Breaking The Ice [bxb]

Chapter Twenty-Three [Liam]

"I can't believe you, Mackenzie Pruitt!"

Mack arches an eyebrow at Gus's guise of pure shock.

We are all sitting around in my room over The Lodge. I tried to ask them to hang out at my house instead, but they like the freedom this room provides, away from parental supervision. Pff. Like we get any of that in my house.

It's been three full weeks since the last time I was in this room and, to be honest, there's a lot I'd rather not stir back to the forefront of my brain. 

Mack's lounging on a rustic loveseat that usually stays outside on the porch by the hot tub, but they dragged it inside so we could all sit. Gus is perched on one of the wooden armrests, peering at her phone screen.

Chloe and Nat are hidden away from my sight, stretched out on the bed amidst textbooks and note cards. I sit with my back to them, on the floor, leaning against the wooden chest at the foot of the bed where we keep clean sheets and some of my clothes. 

I really don't want to look at that bed. I am not even sure what would be worse — jogging back the memories of a night that has no business enduring so vividly in my mind, or tainting those memories with the sight of anyone but him on that spot we claimed for a night. A spot that was left empty the morning after, when he was gone.

There's a Trigonometry textbook open at my feet, but I can't even see it over my knees, hugged loosely to my chest. Is it weird that triangles and tangents make me think about him, or just pathetic?

I can see Mack press her phone against her chest, sitting up to shoot Gus a properly outraged look after he kept trying to snoop. "Were you always this nosy or did puberty make it worse?"

Gus rolls his eyes. He finds me looking at the two of them and fixes his gaze on mine. "She's texting Dean Miller," he says pointedly, like that piece of information was supposed to trigger an alliance between us to rile up Mack.

I guess, any other day, it would have.

"What's it to you who I text?" Mack retorts, a little too affected.

"Are you two a thing now?" I ask.

She shrugs noncommittally, still trying too hard to hide the fact she's not totally unconcerned in regards to this topic of conversation. "We're something."

"Thought you weren't looking for a serious relationship."

"I wasn't. And I'm not."

"Dean's the kind of guy for serious relationships, though," Nat chimes in from behind me. I can't see her face or posture, but her tone his calm and reasonable.

Mack scoffs. "What. You date his best friend for a year and now you're the official expert on Dean?"

"No," Nat says evenly. "But I do know him a little better than you do. We used to talk a lot when I was dating Eli, and we still talk."

I shift in my place on the floor, uncomfortable at the mention of his name. And annoyed that I can't do a better job at hiding my discomfort.

"Oh, yeah?" Mack smiles somewhat cynically, but there's an honest curiosity hidden in there. "What do you talk about? His earnest wish for a committed relationship? Did he show you a wedding album with pictures of his dream tuxedos?"

"No, but he asks about you. He did just yesterday."

That peaks both Mack's and Gus's attention. And maybe mine a little too. I put a hand down on the carpet so I can twist around to look at her.

Nat sits cross-legged, with a half-moon of papers scattered around her and her back to the headboard, and I try not too think too much about the way a pair of strong, hockey-roughened hands held on to the mahogany of that headboard twenty-one nights ago while I—