Nick made a face. “Think we’ll get used toit?”
“Not sure if I want to. Mountain Dew is better,” I told him. Beer tasted like piss to me, and I was just fine withoutit.
Max wandered in the bar behind us then and wordlessly stole the beers out of ourhands.
“It’s a little early for those, hun.” Paige eyed him skeptically when she wandered back out and saw him double-fisting.
Nick gave Max a daring smile and held his gaze, silently pleading with him not to throw us under the bus.
Max just shot us an annoyed side-eye. “It really is, honey. You have yetanotherreason to be mad at me today. Yay.”
We waited until Paige went to the back office again to thank Max before leaving.
“We owe ya one!” Nick called out behind him, and then we were gone.
We spent the rest of the day on our rollerblades, wandering around town half-hazardly shooting the inline hockey puck back and forth to each other.
When Northfield High School’s final bell rang to dismiss kids for summer, Nick and I were waiting outside for Savannah in the huge parking lot holding up her rollerblades.
She was walking out all alone, and I wondered for the millionth time if we should’ve enrolled here instead of our online program. The teachers probably would’ve kept Nick more accountable… and Sav wouldn’t have been alone all day. She was a grade below us, but still, we probably would’ve had at least a couple classes together…
But there was no point in regretting that now, Iguess.
She ran to us with a huge smile plastered on her face and Nick easily slid her lavender-colored backpack onto his shoulder and we were off.
When Duke got out of school a half hour later, we all rollerbladed to 7-11 together to celebrate.
We sat down on the parking lot curb and watched the sun set into the horizon while slurping some slushies.
_____
The second week of summer sucked ass.
We found our groove just for a wrench to get thrown into it.
Mine and Nick’s typical routine included power skates early in the morning with a figure skating instructor that always killed my legs, and then off-ice training upstairs at the SwiftStart Sports workout center, then we’d break for lunchtime, then we’d work.
While we did all of our morning stuff, Duke was enrolled in the 5-12-year-old’s kiddie camp here at the Ice League. He absolutely hated it. The kid had sick skills and blew everyone else at the camp away. Every day at lunch– we spent lunch with Sav and Duke at the concession stand or the subway across the street from the rink- he’d complain about how boring it was and about how annoying Craig’s daughter Clair was– Claire figure skated and played hockey.
Duke usually settled down and forgot about his mornings after lunch though, because he’d join us on the NHL sheet of ice where we worked as ice monitors for the Ice League’s sticks and pucks sessions. Sav convinced us to get jobs here this summer because she’d be working as well. While we monitored the sticks and pucks session, (and let’s be real, Nick and I ended up just running one-on-one battles the whole time with each other and Duke) Sav was teaching Learn to Skate on the other sheet of ice. She usually spent most of the time picking up 2-year-olds and zoomin around with them to make them stop crying, which didn’t sound fun to us, but she loved it.
I had a hunch she convinced us to take the ice monitor jobs so we could play with Duke on the ice while she worked, but that was no problem. He was like our little bro, and he was fun to run drills with.
But… today started off rocky and went downhill from there.
I lost an edge during the morning power skate and was slipping off and falling to my butt every other drill. Coach was laughing at me, which was never a good thing.
I ran to get my skates sharpened as soon as I got off the ice, which made me a bit late to Off-ice.
Off-ice was usually fun because the figure skaters always made an appearance. The upstairs workout room was lined with windows on both sides that overlooked the two sheets of ice. It was all decked out with a fake half football field turf and different workout stations.
It was big enough to have a couple different groups up there rotating stations, and this year, we always seemed to overlap with Sav’s little cohort of skaters.
The three of us were always getting snapped at by the instructors for goofing off, because we’d always make faces at each other and compete against one another the whole time. The only thing Sav could ever beat us at were planks. The girl had a core of steel.
But this morning, when I finally caught up with my group, I noticed Sav was missing from hers.
As I looked around for her bubbly blonde self, I had this nagging feeling that something was wrong.
