7 Minutes in Heaven Read online

  “For what?”

  “Coming out here quietly.”

  “You didn’t want to?”

  “I was happy at home,” he answers simply.

  I nod like I understand, but I obviously don’t. I’ve never lived anywhere but Jackson. I’ve never been out of the state. It’s all I think about. All I dream about.

  Getting out.

  “Why did you leave?” I ask.

  “Because we couldn’t stay,” he answers vaguely.

  His tone tells me to leave it at that, so I do. “Do you miss it?”

  “I miss being warm.”

  I smile at him and the delicious feel of hot air on my trembling fingers. “November is when I start to forget what warm feels like.”

  “When does it come back again?”

  “Not long. June-ish, maybe.”

  “June?” he asks incredulously. He glances at me as he drives, looking to see if I’m serious. “No. No way.”

  “Yep. Sorry. That’s Utah.”

  “That sucks.”

  “That’s Utah,” I repeat on a laugh.

  He looks at me again, smiling. He watches me longer than he meant to. I can feel it in the awkward way he forces a cough, clearing his throat that’s already crystal. “Not a lot of love for your home state, huh?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else. It’s probably not fair to hate it without knowing how bad it can be in the rest of the world.”

  “It’s better out there,” he promises solemnly.

  “Where else have you been?”

  “A lot of places. My dad was Navy. We lived in California for a few years. Hawaii for three.”

  I let my head fall back against the seat. “I’d kill to be in Hawaii right now.”

  “You should go.”

  “I’ll go tomorrow. I’m packing my bag when I get home.”

  He gives me a heavy glance. “Take me with you.”

  “You’ll have to drive. My tire’s busted.”

  “We’re already in the car. Let’s just go now. We’ll keep driving until we hit California.”

  “And the ocean,” I muse happily.

  “I can smell it already.”

  I wish I knew what the ocean smelled like. Salt, I imagine. Seagulls. Sand. All the S’s. The good ones, at least. Not the cold ones like slush and snow and seven-more-inches-overnight. That’s probably what we’re looking at right now. Flakes have started to drift lazily from the sky. They glide off the windshield like nothing. Like crystalline puffs of air. Kyle doesn’t even have to use the windshield wipers. They’re too cold to make a mess yet. Frozen solid and fragile as eggshell.

  Kyle stops at the curb in front of my house.

  “You can pull into your driveway,” I tell him. “I don’t mind walking across the street.”

  He knocks the truck into PARK. “I don’t mind taking you to your door.”

  “Are . . . are you walking me to it?” I ask awkwardly. No boy has ever walked me to my door before. Mark never even took the car out of PARK when he drove me home, and he was pulling away from the curb before I was finished closing the door.

  Kyle glances at my house. “I hadn’t planned on it, but I can.”

  “Oh no! That’s fine. I was just . . . I didn’t know because you parked and . . . whatever, that was stupid,” I laugh. “Sorry.”

  “It wasn’t stupid.”

  “It wasn’t smart,” I joke, feeling like an idiot. I should get out of here immediately.

  “Do you have to go in right away?”

  I hesitate, my hand on the strap to my backpack. “Uh, no. My dad’s home but he’ll be sleeping. He always takes a nap when he gets home because he gets up so early.”

  “So no one is waiting for you?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna hang out?”

  “Where?” I glance at his dark, empty house across the street. It looks strangely angry staring back at me.

  “Here? In the truck?” He gestures to the flakes dropping faster around us. “I’ve never seen it snow before. Maybe I can learn to like it.”

  “You won’t,” I promise him. “You’ll think you do because when it first falls it’s really pretty but after it’s been around a while it gets dirty and hard and you’ll hate it.”

  He wrinkles his nose. “Bummer.”

  “I know.”

  “Still. It’s cool for now.” Kyle looks at me, his eyes dark and deep. Greenish-brown in this mossy kind of way that makes me ache for Spring. “We could enjoy it and pretend it’s never gonna suck.”

  I feel myself smile. It’s fluid. Liquid and warm. Not stiff the way I’ve felt almost all day.

  My hand slips away from my bag as I settle back into the seat. “I guess we could do that.”

  “Cool.”

  “Cool,” I agree quietly. We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the snow fall around us. It’s mesmerizing, like fire. “Tell me one bad thing about Florida,” I command quietly.

  He casts me a quizzical glance. “Why?”

  “Because I talked trash about Utah. You have to balance the scales by talking some trash about Florida.”

  “I can do that.” He stares out the windshield without seeing. Thinking. “It was humid. I hated the humidity.”

  “I’m gonna need worse than that.”

  “You haven’t given me worse than that about Utah.”

  “Okay. Utah is boring and if you get too close to Salt Lake City, it stinks like the inside of a dead man’s armpit.” I smile at him sideways. “Your turn.”

  He chuckles quietly. “Mosquitos. Horseflies. Cicadas that never shut up.”

  “You hate insects?”

  “Not all of them. Just the bloodthirsty, annoying ones.”

  “What about the girls in Florida?” I ask even though I shouldn’t. It feels too close to digging, like I’m interested in him. But I’m not. I’m over guys, remember? “Are they all models like in the movies?”

  “Yes.”

  I scowl at him. “Wrong answer.”

  “You want me to lie?” he chuckles unapologetically.

  “Maybe. Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “You suck.”

  “I do. Sorry.”

  I snort. “You’re not sorry.”

  “No,” he agrees good-naturedly, “but ask me what Utah has that Florida doesn’t.”

  I turn to him, giving him my full attention before obediently posing, “What does Utah have that Florida doesn’t?”

  “You,” he answers immediately. Seriously. His face is earnest and unafraid. His eyes hold solidly to mine in this hypnotic, terrifying way.

  “That’s a smooth move,” I say softly. I’m willing my heart to slow down. It’s a line. It’s not a real compliment.

  “It’s not a move,” he insists. “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s the truth about any girl at school. It sounds good but it doesn’t actually mean anything. Seriously, have you just been dying to use that line? Or was I not even the first? How many girls did you say that to today?”

  He chuckles, looking away. “Never mind.”

  “No! Come on. How many?”

  “A gentleman never tells.”

  “A gentleman doesn’t use the same line on every girl in school!” I laugh at him.

  He smiles, shaking his head. He’s still not looking at me. “I haven’t said that to any other girl at school. I promise.”

  It’s weird, the way his words hit me.

  Not ‘I swear’. I promise. You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but promises are for the future. You promise you’ll bring home dinner. You promise you’ll remember someone’s birthday. It implies a trust I can’t quite wrap my head around.

  “How good is your word?” I ask him carefully.

  He looks at me sideways, smirking. “Even better than my jump shot.”

  “I’ll have to see you play before I know how good that is.”

&
nbsp; “I’m trying out for the team on Friday. You should come watch.”

  “I don’t really watch basketball.”

  “Then just come watch me. I’ll make it fun for you.”

  “Maybe,” I answer coyly, but I know I’ll be there.

  I’m pretty sure Kyle knows it too.

  I settle back into my seat so I can look out the windshield instead of at him. He likes it when I’m looking at him. He knows how distracting it is. The way he smiles and the color of his eyes are like Kryptonite to me. And I have no intention of being taken down by this sexy Lex Luther.

  “Tell me another bad thing about Florida,” I demand.

  Kyle tells me a million things. He tells me about being a Navy brat, moving all over the country. The world. I drink in his stories of faraway places like I need it to survive. We sit and talk like that for over an hour – dreaming together. Imagining we’re anywhere but here in the cold in a truck halfway between his parents’ house and mine. It’s a different world. Distant. Like real life can’t touch us. It’s like we’re in the opposite of a snow globe. The cold is outside but inside we’re wading in the warm ocean. Kyle paints imagines in my mind in vivid colors that make me long to reach out and touch them. To run my fingers through the jeweled waters of a Tahitian bay at sunset. To scale the mossy side of a mountain in Peru, surrounded by green trees, grass, and plants bursting with exotic blooms like fireworks at New Year’s.

  “I want to travel the world,” he explains excitedly. “I have this dream to visit every country.”

  “How many have you been to so far?”

  “Six.”

  “Wow,” I whisper enviously. “I’ve never left Utah.”

  “You will.”

  I smile. “You sound so sure.”

  “You want out. I can see it.” He nods to himself, like he’s reassuring us both. “You’ll get out.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I usually am.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think you’re charming at all,” I muse, watching the snow fall. “I think you’re just arrogant.”

  Kyle chuckles deeply. “Can’t I be both?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he says knowingly.

  He’s right. I do know. I know he’s egotistical but it’s adorable. How does that even work? Is it just because he’s pretty? Am I giving him a pass on having a bad personality because he’s hot? Am I shallow?

  Probably a little, but I think Kyle is just fun. I don’t think he actually has a bad personality. Everything I’ve seen so far, I like. Even the overinflated ego because it makes him funny. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. It’s not like he thinks he’s better than everybody else, he just knows he’s awesome. I like that about him. I wish I had that kind of confidence. I especially like his laugh. It’s like buttercream. It’s rich and so thick I can almost taste the sweetness of it in the air inside the car. It reminds me of my birthday.

  He has a great voice too, but the thing I like the most is that he listens. He asks a lot of questions until I start talking, and once I get going he doesn’t try to interrupt me. He looks at me sometimes, smiling at nothing, and I feel my body flush with heat.

  That nothing is me. He’s smiling at me. I think he likes me.

  I know I like him.

  It’s close to four-thirty when his mom’s blue SUV pulls into their driveway. The time floors me. I can’t believe we’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Dad should be awake by now and Mom will be home soon with Ashley. I tell Kyle as much, gathering my bag off the floor that’s damp with the ice that melted off my shoes.

  “Do you want help with your tire?” he asks.

  “No. Thanks. My dad will help me. He’s probably wondering where I am, actually.”

  “You better get inside.”

  “And you better get home. Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  “Maybe we’ll have more classes together,” he says, sounding genuinely hopeful.

  I smile, willing myself not to blush. I fail, but the important thing is I tried. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I’ll see you later, Grace.”

  “Bye, Kyle.”

  I fall out into the snow. It crunches under my feet; the jagged ice hidden just under the fresh, soft surface. The world has that magic feeling. Everything looks new and fresh when the snow first falls. I know eventually it will fade, but right now the heat from Kyle’s car hugs my body under my clothes. My nose is still filled with the orange scent of his soap and the air freshener that hung in the shape of a shaggy coconut from the mirror. I feel good. Hopeful. Excited in a soft way that flutters in my belly as the snow kisses my cheeks like the wings of butterflies.

  I hear his tires crunching up the road. He’s pulling into our driveway to turn around, heading back toward his house. I debate whether I should turn and wave. Should I smile one last goodbye at the hot guy with the dark eyes and the cocky smile? Or should I play it cool?

  Cool. I should play it cool.

  I go inside without turning around.

  chapter five

  The house is warm. A fire is crackling in the hearth in the living room and there’s a heavy cloud of coffee in the air. Dad is definitely awake.

  As I unwrap myself from my jacket, I spot the telltale sliver of light under the door to the garage. I don’t bother kicking off my boots. It will be cold in there and I’m not about to walk on bare cement in the wintertime. Dad does, but Dad is crazy. He grew up loving Utah and snow. Ice is his friend. It’s never bothered him the way it does me.

  When I crack the door open, I spot him on his bench. He’s hunched over a notebook with mad scribblings that don’t mean anything to anyone but him. We have the same auburn hair. The same brown eyes. I got Mom’s narrow nose and high cheekbones, but I have Dad’s lips. His chin. His laugh.

  He smiles at me when he sees me. “Hey, kiddo. How was school?”

  I shrug, stepping reluctantly into the cold room. “It was good, I guess.”

  “Your car was here when I got home. Did you walk or did your mom take you?”

  “I walked.”

  “Cold walk.”

  I snort in glum agreement. “You’re telling me.”

  I take a seat on an old stool across the table from him. It’s cluttered with a strange mix of equipment – skiing and brewing. In the summer when things are slow on the mountain, Dad dives into his hobby of brewing beer here in the garage. He and his friends hang out sometimes with the big doors leading to the driveway open and a radio playing classic rock. They drink and laugh. Play darts. Shoot hoops at the end of the driveway. Some of them are in shape like Dad, but some are heavy in the middle. They aren’t active like he is and I think that’s why Makena likes to joke about him being hot. He’s in great shape for a guy barreling toward forty.

  “Who’s the dreamboat who drove you home?” he asks with a smile.

  I roll my eyes. “Don’t say ‘dreamboat’.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one says that. It makes you sound old.”

  “Sorry to break it to you, but your dad is old.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s better than that. Try to act like it.”

  Dad laughs. He puts his pen in his notebook to hold his spot before flipping the brown leather cover closed. “Alright. I’ll try.”

  “It was Kyle,” I tell him, my eyes on a shiny metal boot binding in the middle of the table. “He lives across the street. He’s the new guy.”

  “Today was his first day?”

  “Yep.”

  “And he offered you a ride home?”

  “He saw me walking and pulled over to pick me up.”

  Dad is quiet. He doesn’t react audibly, but when I look up at him, he’s smiling.

  My shoulders sag. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he chuckles. “Not a thing.”

  “Why are you smiling like t
hat?”

  “Because that was nice of him. That’s all.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I insist, even though I hope I’m wrong. I’m lying, begging him to correct me.

  Dad never disappoints.

  “No, of course not,” he says sarcastically. “And it’s not a big deal that you guys sat in his car for over an hour. Talking, I’m assuming?”

  “Yes. We were just talking.”

  “For over an hour,” he reminds me.

  “I wasn’t timing it.”

  “I was.” He stands from his stool, wandering to the refrigerator humming quietly in the corner. “One hour and thirteen minutes.”

  “Why would you time it?! That’s so weird!” I cry.

  “I’m your dad. Nothing I do is weird. It’s justified.”

  “Whatever. He’s a nice guy. He would have offered anyone a ride home.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t the only girl walking home today, Grace.”

  Dad comes back to the table with an unlabeled brown bottle in his hand. There’s a red rubber band around it; its only marking. He has a color coded system for his brews. IPAs, stouts, lagers. He tried to explain it to me last summer when the room was filled with fermenting flavors, the air rich with the scent of yeast, but I don’t remember most of it. All I really remember is the flavor of the fruit beer he let me take a sip of. It was cherry and it was terrible. Even he admitted it didn’t turn out like he hoped it would.

  “How was Ash this morning?” he asks as he sits.

  “Same as Ashley always is.”

  “No meltdowns?”

  “No. Everything went totally smooth, except I couldn’t find my keys.” I frown in annoyance. “They were in my car. It was unlocked. I’ve never left my keys in the car before.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I have that flat I need help dealing with.”

  He takes a sip, grimacing slightly. “Already did it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I took care of it when I got home.”

  I smile affectionately. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  I pick up the boot binding, turning the cold metal in my hands. “Do you need help at the shop this weekend?”

  He winces, his eyes apologetic. “I do. You okay with that?”