Page 2 of Switching Skates
“Ugh, fine.” She drags herself to her feet and follows me.
She might have been right about there being nearly fifty left. Thirty-two boxes, to be exact. Which we begrudgingly carry inside, complaining the whole time until we’re officially done, sunken into the couch and sore.
After spending the last four hours unpacking, we drop the moving truck back off at the rental place before ordering pizza from my favorite pizzeria—Maddio’s Pizza. They’re the only place I trust to make me gluten-free pizza that won’t leave me wanting to curl up into a gluten coma afterward.
A lot of restaurants claim to be gluten-free, and if you’re choosing to avoid gluten for a diet, then it doesn’t really matter if there are traces of gluten or wheat. But for me, who has celiac disease, it matters a lot.
I haven’t had celiac disease my entire life. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen years old. It was a hell of a transition to go from eating whatever I wanted to starting a full-on investigation into what I was putting into my body. It got easier over time, but it was most certainly not an easy path, and there are still hiccups along the way, even now.
Not everyone that has celiac has the same experience. It’s actually crazy how unique each person’s journey can be. Since it targets our digestive track, the transition during diagnosis can be brutal as our bodies struggle for nutrients. I knew two twin girls who lost nearly all of their hair. Eventually, it grew back, but not before they shaved their heads to start anew.
I might not have had such a drastic hardship, but my hair didn’t grow for years. If anything, it got shorter by breaking off and thinning. It’s crazy how much an unwanted change in my hair shot my confidence to the ground. But over the next couple of years, as I got a hang on my new lifestyle and diet, my hair came back to life.
There are few places I can safely eat at—and by few, I mean, like, three in this entire town. But my favorite is definitely Maddio’s, which I haven’t had since last summer.
Biting into a slice of delicious cheese pizza, I groan happily. “Ugh, it’s the best. I’ve missed it.”
“It’s pretty good,” Maeve mutters between bites.
I freeze and look over at her in shock. “Prettygood? That’s it?”
She presses play on27 Dresses, and the movie starts as she smiles and rolls her eyes before turning to me.
“Look, Daph, I’m going to hold your hand when I say this …metaphoricallybecause I’m so sore that I’m never getting off of this couch again. And I don’t want to contaminate your hand with my gluteny one.” She pauses, looking at me lounging in the leather recliner. “It’s pretty good pizza. It’s not the best I’ve ever had, but it’s pizza. There’s only so much you can mess up.”
My jaw unhinges, and I act as if I’m going to cry. “I did not think our first fight would happen so quickly after moving in together.”
She grabs a throw pillow and chucks it at me, missing horribly as it lands at my feet. “Oh, shut it.”
Inhaling my next slice, I nestle under my blanket, watching Katherine Heigl change dresses in the back of a cab in New York.
This is a good one. Aclassic, although I say that about a lot of the movies on my list.
But James Marsden and his messy hair, paired with that damn smile of his, would make any girl who watches it swoon. His character, Kevin Doyle, turns from a cynic to someone who truly believes in love right before our very eyes.
“Have you thought about Mason at all?” Maeve asks, her question catching me by surprise.
I mean, yeah, sure, of course I have. I’m about to be on the same campus and in the same rink as him for the first time in acouple of years. He might have ghosted me, but he didn’t ghost his sister. We are bound to have countless run-ins with each other.
“A little bit,” I mutter, glancing back at the TV as my stomach twists.
“That was a lot of thinking for such a short answer.” She eyes me knowingly, calling me out.
I sink further into my seat. “OfcourseI have. I’m about to see him again, and I don’t know whether to pretend he doesn’t exist, like he’s done to me, or straight-up punch him in the face.”
Her eyes soften. “You could always go for the balls instead. Maximum damage.”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Maybe I’ll do that. Get some anger out on the source.”
“I support you in anything you do.” She lifts her glass in the air, toasting to me.
I lift mine, and we both say, “Clink,” before taking a sip.
Happiness floods me that I somehow got lucky enough to have her as my best friend.
That’s another part of 2000s rom-coms that is just as, if not more, important than the main romance—the friendships. The friend you can rely on for anything and everything and who loves you unconditionally.
But I already checked that box from my life list years ago with the free spirit sitting across from me, shoving her face full of pizza. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that girl. Which is why I need to stop sulking and avoiding fun like it’s the plague.
