Any Boy but You (North Pole, Minnesota)

by Julie Hammerle

  To prove to herself, and Harper in absentia, that Elena sometimes did go after what she wanted, and to prove to herself that Oliver Prince meant less than nothing to her, she stepped right up to Kevin Snow, placed her hand on his chest, and touched her lips to his.

  His mouth responded with its familiar vigor, and Elena tried to keep up, but her mind kept flashing to Oliver and how this was what she’d imagined doing with him tonight. She was doing it with stupid Kevin Snow instead, which was pretty much the opposite of what she wanted. She’d been on this ride before, and she’d promised herself she’d never do it again. A few months ago, the last time she and Kevin had hooked up during the Saturday night classic movie show, Elena had run home crying from the video store. She swore then that the next person she’d kiss would be someone who liked her back. That wasn’t this. Elena put her hands on Kevin’s chest and pushed him away.

  “Thanks, Kevin,” she said, a lump in her throat.

  “Any time,” he responded.

  “You should go find your date, probably.”

  He shrugged. “Find me later, if you want.”

  She didn’t want. She’d never want. Elena grabbed her coat and booked it out Danny’s front door. Kissing Kevin had helped nothing. It was like trying to smother a burning building with a dishtowel.

  …

  “You’re an idiot and an asshole.”

  The text from Harper arrived around ten-thirty. Oliver glanced at it and then flipped his phone face down on his desk.

  He knew what he was. He didn’t need Harper to tell him.

  Having no idea where to go or what to do, he’d taken off running after finding his dad kissing Elena’s mom. He’d considered busting into the dance and telling Elena about it. He’d considered fleeing the town completely, hopping the next plane for Florida. What actually happened, however, was that his dad caught up with him, grabbed his arm, and forced Oliver to listen to his side of the story.

  “You didn’t see what you thought you saw.”

  Oliver’s mind kept circling back to the thing he definitely both saw and thought he saw. “You weren’t kissing Elena’s mom? You were giving her mouth-to-mouth? You were showing her your fillings, up close and personal?”

  Shaking, Trip closed his eyes. “It was nothing,” he said. “We’d had a few drinks, things got heated. It was a mistake. A one-time mistake. Emily and I both acknowledge that.”

  “What were you doing getting drinks with her anyway?” asked Oliver.

  His dad blew out a deep breath. “It’s complicated. Our history is complicated. We were talking as friends. That’s it.”

  Oliver shook his head and took off running again. He couldn’t stand here listening to this. His dad had kissed Elena’s mom. Why it had happened didn’t matter. Elena wouldn’t care about the why. Her dad wasn’t going to care about the why. Oliver sure didn’t.

  He and his dad met up again on the front steps of their house. Oliver stood panting on the top stair, while his dad gazed up at him from the walkway. “How can I make this up to you?” asked Trip.

  Nothing was going to make this up to him. Oliver was screwed here. He couldn’t be with Elena after this. There was no way. They were doomed. He had caught their parents kissing, and he couldn’t tell Elena about it. How could he break that news to her? His parents’ marriage was already ruined. He wasn’t going to help destroy another one.

  Oliver’s only recourse was to fade away, bow out, not show up to the dance. Elena would hate him, everyone would hate him, but so what? How was that different than his life up to this point? He was going back to Florida soon anyway. His life in North Pole was over no matter what he did.

  “I want my computer back,” said Oliver.

  “Deal,” said Trip, immediately.

  “Now.” Oliver glared at his father.

  Within five minutes, Oliver was up in his room, his dress pants and shirt abandoned in a ball on his closet floor. He set his laptop on his desk, opened it, and pressed the power button. The room whirred with sound—the motor of the machine, the pinging of the alerts he’d missed over the past several weeks, the subtle clicks as his hard drive revved up. Oliver no longer had to be alone with his thoughts. He was back in his happy, safe, virtual space.

  His first instinct was to check out Stash Grab, but that game had been ruined for him. It was now a stark reminder of what could’ve been. Instead, he opened up a new campaign in Wizard War and lost himself in a pretend world of magic and mayhem.

  He received one text from Harper around seven-fifty. “Where are you?”

  He ignored it and blasted an enemy wizard in the chest with a kill spell.

  A text from Regina came in a few minutes later. “Harper and Elena Chestnut are looking for you?”

  He stole a quick glance at the message and accepted a side quest from a crone in the woods.

  A few hours later, after the dance was long over, he got the “You’re an idiot and an asshole” text from Harper.

  He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

  He was doing everyone a kindness, including himself.

  Elena would hate him for a few days, and then she’d move on. Hating him was nothing new to her, anyway. She’d be fine.

  He, Oliver, would be fine, too. He had his computer back. He could lose himself in his games and projects again. He’d flirted with real life emotion, and he’d been burned. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Much later that night, a witch invited him to her private hut. This kind of thing happened all the time in Wizard War. The huts were meant to be used for private campaign planning conversations, but most people used them to hook up. They were virtual sex shacks. Oliver had previously turned down any hut propositions. He cared only about the campaigns, improving his score, and winning the game. But tonight he wanted to forget, so he clicked yes.

  His avatar was transported to a fully decorated one-room hut. There was a green couch and a table with two chairs. Pictures of cats filled most of the wall space. A few seconds later, a witch popped into the room. She was blond, short, and muscular. She reminded him of proud_hoser’s avatar. (And Harper, too, now that he stopped to think about it, which was an uncomfortable realization.)

  “Hi?” he said, hopeful. What if this witch was Elena? What if she somehow knew he had been playing this game, found him, and invited him to hang out in a safe, virtual sex shack?

  “I’m Gilda the Glad,” boomed the witch’s voice through his speakers. The woman sounded like she’d been smoking a pack a day for the past fifty years.

  “Sorry,” Oliver stammered, fiddling with the game controls. “I thought you were someone else.”

  With a snap, he rejoined his campaign and vowed to stay away from any and all private huts. He wasn’t emotionally ready for romance, real or imagined.

  Unless it involved Elena.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Have a nice day, Craig,” Elena said.

  Eyes wary, Craig picked up his shopping bag, one of the last ones left with the Chestnut’s logo on it. He, like everyone else in North Pole, was getting in on the going-out-of-business sale. Craig paused, waiting.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Elena asked.

  Craig shook his head, wide-eyed terror on his face. “You said have a nice day.”

  “And…?” Elena said.

  “Is the apocalypse upon us?” Craig asked. “You were polite to me. You’re never polite to me.”

  “I’ll revert to my old ways if you don’t vamoose,” she said, shooing him toward the door.

  Craig grinned, wiping his brow. “Now, that’s the Elena I know and tolerate.”

  Once the door had shut behind him, Elena ripped an extra bit of paper off the receipt printer and tossed it into the recycling bin. After the dance last night, she no longer had the energy or the desire to bicker with Craig. Stashiuk4Prez was a lie. Oliver Prince was the jerk who had stood her up. She had kissed Kevin Snow—again. Elena had lost all meaning in her life
.

  The store was closing. Her family was moving to Wisconsin. She might as well get used to it. What was left for her here, anyway?

  She glanced across the street to Prince’s, where Regina was outside hanging a sign announcing the big end-of-Stash-Grab party tomorrow morning. Today was the final day of the game. Tomorrow it’d all be over—someone else, someone besides Elena, probably Danny—would win the plane tickets, and it wouldn’t matter, because Elena was moving to Wisconsin. What was one final spring break with her friends to her? Yeah, she’d wanted to go. Yeah, she’d dreamed about how much fun it would be. But it wasn’t going to happen, so why pretend?

  She watched her fellow townsfolk scurry along the sidewalk, which had turned slippery after an overnight post-snow deep freeze. During the storm last night, North Pole had been lively, full of motion. Today, despite the people skidding across the ice, the town was static, still, raw. The icicles didn’t drip. Water didn’t rush down the gutters. Elena and her town were frozen in suspended animation, waiting for life to happen.

  Around dinnertime, her mom came rushing in, disrupting Elena’s mind-numbing run on one of the treadmills in the home gym section. Her mom tossed her purse to the counter and sighed. “Your father.” She balled her hands into fists.

  Her meditative state ruined, Elena hopped off the treadmill and hid her mom’s purse under the register. “What happened?” asked Elena. She noticed her mom’s eyes were red, and so were her cheeks. She had been crying.

  “He just—argh!” her mom growled, banging on the counter. Eyes wild, she told Elena, “I figured out a way for us to keep the store and stay in town, but your dad’s pettiness—”

  Elena’s dad, hand bandaged past his wrist, burst through the front door at just that moment. “My pettiness? You kissed Trip Prince.”

  Dinesh, who’d stopped just outside the store and had been about to come in, turned tail and ran across the street.

  A warm sense of dread flooded Elena’s body and knocked her out of her emotional deep freeze. “What happened?” she asked through a clenched jaw.

  “Well, your mother kissed Trip,” her dad explained.

  “I got that,” said Elena.

  Her mom, who’d given up on trying to explain things to her husband, apparently, spoke directly to Elena. “We kissed for two seconds,” she said. “And”—she scowled at her husband—“it’s something we both acknowledge was a stupid mistake.”

  “Consider me a member of that club.” Tom Chestnut raised his hand.

  “It’s also not something we should be discussing in front of our teenage daughter.”

  “Too late for that now,” Elena said. “Tell me what happened.”

  Elena’s parents stood in front of the counter, her mom on one side and her dad on the other, like Elena was the judge presiding over this courtroom. Her mom pled her case. “I’d had this idea for a while that we should apologize to Trip, to see if he’d be willing to let bygones be bygones after decades of separation and recombine our stores like the old days. Because the way things are now—with the new Wal-Mart outside of town, plus Amazon and the fact that you can buy anything you need online—neither our store nor Prince’s would survive with the way things have been going.”

  “And then you kissed him,” said Tom.

  Elena’s mom rolled her eyes at her daughter. Elena understood the meaning behind this gesture was, “Men. Am I right?” Elena scowled. She wasn’t on her mom’s side. She had kissed someone who was not Elena’s father.

  Her mom continued. “I admit that I went behind your dad’s back and contacted Trip. But your dad refused to listen to my ideas, and I have as much history with Trip as he does.”

  “And now you’re kissing him. Again.” Tom folded his arms.

  Elena frowned. This was not a productive conversation. They weren’t getting anywhere. “Dad, let Mom finish.”

  “Thank you,” her mom said. “So, I’d gone to Trip a few weeks ago and suggested that we merge the stores.” Elena pictured the papers Oliver had found burning to a crisp in the Princes’ fireplace. “Trip was completely against the idea.”

  “Credit where credit’s due,” mumbled Elena’s dad.

  “But then last night, I got a call from him out of nowhere. He was really upset, and he wanted to meet. I told your dad before I even said yes”—she gestured toward her husband—“so it was all on the up-and-up.”

  “Sure it was,” Elena’s dad said.

  Elena shot him a look to keep quiet.

  “Well, your dad forbade me to meet with Trip.” Emily Chestnut shook her head at her husband.

  “I didn’t forbid you. I asked you not to go because I was worried about what might happen, and apparently my concern was warranted.”

  “Okay, you didn’t ‘forbid’ me, but you were kind of a jerk about it.” She turned to Elena. “I told your dad this could be good for us, this could let us keep the store and stay in North Pole, but he said he didn’t trust Trip. Trip had ulterior motives, as far as your dad was concerned. I said, well, don’t you trust me?’ Your dad said no, and then I tossed a vase to the floor and stormed out.”

  “I cut myself trying to clean up her mess.” Her dad held up his bandaged hand.

  Elena sighed. Her parents were children. Maybe that’s what love did, no matter how old you were. Elena, after all, wasn’t so innocent herself. She’d gotten so upset last night that she went down the path she’d promised herself she’d never take again—Kevin Snow Road.

  “I met Trip at The Chinese Restaurant,” said Elena’s mom. “I assumed he’d invited me there to talk business, that he finally realized we both needed to do something to juice up our stores, but really he just needed a friend. His wife sent him divorce papers yesterday.”

  “Oh.” Elena’s hand went to her mouth. Oliver had known his parents were divorcing, but seeing it in writing had to have been a real blow. She shook her head. Oliver blew her off last night. He hadn’t bothered to tell her what had happened before standing her up. Even if he had been upset, he could’ve called. He could’ve texted. She would’ve understood.

  “Trip and I had a few drinks—which, maybe that wasn’t my best move, maybe I should’ve stayed more clearheaded, but whatever. What’s done is done. The two of us started to argue about shit from the past. He was obviously mad at me for running off with Tom. I was mad at him because he’d conveniently forgotten how absent he’d been during our engagement. Mr. Wong told us to get out of his restaurant, so we did. We went into the alley and fought some more. Things got heated, and we kissed. For a fraction of a second. I went home and told your dad everything immediately. There was no hiding it, anyway. Trip’s son caught us.” Elena’s mom shuddered.

  “Oliver caught you?” Elena’s heart sped up.

  Unmoved by his wife’s story, Elena’s dad had folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t believe you kissed him. Trip is probably crowing right now.”

  “He’s not. I promise you. He’s sad. He misses his wife.”

  Elena held up a hand to shush her parents. “Oliver saw you?”

  Her mom shook her head. “I feel terrible. We heard this gasp, and Trip and I turned toward the end of the alley. There was Oliver, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers. He spun around and ran, and Trip bolted after him.”

  Elena’s jaw dropped. “He had yellow flowers?”

  “Dropped them right there in the alley. Trip trampled them trying to catch Oliver.”

  “Oh,” she said again. Elena picked up a rag from under the cash register and started wiping down the counter.

  Oliver had had a bouquet of yellow flowers.

  “The plan would’ve never worked anyway,” said Elena’s dad.

  “You don’t know that,” her mom argued. “It was worth a try at least.”

  But Oliver hadn’t called her. He’d left Elena alone at the dance. He’d stood her up.

  “Teaming up with Trip Prince.” Elena’s dad shook his head.

  “You two were
best friends,” her mom reminded her husband, “until you ran off with his fiancée. Trip is not the bad guy here. At least he’s not the only bad guy.”

  Oliver probably hadn’t called because he’d just seen his dad kissing Elena’s mom. Maybe he hadn’t known what to say, how to start that conversation? Especially since Elena had a track record of biting Oliver’s head off when he delivered bad news.

  She pulled out her phone and opened up a new text conversation. She was going to write him, Oliver, for real. No more hiding behind their Stash Grab personae.

  “Call me. Please. We need to talk.”

  She sent the message and waited, dusting the pictures behind the counter, enduring more of her parents’ circular conversation about the kiss and the business and moving to Wisconsin. She paused on the sign that said, “We reserve the right to deny service to any Prince.”

  Elena checked her phone. Still nothing.

  She sent him one more message: “I know about the kiss.”

  Elena ducked into the basketball aisle and started stacking shoeboxes. One minute. No new messages. Two minutes. Still nothing. Three, four, five.

  What was she doing? Again, she was waiting around for someone else to give her what she wanted. She was wasting time. She’d put herself out there. She’d sent the text. He was the one who’d blown her off last night, and he was the one who was ignoring her now. Well, forget that, and forget him.

  She stepped out of the aisle and stood, arms akimbo like Wonder Woman, facing her parents, who had moved on from the kiss and were now calmly discussing the logistics of Elena’s mother’s plan. “I’ve gotta go,” Elena said.

  Her dad checked the Picabo Street clock on the wall behind the counter. “The store’s open for two more hours.”

  “You can handle it.” She held up her phone. “I’m going to win Stash Grab and I’m going on spring break.”

  …

  Oliver murdered a wizened old warlock with a flame-thrower spell, but he took no joy in it.