He did not ask me a single question.
Red flag under a red spotlight.
He didn’t even listen when I talked, and I know this because even though I told him I’d been roller skating manymanytimes, he still said he’d “teach me the basics.”
Red flag dripping with the blood of my enemies.
And you know what? He didn’t even teach me. I could have played dumb for an hour and had a cute little lesson from him, maybe even one that ended with our hands all over each other before we raced out of the rink to tumble into his bed (I reallyreallyneed to get laid).
But no. He couldn’t even follow through on being condescending. When we got to the roller rink, he threw on his skates (which he’d brought from home, leaving me at the counter alone to rent my own) and immediately took off. He began to sprint around the rink, showing off his jam skating skills like he was nine and I was his mommy. I could tell all he wanted was for me to tell him how great he was.
Meanwhile, my knees are shaking and by back is screaming, because okay, yeah, I’ve roller-skated a lot, but not since Jenny Milford’s birthday party in the fifth grade when I tried to do the limbo and split my pants.
But after a few laps, it starts to come back to me. I’m getting comfortable, and since I’ve been left to my own devices, I decide to focus on being good at this. Why not brush up on my skills? Get in a little exercise while I’m at it. Not because I need to lose weight,Gabe, but because moving your body is good for you. It’s why I start every morning in my kindergarten classroom with a little dance party.
So despite the fact that this date absolutely will not be ending with me in Gabe’s bed—which I’m sure is a twin mattress on the floor with a navy-blue fitted sheet and a single pillow, no case—I’m determined for the night not to be a total loss.
I’m just starting to attempt wobbly crossovers in the corner when I look up and realize Gabe has left the floor.
“Looking for your date?”
The voice comes from just over my shoulder, making me jump. I nearly go down in a heap as a five-year-old in Rollerblades whizzes by, but I right myself at the last second.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you,” the voice says.Then the body connected to the voice appears in front of me, skating backward. It belongs to a tiny punk-rock pixie with a purple bob, a septum ring, and a black-and-white striped referee shirt hanging over a tattered black denim skirt. She’s skating backward as easily as I might walk down the street. “Your date—he’s on his phone over by the snack bar.”
She points, and I spot Gabe right away, the neonnachossign reflecting off the sunglasses he’s got perched on the back of his neck. Sure enough, he’s hunched over his glowing phone.
“Seems like a real dill hole,” she says, doing backward crossovers as we enter the turn. “Tell me he’s not your boyfriend.”
“Hinge date,” I tell her, embarrassed that I’m slightly out of breath.
She very impressively mimes vomiting into her cupped hands and throwing it in his direction, then glances down at my wheels. “Nice crossovers,” she says with an approving nod, then executes a little jump spin and takes off after some teens who keep doing baseball slides in the skating lane.
I feel like one of my kindergarteners who’s just been told what a good job they did finger painting. Her compliment fuels me.
I skate a few more laps. Once I decide to forget my date and focus on my skating, my skills improve. Feeling a little more comfortable, I try to channel the speed skaters I’ve seen on the Olympics when I hit the turns, my legs crossing over, my knees bent as I lean. I pick up more speed, managing to keep pace with a group of middle school boys. (Granted, they skate half their laps backwards, but I’m still calling it a win.) I’m starting to sweat a little with the effort, but I don’t care. Gabe isn’t going to be peeling these jeans off of me, so there’s no point in worrying about my appearance anymore.
And then Gabe reappears, bobbing to the beat of 50 Cent as he skates, his phone still clutched in his fist.
“Not a big skater, huh?” he asks, doing a few little spins around me that put me off balance. He holds out a hand to steadyme, but I decide in that moment that I’d rather fall face-first onto the wood floor than touch this man.
“Not since fifth gra?—”
He nods like he’s listening but then immediately cuts me off. “Hey, listen. So, I don’t want to be a dick or anything, but, uh, I got a text from my ex? We’ve been on and off for, like, three years. We broke up in April because I spilled a Big Gulp on her laptop after eating a gummy and I, like, laughed? She was so mad. I probably love her, but I don’t know.” He pauses, like he’s actually trying to figure it out. While on roller skates. On a date. With me. And apparently he doesn’t, because he shrugs. “She wants to talk, so I’m going to run over to this bar down the road to meet up with her.”
And then I do fall. Hard. My feet fly out from under me, and I land right on my butt.
“Holy shit!” Gabe says, slamming on his brakes and skating back to where I’ve collapsed in a heap. He reaches down a hand, but I ignore it and climb to my feet.
It’s not until I’m upright that I manage to say anything. Unfortunately, it’s not a heartyeff you, which is what he deserves. I make it a point not to swear much during the school year—it keeps me from slipping up in the classroom when a student inevitably drops an open jar of paint on the carpet or throws up onto my lap. But there usually comes a point during summer break when I start to get lazy, and out come the f-bombs.
Luckily for Gabe (and unfortunately for me), the school year ended only two weeks ago, so I haven’t accessed my treasure trove of curse words yet.
So instead of dressing him down, I say, “You drove me here.”
He scrubs at the back of his neck, having the sense to look at least a little sheepish about ditching his date to meet up with his ex.
“Yeah, you could, uh, Uber? Or, like, if you can’t get one, just message me on Hinge when you’re ready to go. I could, like, come back and get you.”
