Page 27 of My Last Dance

Pulling up his hood, his eyes went back to his textbook.

But for some reason, I wanted to keep talking to him. Closing my eyes, I gathered up my courage. “It’s cool that…” He looked up at me with his dark eyes. “It’s cool that your mom watches you skate. That she’s…around,” I forced out.

I suddenly felt like I was shrinking on the spot. There’s no way I should’ve handed him that little piece of vulnerability. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. I mean, I didn’tdeservepity. I had no room to ever complain. I got everything I wanted. Everything except…time. But that was fine. My parents had work to do, they didn’t need to see me face-to-face just to tell me they loved me.

Suddenly he was right in front of me. His large, calloused hand gently grabbed my wrist, pulling me from my thoughts.

“C’mon, let’s play,” he said, tugging me out of my seat.

“W-what? We don’t have to,” I stammered, looking around as we crossed the lobby to make sure no one would see us.

“You wanna play, we’re gonna play,” he mumbled while fooling with the game’s settings.

The machine loudly announced, “Let’s go!” making me flinch.

He took his place on the arrows and grinned at me as the song “Jerk It Off” started playing.

I stared at him dumbly.Were we really doing this?

“Don’t look at me! Look at the screen.” Kappy laughed. “On second thought, stare at me as much as you want.” He shot me a wicked grin. “Because then I can brag that I beat the best ice dancer at dancing.”

“I’mnotthe best,” I said with an eye roll, but I stepped up on the dance platform and started following the directions on the screen.

He scoffed as he jumped on the front and back arrows. “Yeah, you are.”

My mouth twitched into a grin. I was glad he was so focused on the screen so he couldn’t see the way his words made me blush.

While he was a quick dancer, the machine still announced, “Player 2! Winner!” and he gave me a little bow.

Smoothing back my ponytail, I struggled to hide my grin.

“Wait here,” he said, then jumped down from the game and dashed to the concession stand for more quarters.

We started playing duos after that, and it felt like I was living out a scene from a movie. By the time my ride home arrived, we weresweaty, laughing, and had second place on the machine. Kappy wrote our team name in the leaderboard as ViperDick, which made me genuinely laugh.

When my phone rang for the fifth time, I finally blew out a sigh and texted Gwen that I’d be out in a minute.

“I better go,” I mumbled.

“Ah, dang.” His shoulders fell, mirroring my disappointment. Pushing up his sweaty hair, he stared down at the rankings on the machine. “Kinda pisses me off that we’re not number one.” His brow furrowed. “I wanna find out who DrunkAliCat is. I bet we could take ‘em in real life.”

A laugh popped out of me. “You think?”

“Oh, Iknow.” He grinned.

Rolling my eyes, I struggled to maintain a straight face. Grabbing up my skate back, I gave an awkward wave and turned on my heel.

But right as I was pushing open the door to enter the cold winter night, he called out, “Piper the Viper!” making me whirl back around.

He was already back at the picnic tables, opening up his math textbook. “Same time tomorrow,” he said with a wink.

And my whole body felt a little warmer as I stepped into the snowy night.

_________

The next day we went back to ignoring each other, but after everyone left, he’d walk over to the arcade section of the lobby and put quarters in a machine and silently wait for me.

We’d play a game or two, sometimes staying quiet, each lost in our own heads about skating or hockey. Other times, we shared good news or funny stories. I shared how Patrick and I qualified for Junior Nationals. He shared how he, Colt, and JP pranked the high school hockey team by setting off the sprinklers in their locker room, which froze all their equipment.

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