She’d also dressed for the occasion. She was wearing knee-high socks with a short, pleated skirt that flipped up when she got any speed, giving me glimpses of her long legs. It all had a sort of naughty schoolgirl thing that I was very much into. I tried not to stare too much. I failed.
I was belatedly grateful that I’d picked a venue populated almost entirely by kids too young to know who I was. I actually got recognized far less often than Jason or even Tom and Jack, but it happened occasionally. And I was sure that video evidence of me behaving like a moron in public was something that tabloids missed having as easy filler for when the real celebrities were having a good week. I’d been a staple for so long.
“You’re doing fine,” Vanessa said to me, grabbing the hand gripping the handrail and pulling me forward with her.
“On this date?” I asked hopefully.
She smirked at me and her big blue eyes sparkled. The lights from the roller rink turned her red hair purple. “That too.”
“I honestly thought I’d be able to, you know, just pick it up.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” She’d been so encouraging. More than I deserved.
“Well, faster than this,” I admitted.
“Do you want to take a break? Get something to drink?” There was a bar attached to the roller rink. Vanessa hadn’t so much as gestured at it before she figured out who she was talking to. “Like a soda or something,” she corrected.
I laughed at her reaction. “You’re welcome to have something to drink. I can handle it.” Her expression was dubious and I realized that the time had come to finally address the issue.
We tottered off the rink and took a seat. I could feel her watching me carefully. She deserved to know what she was getting into with me.
“Seriously,” I told her, “I’m not even tempted anymore. Much.”
The weirdest part about it was that it was entirely true. I wasn’t cured, but I was… managing. Pretty well, actually. I hadn’t been seriously at risk of relapsing in a couple of years now. Not as many years as I’d like, but still. Years, plural.
“You don’t have to talk about this,” Vanessa said. Her eyes were wide and unsure. I’d been holding her hand on the rink, so I risked it and grabbed it now. She didn’t pull away and I stared at her, feeling like I was balanced on a knife’s edge. The loudspeakers were playing New Wave music, the disco ball was rotating, and children were everywhere. It was the perfect moment to tell Vanessa about my alcoholism and that one time I murdered someone.
“I want to tell you,” I said, and then cringed. “Okay, I don’t want to. I need to. Trying to pretend that I don’t have any problems is part of what got me in trouble in the first place.” I sighed. “It’s not like I can pretend it isn’t a part of my personality, forever. I have a serious addiction to alcohol, and it’s impossible for me to ever have it be in my life in a healthy way.”
Vanessa nodded seriously. “I understand.”
She didn’t though. Nobody could, unless they shared this affliction with me. The most pathetic part of it was that alcohol was just an expression of the real problem, which was me. I had a hole in my heart, and even now, even after I’d gotten clean and sober and mostly put my life back together, it was still empty. I’d learned the hard way that there was no cure for that problem, only a lot of coping mechanisms, my routine, and a butt-load of therapy. It worked well enough. As long as I could maintain my delicate balancing act and keep myself from literally poisoning myself, everything would be fine. Hell, I’d become the master of the coping mechanisms. I ran the trauma support group.
“You know I was in an accident when I was in my early twenties,” I told Vanessa. “The one that killed the original bassist for Axial Tilt. Jen. She was my brother’s girlfriend and the three of us were at a party. I was driving. I was drunk driving. It was all downhill from there.”
Vanessa looked down at her skates. I wondered what was going on in her head, but I was scared to ask. It couldn’t be good. If she’d Googled me at all, or knew about the band, she’d know this story already, but I still felt obligated to tell it. “I’m sorry.”
“I just want you to know what kind of person I am.”
Her gaze snapped up to me. “You mean the kind of person that you were. Past tense.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s part of my history that I can’t run from or minimize.”
“Just because you have bad things in your history doesn’t make you a bad person.”
I smiled at her, but it was empty. “I’m glad you think so.”
She changed the subject, and we moved on. She didn’t run away or seem to hate me. Her enthusiasm was slightly dampened, but she didn’t bolt. Maybe, just maybe there was a chance for us. And even if there wasn’t, I knew right then that I was going to write a song for her. So that I’d always have a little piece of this night, even after it was gone.
14
Vanessa
Ian was doing better. He could make it all the way around the rink by the end of the night.
“Tell me the truth,” I asked him during a slow song when we could talk more easily, “what made you want to go roller skating?”
Ian looked anywhere but at me. “Caroline said you liked it.”
I blinked in shock. “You talked to Caroline about me?”
I hadn’t been able to get in touch with her for two weeks! But she was returning Ian’s calls? That hardly seemed fair. I was her best friend. She should be on my side, not his. She was going to hear about this.
Ian seemed to register my irritation. “Not exactly. Not recently at all. She mentioned once that her roommate liked roller skating.”
“Oh.” My irritation drained out of me as quickly as it had appeared. That was alright, I guessed. “I do like roller skating. I used to do roller derby.”
Ian brightened. “Really?”
“Yep. So, I have lots of experience elbowing people in the face. That’s how I knew how to help you last night. Well, that and my EMT experience.”
Ian laughed. “I see. I wish I could have seen you in your roller derby days.”
My smile faded. “It sucks that I can’t do it anymore, not with…” I waved my mangled left arm. I wasn’t wearing long sleeves today, and the scar around my forearm, just below the elbow, was obvious. The surgeon actually had done a really good job with it, but it was still evident that something pretty intense had happened.
“Why not?”
“I’ve only got about seventy percent mobility with it,” I told him. “It’s not ever going to get much better, either. It would be dangerous to me and my teammates if I tried to play again.” I shrugged, pretending that I didn’t care. The truth is that I’d never been that good, but I’d enjoyed it so much I didn’t care. Plus, I lost a lot of friends when I quit playing. It wasn’t my derby friends’ fault, either. They didn’t abandon me. I avoided them because I felt useless and broken.
Ian nodded. He sat back and looked at me. “If it makes you feel any better, I think your scar is pretty badass.”
I smiled at him and wrapped my fingers around the dark, purple-red skin. It stood out a thousand times worse on my deathly pale skin. “That does make me feel better, although I was thinking of getting a tattoo to cover it.” I’d been thinking about a dragon or maybe a vine? Something that coiled. I was just getting really tired of looking at the scar. It was ugly. And it reminded me of an ugly time in my life. A tattoo, even a bad tattoo would be better.
Ian’s expression shifted to something I couldn’t name. Not pity though. I hated pity. For once, I got the feeling that someone understood. “That’s what I did. The accident that I was talking about earlier? All the tattoos on my chest are covering the scar tissue from the burns.”
Burns? I hadn’t noticed. His tattoos did the trick.
“I thought I was going to have scarring on my legs from burns, too, after mine, but they put some crazy goo on it and I totally healed,” I told him. “It was like magic.”
“Modern medicine is amazing, huh?” Ian said. “Soon we’ll all be cyborgs.”
I nodded. It really was amazing. I would have been very, very dead or disfigured even a few years ago. Because of the miracle of science, I was almost normal again. Doctors were the real miracle workers. “Yeah, I owe a lot to the doctors. I mean they literally stuck my arm back on after fishing it out of a ditch next to a burning ambulance.”
Ian winced. “At least you have a badass story to match your badass scar.”
What, the part where my fiancé was murdered? Or the part where I saw it happen? I didn’t say it. But I thought about it. I knew that wasn’t what he meant, but the truth is that I was always about thirty seconds from a crying breakdown about Sam. Even now.
Ian must have seen the change in my expression. His blue eyes met mine and he squeezed my hand. “Let’s talk about, literally anything else. I feel like I’m ruining this.”
“Deal,” I told him. “You sure do know how to spoil a mood, Conroe.”
He chuckled and dragged a hand through his hair to mess it up even worse than the roller rink already had. My fingers itched to push it behind his ears. The man could make disheveled look so damn dead sexy. “Guilty. Killing the mood is my shitty superpower.”
“Mine’s horrible morning breath,” I told him, only realizing after the fact that it was a terrible thing to tell him. Morning breath? God, I was bad at flirting.
Ian just laughed. “We’re really quite a pair, aren’t we?”
“Yes, I guess we are.”
15
Ian
Vanessa laughed at another one of my terrible jokes, and I wondered if I was really doing this well or if she was just tolerating me. The roller rink was closing and we were among the last few on the floor.
“Last song, kids,” the DJ said over the PA system. “Couples skate while you can.”
The first powerful bass notes of Massive Attack’s Teardrop blared from above. Sounded about right. Love is a verb. Somebody turned on a smoke machine. The effect was magical, and oddly romantic.
I felt good. Really good. Vanessa was on my arm. I’d finally gotten the hang of this. I wasn’t going to be winning any skating competitions, but I was competent. I’d even taken off my knee and elbow pads to demonstrate my confidence.
“So, have I redeemed myself?” I asked her.
She raised a slim, auburn eyebrow. “Did you need redemption?”
I smirked. “From the other night, yeah. Do I get forgiven?”
“You mean for beating me at Scrabble?”
Apparently, I was going to be teased no matter what I did. Might as well play along.
“I’ll never apologize for my superior Scrabble skills.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. You just got lucky.”
“I beg to differ. I was maybe about to get lucky, but Jason had to go and ruin it by coming home.”
That got me a blush. Her response was a noncommittal, “Hmm.”
The last note of the night faded away and there was nothing left to do. We needed to leave. It was late and I needed to take Vanessa home. I wanted to be the sort of guy who could take a girl out on a first date and then get a second date. I wanted to be the sort of guy a girl like Vanessa would want a second date with. I didn’t want a simple hookup.
So, I’m not sure what compelled me to pin her against the wall outside the deserted roller rink and kiss her like it was the only antidote to what ailed me.
Alright, that wasn’t quite true. I knew exactly what compelled me to do that. It was Vanessa’s soft, sweet mouth. It was her clever, teasing tongue. It was the way she smelled and the way her breath caught when I pinned her. It was the look in her eyes.
I was helpless to resist her. Every kiss just made me want a thousand more, and she seemed just as game as I was to lose control again. She buried her hands in my hair and held me closer and I wasn’t about to disappoint her twice.
We probably should’ve gone and made out in my car, or driven back to her place or mine, but I couldn’t think that far ahead. The best I could do was drag her into the alleyway and pick her up. With the last of my rational brain function, I knew that this was not better than Jason’s couch. It was much, much worse.
She wrapped her legs around my waist and set my heart racing faster. The blood that was not being used by my brain rushed below the belt, especially when she sent her fingers to my fly. She stroked me through the thick denim.
“We should go somewhere else,” I whispered, but my heart wasn’t in it. It was in her teeth and I prayed she wouldn’t bite down. I needed her. All of her.
Right there in the damn alleyway.
She shook her head. “Don’t stop.” Her little teeth nipped at my neck. “I don’t want you to stop.”
That was it. The last of my willpower.
I tried.
Between my body weight and the wall, it wasn’t hard to support her while I lifted her shirt and bra up and kissed her chest, her neck, and every inch of smooth, pale skin I could reach. She arched up into me, eager and sweet.
My fingers crawled up her legs, past her adorable knee-high socks and to her creamy, soft thighs. She had perfect thighs, although I couldn’t see them nearly as well as I wished I could in the weak streetlight from half a block away. I could feel her thighs just fine though, and my fingers could also feel the hot wetness between them.
She whimpered and leaned into my touch. This was going to be quick. Dirty. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t help myself. And Vanessa was clearly very ready.
“You deserve better than being fucked in an alley.” It was a statement of fact. Not even really an apology. I fumbled with the condom I fished from my wallet.
Without putting her down, I couldn’t hope to take her panties off, so I just pulled them aside. I slid a finger inside her, testing her reactions and feeling gratified when she stared into my eyes like I was the only man in the world who could give her what she needed. Her little body was so ready, and I was right there with her.
I pushed inside her, not bothering with gentle or slow. It wasn’t the time for gentle and slow. It was the time for frantic and greedy, so that’s how I took her, driving into her desperately and hearing her making little encouraging noises in my ear. She caught onto my rhythm and we moved together, easily finding our pace.
Vanessa’s lips curled into a smile when I fisted her hair. She clearly didn’t mind it a bit rough. I knew I didn’t.
In the quiet of the evening, with no one else around, in perhaps the worst setting possible for sex, I gave her every ounce of energy and affection I could. She rocked her hips into mine and matched me thrust for thrust. She was impossibly tight, impossibly hot, impossibly perfect.
I listened to her little noises get higher and more urgent. Her breathing was shallow and panting, and mine was too. I was close. Too close. Too quickly. I was on the verge of embarrassing myself.
I barely managed to tip her over the edge before I was falling right down with her, emptying myself into her in a frenzied rush of pleasure. We clung to each other afterwards, holding on to the feeling as it faded into nothingness and then awkwardly righting our clothes and stumbling in the dark. Vanessa pulled away from me when I tried to grab her hand.
“Vanessa, are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine Ian.” She didn’t sound fine. “Will you take me home now?”
I swallowed. Fuck. I’d done it. I’d fucked it up. I’d gone too fast and now she regretted it.
I wanted to say a thousand things, but I couldn’t find them. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry that I hadn’t insisted we go somewhere that was not a disgusting alley behind a roller rink that smelled like old funnel cake. I wanted to tell her that I was grateful to her and enjoyed her company more than anything, even the sex. I wanted to tell her that I really, really liked her and hoped she didn’t hate me.
But all I said was, “Yeah, I’ll take you home.”
<
br /> 16
Vanessa
“You’ve barely touched your food.” My friend, Faith, pointed at my plate of uneaten brunch and shook her head at me disapprovingly. “You love waffles. What’s the matter?”
I sighed and pushed a bite of waffle into a puddle of maple syrup. “Nothing’s the matter.” I didn’t even sound convincing to me.
Faith rolled her eyes. “You’re a really terrible liar, you know that, right?”
I smirked. “Maybe I’m actually a really amazing liar. You just don’t know it because I’m that good.”
“You’re not,” Faith teased. “You blush bright red when you lie.”
I gaped at her, wondering if I were really that transparent. “I most certainly do not.”
Faith looked typically gorgeous despite her unconvinced, scrunched up expression. She’d recently gone back from blonde to brunette. She looked better that way. “What’s bothering you, Vanessa?” she asked me. “Tell me.”
“I met a guy,” I admitted.
Her expression turned encouraging. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Through your new gig? Doing freelance video stuff?”
Faith was a nurse. She didn’t really understand what freelance video stuff was. I’d explained it a couple of times, and I sent her the videos of the two concerts for Axial Tilt, but she’d said that ‘the music was too loud and it woke the baby.’ She also understood what a viral video was, but she didn’t really grasp why it mattered so much to me that my videos were receiving so much publicity. We were just on very different professional wavelengths these days. Back when I was an EMT we’d talked shop all the time. Nowadays that didn’t happen.
“Yes, from the video stuff,” I explained. “The guy is actually the drummer for Axial Tilt.”
Faith’s mouth dropped open in disbelief; she knew who he was and her eyes widened. “Oh really? They’re famous right? Eric says they’re the best by the way. He wants you to get their autographs.” She shook her head. “Sorry, he said I had to ask. I promised him I would. Tell me about the guy.”
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