Chapter 4 #2
But then “Call Me Maybe” comes blasting from the ancient sound system, a hint of static from the mounted speakers giving the song even more pep.
My body reacts like I’m a deep cover spy and the song is my signal.
I push off with my neon-orange wheels and pick up speed.
I dig my feet into the floor to the beat, mouthing along with the words, my hips swaying on their own.
“Carly Rae Jepson works every time,” Violet says, skating up beside me, and there’s no judgment in her voice. She sings along with the chorus for a few bars. “I had the DJ throw that one on to keep you going. Have you ever thought about playing roller derby?”
I blink at her, my chest heaving with exertion. “What?”
“Roller derby,” Violet says. “Roller skates, full contact, fun? You familiar?”
“I went to see it once in college,” I tell her, recalling the outing with my sorority pledge class. I remember thinking it looked cool and also a little terrifying. I know I don’t have nearly enough guts or tattoos to do it myself, to say nothing of my athletic ability.
“I coach the team here, and I think you should try out.”
“Oh, I don’t really do sports,” I say.
Violet scoffs. “That sounds like a story you tell yourself because of public school gym class trauma, but I’m telling you, you’ve got natural form and an ass that could lay a bitch out.”
I nearly look over my shoulder to see if she’s talking about someone else. There’s no way those words are meant for me. “I don’t—”
Violet holds up a finger, and I notice her purple sparkly manicure, which matches her hair. “Keep doing laps. When you’re done, I’ll give you a flyer and you can think about it. Just…don’t say no yet.”
Two hours later, my legs are burning, there’s sweat pooling in my bra, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a monster blister beneath my big toe.
But I skated.
Fast.
And now I’m very drunk.
Oops.
I didn’t mean to get this drunk, obviously.
Or drunk at all. But over the last two hours, something strange happened to me.
As I was whizzing across the floor, my hair flying out behind me, I suddenly felt…
free. Light and fast and free. I haven’t felt like this since that fifth-grade birthday party, before middle school started middle-schooling hard and I was suddenly behind.
Not pretty enough or thin enough or cool enough not to care that I wasn’t pretty or thin.
And I’ve felt like I was playing catch-up ever since.
Through high school and college and even now, as a full-grown adult, still living in the house I grew up in (though now without my parents, fortunately).
I still feel like there’s a destination I haven’t arrived at.
A destination that I can’t even seem to find on a map.
But tonight? Tonight I skated so fast that I almost felt like I saw something shimmering in the distance, some kind of oasis I might be able to reach. All I needed to get there were these skates and my own two legs.
And I did not need Gabe.
So I skated and skated and skated until the lights went up and the music stopped, the floor cleared, and I was the last one standing.
Well, except for Violet, who told me to hang around so she could give me that roller derby flyer and also offered to share her flask of tequila.
IPAs are not my friend, but tequila?
Tequila and I are besties.
“I didn’t realize you were such a cheap date,” Violet says as she strides over to the carpet-covered bench where I’m sitting, clutching my purse in one hand and her nearly empty flask in the other.
“I’m sssssory,” I slur, then hiccup, which makes me laugh.
It’s been a while since I drank this much this fast on an empty stomach (the veggie burger I had with Gabe was terrible, and I barely had three bites…
or maybe it was just the company that was unappetizing).
I have to work to calm my wicked case of church giggles.
“I need to get an Uber,” I say after a deep breath, still laughing.
“Girl, I have listened to way too many true crime podcasts to put your drunk ass in an Uber alone.”
“But my date left me,” I remind her, and from the way she flinches, I fear I may have turned my personal volume knob up too high.
“I can drive you. Where do you live?”
“Cardinal Springs. How do I know you’re not a murderer?”
“Because something like five percent of murderers are women, and you already cashed in your good odds on not having to go home and have disappointing sex with that jam skate ding-dong. But good job asking the question. You’ve got fight in you.
” Violet taps her phone. “Unfortunately, I promised to pick up my roommate from work, and she doesn’t get off for another forty-five minutes, so can you hang out until then?
I won’t make it to Cardinal Springs and back before she gets off. ”
I’m teetering right at the edge of the sleepy phase of drunkenness, and the musty-smelling carpeted bench is looking like a lovely little spot for a catnap when all of a sudden, the memory of a strong pair of hands taking my phone pops into my brain.
I remember that sharp jawline, the tawny color of his skin, like he spends hours every day in the sun and not in some bank office.
Those deep blue-gray eyes that always look stormy, and the buzz cut.
What is it about the buzz cut? I have never in my life been interested in a man who looked like he just got drafted, but Dan McBride? Hello, sailor.
I open my phone for the first time tonight, the screen filling with the brand-new contact information he entered.
Call if you need to.
My stomach flips, and with this much tequila swimming around in it, that could go either way.
A mean little voice in my head starts in with He didn’t mean it, he doesn’t want to hear from you, but drunk Carson is somehow more rational than sober Carson.
Drunk Carson thinks, Dan McBride doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.
Because Dan McBride doesn’t usually say much of anything at all.
Not like Goober Gabe, who talks a lot and probably never means a word of it.
I babble as I type. “I have a ride! I can call my best friend’s brother! He’s my new roommate and he said to call him and he gave me his number and I can call him! He has a car and everything!”