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Dipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he rocks a little on his heel. “The store is really coming together, Doug.”

Dad absolutely won’t be called Mr. Foster. He takes more offense than Mom when she’s called Ma’am, exclaiming that such a formal title not only makes him feel old, but places barriers he doesn’t want between himself and the important people in his life. Because Holt is important to me, he’s important to Dad, too. I love Dad for that.

Holt has become so much of a fixture in our lives, that Dad has even begun to watch hockey. The last game the Vancouver Vikings played, Mom made a big spread of goodies, and the whole Wilder family joined us to watch the game on Dad’s new projector TV. Mom said it was his mid-life splurge, because with the opening of the store, no bank would have approved him for a sports car.

“It is, eh?” Dad’s eyes do a sweep of the space which, honestly, looks a lot like chaos to me. “Our doors should be open by the first week of March.” Dad’s eyes do another sweep, landing on the boxes that haven’t even been stripped of tape yet. He sighs. “God willing.”

Holt chuckles under his breath, his eyes glittering as they drift to me. Then he says to Dad, “If you need an extra hand, just let me know.”

“With your hockey schedule and the shifts you’ve been picking up with your dad and Tate, you don’t have time for this mess.” Dad’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Faye tells me you’re quite the busy man.”

Holt shrugs. “I can always make time.”

“How is hockey going?”

“Good.” Holt lights up, like he always does when he talks about hockey. “Coach says I play forward best he’s ever seen.”

There’s something in the smile Dad gives Holt. Something there and then gone. Something Holt misses.

But I don’t miss it.

It’s a sharp spade, the blade of it digging into the earth of all that is me and Holt. It cuts into the twisted roots of us, severing a dream or two and planting an insecurity in its place. Because Dad loves me more than anything—and that something in his smile—I think it might just be devastation. Heartbreak. Sorrow.

For me.

11

ALL I EVER WANT TO BE

FEBRUARY 2007 – 15 YEARS OLD

Mom is surely losing her bananas over the snow. The flakes are even bigger now than they were when we were in Dad’s shop. As Holt held my hand, tugging me from the shop to the passenger side of his rusty blue truck, the big flakes had fallen all around us. Some clinging desperately to the fibres of our jackets, the others to the strands of our hair in a desperate attempt to find a place to settle, to root, only to melt in the heat that blasted from the dash.

My heart feels a little like those snowflakes now as I sit beside a boy I’m crazy in love with. It’s desperate to settle. To root somewhere deep inside him. But I’m starting to fear that maybe the place my heart has chosen to rest will inevitably be scorched, burned raw by the dreams I can’t compete with.

I’m not sure what the remnants will be, if any will exist at all.

Holt leans back in the seat, his hand sliding over to mine. “You’re thinking again.”

I smile, but this time it doesn’t come easy. “I’m always thinking.”

His fingers curl tighter around mine. “Want to talk about it? Whatever it is.”

I don’t want to talk about it. My insecurities are only growing more and more raw every day. And that last look in Dad’s eyes, the pained worry in his smile. It affected me. Deeply.

Still, I want Holt to think I’m strong.

No, I want to be strong for Holt.

I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”

“Faye.” Holt unbuckles my seatbelt before he tugs me across the bench seat. With an arm thrown heavy around my shoulders, he lifts my chin with his other hand. His brown eyes I love so much bore into mine. Drilling into the depths of me as though he’s panning for shards of my soul to keep. “Talk to me.”

There he goes, sifting through the pieces of me in his search for the gold he’ll steal and never give back. I crumble at his feet like sand, and he holds my heart in the palm of his hands. I wonder if he knows.

“I love you, Holt.” The words fall from my tongue like a confession pulled from the very depths of me, snared eternally in the ether of first love.

My breath catches in my lungs as he stares down at me for long moments. My mind works to backtrack the confession and fails. Even though there is fear in this declaration, there is relief, too.