Full Strength

Forty Seven-Logan 🏒

        Eve and I had pushed our ice cream date out a couple of weeks, since her washer had gone out and she'd had to frantically call a plumber. So now we were eating ice cream in her car, the cones becoming slushy. 

        "How is skating going?" she asked.

        "Good." Lillian and I had gone skating for the past two days in a row. We stayed out until dark, our cheeks red and our lips blue. Then we would come in and drink hot chocolate, cuddling in front of the fireplace until we got so tired that we had to go to bed.

       "I think by the end of the month I'll be doing morning skate with the team," I told my sister, licking a drop of ice cream that was dripping dangerously close to my thumb.

        "That's good. Feeling up to playing in games?" Eve asked.

        I shook my head. "No way. I'll be lucky to make the playoffs at this rate. Getting slammed around by a handful of guys who weigh two hundred pounds does not sound fun."

        Eve glanced down towards my leg. "Does it hurt at all?"

        "Once in a great while, there will be like, a weird twinge," I admitted. That part wasn't so fun; a reminder that however I felt, there was always a hint of uncertainty. Lillian had said that it wasn't a big deal, that it would mostly just mess with my confidence. Even going on a walk made me uneasy, wondering if I would twist my ankle and be lost in the woods for weeks.

        "Enough about me, how have you been?"

        "Fine. Work is killing me, but I'm grateful I at least have a job," my sister said grimly.

        I frowned. "I thought you liked this time of year."

        "Normally, yes, but over the break there was a big shift in the board. People got promotions and there were some people who retired, so now it's a bunch of new people who I'm convinced have never set foot in a school in their life," she grumbled, calming herself with a lick of ice cream.

        "Sorry," I said sympathetically.

        "It's okay. I hate the paperwork part of my job. I just want to teach, but I understand why it's there," she sighed. "In terms of good news, Allison got me an e-reader."

        "Did you spend all your money on books?" I asked, biting back a smile. My sister was incredibly smart with money, but her weakness was buying books.

        Eve shook her head proudly. "Nope. I've only been downloading free ones. I mean, most of them aren't all that well-written, but I'll read anything that's half decent."

        "Do you have a lot of time to read them?"

        This deflated her smile a bit. "No. Right now I have a massive stack of assignments to grade on my coffee table," she admitted. "But maybe I can squeeze in a book tomorrow evening."

        "That'll be nice." Eve always used her weekends for grading and planning lessons, while evenings were for resting.

         "So is there any particular reason you invited me to have ice cream or did you just feel like getting me to pay for sweet treats?" she asked.

         "I actually wanted to talk to you about something," I said, my stomach helpfully tying itself in knots.  I'd brought this up will Lillian last week, saying that if Nick knew, it was only fair to Eve that she know as well. 

         Eve nodded. "Okay. Did you kill someone?"

         "Contrary to your murderous tendencies, no," I said, rolling my eyes. She really was a little too invested in her murder mystery books.