Page 72 of Nobody in Particular

“Even better.”

“I don’t like you that much yet,” I add. She sits on the bed with the gift in her lap and shoots me a glare. “Open it,” I urge.

She does, revealing the pair of leather figure skates I spent hours agonizing over last week. Now that I see them, I like them even more than I remembered. More than my own. “I thought they would be useful today,” I explain. “Also, I would love to give you another one-on-one lesson. If you would like.”

She pulls one out and rotates it in her hands. “These are officially the nicest things I own now,” she says, which I think is a compliment. “Do you think I can take the blade off and wear them as shoes?”

“I think you would struggle,” I answer seriously, and she looks up at me with a grin.

“I love them. Thank you.”

“I’m glad. No weirdness, then?”

“Oh, I thought I’d take a leaf out of your book,” she says lightly,squeezing the tongue of the boot. It’s plush. Much more comfortable than the school stock.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m shoving it down until I can’t feel it anymore.”

I choke on my laughter, and she shoves the skates back into their box. “Your gift comes later. Let’s go,” she says, rising to her feet and holding a hand out to me. I let her pull me up, and then we let go of each other. We won’t be able to hold hands again until tonight now.

But at least I get to spend the day with her. At least there’s that.

THIRTYDANNI

When I used to think of Europe, sprawling black lakes covered in thick ice and bordered by snowcapped mountains came to mind. I used to think skating on an honest-to-god lake hand in hand with someone was the most romantic-sounding thing in the world. Only, even though we had plenty of lakes within driving distance, I couldn’t skate, and none of my friends were very interested in going, and I never met anyone who wanted to date me anyway.

Today, I can skate—sort of—and I’m at one of those lakes, on Valentine’s Day, with my girlfriend, even. But the romantic part is debatable, because my girlfriend’s here with her fake boyfriend, some strange guy is here, too, and we’re surrounded by police guards and paparazzi, and they’re all either staring at us or taking photos of us.

It might be someone’s idea of romance, somewhere out there, but I’m not sure it’s mine.

Alfie’s friend ends up being a smiley guy called Edmund Ahmad with soft black curls under a cream beanie, dark brown skin, and a contagious sort of laugh. He’s super sweet, and I warm to him pretty fast, but I can’t warm all the way because I realize too late I’m not actually sure what he thinks today is. I’m assuming he doesn’t know that Rose and Alfie are only pretending for the cameras. It’s possible he thinks this is a group hang, but if I were him, and I were asked togo hang with my friend, my friend’s girlfriend, and a “single girl,” I’d think it was a date. And I can’t even figure out a way to ask him if he thinks it is without letting him know why heshouldn’tthink that.

The four of us pull over to a bench to put on our skates, and I wrestle with my super-stiff boots. They’re wildly gorgeous. So gorgeous they scare me. What if I mess them up? I don’t have expensive things like this, so usually I don’t need to worry at all.

“Under and over, remember,” Rose says. She starts forward, like she’s going to show me, but then she catches herself.

“I can help,” Edmund offers, kneeling in front of me. “I used to skate all the time.”

Rose glances sideways while Edmund laces me up, and her mouth twitches, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Have you ever skated before?” Edmund asks me.

I almost say yes, but then what if he asks who taught me? And then I’ll have to lie, and what if I accidentally say Molly or Eleanor and it turns out they don’t even know how to skate, and then he asks them, and they’re all like, “What, I can’t skate at all?” and then he realizes I was lying and everything falls apart?

“Only as a kid,” I say, and Rose looks at me sharply.

I’ll explain the lie to her later. God, this is already a headache.

They’ve sectioned off a whole area of the lake with traffic cones for the four of us to hog by ourselves. On the other side of the cones, skaters are doing laps arm in arm, or showing off their spins in the center, or… crowding near the cones to gawk at us like we’re zoo animals. Gawking at Rose, really. Several people are calling her name and waving to her, and she waves back with a bright smile. The security team gestures for the crowd to keep moving. Even though most of them aren’t looking at me, my whole face is red-hot, and I kind of wish I could be anywhere else in the world than right here.

When we move to the ice Rose steps out first, with Alfie. She looks like shereallywants to offer me her hand to get on, but Edmund does it for her. I’m just glad somebody is, because everything Rose taught me back in October has flown out the window. I step onto the ice with shaky legs and almost drag Edmund down with me. “You’re doing great, just go slowly,” he encourages me.

Ahead of us, Alfie takes Rose’s hand, and they talk while skating right at the paparazzi like they don’t even notice they’re there. Totally casual action shots.

I slip and crumple into a heap, and Edmund lets out a gale of laughter as he tries to hold me upright. “Sorry,” I groan.

“It’s okay. I spent half my time on the ground when I learned.”

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