diving onto the sled on his stomach with a whoop. I laughed.

“Please,” was Jessica’s opinion, her eye roll matching Riley’s earlier one.

Kylie started shrieking when Easton hit her with a snowball. It was a bold move for him, but I guessed the fuzzy pink target was too tempting. She looked like the snack food Sno Balls, and I would imagine that at ten years old, sugar factored into the majority of his fantasies. He probably couldn’t help but be fascinated. Nathan took a turn down the hill, and Tyler and I went together, me tucked between his legs.

But we were too heavy as a two-man team and stalled halfway down the hill..

“That was a rip-off,” he said as we trudged back up to the top. “The only good thing about it was your ass rubbing on my junk.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. It was like guys came with a manual titled Gross: The Least Romantic Things Ever to Say to Women. All of which seemed to crack them up.