“Cosa c’è? What’s wrong?” He cupped his hands over mine. “I can hear it in your voice. Something’s upset you.”
I shook my head, yanking my hands out from under his. “Stop! Okay? You can’t talk to me like that. Or hold my hands like that! You told me you like Eve! Andres saw you kissing her, and, and …” I put my head in my hands. “I don’t even understand what’s going on anymore!”
I waited, my head down, listening to the lapping water while Lanz sat in stunned silence. Then he laughed.
I peeked up. “How can you possibly be laughing right now?” I glared at him. “Stop, or I swear I’ll throw you overboard.”
Lanz held up his hands. “Abbi pietà! Have mercy! I am not laughing at you. Only … that you thought me and Eve were … that I kissed her in that way. Like a girlfriend.”
I stared at him. “Didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “No! In Italy, we kiss hello and good-bye, cheek to cheek. It’s the custom. I was only trying to be polite with Eve.”
My pulse thundered in my ears. “But … but you never kissed me cheek to cheek like that.”
“Because I was too worried you would slap me!”
I giggled. “That’s fair. I might’ve slapped you.”
Lanz’s laughter faded, softening into seriousness. “Eve is nice. But she’s not the girl for me. I think, actually, that her heart belongs to someone else.”
“Ethan,” I said, then clamped a hand over my mouth in shock. It was the first time I’d said aloud what I’d been wondering since I’d seen them together in the science lab this morning. Or maybe I’d suspected it for even longer, and I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.
“It is only a guess,” Lanz said quietly, watching me. “But … this means you’ve noticed, too? And … are you hurt? Angry?”
“I—I’m not. At least, not the way I thought I might be.” I sighed. “Ethan and I are … we’re taking a break to figure things out.”
Lanz’s eyes saucered. “Was this his idea or yours?”
“Mine.”
“Why?” He said it so quietly I barely heard.
I risked meeting his eyes, and saw something new glinting in them. Hope. My heart thrummed, and suddenly, I gave in to every feeling I’d been pushing away. “Because … because I can’t think straight around you. That’s why I didn’t want you to work at Once upon a Scoop. I was scared to spend time with you because I … I didn’t want to fall for you.” There. It was out. The weeks of denying the truth were over.
“Did you?” He leaned toward me until I could smell the scent of his skin—tangy lemon, sand, and sun. “Fall for me?”
“You have to know the answer to that,” I whispered, blushing furiously. “But … I have plans. Everything has a place in my life. School. Ethan. Dance. And this … this complicates everything.”
He smiled. “So your life doesn’t fit into neat little boxes. Quel che sarà. What will be, will be.” He brushed my hair from my forehead. “Malie, please. Look at me.”
My body was a roller coaster of adrenaline as I lifted my eyes to his. I was terrified; I was elated. I was nauseous; I was lighter than air. I dreaded; I hoped.
“I am Ethan’s friend. I am … your friend. But since I met you, I’ve … wanted to be more than that to you. I’ve tried to keep a distance from you lately, but … it’s not working.” His eyes were steady, unblinking. “You asked before why I never kissed you cheek to cheek.” He cupped my face in his hands. “There is only one kind of kiss I want to give you.”
His lips moved toward mine, until they were so close I could feel their warmth. But—
“Lanz, wait.” I pulled away so quickly the kayak swayed. “I can’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
He gazed out over the water, then slowly nodded. “You’re right. I don’t, either.”
“I have to think. And talk to Ethan. But I … have a lot to deal with right now with rehearsals … I need to focus. Then we can see …”
I expected him to say he understood, or that he agreed, but his relaxed demeanor was gone, replaced with a stiff politeness. “We should get back now.” He swung his paddle into the water, turning his eyes toward the shore.
“Oh.” My insides crumbled. “Okay.”
Our ride back to the beach was silent, and as soon as we settled the kayak into the sand, Lanz said he was going home.
I was dismayed. This night was ending all wrong. As he began to walk down the beach, I ran to catch up. “Lanz, wait! Are you … are you mad at me?”
He shook his head. “No.” Then he threw up his hands. “Well. Maybe … Yes!” The moonlight shone on his frown. “You talk about plans and complications. But … what is so complicated? You are going to be Cinderella. Your dream is real and happening. You should be less worried now. You should relax. Enjoy this.”
“I don’t need to relax,” I said defensively. “I need to rehearse.”
“So rehearse. Dance. Perform. I love that you want to do it all. And I want to be there for you, only … I’m not sure you want to let me in.”
“I do!” I cried. “I told you I do.”
“Then what is it?”
I dug my bare feet into the sand. How could I tell him my fear that even the smallest wrinkle could sabotage all I’d worked so hard for? Things with Ethan were always comfortable and convenient. With Lanz, I felt so unbalanced, so dizzy with like. What would that do to my dance? My focus?
I tried again. “I haven’t even told Mom about ballet yet. I have no idea how she’ll handle it. That’s stressful enough, without adding this into the mix.”
“This?” Lanz repeated. “Meaning me?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Mal, you can’t lie to your mom anymore. You have to tell her. But that doesn’t have anything to do with us. That’s between you and her.”
“I know. But I don’t need anyone else getting in the way right now …” My voice died as his eyes widened, and I realized how my words had sounded.
“I’m getting in your way.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Malie, you haven’t been honest with your mom, or yourself. If you’re brave enough to dance in front of hundreds of people, you should be brave enough to fight for what you want.”
I glared at him, fury rising in my chest. “You’re one to talk. You’ve been working this whole time at Once upon a Scoop without your mom knowing. You don’t want to deal with telling her the truth, either.”
“It’s not the same. I don’t want to hurt my mother …”
“And lying to her doesn’t hurt her?” I countered. “That’s an excuse. You’re being a hypocrite.”
He stared at me, then kicked at the sand. “Forget it!” His voice was tired. “I’ll make things easier for you. I won’t be a distraction anymore. Addio.”
He took off at a run down the beach. I stared after him until he disappeared into the darkness.
“Well?” I asked, scrutinizing Andres’s face as he popped the spoonful of lavender ice cream into his mouth. “How is it?”
Andres blanched, making an effort to swallow even as Tilly shot him a warning look. “It’s … unusual?” he said tentatively.
“Ach!” I yanked the plastic bowl away from him in frustration. “You hate it!” I threw the bowl into the parlor’s trash can, then sank back into my chair.
We’d been sitting at our table for the last hour, morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. We’d already attempted a lackluster round of Heads Up!, and now, in an attempt to cheer everyone up, I’d dished out some of my freshly churned ice cream. Bad idea. Our collective mood had gone from gloomy to downright morose.
Tilly smacked the back of Andres’s head. “Couldn’t you have pretended to like it, for crying out loud?”
Andres held up his hands. “I can’t help it if Malie’s ice cream isn’t as good as—”
Another smack, followed by Andres’s “Ouch!”
“It’s fine,” I said despondently. “I kn
ow it’s not as good as Lanz’s. We still have a decent amount of his ice creams and gelatos in the deep freeze, but I’m not sure how long they’ll last.”
“Well, when’s he coming back to work?” Andres asked. “Soon, right?” I felt a pang of guilt. Poor Andres. First Ethan had quit our morning “VIP” time, and now Lanz had quit Once upon a Scoop entirely.
“I don’t know.” My voice hitched with unease. “He told Mom that he had to help build props for his mother.” My voice dropped into a whisper. “For Cinderella.”
“That’s what he told me, too,” Andres said forlornly. “I don’t get it. He loved working here.”
I fidgeted in my chair, not able to look at either one of my friends. I hadn’t told them about my fight with Lanz, or why, I suspected, he really wasn’t coming to the parlor. He’d promised he wasn’t going to distract me anymore, and he was keeping his word. He hadn’t been to the Scoop once since our fight, and he avoided me completely at school.
“What’s with the long faces?” Mom asked as she appeared at our table. “This isn’t like you. I haven’t heard a single laugh all morning.”
“Maybe you should ask Malie.” Tilly folded her arms and sat back in her chair, frowning at me.
“What did I do?” I cried, but even as I said it, I knew. I’d driven away Ethan and Lanz, and now everything was off kilter.
Mom focused full parental sensors in our direction, her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out the problem. “Does this have something to do with that school project you two are working on?”
“What project?” I asked absently, then jolted as Tilly kicked me under the table.
“Your Scarlet Letter project,” Mom said. “I can’t believe how many hours you two have put into it after school. These assignments seem so much more involved now than when I was a kid.”
“Oh! Right! That project. It’s fine,” I managed, my voice strung too tight. “Should be done in a few more weeks.” Tilly was shooting me death rays now.
“A few more weeks!” Mom’s eyes widened. “I’m tempted to call your teacher about this. It’s taking up so much of your time.”
“You’re so right,” Tilly said. “We should wrap it up, Mal. ASAP.”
My pulse raced. What was she doing? I grabbed her hand and stood up, pulling her toward the kitchen. “Tilly, I need some help with the gelato that’s chilling …” I improvised.
The second the kitchen door swung shut and we were safely beyond Mom’s earshot, I hissed, “Thanks for almost throwing me under the bus out there.”
“This is getting old, Mal.” Tilly gave me a serious look. “Since this weirdness with you and Ethan started, you don’t eat lunch with us at school anymore. Whenever he’s with us, you avoid us. And you’re still expecting me to keep covering for your ballet stuff? Not cool.”
“I’m just … really focused right now. I’ve got to get a handle on the choreography for the ballet, and lunch is a great time to practice. That’s all.”
It was true, at least, that I had been spending lunch practicing in the school’s gym. It was empty then, and there was a mirror along one wall so I could correct my form when I needed to. Only that wasn’t all. Not even close. And Tilly, with her radar intuition, wasn’t buying it.
“Look,” she told me. “I don’t know what this whole ‘time-out’ phase with Ethan is about, but you’ll work it out. You two are like me and Andres. Meant to last. Don’t give him up just because you think you’ve outgrown him. You don’t outgrow love at first sight.”
“What if it wasn’t? Love at first sight, I mean?” I responded, which made her balk.
“What are you talking about?” She gaped. “Of course it was!”
“I’m not sure anymore,” I said quietly. “Maybe it was just that I wanted a version of what you and Andres had. I wanted someone to hold hands with and crush on.”
“Wait, do you really mean that?” she asked.
I was about to say more, but then I heard Mom calling my name from outside.
Tilly blew me a grumbly kiss and left to go get Andres so they could hit the beach.
As soon as they were gone, I got ready to help Mom open the parlor. But first, her eyes lasered in on me.
“Okay, Malie,” she said matter-of-factly. “Talk to me. You haven’t been yourself all week. Are you missing Dad? Is it something with Tilly? Or Ethan?”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Just keep repeating it until she believes you.
She restocked the display freezer with a tub of vanilla gelato. “Sometimes I wonder if it might have been … easier on you, if we’d moved back to Hawaii when your dad did.”
“What?” I gasped. Never, in the three years since the divorce, had she said that before.
“You would see your dad more, and Tutu. Maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so focused on dance. It wouldn’t have been your only way of coping.”
“I never used dance to cope,” I countered.
“I know you think I can never understand how much you loved dance, but …” She smiled sadly. “Malie, parents have dreams, too. Things they hoped for in their lives. Some of mine came true. Especially in you. Other dreams … Me and your dad. What I wanted for all of us together as a family … It didn’t work out the way I planned.” She pressed her hand against my cheek. “But have I messed up too badly with us? You and me? Have I put too much responsibility on your shoulders? With the parlor, and—”
“Mom, no.” I hugged her. “I’m happy here. And the parlor’s doing so well now—”
“It’s doing well, but who knows for how long? Mr. Sneeves is fickle, and everyone’s replaceable.” She turned from the freezer to focus her full attention on me. “That’s why I never wanted dance to become too important to you. When you love something that much, and make it your whole existence, you’re bound to be disappointed by it. Someone else will come along who dances better, or you’ll get an injury, and then what? Then you have nothing to fall back on.”
“So … it’s better not to take the risk at all? I’ll never believe that, Mom. I’m going to start a batch of ice cream,” I added quietly before escaping to the kitchen.
I collapsed onto a stool by the ice cream maker just as my phone buzzed with a text from Ethan.
I stared at the text. First Tilly, then Mom, now Ethan. Why did everyone seem to want to talk these days, when that was the last thing I wanted to do? Still, Ethan was right. We did need to talk, and it wasn’t fair for me to put it off any longer.
Heart hammering in my throat, I replied to his text, telling him I’d meet him in front of the conservatory after school. Then I slipped on my apron and fairy wings, and got to work.
I spotted Ethan from a block away, standing outside the conservatory, scribbling in his notebook. Nostalgia flooded me. Ethan’s hair was mussed, and his shirt hung crookedly because he’d mismatched the buttons. How was I going to tell him what I knew I had to? How could I cause someone I cared about that kind of hurt?
He glanced up and our eyes met. “Hey, you,” he said, like he always did. But today, his voice was constricted, his face flushed. He motioned to a sidewalk bench. “Um … should we sit?”
“Sure.”
We sat down with a foot of space between us, and neither of us made a move to close the gap.
“I wanted to—” The words came out in unison from both our mouths. We stopped, laughing awkwardly, and a sadness pricked my heart. It was like we were suddenly strangers.
“I’ll go first, if that’s okay,” Ethan said, and I nodded gratefully. He clasped and unclasped his hands in his lap, then straightened. “I’ve been thinking about how, well, weird things have gotten between us lately. At first I blamed you. I told myself it was because you were so focused on your dancing.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand. “I know it wasn’t you. You weren’t doing anything different than you’ve always done. I wasn’t, either. But things changed.”
“Or … maybe we changed?” I offered.
“
Yeah. Maybe.” He nodded with relief.
I leaned my head against his shoulder for a second. “Being around you was always so easy. I never wondered why there wasn’t more of a—”
“Spark?” Ethan finished for me. “I didn’t even realize it was missing until …” His voice trailed off and his cheeks flushed darker.
“Eve?” I lifted my head to glance at him as his eyes widened. “It’s okay. I thought there might be something between you two.”
“There’s not! At least, not yet.”
“But you want there to be?”
He hesitated, looking pained with guilt. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. “But I can’t stop thinking about her.”
He looked frustrated and lit-up all at once, and I couldn’t help laughing. “I get it.” It was exactly how I’d been feeling about Lanz. “And I’m not mad, or upset even. You and Eve seem great together. And she’s completely in like with you.”
His blush deepened. “You think so?”
I nudged him. “There’s only one way to find out for sure. Ask her.”
“But, Mal, what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m actually relieved. I knew it was time to end things …” I sucked in a breath. “But I didn’t want to hurt you, either. I’m fine. More than fine.” I smiled at him to prove it.
We sat for a few minutes in amicable silence, watching passersby, lost in our thoughts and memories. “You know,” Ethan said, “I thought you were starting to like somebody else, too.” He studied my face. “You and Lanz? Am I right?”
It was my turn to blush. “Maybe, but …” I swallowed. “We got into a fight, and now we’re not talking to each other.” My voice wobbled, and Ethan gave my hand a brief squeeze.
“Want to tell me about it?”
He said it so openly that seconds later, I was spilling the whole story, as if I was talking to a best friend, which, I realized I was. As I finished, Ethan’s cell rang, and I saw Eve’s name on the screen.
“Take it.” I shouldered my schoolbag. “I’ve got to get to rehearsal anyway.”
Sundae My Prince Will Come Page 11
