Page 6 of A Merry Christmas for Art… and His Tentacles

My stomach twists in knots. This is not going well. I showed up looking like a piece of candy corn, and now I’m snatching his money with my tentacles. I turn around, not sure I can do this. The problem is that Dean Miller is nice to me. He isn’t acting annoyed or weirded out by my tentacles’ behavior, and he doesn’t seem upset that Frank expects him to spend time with me. He’s such a great guy, and I’m so socially stunted that I can’t have a single conversation with him without making it awkward.

This is why it isn’t safe for me to develop crushes on people. It just makes me more nervous to be around them, and I’m already nervous enough as it is.

“Hey. Are you okay?” Dean Miller asks.

I nod.

“If this is too much, I can get the skates,” he offers.

I can’t let him do that. The whole point of this is for me to interact with people.

My tentacle jerks forward again, forcing me to take a step toward the skate rental counter. Clearly, it wants to go ice skating with Dean Miller.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, pretending that I meant to step forward. My tentacle is bound and determined, reaching straight in front of me. At this point, I have to go along with whatever it wants, or I’ll cause a scene. I trudge toward the skate rental counter. When I get to the register, my tentacle places Dean Miller’s card in my hand.

The poor cashier watches my tentacle with fascination.

“Um, hi,” I say.

She stares back at me in silence. She seems more nervous than I feel. Probably because she has to rent skates to someone who looks like the creature from the black lagoon.

“I need two pairs of skates? A size ten and a size nine. Hockey skates if you have them. For the size ten.”

She glances down at the register in front of her and pushes a few buttons. “Anything else?”

“Uh, do I pay for the skating passes here?”

“Yes.”

“Then two skating passes.”

She tells me the total. I hand her Dean Miller’s card, even though I should probably pay for my things separately.

“Hold on. I’ll go get your skates,” she says and walks back to the aisles of skates labeled by size.

Dean Miller appears next to me. “That was great.”

“Um, I accidentally used your card to pay for both of us. I can Venmo you?—”

“It’s my treat. You can pay next time,” he says. And he winks. He actually winks. I’ve seen people do that in movies and I’veread about them doing it in books, but I didn’t think that real people winked at each other.

Dean Miller's winked at me twice in the last week.

The cashier sets two heavy pairs of ice skates on the counter. One set is larger with smooth blades, while the second is smaller and has spikes on the toes of the blades.

Dean Miller grabs the first pair. “I haven’t skated in forever. I played hockey growing up, but I haven’t put on a pair of skates since high school.”

He played hockey? That means he must be good at this.

“I have never ice skated,” I admit.

He smiles. “It’s okay. You can hold my hand if you want.”

Was that flirting? It couldn’t be. But with the winking and the paying for my ice skates…

He isn’t flirting with me, is he?

I follow him to a bench near the entrance to the rink and sit down. I want to ask him if holding hands is a normal thing for friends to do, but I’m pretty sure that would be an awkward question.

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