Equal Ice // Harry Styles AU

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Gabrielle’s POV

When I finally heard the doorbell ring, signaling that Bella was here, I got up from the couch and picked up my skate bag before heading to the door. When I opened the door, I saw Bella standing on the porch with a big smile on her face.

“Are you ready to skate?” she asked cheerfully.

“Yep,” I said and put a completely fake smile on my face.

Just as I had with my dad, I saved that excited look that she had on her face because I knew at the end of today it probably wasn’t going to be there anymore when she was around me. I locked my front door once I walked out of the house, and then the two of us walked to Bella’s mom’s car.

“Hey Gabi,” Bella’s mom greeted; just as cheerful as Bella had when I opened the door.

“Hey,” I said back, still having the façade of excitement I had done when I opened the front door to Bella.

I wondered what Bella’s mom was going to think of everything and what she was going to think of me towards the end of the day. I knew Bella was going to tell her everything, but I hoped she would wait until they dropped me off at home after skating practice. Bella’s mom was probably going to be like Harry’s aunt was and will be okay with it because she isn’t as serious about the feud as some people are.

“Are you both excited to finally get to go back to the rink?” Bella’s mom asked us as she backed out of my driveway and began to drive to the rink.

“Yeah, but it feels a bit weird going back to my normal routine and everything now that I’ve had so much free time,” I told her.

“I completely understand, but I bet your dad is happy to have you back on the rink,” she said.

“Oh yes,” I told her.

“Well I already know you’re pretty excited to go back to the rink,” Bella’s mom said, talking to her daughter now.

“I’m happy to get to skate and really excited to see all the renovations and changes they did to the rink,” Bella began, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she had more to say about going back to the rink, and I knew the rest of what she was going to say was most likely going to be everything that she wasn’t looking forward to having in her life again at the rink,

“But, I’m not excited about having to see the hockey players again,” Bella said, saying exactly what her mom and I knew she was going to add.

I began to wonder if Bella ever told her parents that the guy she went out with that night was a hockey player. I doubt she did, considering how much she has let her mom know that she hates pretty much any hockey player, especially the ones that skate at this rink. Just to be obnoxious, I had almost asked her why she hated hockey players so much if she went out on a date with one.

Since I didn’t know if her mom knew or not, I decided just to keep my mouth shut since I was already responsible for the date being a disaster for her. I didn’t want to say something that might start something with her and her mom right now, I didn’t know if her mom would be mad at her, or what. I did know that Bella would be mad at me if I said something and there was already a very likely chance that she was going to be pretty mad at me already later today if coach does decide to tell people today, and I’m guessing he will.

“I get that you don’t like those guys, but would it hurt you to just ignore them instead of always talking about how much you dislike them or trying to get a rise out of them every time you see them?” her mom said to her.

“Ignoring them is no fun though, I hate them and I want to let them know,” she said.

“Oh I’m pretty sure they know,” I told her, recalling a ton of the arguments and fights that she has started with them all almost every day when she would come to my rink when I was done practicing.

“I still like to remind them,” Bella said, causing me and my mom to laugh at her as we continued to ride to the rink.

A few moments passed, and now Bella and her mom were just talking about their plan for this week for getting Bella caught up on her training since she’s obviously not been able to skate for a while. I eventually jus tuned out everything they were talking about, and just did what I usually did when I was bored in a car or had a lot on my mind which was just looking out the window.

I started thinking about what Harry was doing right now. He might still be asleep since he still had awhile until he needed to be up and getting ready to head to the rink, and he told me that he was probably going to be sleeping in. Neither of us were looking forward to having to wake up earlier than we had been during our break, so I didn’t blame him for waiting longer than he really should to wake up. I however couldn’t do that since my training time started so early.

We had talked on the phone a few times during the last week of the break, but we only actually saw each other like two or three times. We’d been a bit distant ever since the small fight we got into the night that his coach found out, and ever since then there has just been some tension between us that we’ve both just been ignoring. I knew it was probably best to talk about it so we could work out this problem we were having with people knowing about us, but for the time being, ignoring the problem was working for us.

We were about to have a different problem to deal with soon though because at some point this week, most likely today, everyone was going to know about us. When I had talked to Harry on the phone just the other day, I kept going on and on about how worried I was for today, and I had a feeling that I had put some new worries into his head that he didn’t have before. I had felt bad for doing that, but I really had needed someone at the time to rant to about everything that I was worried about that could happen today.

As always someone of my worries were far from even having part of it happen, but it was still in my mind and most of my worries weren’t impossible, just highly unlikely, but still stressed me out. I could tell Harry is getting pretty tired of me being stressed all the time, and he argues that its because I’m keeping so much from my dad, but I always disagree with him. Although it may be one reason why I’m stressing out, what Harry doesn’t understand is that telling my dad wasn’t going to make all my stress go away and make me feel happy being open with my dad like it did with his aunt.

Telling my dad was just going to create more problems for me, and not just me, a few problems for Harry were going to occur too, probably not as many as me, but definitely enough to affect Harry. If I told my dad, my stress level was just going to drastically rise all at once. My heart felt like it was beating a thousand miles an hour once I saw that we were approaching the rink.

I looked at all the cars as we drove into the parking lot and thought about how many of those people who owns those cars were going to know about Harry and I by the end of the day, and how many were going to care.

I was a bit confused when Bella’s mom parked the car in a parking spot instead of bringing us up to the front and dropping us off like she usually did on days she had to work, like today.

“I’m just parking because I want to go inside and see what renovations they did to the rink,” Bella’s mom informed us, answering both me and Bella’s question that she knew we were both thinking.

“Couldn’t you have just waited until you came to pick us up since you already come inside then,” Bella said as the three of us got out of the car.

“Yes, I could, but I would really like to see the renovations now,” she told her daughter as she walked to the other side of the car where Bella and I were, and then the three of us began to walk up to the entrance of the building.