XOXO, Santa by Spencer Spears

Author:Spencer Spears [Spears, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-15T18:30:00+00:00

10

Henry

We spent the second half of the car ride in silence, for which I was grateful, because I didn’t know what to make of Blake’s confession.

Well, not confession, exactly. But…explanation?

Was it really possible that he’d had no idea what his friends were like in middle school? That he’d thought I was the one who’d ditched him?

It didn’t seem like it should be. Because that’s not how it happens, is it? It’s never the weird kid who ditches the popular one. The nerd who’s too cool for the jock.

It’s never the gay kid who makes the straight one feel rejected.

I wanted to think Blake was lying. Trying to make himself—and me, I supposed—feel better. But as I watched him from the corner of my eye for the rest of the drive, I didn’t get that impression. I had the strangest sense that he was telling the truth.

I felt like an idiot, for getting so upset. For the tears that brimmed in my eyes as we’d argued. It was like I’d told Santa online—high school was in the past. I tried hard not to care about it anymore.

But it was easier to say that to a stranger on the internet, and a lot harder to remember it when I was trapped in a car with the guy I’d had a crush on since forever. The guy who’d hurt me back then—and who’d apparently been hurt by me.

It all lived closer to the surface than I liked.

Once we were off the freeway, the drive to the cabin was almost totally dark. We passed occasional clumps of houses, down in the valleys below the winding mountain road. Their lights would appear suddenly, flicker like candles, and just as suddenly be swept away as the road twisted out of sight.

Blake drove fast. Faster than I would have, anyway, no matter how familiar we were with the route. After one particularly harrowing hairpin turn, our headlights shone on a deer, standing in the middle of the road. He was massive, his antlers illuminated like a halo, and my hand went to my chest as Blake came to a sudden stop.

“Oh my God.”

“It’s okay,” Blake said, his tone calm. He flicked his brights on and off like a strobe light, and on the third flick, the stag bounded off into the pines on the far side of the road.

“I thought you were going to hit him,” I said, my heart still pounding. Blake looked over at me and chuckled, and I frowned. “What?”

“Just remembering when we were kids,” he said. “And how you thought that a deer might attack us, every time we saw one.”

“You know, some male deer can get so hormonally addled during mating season that they have been known to attack humans. It’s not a completely ridiculous fear.”

“Thank you, Professor Wikipedia.” He grinned. “But don’t try and pretend like you weren’t equally scared of fawns and does.”

I shot him a dirty look. “Just because I have a respect for wild animals does not make me a wimp.

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