I hesitated for half a second, then took his outstretched hand. Why not? Life had already blindsided me today; might as well embrace a little slapstick.
The lobby carried that crisp chill I remembered from winter trips at Lake Tahoe. Glossy Panthers posters and players frozen mid-shot lined the wall.
“Ever been here before?” Andrew asked as we laced up.
“Two or three times, a few years ago. Besides that, I’ve only driven by.”
The memory of Vince, impatiently trying to explain the offside rules, the blue lines, and power plays, while my eyes glazed over, flickered, then faded. With him, hockey had felt like homework I was failing. Funny how now I was more willing to literally fall with someone I barely knew than I’d ever been to get into my fiancé’s passion.
I mentally slapped myself.
Don’t compare, Mel.
Andrew smiled, easily. “They open the rink after home games. It’s one of those popular things, and it seems the Zamboni guy’s a legend. I read Yelp reviews.”
I grinned. “You researched this?”
“I wanted to impress the office assistant.”
“Ex-office assistant,” I corrected, standing up and immediately teetering like a clumsy flamingo.
He caught my elbow with surprising speed. “Sorry to hear that. I understand the firm merged. Is that—?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly, not wanting to bring the gloom of my jobless situation into our wobbly date. “It’s fine.”
Thankfully, he took the hint as we shuffled toward the rink.
The lights were soft, blue-toned, making the ice shimmer in a winter-snow-globe way. Disco music played overhead. When we stepped onto the ice, I gripped the wall as if it were a life raft in a very windy ocean.
Andrew wasn’t kidding; he was no skating prodigy either. We slid, yelped, bumped into each other, and laughed more out of panic than charm.
It was comfortable company, without the pressure of electric-charged butterflies. It was nice. A version of nice that kept your pulse steady and unshaken, and part of me, the still-cautious part, stayed curled inward. Was this steady ‘nice’ who I was now?
I started to find my rhythm, managing somewhat fluid little glides—
“Do it! Do it!” A chant erupted from a small group of teens at the center of the rink.
A kid in an orange beanie launched into what was either a pirouette or some kind of ice-based trust fall. He spun out, skidding across the ice straight toward us.
“Watch out—!” Andrew reached for my arm, but the kid clipped his side, then crashed into me.
Pain flared in my elbows, ankles, and hips after one chaotic tumble.
Staff rushed onto the ice, pulling us and the others to our feet. Voices clashed—too many at once with reprimand and concerns—as security closed in on the teens. Someone led me off the rink into a small room behind the skate rentals.
My ankle throbbed with a dull ache, and my head buzzed, a lingering echo of the collision. I sat in the back room, ice pressed to both my foot and the side of my head, taking slow, deep breaths to calm the racing pulse that hadn’t settled.
After a while, voices approached from the entrance, low and concerned.
“Frank, what happened? I was leaving when the music stopped, and I saw some commotion,” a man asked.
“Teenagers, man. Making bets, playing chicken on the ice.”
I recognized Frank’s voice then, the older man who’d asked someone to escort me in here.
He stepped into the room, followed by another man. I straightened as much as my bruised body would allow.
“Feeling better?” Frank asked gently, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
