Scars On Ice | Charlie Conway

t h i r t y - t w o

"Your date is going to get lonely," was the only greeting that Aspen offered. She didn't turn her head or open her eyes. If she hadn't spoken, the boy beside her would've doubted that she even knew he was there.

He let out a small chuckle. "I think Averman will survive a few minutes without me," Charlie joked. His blue eyes studied her side profile tentatively, desperately searching for some sort of indication that she wasn't upset with him. When a gentle smile pulled her lips upwards, he felt himself relax. "Your date looked a bit lonely when I passed his table."

Aspen gave a small shrug. "Rollie's got Jay. They're fine," she breathed tiredly. As much as she knew that the right thing to do was to go spend time with her friends, she just didn't want to move.

"Rollie," Charlie repeated with a small sigh. His voice was so quiet that Aspen hardly heard it, and even when she did register his words, she didn't say anything. The sat in silence for a moment before Charlie abruptly blurted, "I thought you were in love with him."

That declaration was enough to make Aspen open her eyes, and for the first time since the boy had seated himself beside her, their gazes met. She furrowed her eyebrows. "Roland?"

Charlie nodded, his cheeks turning bright red. He lifted his hand to rub sheepishly at the back of his head. "As much as it really kills me to admit, I've pretty much been disgustingly jealous of him since the first time I saw the two of you together."

Aspen's frown deepened. What was there to be jealous of? "Jealous? Why?" she asked in stark confusion.

"How much time he gets to spend with you, for one," he began timidly, a small smile falling onto his lips. That smile quickly fell away as he continued. "And you always spoke so highly of him. No matter how often you and I talked, the suspicion that you secretly wished I were him was constantly tugging at the back of my mind."

Aspen was quick to shake her head, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment. "It's not like that!" she insisted hurriedly. She adjusted her posture to sit a little bit straighter, her expression becoming serious. "Roland and I are just friends. Have been, pretty much since kindergarten."

The look that Charlie sent her bordered on sympathetic, as though he pitied her naïveté. "Aspen," he began slowly, his eyebrows gently arching above his deep eyes, "people who are 'just friends' don't look at each other the way Roland looks at you."

Aspen's blood ran cold as an anxious pit swallowed the contents of her stomach. Was that what Elle had been trying to tell her for the past two months? Why hadn't anyone said anything? If Roland felt that way about her, how long had she been unknowingly stringing him along?

How long had she been breaking his heart?

"Oh my god," she breathed, her heart thundering in her rib cage. She shook her head to clear away her thoughts. "No," she insisted, "it's not like that."

Charlie didn't press her further. He didn't repeat that it was like that, that everyone but her had seen it as clear as day. He just let her process things in silence for a little while.

When she had gotten as good of a grasp on the information as she felt she possibly could, she let out a sharp huff. "Why are you telling me this now?" she asked, one fair eyebrow raised in suspicion.

Charlie forced a wry smile. "You wanted an explanation," he reminded her.

She scoffed, "You've left a few things out."

With a sigh, Charlie gave a solemn nod. "I know," he responded dryly. It took him a moment to regain his courage, but when he did, the words tumbled out of him like a faucet that he couldn't turn off. "When you didn't want to wear my jersey, I panicked. I figured it would soften the rejection a bit if I just gave it to someone else, but that only made things worse."