Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  “What do you need?” Max asked, certain that no matter what the answer was, she couldn’t provide it now, anyway.

  Callie shrugged. “I’m not sure, but . . . I think, maybe, wings?”

  Max blinked several times, wondering if she’d lost consciousness, and perhaps this whole encounter was actually a hallucination.

  “Chicken wings, not like actual wings to fly with, though those would be good, too, I suppose, but I really meant the kind you eat.”

  “Buffalo wings?”

  “Yeah, but”—she grinned sheepishly—“here we just call them ‘wings.’ You want to go get some with me?”

  Max turned her head to one side and then the other as if she might rattle her brain back into place. When nothing shifted, she said, “That’s not what I expected.”

  Callie grinned. “I get that, but I mean, you are in Buffalo, so wings should never exactly be unexpected.”

  Max tried to consider that point. She supposed it was no weirder than anything else that had happened in the last ten minutes, and maybe it was exactly what she needed to jar herself out of her downward spiral because she did actually seem to be breathing better now. Callie had a habit of breaking off in wildly different directions, but none of them had actually led her too far astray . . . yet. “Okay.”

  “Okay? To wings?”

  She nodded. “Okay to wings.”

  “Good.” Her grin spread. “Want me to drive?”

  “Yes, please.”

  And that was all she’d had to say. Suddenly, she went from lost and cold and scared to cruising along the highway in Callie’s little Subaru hatchback with a tiny curling stone on top of the antennae and Team USA stickers in the back window, because, of course.

  “So, you know about the whole wing controversy in Buffalo, right?” Callie asked with a casualness in her voice that didn’t betray any of the freaked-outedness most people would’ve felt in a similar situation.

  “I know Buffalo wings were invented here.”

  “Right, but where?”

  Max shook her head. “No idea. Where?”

  “That’s the controversy. Two different restaurants claim to be the originator of the Buffalo wing. Both the Anchor Bar and Duff’s have stories about inventing our city’s signature dish, which incidentally makes Buffalo the only city that’s also a flavor.”

  Max snorted. “That’s quite a claim to fame.”

  “Right? I mean, you don’t get Detroit-flavored chips, or Cleveland sauce.”

  “Nor am I sure I would want to.”

  Callie laughed. “But it’s important to know where you come from, and Buffalo isn’t quite sure where her signature taste began.”

  Max thought about that, grateful to have something else to fill her mind and push out the horrible questions that had crowded the space earlier. “Well, which place do you think is better?”

  “There’s great debate around that as well. It splits the city down the middle. Everyone here has a pretty set opinion on the subject, but I wouldn’t want to taint your taste buds with my bias. I think you need to try both for yourself.”

  “Fair enough, but which one are we trying today?”

  Callie clasped her hand on Max’s shoulder and gave it a playful squeeze. “My friend, you have so much to learn.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” she said seriously, “but that still doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Both,” Callie said with a grin. “The only way to do a proper taste test is by limiting all the variables and trying one right after the other.”

  “We’re going to two wing places in one day?”

  “Of course we are.”

  Max laughed, but the sense of absurdity surrounding her now stemmed less from the overindulgent meal plan and more from the woman suggesting it. After everything that had happened between them, Callie should’ve taken her chance and run for the hills. Instead, she had run toward her.

  Max read the menu aloud. “Medium is hot. Medium hot is very hot. Hot is very, very hot.”

  “Welcome to Duff’s,” Callie said proudly.

  “It’s not much to look at.” Max glanced around the dark interior and low ceilings of the small dining room. “But it’s got a good, authentic feel to it.”

  “They’ve franchised out and have several bigger, more polished locations, but this is the original, so I think it best to start here.”

  “I agree. You always want to start at the source of a story and work out from there,” Max said, then frowned. “Then again, what do I know about sources?”

  Callie did her best to ignore the comment. “Well, do you know what kind of wings you want to try?”

  “What do you recommend? Despite what you saw in my car earlier, I have a relatively high pain tolerance.”

  Again Callie dodged the heavier topic and suggested, “Let’s do one order of medium and one medium hot so you get a sense of the flavor and then the heat.”

  “Deal.” Max put down her menu and let Callie place the order, but as soon as the waitress left, she started to get a little twitchy again, her gaze sweeping everywhere that didn’t involve making actual eye contact.

  Callie wanted to help. She wanted to know what was going on, but she felt as though she was dancing around a trapped animal too scared to let anyone get close enough to help. Her instinct to soothe was tempered by her own desire not to get bit in the process. She tried to tread carefully as far as Max would allow.

  “I’m sorry we got interrupted back at the club.”

  Max’s shoulders tensed, but Callie pushed forward gently. “I wanted to say that I think I messed up when I brought up your job. I think I made you feel pressured without meaning to.”

  “It’s fine,” Max said curtly, a warning in her tone.

  Maybe Callie should have left it there, maybe she should’ve changed the subject again, but she couldn’t shake the sense that something helpless lurked behind the low growl in Max’s voice.

  “I’m not always good at talking about things other than curling, but I was trying to show interest in your job because I know it’s important to you. You’ve been so supportive of me in my job lately that I wanted to do the same for you, but I didn’t convey that well.”

  “No, I misunderstood. I do that a lot more than I like to admit.”

  “I don’t think so,” Callie said. “I think you’ve worked really hard over the last month to try to understand curling. I know you don’t share my interest.”

  “You mean obsession,” Max teased.

  Her heart stretched against its confines to hear a little sass back in her voice. “Sure. Obsession. I’ll wear it, and you have done your best to humor me.”

  “To be fair, your obsession relates a little to my job.”

  She sighed. “Am I really that bad at showing a complimentary interest in something not related to curling?”

  The corners of Max’s mouth curled up. “No. I’m just bad at accepting it.”

  “Well, stow that long enough for me to say I’m interested in you. That’s all I was trying to express back at the club. I wanted to know how your week went because I’m interested. Did I say that part all right?”

  “Kind of,” Max admitted, “but it’s not terrible to hear twice.”

  The waitress returned with their wing orders and, after making sure they knew which ones would burn and which would scorch, left them alone again. The conversation faded as Max took her first bite of the medium wings and nodded appreciatively.

  “This is in the top five of wings I’ve ever eaten.” She chewed a little more. “Make that top three.”

  “Not too hot?”

  She shook her head. “Good burn, but also good flavor. Smooth burn with a buttery texture.”

  “See,” Callie said, in between her own bites, “here’s the type of thing I should’ve led with earlier, but did you get into journalism because you always had a way with words, or did you learn to describe things like that because you’re a journalist?”

&n
bsp; Max frowned, and Callie’s stomach tightened again, but the withdrawal she feared never came.

  “Maybe both?” Max shrugged and grabbed another wing. “I think I learned to use my words early on, much to the chagrin of my family, who were more likely to use their fists or their intimidation.”

  Callie grimaced.

  “Yeah, I didn’t come from a high-class set of people.” Max pushed on. “And I couldn’t compete with them in their arenas. I was never going to be big or intimidating, but I could talk circles around them. I could tie them in knots, which didn’t always end well for me at home, but it started to get me noticed at school. I had some teachers take an interest, and suddenly I wasn’t just reacting. I was starting to make sense of things around me.”

  “I admire that,” Callie admitted. “I wish I were better at making sense of things.”

  “You make sense of your world. You get people, know what motivates them. People trust you. They like you.”

  “I’m sure they like you, too.”

  “No.” Max shook her head. “Sometimes they admire me. Sometimes they need me, and sometimes they find me interesting or amusing, but I think very few people actually like me. I get under their skin. I make them feel uncomfortable. I needle until they reveal things they don’t always like to, and once I latch onto something, I don’t let go.”

  “You’re tenacious.”

  “I’m a polymath pain in the ass. I know enough to draw people in and then pick them apart.”

  “Sounds like a dangerous skill.”

  “It can be,” Max said gravely, then reached for the medium-hot wings. “Should we take our taste buds up another notch?”

  Callie noticed the change in subjects but didn’t want to push. “Sure, same time?”

  Max nodded, and they each raised a wing to their mouth and locked eyes. For a second she remembered the flash of connection, of staring down at Max in bed, of feeling their bodies pressed together in a way that went deeper than skin.

  The heat spread through her before the sauce even touched her tongue, but the food certainly didn’t help.

  “Definitely hotter,” Max said, as her eyes began to water.

  “Too much for you?” Callie teased as she fared only slightly better. The wing still had good flavor, but it was harder to isolate over the burn across her lips and tongue.

  “Not at all,” Max said, even while reaching for her water. “I can take it.”

  “You don’t have to,” Callie offered. “It’s not a competition.”

  “Everything’s a little bit of a competition, isn’t it?” Max asked. “I mean, maybe not with you, but with me. I always want to know where my boundaries are.”

  “So you can push them?”

  “Maybe.” Max grinned again. “Something we have in common.”

  “Is that why you chose to write about sports instead of going into a more general form of reporting?”

  “It’s part of it.” Max relaxed again. “I think I also liked bucking stereotypes. Not a lot of girls in my school wanted to cover the sports teams. It was a boy’s job, and even the school newspaper advisor didn’t think I had what it took.”

  “I bet that went over well.”

  Max snorted. “Yeah, I don’t like being told I can’t do something.”

  “Shocking,” Callie mused.

  “Oh, you’re one to talk. Besides, she wasn’t totally wrong. I never did take to doing simple play-by-play summaries or reporting box scores. Before long, I transitioned into doing more in-depth pieces on the athletes or the sports themselves. Then I did an exposé on the funding of women’s sports in relationship to men’s sports in our school district.”

  “Impressive.”

  “The superintendent didn’t think so when it got a Title IX complaint filed against him.”

  “Good for you!”

  “Yeah, so while I found individual sporting matchups interesting enough, the people behind them were much more compelling for me. By the time I got to college, I’d found my niche, and I got bigger and bigger opportunities to delve deeper into the culture of sports and the psyches of the people who compete.”

  “And that’s how you landed here,” Callie concluded, grabbing one more wing and pushing the last one toward Max, who accepted but was no longer meeting her eyes.

  “Something like that.”

  Callie internally kicked herself, but for what she wasn’t quite sure. She’d obviously triggered the sadness in Max again, but she didn’t know how to stop, and honestly she wasn’t sure she wanted to. If something could shake a woman of Max’s fortitude and presence this badly, maybe it didn’t need to be exposed.

  “So, how do you decide who gets to be a story? I mean, there are millions of athletes in the world. How do you decide which are interesting enough to warrant more research? The biggest? The fastest? The most famous?”

  “Those factors help,” Max admitted slowly. “They certainly guarantee a built-in readership, which is important, but they don’t always ensure an interesting read.”

  “But how do you know, before you start, what will make for an interesting read?”

  “I don’t. No one knows where a line of questions will lead before it starts, or why ask the question in the first place?” She grew more animated as she gestured with her half-eaten wing. “I only know when something piques my own interest enough to start digging. That’s part of the excitement. You never know what you don’t know, and sometimes you find out even the things you think you know just ain’t so.”

  Callie grinned. “I like that. Reminds me of my own life lately. I feel like I’m living at the intersection of what I don’t know and what I thought I knew might not be true.”

  Max hung her head again. “I’m a big factor in that, aren’t I?”

  “Do you want me to lie or be honest?”

  “Honest. Always honest.”

  “Then yes,” Callie said. She quickly added, “Not that I’m pushing. I’m not. Your life, your feelings, your past, they’re all yours, but the more I know about you, the more I want to know, and the more I know—how did you put it?—the more I suspect what I think I know, just ain’t so.”

  Max still wasn’t looking directly at her, but the side view allowed Callie to see the little twitch in her jaw, and the strain at the spot where neck met shoulder. Something was twisting her in knots from the inside out, and in that moment, Callie wanted desperately to be the one to start untying them. Only she didn’t know how.

  Max finally broke the silence. “Are we ready to move on to the Anchor Bar?”

  She nodded slowly. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Anchor Bar was bigger than Duff’s, and slightly more polished in that, instead of bare-wood paneling, the walls were covered in newspaper clippings about wings and framed photos of celebrities eating their wings. Max appreciated having something else to look at as an excuse for avoiding the questions in Callie’s eyes.

  Why did she have to be so perfect? So understanding? So gentle? Max had built all her defenses around being angry, and it had worked well until Callie had come along. Now, sitting so close to her, she’d started to forget why she needed defenses in the first place. She almost had the urge to try the “suicidal” wings just to feel the burn again, but Callie warned against it, and gave one order each of medium and hot. Mercifully, both arrived quickly.

  “And?” Callie asked, leaning forward expectantly as Max tried one of the medium wings.

  Max chewed slowly, taking in the crisp outer layer coated in a mix of tangy and buttery flavors. “I’m developing a preference, but I’m going to need a bigger sample size.”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t want to rush to judgment.” Callie feigned a serious nod, but the quirk of her lips gave her away.

  This time Max selected one of the hot ones and took a big bite. Immediately the increased heat hit her sinuses. She wouldn’t have thought she had anything left to clear out after the medium-hot ones at Duf
f’s, but she stifled the urge to blow her nose. And yet, the fire never rose to a painful level. There was a distinct edge of hot pepper to this one, but it didn’t completely sublimate the tang or the smooth finish. Duff’s wings were great, top-contender great, but these were on a different plane.

  “This one,” she said, as soon as she swallowed. “These are better.”

  Callie raised a fist triumphantly. “We can be friends!”

  “Wait.” She laughed. “I didn’t know this was a test.”

  “I told you we were doing a taste test.”

  “Yeah, taste test, not a friendship test.”

  “Who wants to be friends with people who have bad taste?”

  Max laughed harder, the sound foreign to her own ears, the shake in her shoulders beginning to loosen some of the tension there. “Fair point, but I thought we were already friends.”

  Callie’s smile turned sweet. “It makes me really happy you thought that. I mean, after everything that happened, and then everything else that happened today, I worried you hated me.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Callie, how could I hate you? Or more importantly, how can you not hate me? I mean, I know what you must think—”

  “You don’t.” She cut her off. “You can’t possibly know what I think, because I don’t even know what I think. There are so many things I don’t know about you and, again, I am not pushing. I am okay with not knowing every detail of your life, but please don’t assume you know what’s going on in my head. Or maybe, if you’re so sure you do, then you should tell me, because I don’t.”

  Max stared at her. “Um, that was kind of a lot.”

  Callie sat back. “Was it? Sorry.”

  “No, don’t be sorry. You’re right.”

  “I do love it when you say that.”

  She snorted. “Don’t get used to it.”

  “I am getting used to it,” Callie said, her tone a little lighter. “It’s happening a lot lately, and I’m good with it happening more.”

  “What if I’m not around long enough for it to happen much more?”

  “Unacceptable. You promised me a season, a full season. That’s the deal. I’m not friends with people who break deals.”