I nearly look over my shoulder to see if she’s talking about someone else. There’s no way those words are meant for me. “I don’t?—”
Violet holds up a finger, and I notice her purple sparkly manicure, which matches her hair. “Keep doing laps. When you’re done, I’ll give you a flyer and you can think about it. Just…don’t say no yet.”
Two hours later, my legs are burning, there’s sweat pooling in my bra, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a monster blister beneath my big toe.
But I skated.
Fast.
And now I’mverydrunk.
Oops.
I didn’t mean to get this drunk, obviously. Or drunk at all. But over the last two hours, something strange happened to me. As I was whizzing across the floor, my hair flying out behind me, I suddenly felt…free. Light and fast andfree. I haven’t felt like this since that fifth-grade birthday party, before middle school started middle-schoolinghardand I was suddenly behind. Not pretty enough or thin enough or cool enough not to care that I wasn’t pretty or thin.
And I’ve felt like I was playing catch-up ever since. Through high school and college and even now, as a full-grown adult, still living in the house I grew up in (though now without my parents, fortunately). I still feel like there’s a destination I haven’t arrived at. A destination that I can’t even seem to find on a map.
But tonight? Tonight I skated so fast that I almost felt like I saw something shimmering in the distance, some kind of oasis I might be able to reach. All I needed to get there were these skates and my own two legs.
And I didnotneed Gabe.
So I skated and skated and skated until the lights went up and the music stopped, the floor cleared, and I was the last one standing.
Well, except for Violet, who told me to hang around so she could give me that roller derby flyer and also offered to share her flask of tequila.
IPAs are not my friend, but tequila?
Tequila and I arebesties.
“I didn’t realize you were such a cheap date,” Violet says as she strides over to the carpet-covered bench where I’m sitting, clutching my purse in one hand and her nearly empty flask in the other.
“I’msssssory,” I slur, then hiccup, which makes me laugh. It’s been a while since I drank this much this fast on an empty stomach (the veggie burger I had with Gabe wasterrible, and I barely had three bites…or maybe it was just the company that was unappetizing). I have to work to calm my wicked case of church giggles. “I need to get an Uber,” I say after a deep breath, still laughing.
“Girl, I have listened to way too many true crime podcasts to put your drunk ass in an Uber alone.”
“But my dateleft me,” I remind her, and from the way she flinches, I fear I may have turned my personal volume knob up too high.
“I can drive you. Where do you live?”
“Cardinal Springs. How do I knowyou’renot a murderer?”
“Because something like five percent of murderers are women, and you already cashed in your good odds on not having to go home and have disappointing sex with that jam skate ding-dong. But good job asking the question. You’ve got fight in you.” Violettaps her phone. “Unfortunately, I promised to pick up my roommate from work, and she doesn’t get off for another forty-five minutes, so can you hang out until then? I won’t make it to Cardinal Springs and back before she gets off.”
I’m teetering right at the edge of the sleepy phase of drunkenness, and the musty-smelling carpeted bench is looking like a lovely little spot for a catnap when all of a sudden, the memory of a strong pair of hands taking my phone pops into my brain. I remember that sharp jawline, the tawny color of his skin, like he spends hours every day in the sun and not in some bank office. Those deep blue-gray eyes that always look stormy, and the buzz cut. What is it about the buzz cut? I have never in my life been interested in a man who looked like he just got drafted, but Dan McBride? Hello, sailor.
I open my phone for the first time tonight, the screen filling with the brand-new contact information he entered.
Call if you need to.
My stomach flips, and with this much tequila swimming around in it, that could go either way. A mean little voice in my head starts in withHe didn’t mean it, he doesn’t want to hear from you, but drunk Carson is somehow more rational than sober Carson. Drunk Carson thinks,Dan McBride doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean. Because Dan McBride doesn’t usually say much of anything at all. Not like Goober Gabe, who talksa lotand probably never means a word of it.
I babble as I type. “I have a ride! I can call my best friend’s brother! He’s my new roommate and he said to call him and he gave me his number and I can call him! He has a car and everything!”
CHAPTER 5
DAN
Carson
