Page 16 of For Pleasure Or Worse

He was asking about my day? I was used to dinner with one-sided small talk and a lousy go between the sheets before I saw myself out the door. To which I would then call Ophelia and we would trade horror stories from our somehow identical dating scenes despite her being across the country in Colorado. It was becoming a competition at this point.

"Yours was probably way more interesting than mine," I deflected.Yeah right.Three hours of my day were spent with a tentacle the size of my forearm suction cupped to the refrigerator in my kitchen. "Just…work," I answered.

For the first time, “work'' gave me a hot, itchy feeling at the back of my neck. Because I knew if anything were to go anywhere with a guy, the extremely prominent and promiscuous side of my life would have to be revealed. I couldn't quite gauge yet what Mateo might think of it, but the possibility of rejection unnerved me already.

His smirk remained despite my dry answer.

"I'll loosen you up, Natalia Russo."

I wrung my hands in my lap and allowed a shy smile. "So, where are you taking me?"

Mateo's hand disappeared, digging into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out several rectangular pieces of cardstock. He read through what was scribbled on them, sorting them quickly. "Let's find out."

I laughed, bubbly and girlish, a sound that felt very childlike, or maybe youthful and distant because I hadn't heard it in so long. "I'm intrigued."

"It was too hard for me to narrow it down, and I didn't want to pick something you didn't like. So I figured if I put down a bunch of different options, and then had you blindly choose from them, you couldn’t blame me for a shitty date choice. Plus it's a little spontaneous and fun, so…" he trailed off, shuffling the cards. "It's a little weird though, now that I'm saying it out loud."

"It's perfect." I stopped him from tucking the cards away. "I love that."

"Yeah?"

"Come on, then."

He fanned a few cards face down in front of me and I plucked one from under his thumb.

"I hope it's the couple's ashiatsu massages," Mateo joked.

"Why pay someone to walk on you when I'll do it for free?"

"I didn't know that was an option." Mateo playfully grabbed at the paper in my hand. "Give that back, I need to do some modifications."

I held it close to my chest and flipped it over, two words scribed on it in that universally manly all caps style of handwriting.

"Roller skating.”

"Roller skating," Mateo repeated with a touch of disbelief.

"Yeah." I laughed, though my cheeks burned beneath the blush I was wearing. "Did you forget you wrote this?"

"Not at all," he said, straightening in his seat. "Have you ever roller skated?"

I paled. "No."

Mateo's tongue perused the inside of his cheek, gaze ping-ponging between my eyes then down to my mouth so briefly I wouldn’t have never noticed if I wasn't so attuned to everything he did.

"It'll be great," he said abruptly. "Seatbelt, please."

The one rollerrink in the area was old and oval-shaped, from the outside as well as in. There was a long handicap ramp and vertical beige vinyl siding with a sign outside hanging by a thin thread, the letters off-kilter and dimly lit.

High Roller. Or, H----oller.

Inside, the carpet was the kind of black that had turned gray over time, smooshed into a thinner, matted material by shoes and skates. It smelled like dust and burnt popcorn, a little bit like stale piss and mothballs.

Despite it, the glossy wooden rink in the center of the place was packed with people. Friday night dance-skate was in full swing, and a neon light show dotted and waved across the walls and floor.

I found a sticky plastic bench to sit on while Mateo rented the ugliest tan and orange wheeled skates for us to wear. Across from me three teenage boys were fighting over the joystick on a claw machine. Another stood at the side of the glass box coaching his friends in the direction of an iPad that I'm certain was glued to the base of the thing.

"This place is a shit hole." Mateo dropped the pairs of skates on the ground in front of me.

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