"Are you?"
He looked at me in his too-small jersey, PIPER stretched across my back. "Yeah. I'm sure."
The rink was half-empty. A group of kids in hockey helmets wobbled along the boards while their parents watched from the bleachers. One of the dads did a double-take when we walked in. Red's face had been all over ESPN two days ago. In Vegas, at a hockey rink, he was never going to be anonymous.
Red noticed. His shoulders tightened for a second, and then he deliberately relaxed them.
The rental skates were terrible: too soft in the ankle, blades dull enough to slide rather than grip, the kind of equipment that made real skating impossible. I laced them up anyway and didn't complain.
We stepped onto the ice together, and it was different from every other time we'd shared a rink. No cameras. No coaches. No competition scores to chase. Just cold air and bad pop music crackling through the speakers and the familiar glide of blades on ice.
Six years ago, we'd shared a rink in Rio Rancho. Red had stood in sneakers on my ice, smirking at me before sunrise.
Now he was skating beside me, matching my pace. I reached over and took his hand.
"You look weird without all the death spirals," he said after a while.
"You look weird without pads."
"Show me something." He squeezed my hand. "Not a jump. I know you can't in those. But something."
I let go of his hand and skated a few feet ahead, then turned to face him, skating backward. The rental skates made everything harder, the edges unpredictable, but I'd been skating since I was four. I could make any blade behave.
I did a simple spin, nothing fancy, just a scratch spin that any beginner could do. But I pulled it tight and centered it perfectly, arms overhead, and when I came out of it I was facing him again.
"Show-off," he said.
"You asked."
He skated closer and kissed me, right there at center ice, in front of the hockey kids and their parents and whoever else was watching.
Someone's phone was out. A mom in the bleachers had her camera aimed at the ice.
Red pulled back and saw her too. "That's going to be online in about thirty seconds."
"Probably."
"You okay with that?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm okay with that."
He kissed me again, slower this time. When he pulled back, he was smiling.
"Good. Me too."
In the parking lot, the desert heat was already building. Red leaned against his truck and looked at me, really looked, the wayhe had that first morning in Rio Rancho when I'd told him he was on my ice.
"I'm glad you came," he said.
"You already made that joke."
"Not a joke this time." He reached out and pulled me closer by the hem of the jersey. "I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're doing this."
I stepped into his space. The sun was warm on my back, his name warm across my shoulders.
"Me too," I said, and kissed him.
FEBRUARY
