Balancing Acts by Emily Franklin

Author:Emily Franklin [Franklin, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5228-2
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-09-30T16:55:00+00:00

15

Check the weather every day—twice.

MELISSA CAN’T HELP BUT stare at JMB and Celia—he spins her around, laughing, faux-dancing on the snow as the wind picks up around them. “Bit of a spectacle, aren’t they?” Gabe Schroeder sidles up to her. Melissa tries for calm, knowing she’ll never achieve cool. “Fame has that allure, I suppose.”

Gabe shrugs. “Been there, done that.” He gives a last look at JMB and Celia. JMB starts to make his way to the shed.

Suddenly, Melissa can’t hold in her feelings, all the resentment and embarrassment from last season. She remembers seeing him for the first time, how kind he’d been lifting her bags, how they’d hung out and traded stories over frozen lemonade. He’d invited her to watch his race—and when he’d won, he’d waved to her. And then, everything ended when he’d allowed her journal to be announced to everyone—and denied any of it was true. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” Gabe looks at her with a serious expression.

Melissa tries to steady herself on her poles so she can get her other ski on. “You know what happened last year—and God knows I’ve tried to avoid you. But you keep popping up.”

“I do not,” Gabe says. He reaches out to hold firm her pole.

“You were at that club, the one with no name—”

“You were there?” Gabe asks. He sounds genuinely interested. “Why didn’t you say hi?”

“Um, hello? This might come as a shock-surprise, Gabe, but you made my life a living hell last season. I …” She doesn’t care anymore about feeling stupid, about harboring feelings for him, and realizes it might just feel good to let it out and let it go. “You knew I liked you, okay?” Gabe nods, a blush creeping over his cheeks, highlighted by the paleness of his curls. As he watches her, Melissa recalls the intense way he stares at your mouth, which makes you feel like you’re the only one in a ten-mile radius. “And yet you did nothing—no, correction. You did the opposite. You did everything in your power to see that I became a laughing stock. Reading my journal out loud? Into a microphone?”

“It was called Night of Humiliation,” Gabe explains. “And if you’d stayed, you’d have learned that …”

“I would have learned that it is a huge mistake to ever put anything on paper if you want it kept private.”

“No, wait. After you left that night—you missed my act. You didn’t hear that I …”

“Oh, shut up!” Melissa says to him and feels redeemed. “I’m sick of sneaking around here hoping not to see you this season. I’m tired of feeling dumb for having feelings. So I had them. Had being the operative word in the past tense.”

Gabe stares at her, his eyes still on her mouth. Then he looks at her directly, their eyes glued until he speaks. “The past, huh? I’m sorry. I—You—I never meant to …”

JMB dashes over, out of breath and happy as a puppy. “Hey—did I miss her?”

Gabe shakes his head.

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