“You’ve pretty much ignored me for the past four years, except to insult me or to throw something at me. Then suddenly you want to make out just when our friends get together? You don’t act like you’re very fond of me. You act like I’m convenient. You would have made out with any chick you happened upon in the sauna, from the hotel maid to the lady in room 3B. I’m not sure I do want to end our trial separation. We have irreconcilable differences.” By the time I got all of this out, I was shouting at him. I’d known I was angry at him, but I hadn’t realized I’d been storing up that much resentment for four years.
Apparently, neither had he. His hand suddenly tensed on my tummy, and I suppressed the urge to say oof. Nick and I had been pressing into each other on the bench, our thighs touching. Our heads were coming closer together with every word we uttered. If someone had interrupted us just then (which they wouldn’t, because we would hear the hall door squeak first), they would think we were about to kiss. They would never understand how much tension rode on every word as Nick looked into my eyes and the following words slid out of his mouth and straight into my heart like slivers of glass: “You have a lot of freaking nerve.” He sat back against the wooden wall, sliding his hand off my tummy and his thigh out from under my hand (nooooo!).
Clearly I couldn’t read Nick as well as I’d thought. I hadn’t wanted to make him angry if he really did care about me. I’d only wanted him to get his hands off me if I didn’t mean anything to him. Now that it appeared I did mean something, and I’d hurt his feelings, my goal now was to get his hands back on me. “I’m not trying to make you mad,” I said quickly. “I’m not even saying I’m right. This just seems very sudden, and I wanted to talk about it with you a little mo—”
“Forget it, Hayden.” His skin glowed with sweat in the low light of the sauna, and his dark hair stuck to his forehead in wet black wisps. He breathed hard like the football team had just given him a good workout. Or like I had. And he looked like I’d slapped him.
But even without the hurt expression on his handsome face, I would have known I’d seriously wounded him because he called me Hayden instead of Hoyden. Like my mother using my full name, Hayden Christine O’Malley, it meant I was in big trouble.
He went on, “I can’t believe you would say something like that to me.” He folded his big arms on his bare chest. “I mean, even if you don’t care about me, I can’t believe you would be that much of a bitch to anyone. That’s just cruel.”
The thing to do then was to make a snappy comeback and stomp out of the sauna, never to return. I got called the B-word a lot, undeservedly in my opinion, just because I had red hair and I said what I thought, perhaps a tad too loudly.
But all I could do was sit there on the bench, staring at Nick with my mouth open and tears in my eyes. I couldn’t get over the feeling of seeing him for the first time tonight as younger and vulnerable, more like me. It hurt that I had hurt him. It hurt more that he had hurt me back.
Outside the sauna, the hall door squealed open. Someone was coming.
“Great,” I breathed. Chloe had invited Nick over here tonight because he’d held my hand in the hall and she’d thought there was more to come. Even once I explained to Chloe that we officially hated each other now and that nothing had happened between us, Nick and I would not live down getting caught together in the sauna. All my friends would double their teasing me about Nick, and I would never be able to get him off my mind.
Strangely, Nick didn’t seem the least bit concerned about Gavin catching us and teasing us in class forevermore. He still stared at me like I’d slapped him. Okay, I’d slapped him a lot in class over the years, when he had shot spitballs at me or tried to write his name on my arm. This time he stared at me like I’d slapped him when he didn’t deserve it.
The sauna door swung open. “There you are,” Chloe exclaimed at me with her fists on her hips. Her eyes slid to Nick.
Gavin appeared over her shoulder. “And there you are,” he called to Nick. His eyes slid to me.
Liz and Davis crowded the doorway, too. All four of them now wore bathing suits, which meant they’d intended to join us in the sauna. Suddenly it was way too hot and I couldn’t breathe.
“God, it’s like a sauna in here,” I muttered at the same time Nick mumbled, “I was just leaving. This place is full of hot air.” Too late I realized we were pushing through our friends in the doorway at the same time. We couldn’t have acted more guilty.
I reached the hallway free and clear. Someone big padded behind me—Nick, I assumed—but I didn’t look back. I burst through the squealing door, slipped into the women’s locker room, and rushed under a cold shower with my bikini still on. “Eek!” Maybe if I stood there long enough, the lingering lust I felt for Nick would wash away, along with the regret that we hadn’t kissed in the sauna.
The cold water bouncing off my skull only gave me a headache. I’d rejected Nick, yes. But the more I thought about it, the more his reaction seemed completely uncalled-for. I got called a bitch a lot. That didn’t mean I had to take it.
I turned off the water and pushed through the door on the opposite side of the locker room, into the cold night. I dashed for the heated pool, jumping in without looking first to see who I’d be sharing it with. Of course, Nick sat alone on the submerged stairs with his elbows behind him on the wall, watching me as I came up for air. Everyone else must be inside and coming soon.
He didn’t take the opportunity to leap across the pool and push me under, as he usually would have. He just stared me down, frowning, and flicked his wet hair out of his eyes with his pinkie. When I was little I’d spent a lot of time at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. Now it was like Nick and I were separated by one of those foot-thick walls of specially tempered glass. We could see each other. We could even long for each other. But even if we both had put our hands up to the glass, we could never have touched. The glass between us was smooth and cold.
“Congratulations to you,” the voices of the others sang from behind the slowly moving door. Gavin held it open for Chloe, who paraded out with the cake, and Liz, who carried paper plates and forks and napkins. As soon as everyone was clear of the door, Gavin and Davis made a run for the pool and jumped in to avoid the frigid air just like I had, but the girls sang on. “Congratulations dear Hayden, congratulations to you!”