“I don’t know,” she muttered, looking uncertain. “Let’s just leave.”
“You want to dance?” I prodded. “I’ll get you anything you want.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I get anything I want,” I stated quite plainly.
She laughed under her breath, probably thinking I was joking, and I went weak for a moment, the light in her eyes the most beautiful thing I’d seen in a long time.
But she shook her head. “No.”
Jesus. Is this how she wanted it? Me taking care of shit that hurt her or pissed her off behind her back because she was too timid? Because that’s what would happen. I didn’t let things slide.
“No one denies you,” I said.
“But not like this,” she told me. “I won’t like how it feels if I don’t earn it honestly.”
Yeah, I got it. I’d probably feel the same way about basketball.
But…
“She deserves to cry like she made you cry, at least,” I pointed out. “At the very least, a pout.”
Telling Winter to give up dancing—encouraging anyone to not do what they wanted to do—was arrogant, presumptive, and smug. I wanted to shut her up.
“I can probably have her fired,” I said.
But Winter just laughed.
I frowned. “Can I at least flood her yard and do donuts?”
“Nothing destructive,” she ordered me. “Nothing mean. It’s got to be funny. And like…easy to clean up. You know? Something elegant.”
“Something middle school,” I corrected her snidely.
She rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat again, smiling to herself.
I relaxed into the headrest, pondering what I had in my trunk. My buddies and I had all been summoned back to town from college to host Devil’s Night tomorrow night, and as soon as we got back today, we’d gone supply shopping. I had bottles of liquor in my trunk, but Winter didn’t want to start any fires. There was plaster, glue, flashlights, and the guys had some other shit, like rope, smoke bombs, and sledge hammers. Most of this stuff we probably wouldn’t use tomorrow, but we’d been so into it after having not taken part in the Thunder Bay night of mischief for a couple years, we lost our heads and got excited.
Something non-destructive, though.
We didn’t do anything non-destructive.
And then I remembered. I also had some air horns and duct tape in my trunk.
Jesus. Well, that was it then. I knew what we had to do.
I couldn’t believe I was sinking this low, for Christ’s sake.
“Buckle up,”
I told her, shaking my head at myself. “I know what we’re going to do.”
She held the back of my sweatshirt, following me as I jogged down the pathway, around the corner, and past the elevators. I’d been forced to come to Bridge Bay Theater dozens of times growing up to see performances my parents sponsored or to visit my mother when she deigned to perform as if the town should be so grateful to have a genuine Bolshoi ballerina in their midst. Really, it was just an ego boost for her, since she hadn’t performed on a grand scale since she was fifteen. My father married her, brought her to America, and that was that.
I knew this place like the back of my hand, even though I hadn’t been here in years. Luckily, the basement window still didn’t lock.
“You’ve done this before?” Winter asked me.