Offside in the Friend Zone novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Plus-One
At the Frost Lodge welcome dinner Calla mocks Henrik for coming alone, and Astrid stands up and claims him, only to be handed the key to the Honeymoon Cabin.
Calla Frost waited until the whole dining hall was listening before she called Henrik Aldahl pathetic.
"Still no plus-one, Henrik?" she said, and she smiled with every tooth.
"Five years in the league, and you still show up to your sister's wedding alone."
It was Sunday night, the welcome dinner, and Frost Lodge had sixty people at long pine tables.
The fireplace was big enough to park a truck in.
I was at the far end with a plate of walleye I had stopped tasting.
I hadn't seen Henrik in five years.
He had walked in late with snow on his shoulders, and the room had gone quiet.
He was bigger than I remembered.
His dark-blond hair was longer now, tucked behind his ears, and his nose had been broken at least once more.
He hadn't looked at me yet.
I knew exactly how hard he was not looking, because I was doing the same thing.
Elsa, his little sister and my best friend, was marrying Calla's brother Kaspar on Saturday.
That made Calla family, whether any of us liked it or not.
Calla had been engaged to Henrik for fourteen months, and eight months ago it had ended.
She told everyone she was the one who left.
"Don't be shy," she said, tilting her head at him as if he were a dog that had messed on a rug.
"Everybody here knows what happened to you."
"A man like that, with no one to bring."
A few people laughed, the polite kind of laugh that costs nothing.
Henrik stood there with his cap in his hand and his jaw working.
He used to do that when we were nine and somebody called him slow.
Then he lifted his chin and said the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
"I'm not alone."
"Oh?" said Calla.
"I'm with Astrid."
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.
Sixty heads turned toward the end of the table, toward me.
I was a woman with a chipped tooth and a pixie cut, in a rink hoodie under my good cardigan.
Henrik finally looked at me.
Those green eyes were exactly the same, and they were begging.
I had a plan for this week.
The plan was to hold Elsa's hand, wear the dress, and be somewhere else whenever Henrik was in the room.
The plan did not include this.
"Astrid Nygaard?" said Calla, and the whole room heard the doubt in it.
"From Harbor Falls? The rink girl?"
"Henrik's little friend?"
I put my fork down.
Five years ago, in a skate shed that smelled of rubber and ice, I told him a lie.
It was so cruel that he left town and never called.
I owed him a good deal more than a plus-one.
I stood up.
My chair scraped, and every conversation in the hall died with it.
I walked the length of the room with sixty people watching, and my boots sounded on the pine.
Henrik didn't move.
I stopped in front of him, went up on my toes, and kissed the hard corner of his jaw.
He smelled like cold air and cedar and the same stupid soap.
His whole body went still.
"Five months," I said, loud enough for the back wall.
"He's been very patient with me."
Then I slipped my hand into his and turned to face the room.
Elsa had both palms over her mouth, and her dimples were showing.
Her father, Rolf, had put down his whistle for the first time in thirty years.
Calla looked at our hands.
"Five months," she said slowly.
"And nobody told Elsa?"
"We wanted to tell her ourselves," I said.
"At the wedding."
"After the bride's day was over."
It came out smooth, which scared me more than the lie itself.
Behind me, Henrik's thumb pressed once against my knuckle, hard enough to hurt.
I hoped it meant thank you.
I was afraid it meant something else.
"How lovely," Calla said.
She rose from her seat and walked toward us with something small and silver in her palm.
"Then you won't mind where we've put you."
"We're completely full this week, you understand."
"The last room left is the Honeymoon Cabin."
She set a brass key in my free hand and closed my fingers around it, one by one.
"One bed," she said.
"Enjoy it."
And the whole hall, bless every last one of them, began to clap.
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