Free I Know It's Over by C. K. Kelly Martin Page A

late-night hockey games so far that summer and my stickhandling had definitely gotten rusty. Weekly practices and a busy game schedule would take care of that in the fall, but usually I made more of an effort year-round.
    “I’m thinking I’m going to miss you,” she said.
    I smiled into the phone. “We’ll make time, right?”
    For sure. There probably wouldn’t be time for CSI over the phone, but there’d definitely be time for her. I didn’t think I could go a week without spending time alone with Sasha. You spend months barely acknowledging someone’s existence and then BOOM, you’re emotionally addicted to her. Science would probably blame it on chemicals, genetics, or something equally logical, but it didn’t feel like anything logical.
    Sometimes I’d catch Sasha kissing me with her eyes open. It was a weird feeling, someone watching you from that close, and it’d usually make me laugh and have to stop.
    “You’re doing it again,” I’d say.
    One time she’d put her hands on either side of my face and replied, “I like the way you look when you’re kissing—when I see your face, it’s like I know how you feel.”
    I knew what she meant. I looked at her all the time too. The way she stared back at me made me feel like she was really seeing me. Because most people don’t actually see you. People aren’t very good at that generally. Most people can only recognize certain parts of someone else, not the whole picture. Maybe you’re lucky if one other person can really see you. Maybe you’re not meant to be able to see everybody; maybe that would be even more confusing. I don’t really have a clue how that works except that I thought Sasha could see me and that I could see her.
    So of course I’d spend Saturday night with her. I didn’t feel bad about sneaking around like she did. Parents shouldn’t force you lie to them. I get that lots of parents have a no-bedroom rule when it comes to the opposite sex. I get that nobody wants their kid driving around under the influence. A nine-thirty curfew, on the other hand, is total insanity. When I worked nights, I didn’t even get home until nine-thirty.
    I hung around with Keelor on Saturday afternoon. He’d hooked up with this girl named Karyn a few days after Dani’s party and was no longer engaging in Vix-related activities. That put us in a similar position, but I knew that he didn’t understand what I saw in Sasha. We’d spent all of one evening with him and Karyn during the last month, a polite but strained evening that made it obvious Keelor and Sasha weren’t interested in getting to know each other any better than they already did.
    When I’d asked Sasha about it later, she said, “He was in my math class last year, okay? I know what he’s like. All those stupid sexual jokes. Everything is about sex with him. It’s like he has no other way of relating to girls. He was totally like that with Karyn.”
    “He’s not like that with you, though,” I pointed out.
    “He would be if I let him.”
    “You know, sometimes you take things too seriously,” I told her. “She obviously likes him. What makes you think you can decide what’s okay between other people?” I didn’t tear down her incredibly boring friends. Never mind that Lindsay was obsessed with everything that was happening between Sasha and me because she had no life outside the educational system or that Yasmin believed dropping twenty pounds would solve all her problems when her attitude was the real issue.
    “I’m not deciding for other people,” Sasha said. “I know you’ve been friends a long time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be or anything. I’m just saying I don’t like him. That’s all.”
    “Well, I do, so maybe you could lay off him,” I said defensively. It didn’t matter whether she was right or not—only that she was bad-mouthing him.
    Sasha got all serious on me, saying I shouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want the truth. I told her she’d