Cupcake Love

by Diana Currie

  “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, Rachel. It’s just that with Casey at my house we’re not going to get any privacy there, and you know how your parents are,” Ally said.

  “I know, sweetie. I understand. I just don’t like thinking about that.” Rachel said, patting Ally on the shoulder. “I don’t mind giving you some privacy, just next time give me more notice, okay?”

  Ally agreed and smiled like a kid in a toy store. It was sweet how giddy she was at the thought of her boyfriend coming home. “And I do know how you feel, being the sister I mean. I was totally freaking out when I thought that Hannah and Shane had slept together after our party.” She purposely shivered as if the thought gave her the creeps.

  “I’m still not convinced we got the full story there,” Rachel said winking at me.

  I turned my face away from them to hide my embarrassment. Was this football game ever going to resume?

  “No offense to Hannah, of course. I don’t like thinking about my brother with any girl. You should have heard the noises he and Wendy made last summer. I could barely look at him each morning,” she went on. “Just because mom and dad can’t hear him from their room doesn’t mean I can’t from mine. I share a wall with him!”

  They both laughed. I wanted to crawl under the bleachers and die. I’d had firsthand experience with getting Shane to make some of those noises and my body had been craving them ever since. I pretended I saw someone I knew and excused myself from my friends. Hiding behind the restrooms I took a few deep breaths, letting the frigid air burn my lungs. I heard my phone buzz so I pulled it out of my pocket to see who it was from. Shane.

  What’s the score?

  I rolled my eyes and smiled at the phone. Someone must have writer’s block. I typed as quickly as I could and shoved my freezing hands back into my pockets.

  17-14 Hens.

  RU coming?

  It felt like it was getting colder, probably going to snow. I hated snow. My phone buzzed again.

  That’s kind of a personal question, Hanny ;-)

  I laughed out loud. Shane made a dirty joke. That wasn’t like him at all. I didn’t know how to respond. Should I play along? Would he consider that flirting? Was he flirting? I started sweating despite the cold as I struggled deciding how to respond. Just as I was about to reply someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped.

  “Aiden!”

  “Hey Hannah,” he said smiling.

  “How are you?” I murmured unsteadily. Aiden looked to be doing very well. There was a beautiful girl standing next to him, her arm linked tightly in his as if close proximity would keep her warm. She had dark hair like his and the same skin tone. The girl was stunning and I was surprised to find myself wildly jealous that she was touching Aiden.

  “I’ve been good,” he confirmed. “This is my sister, Amber.”

  I smiled wide when he said the word sister. Of course. I could see the resemblance in their smiles.

  “Hi, Amber, it’s nice to meet you,” I said politely.

  “You too. Aiden’s told me a lot about you,” was her reply. That threw me for a loop. I hadn’t seen or even spoken to him in months. I wondered if either of them saw the relief on my face when Aiden told me she was his sister.

  “Amber’s a senior at Penn State so she came down to watch the Hens crush her team,” he joked.

  She mock punched his arm with her free hand and he chuckled. They were so cute. I felt increasingly awkward as the seconds ticked by. How much did she know about my relationship with Aiden? I didn’t know what to say.

  “Are you here with anyone?” Aiden asked.

  “Ally and Rachel,” I replied. “Our friend Ethan’s on the team,” I explained to Amber.

  “Oh, how exciting!” she said enthusiastically. “Looks like it will be a close game.”

  Aiden seemed pleased at my answer. I thought maybe he feared I was with Shane. Just then I remembered I was in the middle of a texting conversation with him and anxiety rushed through my body.

  “I should get back to my friends,” I said. “Half-time must be almost over by now. It was nice meeting you, Amber.”

  “You too, Hannah.”

  “Bye, Aiden,” I said smiling.

  “Bye, Hannah,” he said, staring at me like he was trying to convey a secret message with his eyes. I turned and jogged back to where I’d left Ally and Rachel.

  I found them on the bleachers and quickly took a spot next to them. I whipped out my phone and saw I had another message.

  Hannah?

  Crap. I quickly typed my explanation of where I’d been and shoved the phone into my jeans pocket.

  Sorry. Ran into a friend. Wish u were here.

  “Where did you go?” Rachel asked me.

  “I ran into Aiden,” I admitted.

  “How did that go?” she replied.

  “A little awkward. He was with his sister and she said Aiden told her all about me.”

  “I still don’t understand what happened between you guys,” Rachel said shaking her head.

  “It’s a very long story. Let’s just watch the game.”

  *~*

  I tried very hard to sleep the following Tuesday night. Why, oh why hadn’t I agreed to ride home with Rachel when she offered earlier that day? Right, because I was a pathetic loser who didn’t want to give up an hour long car ride with the man I fanaticized about daily. I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to drown out the moans coming from the next room.

  “Yes, Jack, right there.”

  “Like that, baby?”

  “Ah, ah, ah!”

  I had to get out of there. I went down to the living room where I could barely hear them anymore, just a faint sound of the headboard hitting the wall. I still felt like a voyeur. I could call Shane but didn’t know how to explain my reason for needing to get out of the house at nine o’clock at night without telling him what his sister was doing. So I called Ethan.

  “Yo, Hannah!” he answered.

  “Hey, E. Whatcha doing?”

  “Hanging out with Riley and some of the other guys.”

  “I need a favor, buddy,” I said in a playful tone. “Ally and Jack are, shall we say, reuniting and I need to get out of here before I get physically sick.”

  I heard his deep hearty chuckle on the other end of the line. “Well, you’re more than welcome to come over, Hannah, but how are you going to get here? You need me to get one of the guys to pick you up?” he asked.

  “No, I was thinking I’d just take Ally’s car. Something tells me she won’t be needing it.”

  “Okay, well come over whenever.”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up the phone. I quickly scribbled a note to Ally letting her know I took her car and that if she needed it back right away to just call me. Then I grabbed my purse and took off for the sanctuary of Sigma Phi.

  Ethan answered the door when I arrived and gave me a big bear hug. There were a lot of unfamiliar faces in the living room all lounging around and drinking beer. Typical. The only person I recognized was Riley and I waved hello. He tipped his beer to me with a smile.

  “Want to chill in my room, Hanny?” Ethan asked. I nodded and followed him up the stairs. He took them two at a time so I had to run to keep up. The laces on my tennis shoe were untied and I tripped on the final stair, catching myself with my hands on the landing. Ethan chuckled and held out his hand to help me up.

  “Never gets old,” he joked about my clumsiness.

  Ethan shared his room with a guy I think was named Max but I’d never met him. From the looks of it Max had already left for home. His bed was stripped down to the mattress and his pillow gone. I was guessing his mother would be doing laundry this Thanksgiving. Ethan’s side of the room contained his football gear, video games hooked up to a small TV, and a lot of sports memorabilia. I noticed a picture of Rachel on his dresser but quickly glanced away so he wouldn’t think I noticed it. I took a seat in his desk chair.

  “So, Ally and Jack are
getting it on, huh?” he joked.

  “God, yes. They are really making up for lost time. Rachel had the right idea leaving before Ally even picked him up from the airport.”

  “And here I thought she left early to avoid me.”

  “No, Ethan. Not at all. Rachel isn’t as angry as she used to be. I think she might be starting to miss you,” I offered him.

  He didn’t want to talk about Rachel so he turned the conversation to me. “Is there anything you want to talk about?” he guessed.

  “What makes you think I came here to talk about something?”

  “Because it’s been over two months since you hooked up with Shane and somehow I’m still the only one who knows about it,” he smirked. “I figured you’d be dying to talk by now.”

  “I am. I just wish it would be with him,” I sighed.

  “You two haven’t talked about it at all? So you haven’t done it again?”

  “No and no. He promised me that having sex wouldn’t affect our friendship and you know Shane always keeps his promises. He hasn’t said anything to you?”

  Ethan shook his head. “I tried to ask him about it the first time we were alone after the party. I grinned at him and said, ‘duuuude…’ but he just shot me a pissed off look and told me we were not going to discuss it.”

  “That sounds like him,” I agreed.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “What can I do? He obviously only finds me attractive after a couple of beers. What do they say about alcohol? Helping ugly girls have sex since 1864,” I said sarcastically.

  “Whoa, Hanny. First, you are not ugly, you’re a beautiful girl. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. If I wasn’t pathetically in love with your friend and sort of thought of you like a kid sister, I would totally tap that.” He winked at me and I blushed.

  “Thanks, E. Same here,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  “How are you dealing with being his friend now that you’ve made love?” he asked in a girly voice.

  I sighed. “Apparently I was making love, but he was having sex.” It hurt talking about this subject but if anyone could understand it was Ethan.

  “I really think you’re underestimating your sex appeal. I could try to get some information out of him, get him talking about girls and somewhere slip in your name and see what he says,” he offered.

  “No way, I don’t want to start plotting.”

  “Do you want me to ride home in Ally’s car tomorrow? You could have the whole hour to talk some sense into that thick head of his.”

  I considered that for a moment but then said, “No, please. If I do talk to Shane it isn’t going to be when I’m trapped in a car with no escape route.”

  He laughed but then agreed. We talked about him and Rachel for a while, about how she acted jealous when Ally suggested I date him and that seemed to boost his spirits a little. He told me he planned to confront her over winter break when football and finals were over. I told him I thought that was a great idea. Rachel hadn’t talked to me much about Ethan since the semester began but I knew her very well. Although she talked about meeting guys and went out on dates she never brought them home. I didn’t think she’d had a guy sleep over since Ethan. I knew that tidbit would interest him but I wouldn’t betray her confidence any more than I would Ethan’s so I had to bite my tongue.

  “I’m not going to beg her to take me back. I’m going to apologize for the jabs I took at her during our huge fight and tell her exactly how I feel. I just need her to know. She can decide what to do after that.”

  “I wish I had your courage, Ethan. Maybe once you get Rachel back I’ll follow your lead and do the same kind of thing with Shane,” I thought out loud.

  “He’d be a fool not to say yes to you, Hannah,” he said sweetly.

  “Aw, shucks, E,” I joked.

  While Ethan would be home in Pittsgrove over winter break I would be exiled to Baltimore for the whole month. Mom had refused to take no for an answer when she invited me to stay with her for Christmas and the weeks following. She said she had time off work and wanted to spend it working on our mother-daughter issues. I’d finally agreed when she threatened to cry if I didn’t stay. How could I turn her down when she begged like that? I was actually looking forward to spending some real time with my mother. I missed her very much, but the thought of being so far away from Shane made my stomach queasy. It was strange how the way I missed my mother differed from how I missed Shane. With my mom it was a dull ache and sometimes more pronounced when I needed her the most and she’d let me down, but the way I missed Shane even when he was only across campus felt like I had the weight of the world on my back, like I couldn’t breathe.

  I finally left Ethan’s place around one am. When I arrived back at the house my note to Ally was in the same place I left it and there were no sounds coming from her room. I opted to sleep on the couch anyway, pulling a throw blanket over my legs and curling up with a pillow. I flipped through the channels on TV and settled on a new cleaning product infomercial that promised to remove old stains in less than twenty seconds. This I had to see! I drifted off to sleep somewhere between my thoughts of Shane’s lips on mine and the endless possibilities of the OrangeGlo 2000.

  CHAPTER 15: VACATION PLANS

  “Just pick one, it doesn’t matter which one we get her.”

  “Shane, of course it matters. Haven’t you ever met your sister?” I said sarcastically.

  It was four days before Christmas and I was at the mall helping Shane do all of his gift buying. We’d just taken our last exams that morning and with the pressure of school off his shoulders he finally realized he needed to buy his family gifts. The only person I knew who despised shopping more than me was Shane, which is how I got dragged into the trip to the mall. Every department store we entered was a madhouse and I’d been crowded, pushed, and nearly run over by shopping carts more times that I could count.

  “This one is more expensive because it’s real leather,” I considered out loud. “But this one looks more practical.” I held the purses out so I could examine them side by side.

  Shane snatched the leather bag out of my hand. “Haven’t you ever met Ally?” he teased. “More expensive. Genuine leather. This is the one.”

  I rolled my eyes but followed him down the aisle as he darted around the frantic shoppers to find a cashier. Ally was the last person on his list and once this transaction was complete we were free to go. For once, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave a shopping center. Our arrival back at campus would only mark the beginning of our month long separation and I was already dreading it. Rachel was driving me back to Pittsgrove tomorrow to spend a day with my Dad before I left for Baltimore.

  As I watched Shane tap his foot impatiently I wondered to myself whether he was at all distressed by our impending goodbye. If he was it didn’t show. He swiped Colin’s American Express and we were on our way. The Firebird was parked at the other end of the mall so we had to traipse back through the mobs in order to leave. As we passed the food court my stomach alarm went off and I stopped walking. We’d been here all afternoon and I hadn’t eaten since before my morning exam. Shane turned back when he’d noticed I wasn’t following close behind him anymore.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Your personal shopper is hungry,” I replied, giving him my best pout. He flashed me that perfect smile.

  “I suppose I do owe you a meal after saving me today. What would you like?”

  I pointed to a sandwich shop and we made our way over to the counter. After deciding what I wanted I went to find a clean table while he stood in line for the food. I watched him intently as he conversed with the person behind the counter, trying to memorize the unique color to his hair and the elegance in his mannerisms. I committed to memory the way his ass looked in his jeans. He was chatting politely with the girl at the cash register as she filled the drinks. The cup spilled over as she gazed dreamy-eyed at him. I couldn’t laugh at her Shane
-induced trance; I’d seen it many times before. Hell, I spent five years of my life under his spell. Ethan couldn’t understand why I’d gone so long without telling Shane how I felt. It was because of this scene right here. A part of me was content to sit in the middle of the crowded food court and stare at him all day; it relaxed me to watch his perfection. I considered myself lucky just to have him in my life. It felt like pressing my luck to ask for more.

  Shane sat across from me and placed the tray between us. “How do you think you did on the English 2 exam?”

  “Slam dunk. I studied all the right material,” I replied smugly.

  “You didn’t think the questions about Chaucer were difficult?” he questioned.

  I laughed. “What is with your aversion to Chaucer?”

  “The professor spent so much time on The Canterbury Tales I thought I was going to fall asleep half the time. I couldn’t get into it,” he explained.

  “I thought every tale was beautiful,” I replied. “It’s amazing to think you’re reading something that was created over six hundred years ago; that it’s still being taught today.”

  He smirked at me and said, “I admire you passion for literature. It’s surreal.”

  “Why are you an English major, Shane? So far you’ve hated all the poetry, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Bronte sisters. What excited you about this field of study?”

  “Honestly, I’m waiting for the creative writing courses to start next year. That’s what I might want to do with my life,” he shrugged.

  I took a sip of my soda. “I had no idea you wanted to be a writer. How come you never talk about it?”

  “I don’t know if I’m any good,” he chuckled. “It seemed like a good undergraduate degree, in case I decide to go that direction. My long term plan is still University of Chicago or NYU to study family law.”

  I tried very hard not to think about Shane’s plans for graduate school. The very thought of him moving away made me uneasy. I ate a french fry as I decided what to say.

  “Have you finished writing anything yet?” I asked, pulling the conversation back to a career path where Shane would stay in state.