“I’ll be right back,” I call, skating away. “Water break!”
Ten minutes, one orange soda, and two packs of M&M’s later, I walk back towards the ice feeling like I’ve built my defenses back up enough to get through the rest of this skating session without either jumping Cam’s bones or falling face first in love with him and both of his kids. But before I can take a step back onto the ice, I see Riley sitting on the bench, phone in hand, muttering to herself, and shaking her head. She disappeared when we started playing, insisting that she had way too much homework to stay on the ice for even one second longer, but the look on her face doesn’t say homework to me.
“You okay?” I ask, walking over to her.
Her head shoots up at the sound of my voice, and she turns to me, blinking rapidly to, I’m sure, try and banish the sheen of tears, but I see them, and for the second time today, my heart squeezes for one of Cam’s kids.
“I’m fine,” she says quickly, her voice taking on a harsh edge that is, I’m sure, meant to conveyGo the fuck away.
But when a tear escapes and slides down her face, I know there is nothing in the world that would make me walk away from this vulnerable teen right now. With a quick glance at the ice to make sure the guys are all occupied, I drop down onto the bench next to Riley, swinging one leg up so I’m facing her, even as she stares forward, her phone still clutched tightly in her hand.
“It’s okay if you’re not, you know. You never have to say you’re okay if you don’t feel okay.”
“It’s okay not to be okay?” she says with a half laugh.
“Something like that, but with sincerity and, like, one hundred percent less cliché.”
She huffs out a laugh and turns to me, looking down at her phone and letting out a deep sigh. “It’s so stupid.”
“I’m sure it’s not. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. We can just sit here, or you can tell me to go away and leave you alone. I promise I won’t be offended. I deal with football players all day who are so out of touch with their feelings those feelings might as well exist in another dimension. Literally nothing offends me.”
Her lips curve up in a small smile, and she sets her phone down on the bench behind her, giving it a wary look before she turns back to me. “It’s the group chat for the play.”
I wince internally, because I don’t have to have kids of my own to know that nothing good ever happens in a group chat full of teenagers. Riley looks like she wants to say more, so I wait, giving her the space to talk when she’s ready. Ready comes sooner than I thought it would, in a flood of words and teenage angst.
“We had rehearsal during a free period to do blocking for ‘Voulez-Vous.’ It’s the song we sing during Sophie’s bachelorette party scene, and it’s pretty complicated choreography with a lot of the cast on stage during the song. I know my lines backwards and forwards, and I can usually pick up choreography fast, so I don’t know what happened, but I had, like, an off day or something. There’s a part of the song we had to do over and over again because I kept messing it up, and I just felt like such an idiot. I could tell that the director was irritated, and every time we had to go again the rest of the cast would grumble about it, and that just made it worse, you know?”
She looks at me like she’s begging me to understand, and I nod. “I do know. You were already anxious because you were struggling, and then when it felt like everyone was annoyed at you for that, it made your anxiety worse, which made it evenharder to get the choreography right. It was like a perfect storm of suckage.”
“Exactly,” she says glumly. “Anyway, the practice from hell finally ended, and I got through the rest of the day and then came here to watch Ethan’s game. Ethan wanted to stay longer and skate, and my dad got permission to use the rink, so I figured, why not? I put on skates too and put in my earbuds and blasted music. It felt really good to skate around as fast as I could—like the faster I skated, the less what happened today mattered. There was even some Celine Dion on my playlist. She kind of rocks. I totally get why you named your car after her.”
I smile, because I know that feeling so well. The ice has always been my sanctuary. The place where nothing matters except for how fast I can skate and the way the cold rink air feels on my face as I fly. And the Celine comment? Forget it. This girl is cool as shit. “That’s how skating makes me feel too.”
She nods, like she gets it, but when her face falls, I know we’re getting to the cause of her tears. “But then all of a sudden, I started getting notifications in the group chat. Tara—the understudy for Sophie—was talking about practice today and how awful it was and how maybe I didn’t have what it took be the lead. She said since I’m only a freshman, I should step aside and let her take over because she’s a senior and she already has all the choreography memorized so she wouldn’t hold anyone back the way I did today.”
Riley’s shoulders slump and she hangs her head, defeat in every line of her body. The shot of protectiveness is so sudden and so strong, I have to restrain myself from searching out this little shit’s address and taking care of her myself. Instead, I reach back into my bag and grab a handful of snack size M&M’s packages in various flavors, dropping them onto the bench between us. “Take your pick, Ry.”
She looks from the M&M’s to me. “Why?”
I smile at her befuddlement. “Because when I have a bad day,I need emotional support M&M’s. Your day has been a trash fire, so I think you need all the M&M’s you can eat.”
Her mouth tips up in a real, genuine smile before she grabs a bag of peanut M&M’s, tearing open the package and tossing a couple into her mouth.
“Good choice,” I say approvingly. “My mom always says peanut M&M’s are the best flavor for when you’re in your feelings.”
Riley sighs, swallowing the candy. “I’m definitely in my feelings because there’s more.”
I tear open my own bag of peanut M&M’s in solidarity and settle in for the rest of the story. “Lay it on me.”
She glances over at her phone and makes a face. “So of course other people started agreeing with Tara, saying that a freshman never should have gotten the lead and that I wasn’t good enough to play Sophie. That I should just step down now before I ruin the whole show. It was…” Her voice breaks, her eyes filling with tears, and I set down my M&M’s, taking her hand and squeezing, my heart aching for her because sometimes it just absolutely sucks to be thirteen. “It was mean,” she whispers. “It was really, really mean. And, like, I know she’s just jealous that I got the part and she didn’t, but…” She trails off.
“But that doesn’t make it hurt any less, does it?”
She shakes her head. “Nope.”
“Let me ask you a question. What do you like about acting?”
Riley considers that for a second. “I like that I get to pretend to be other people. To have experiences that I haven’t had yet.” She shakes her head, like she’s trying to figure out how to explain herself. “I like being me, but I also like pretending to be a girl getting married to the love of her life and trying to figure out who her dad is on a Greek Island. Or a teenager on a dance show, like when I was inHairspraylast year. I got to be Fiona inShrek the Musicaland Veruca Salt inWilly Wonka, and it was just so much fun. It’s like I get to be me but then I get to be all these other people too, and it’s just really cool.”
