I hadn’t known that, actually, just like I hadn’t appreciated how long he and Shani had been together.
He’d also apparently brought his own, because instead of waiting with me at the counter, he sat down on a nearby bench and took one Rollerblade with lime green wheels out of a bag I hadn’t even noticed he was carrying. He strapped it onto his foot with so many buckles he looked like an Olympic snowboarder before removing the other one from the bag.
“What size?” the greasy-haired teenager behind the counter asked me, and I reluctantly slid over my shoes to accept a pair of dull tan skates. They had brown laces and orange wheels, brought to you directly from 1982.
“Why amIhere?” I asked once I’d sat next to Conner to put my skates on. I hoped I remembered enough to not completely embarrass myself. If I went ass over teakettle wearing these throwbacks I’d be pretty pissed.
“You gave me such great advice before,” he said. “I figured I could use my big sister’s help in vetting the idea.”
Well, that was impossible to refute. I let him help me to my feet, only because any loss of dignity from that move was mitigated by the much greater potential for lost dignity if I ate it on this dirty carpet. We made our way gingerly to the polished wood floor.
“So what exactly is the plan?” I asked. Everyone was going so fast.
“You have to skate clockwise around the floor,” Conner said,pointing out a guy skating around in a black-and-white-striped referee shirt. “Otherwise they’ll tell you to turn around. You can hug the wall if you need to, but I plan to pick up some speed.”
“I meant the plan for yourproposal.”
Conner stepped out onto the floor, so I followed, but it really was slicker than I’d expected. My feet almost went out from beneath me, but I grasped the wall just in time.
“I’m thinking a meaningful song, then they can make a special announcement while I go down on one knee in the middle of the rink?”
That actually sounded cute. Cheesy as hell, but cute. “What song?” I asked. “Please don’t make it one of those ones about how she doesn’t know she’s beautiful.”
Conner had already started to skate a little, keeping it slow and easy for me, since I was still clinging to the wall. A four-year-old had lapped me twice and I officially left the last of my dignity back with my real shoes. I wasn’t going to see it again as long as I was wearing these wheeled bad boys.
“What do you mean?”
“You know the ones,” I said. “Like, you don’tknowyou’re beautiful, which is why you are. Because it’s so ugly for a girl to have her own self-esteem, apparently. Or the ones where the guy is like, Girl, you don’t know how beautiful you are, butIdo. Like he’s the keeper of her beauty or some shit.”
“Shani loves that song!” Conner said.
“Well, sure, they make them catchy as hell!” I said. “You may hate yourself for humming ‘Blurred Lines’ but you’ll do it anyway. That’s the power of music.”
“Maybe I’ll use this song,” Conner said, pointing up at theceiling as though to indicate the sound enveloping us. It took me a minute to place it, and once I did, I made a face at him.
“You are not going to use ‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’ as your proposal song,” I said. “No matter how authentic it would be to the general skate rink experience.”
“I’m pretty sure they played this on our first date.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve been playing it since the nineties,” I said.
Conner only grinned at me, pushing out with one foot to pick up some speed, until he was way ahead of me around the floor. I had felt confident enough to let go of the wall, but was still half shuffling my way back to the other side. The four-year-old flew by me like Apolo Ohno, the wind coming off her so intense it made me wobble.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered, stepping off onto a carpeted area on the other side of the rink, where there were benches I could sit on. This was Conner’s plan. No need to torture myself for it.
My hair was already starting to droop from the activity, and I reached up to tighten the elastic around my bun. The truth was, I could make fun of those cheesy songs all I wanted, but I had been just as susceptible when Sam complimented me earlier. I prided myself on being able to appraise myself in a fairly straightforward way—I knew I was fat, a word that didn’t bother me as long as the person using it wasn’t doing so pejoratively. My forehead was too high but every single time I’d tried to hide it behind bangs it had been a mistake. My bottom teeth were crooked, which you only noticed if I smiled too big. Luckily, that wasn’t an expression I was used to wearing too often.
But I knew my hair was healthy and a pretty color, dark brownshot with red in certain lights. I’d always liked my eyes, which were large and framed by naturally long lashes, and if I used to wish they were violet instead of brown, I was mostly over it now. That had been a side effect of reading too many romance novels, I knew, where the heroine’s eyes were always sparkling emerald or velvety indigo.
I still hated that messaging ofshe doesn’t know she’s beautiful and that’s why she is, but I couldn’t deny that it had been nice to have someone else notice me, appreciate something about me. It gave me a hot, prickly sensation just thinking about it, that started in my toes and traveled up my spine.
Although maybe that was just these skates, which were too tight.
Conner skated by then, shouting out, “Watch this!”
I dutifully watched as he turned to skate backward, grinning at me as he skated through the corner before spinning to face forward again. It was so obnoxious, how much he was showing off, but I couldn’t help but bite back a smile. He reminded me so much of the way he’d been as a kid, always desperate for attention, wanting me to watch him climb the highest tree or beat a level in a game or perform a card trick that he would inevitably mess up.
“You watching?” he called as he passed me.