I sit up, and the hem of my dress flops down to cover my Wednesday panties. I bought them because they were silky and didn’t show lines through my clothes, but they have the days of the week printed on them. And they are showing.
This is definitely not heaven. I’m in hell.
“Oh yeah.” I jump to my feet, smoothing my dress over my butt. “I’m totally fine. That was pretty funny, huh?”
The guy closest to me has on reflective sunglasses, but they don’t disguise the worry on the rest of his face. “That was one of the worst falls I’ve ever seen.” He reaches out to touch my arm, like he wants to support me but stops. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah! Of course.” I smile and wave off his worry, even though tears prickle my eyes. “I’ve just got to get the bike and …” I spin around, realizing Watford’s leash is no longer on my arm.
One of the guys is taller than the rest. Like gargantuan tall. Like a foot taller than me and that’s saying something. He points to my leg. “You’re bleeding.”
I look down at a gash that splits my kneecap. “It’s just a scratch.” A big scratch. Big enough that the blood is already dripping down my leg and under the strap of my shoe. I’ll worry about it later when there aren’t people staring at me, probably filming this whole thing. “My dog. Did any of you guys see where he went?”
“Yeah,” Mirrored Sunglasses says. “He’s in the water. With our ball.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” I limp toward the lake, yelling for Watford.
Two of the guys peel off, leaving me with Sunglasses and Super Tall. They round up the dog pretty quickly. Watford trots back toward me with the remnant of what was once a soccer ball. He drops it at my feet like an offering.
Is it possible to die from embarrassment? And if so, couldn’t I have just died from the fall? My face heats to a million degrees. Sweat beads between my shoulder blades and stings the gash on my knee.
“I’m so sorry. I forgot how much he loves soccer balls. My uncle used to play in the UK, and Watford just destroys every ball he sees, and he must have gone crazy when he saw this one and—” And I’m rambling. I can’t seem to make it stop. “I can buy you a new one.” I reach for my purse, but it’s in the sand a few feet behind the bike, and I realize that the other soccer team—of the game I just crashed into—is waiting impatiently.
“I’ll just take him and …” I thumb toward the walkway. A guy with a shaved head hands me Watford’s leash.
Sunglasses jogs along beside me and picks up the bike while I grab my bag. I pull out a twenty from the cash envelope Aunt Emma left for me to use for food while she’s out of town, but he shakes his head.
“Please don’t concern yourself.”
I realize that Sunglasses has an accent to go along with his Greek god good looks. He is probably Greek for real. Or British. I don’t know. Maybe I did hit my head. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He carries the bike up the stairs for me and puts it on the path. “Can you make it home all right? Should I call someone for you?” He frowns at the dog, forehead bunching in concern.
“We’ll be fine. Watford is such a good boy.” And he usually is, right until he starts licking the blood off my leg. “Knock it off.” I push his nose away.
Sunglasses lets out a little chuckle he’s probably been trying to hold back this whole time because a girl in a dress flipped over a bike’s handlebars and into his soccer game. If it wasn’t me, I’d probably laugh too.
“Gabe!” Super Tall yells, pointing to their opponents. The game is starting again, and they’re playing without him.
He hesitates, like he’s not sure if he should leave me alone.
“You should go.” I try to take the bike off his hands. “Thanks for your help.”
“I hate to leave if you’re injured.” He doesn’t relinquish his grip on the handlebars.
“Nope. I’m good.” I’m also lying.
Sunglasses, aka Gabe, gives me a grin. “You do know how to ride a bike, right?”
The heat in my face burns all the way up to my ears. “What? Yes! Of course.” I make myself laugh like what he’s saying is so silly. It comes out too high-pitched, and I clear my throat. “Everyone knows how to ride a bike.”
His dark eyebrows pop up above his glasses. “If you say so. Be safe.”
Then he’s jogging back to his game, checking over his shoulder once to wave goodbye.
Holy crap. Now I actually have to ride the bike home. I hop on, cursing as it pulls at the wound in my knee, but I’m not going to walk away. I can ride until I reach the trees, and then I’ll get off again where he or any other members of the pantheon can’t see me.
“Watford. Heel.”
I swear the dog’s expression droops, which is pretty impressive considering his face is always droopy.
“No treats for you.”
I pedal off again, trying to ignore the blood pooling between my toes.
Honestly, once I get going, it’s not so bad. Watford keeps a decent pace, and as long as I don’t have to do any tight turns, I’m fine. Nervous and trembling and mortified, but fine.
When I pull up in front of Aunt Emma’s high-rise luxury residence hotel, the Belden-Stratford, Doorman Kevin bounds down the stairs. “Miss Maddie? Are you all right?” He takes the bike from me, balancing it against his hip as he bends over to get a closer look at my leg. “Let’s get you inside, and we can call your mom.”
So she can ruin everything over a skinned knee? Thanks, but no thanks.
“I’m fine, Kevin. Really.”
But he bustles me to the front desk and calls one of the bellhops to wheel the bike up to Emma’s apartment. He makes me sit in one of the fancy red-and-gold chairs in front of a low marble table and kick my leg up on top. One of the ladies at the front desk—her tag says JAN—brings me a little first aid kit with plenty of bandages and big gauze pads. Watford rolls up against her legs, long tongue lolling out. She pats his head absently like she’s used to his affections.
Everyone is so kind, but it’s salt on this new embarrassment. I should be used to it at this point. I came by the nickname CalaMaddie McPherson honestly. Just like Calamity Jane, accidents like this seek me out. My eyes sting almost as much as my knee. Not only did everyone on Lake Michigan and a group of super-hot guys see my epic crash, but now, everyone in the lobby of this ridiculously expensive hotel knows that something happened too.
I manage to extract myself from Jan and Kevin’s care, promising to call my mom as soon as I’m upstairs, and limp to the elevators with Watford trailing behind me. At least I wore him out. He walks straight to his water dish below the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lincoln Park and starts to slurp. I drop onto one of the tufted barstools at the island that divides the kitchen from the living room to take a look at my gash. I’ve had worse.
Like the scar on my chin from slipping in a puddle of soda at the mall two years ago. Eight stitches that time. I’ve got a permanent bump on my left forearm from a battle I lost with the stairs at my grandma’s house. My mom always says that if a disaster is going to happen, it’s going to happen to me. To make me feel better, my older brother, Max, emailed me a study proving that one in twenty-nine people is naturally more accident-prone. It suggested that a lot of those people are risk-takers: never me. Some are multitaskers, trying to do too many things at once: probably me. Others just have bad luck: totally me.