Chapter 38
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
APRIL
“When you said ‘seal the deal’, this is not what I had in mind,” Chance mutters, staring at me as I wobble forward on the skates Bobby lent me.
Behind him, the ice glints white and frosty. It’s a regular ice rink, but it might as well be the Siberian tundra in my eyes.
My safety-pad-covered knees quake at the thought of stepping onto the ice.
A chill inches up my spine despite the two layers of Chance’s sweater and numbered jacket shrouding me from the cold.
I try to take a step forward, but my brain communicates ‘time to panic’ and my limbs revolt.
Both legs start wobbling.
Arms, windmilling.
Balance and gravity are in a heated battle and the former is losing.
I bend my knees and wiggle my arms, knocking the scarf around my neck askew. “Chance!”
Warm, calloused fingers close around my elbow. I manage to remain upright with Chance’s grip firm around me.
“You good?” Chance asks. I have no idea how he got to me so fast, but he’s not even winded.
“Yeah.” I blow out a breath. With his help, I take a shaky step forward.
“Didn’t you tell me you were never going to skate?”
“I said I was allergic to falling on ice. But things change. I can’t be your girlfriend and not even know how to handle myself in an ice rink.”
“I’m your boyfriend and I don’t know how to fix cars,” Chance points out.
“Don’t worry. I have a bunch of beginner friendly engine repair tutorials all picked out.”
Chance groans while I laugh maniacally. However, that laughter turns to whimpers of fear when I take another step toward the ice.
“I got you,” Chance says, holding my elbow for balance.
I windmill my arms, moving jerkily. “You said this wasn’t what you were expecting? What did you think I meant?”
Chance tilts his head, eyes rolling to the ceiling as if contemplating whether he should share. Finally, he returns his dark blue eyes to me and says, “Kissing.”
Heat rams straight through my cheeks. I wrench my elbow away from his hold and immediately regret it. The slices of iron death attached to the bottom of my shoes slip out from under me and gravity tries to body-slam me into the ground like a WWE wrestler on a Tuesday night match.
Chance quickly wraps his arms around me. I end up flopping into his chest, which is really just a mass of bricks underneath a soft white T-shirt. It hurts almost as much as getting bonked in the head with thick library books.
I ease back a little.
Chance leans forward, bringing his face even closer to mine. A cheeky smirk tugs on his lips. “Ah, this is good too.”
I can literally feel my scalp blushing.
I clear my throat and push him away, not too far though because letting him go would mean face-planting in a violent display of flailing arms and legs. “If it’s this hard to walk already, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get on the ice.”
Chance accepts the subject change and the slight distance between us with grace. He slides one giant hand through his hair and the soft black strands shift messily in all directions revealing, yet again, that there is not a single hairstyle he can’t pull off.
Except maybe the Fabio one he had in high school.
“I’ve got you,” he says confidently.
Chance leads me to a bench just behind the boards. He sits beside me and laces up his skates like a fireman shrugs into gear at the sound of alarms. In what feels like a second, he’s on his feet again—having gained an unnecessary set of extra inches—and offers his hand to me.
I hesitate. “It’s okay. I can do it.”
“Don’t trust me?” He arches a brow, his lips quirked upward.
“No, it’s not that. But… can you help me and stay upright yourself?”
“I skate better than I walk,” he returns cheekily. “You’ll be fine.”
With a cloud of doubt swirling around me, I set my hand in his and totter behind him. The moment I set one leg on the slippery ground of hardened water (or whatever ice rink floors are made of), I immediately regret it.
“No, no, no. I need to go back,” I whine.
Chance turns to face me so gracefully, I’d believe it if he said he was a figure skater before he signed up for hockey. “April, just breathe and put both feet on the ice.”
“I can’t. I can’t.” My brain is sending up red flag after red flag. Ice was not meant to be walked on. If humans were designed to go gallivanting on slippery slopes, we would have been born with metal plates jutting out of our toes so we could glide.
“April…” Chance tries to pull me forward.
I resist.
The tug of war costs me dearly. While I have one foot anchored on the solid part of the ground, my other foot is on the ice and surging ahead like the Titanic at that iceberg.
“Chance!” I squeeze his hands for dear life as I drop into a mid-split. “Chance!” Frantically, I climb my way up his arms to stop my slow descent.
He tugs me back to my feet with the strength of his bulging biceps alone and then returns my hands on his.
“Tink, sweetheart, I got you. Just follow me.”
I slowly allow my other foot to join the first on the ice. Chance holds my hand and skates backward at a glacial pace. I follow him like a newborn deer testing out his legs. Each of my skates seem to have their own engines because one foot keeps veering right while the other keeps sliding left.
Chance snorts.
I shoot him a glare that’s sharp enough to cut. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No, ma’am,” he says, pulling in his lips.
I murmur grumpily, “I haven’t done the splits since my middle school cheerleading tryouts and here I am about to do two of them in a day.”
Chance’s eyebrows shoot up. “You tried out for cheerleading?”
“You try being an awkward eleven-year-old who loves fixing engines with her dad and the younger sibling of the most popular girl in school. It was a very confusing time.”
“Did you make the team?” he asks.
“I got laughed out of the gym.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Dad let me drive on the backroads after try-outs, so it turned into a happy memory. Besides, I would have hated every second of being a dancer. I was happy leaving that to June.”
“This is your first time talking about her.”
“About who? June?”
“May mentioned that you three are a quarter of the calendar.”
I laugh.
“But,” he adds, “that’s kind of all I’ve gathered.” He smiles and shakes his head. “So June was the most popular girl in school?”
“Don’t sound so excited.” I give him the stink eye.
“I’m just intrigued. You’re so…”
I scrunch my nose. “So what?”
“Feisty.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Of course, Tink.” He laughs. “And May is chirpy and optimistic. So I kind of pictured June as a combination of the both of you.”
“Well, she wasn’t. June was—is—extremely beautiful, but she’s kind of cold too. Didn’t like having her sisters hanging around all the time. Was super independent. She and dad argued a lot growing up. Even so, I don’t understand how it was so easy for her to leave town and never look back.”
My heart burns the way it always does when I talk about my older sister. Our family shattered the day she left and we’ve carried on, but it’s never been quite the same.
“Sounds like you miss her a lot,” Chance says carefully.
“Miss her?” I scoff loudly to ignore the pang in my chest. “I cut her off when she stopped answering my calls. Dad and May are the sappy ones. Dad can’t remember us, but he mentions June all the time and May…” My throat wells with emotion. “Anyway, that’s enough of my family drama. What about your family?”
“What about them?” Chance asks, skating a little faster.
I side-eye him because I notice he’s increasing the pace, but I don’t stop him. As long as he doesn’t let me go, we’ll be good.
“What’s your family like?” I add.
Chance narrows his eyes in thought as we take a curve. Does he have eyes in the back of his head? How has he not turned around to check that he isn’t crashing into the goalie net?
“We’re pretty normal. My mom and dad are both business owners. My sister is married and lives out of state. We don’t get together often enough to have drama.”
Thanks to my internet search I’m aware that Chance’s parents are more than simple ‘business owners’, but I don’t think correcting him about how he views his family’s wealth is the right thing to do.
“Hm.” I move my attention from him to the crisp feel of the wind on my face as we skate. Being on the ice no longer feels as awkward since I’m not in fear of landing hard and cracking my knee.
This isn’t half bad.
“I think I can try on my own,” I tell him.
“You sure?” Chance asks, watching me closely.
I nod.
“Okay. Move your feet out like this.” He shows me. “And if you feel like you’re about to fall, don’t make your movements big and wild or you might land backwards. Instead, fall forward, okay?”
“Okay.”
He releases my hands and I wobble a fair bit but manage to keep going on pure momentum. Chance finally stops skating backwards and moves beside me.
“Speaking of my family,” Chance says casually, “my mom supports a non-profit children’s organization.”
“How nice,” I mumble.
“They have a ball every year to raise donations.”
“Oh.” A ‘ball’ sounds like a ‘rich people’ word. Why not just call it what it is—a party? “That’s nice.” I keep my concentration focused on gliding my feet the way Chance taught me.
“I was wondering if you’d come with me,” he says.
My eyes whip up to his. “As in meet your parents?”
“Well… yeah.”
At that moment, I lose all my balance and catapult to the ice.