“Bye, Hoochie. Great skating today.” Chloe waves and walks away.
Joe turns to Ben. “Are you going to join us at the party tonight at Blue’s?”
Ben looks startled for a minute, then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable in party environments. I don’t drink.”
“Oh, well, we’ll miss you. I was hoping to hear some of Tina’s scandalous stories.”
“Oh God, Ben, get out of here.” I shove him toward the door. He gives me one last hug, and then he goes, smiling on his way out.
“So, um, do you want to ride with me?” Her voice is small and shy behind the rasp. “I’ve really missed you.”
She’s carefully not meeting my gaze. I take in her hunched body language, not her usual swagger, and it feels so wrong that she’s humbling herself just to ask for my company.
“Joe . . .”
“Please?”
And how can I say no?
“I have to go home and shower. Pick me up at seven?”
She smiles and her shoulders drop with relief. “Yeah?”
“You know I’m a sucker for the way your voice cracks when you say please.”
“Ooh, maybe I should practice and see if I can make it crack every time.” She laughs and squeezes my hand. “I’ll see you at seven.”
I have a doorbell, but she knocks. Soft, like she’s calling my name.
When I open the door, she’s leaning on my entryway in skinny jeans, a button-down, and suspenders, with her hair slicked back and a grin on her face.
The swagger has returned.
“You look—” I shake my head, searching for the words. “You look amazing. Dapper as fuck. Come on in, I need to—”
She puts her hand on my arm and I stop babbling. Even this little touch, this tiny contact, is enough to set my heart racing.
“Are you nervous?” she asks.
I nod.
She follows me into the house and shuts the door behind her. “You look really nice.”
I glance down at my shirtdress. The same one she—
“I fixed the button,” I blurt out.
“I’m glad it was repairable. I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful.”
“It’s okay. It was hot.” I laugh. “Let me grab Elvis and my purse.”
During the drive to the bar, she hums “Suspicious Minds.” When she realizes I’m listening, she blushes and stops. “Your dog gives me the worst earworms.”
We enter the bar to a chorus of “Hooch!” and “Joe!”
It hits me all at once: she’s delivered on everything she promised when we first met for drinks after she fixed my washing machine. Friendship, teamwork, female companionship. Something bigger than individual glory. A lump forms in my throat, and I cover it by going to the bar and asking Stella for some water for Elvis.
She gives me a once-over as I stand there waiting, then glances at Joe. “You and Joe came together?”
“Yeah, you know—a designated driver thing.” The lie tastes awkward in my mouth—but is it a lie? It feels like one.
“Uh-huh.” She watches Joe across the room as she says the next part. “You skated well today. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
“But you’re only keeping my spot warm. I’m coming back.”
I laugh. “I am happy to be pivot to your jammer.”
She gives a sharp little nod and then looks down at Elvis.
“We need to get him a purple LLRG doggie T-shirt. He’s awfully underdressed to be our mascot.” She hands me the water and a basket of fried pickles. “Would you give these to Joe for me? I’ll be out there to join y’all in a minute. Stupid crutches.”
Lauren and Bex are deep in conversation over by the jukebox, and by the time I get to Joe, they’ve picked a song, the bar is filling with music, and tables are being shoved aside to make a dance floor.
“Dance with me?” Joe asks as I set the pickles on the table. “It would seem weird if we didn’t.”
“I’d dance with you anyway.” I let Elvis off leash, and he hops up onto the seat of our usual booth and settles in.
There’s something gentle and sweet in the way Joe holds me while we dance, like she can’t believe I’m there. She keeps smiling up at me and biting her lip.
“What’s going on?” I ask, unable to stop smiling back at her.
“I’m just really happy. We won our bout. You’re dancing with me.”
I pull her a little closer, and she puts her arms around my neck. Our breasts are pushed together, and my breath catches in my throat. “I meant what I said earlier. You look pretty tonight.”
“Thanks.” Then she closes her eyes, and we sway together, and I want to kiss her so badly, I don’t know if I can take it. Thankfully, the song ends, and Bex cuts in. It seems like I dance with everyone except Stella, since she’s on crutches. When I dance with Chase, it’s the first time I’m not the taller partner.
“This is nice, dancing with a dude.” I smile up at him. “I should try it more often.”
“It’s kind of weird dancing with the girl who makes me do my pushups,” he grumbles, then raises an eyebrow at me. “Unless you think I could skip them.”
“Don’t let him, Tina!” Lauren calls. “I like his guns!”
He laughs as he spins me under his arm. “I guess I have you to thank for giving Joe the idea of having me ref.”
“I didn’t do—”
“Don’t lie to me, girl.” His voice is stern, but he’s grinning as he says it. “You don’t even see—you sat here in this room, while all these people who love you watched you go on television and tell the world who you are and why you matter. And you don’t even see it.”
“See what?” I look around. “I’m just me.”
“Well, if you can’t see it, I don’t know if I can help you.” He smiles.
“I’m going to give you extra pushups for that.”
“You worry that you need people too much, but the way I see it, other people need you—to motivate them, to show them where to find their courage. Yes, they still have to put in the work, but they want to because you believe they can.”
“That’s what a personal trainer does.”
“Yeah, but you don’t save all your mojo for work. You do it all the time. Lauren says she only made the team that night because you talked her down.”
“She’d have made it anyway.”
“Eventually, sure. But she thinks it happened when it did because of you.”
Then the song ends, and I beg off the next dance, heading for the ladies’ room to catch my breath and figure out what he meant by that pretty speech.
It’s empty, and I take a moment to splash some cold water on my face, which is flushed from dancing and laughing and beer. I help people?
“Hey.”
With the water running, I hadn’t heard the door open, but there’s Joe, leaning on the wall by the paper towel dispenser.
“Hi.”
She waves her hand in front of the dispenser’s motion sensor, rips off the towel, and hands it to me. Dabbing the water off my face, I stare at her.
“Please—”
“I miss—”
We both start laughing, then the next thing I know, she’s in my arms, and I’m pressed back against the wall, and we’re kissing, really kissing, like we’ll die if we don’t.
“I missed you,” I gasp when she bites my neck.
She groans and tilts her head back when I run my hands over her nipples. “God, yes.” She practically climbs my body, shoving her knee between my legs.
My skirt rides up and I haul her closer, our bodies rocking together in frantic rhythm. I slip her suspenders off one shoulder and start tugging her shirt out of her pants.
Then the door bursts open and we break apart, panting.
Some people never learn their lessons.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stella crosses her arms over her chest.
“Stella . . .” I start, then I look at Joe,
who’s gorgeous and disheveled with the suspender slipped off. I smile at her, and she giggles, running a hand through her slicked-back hair.
“I’m kissing my girlfriend; give us some privacy,” she says, still laughing.
“Your girlfriend?” I feel a thrill even though, no, we haven’t talked about that. She just called me her girlfriend. To Stella. To her derby wife.
To her best friend who’s injured and can’t skate, and resents her old girlfriend.
“Joe—” I start again, but Stella interrupts me.
“I can’t fucking believe you’re doing this again. Don’t shit where you eat, Joe. Don’t fuck your teammates. Because once you get past the heart-eyes and rainbows phase, you’re going to walk the fuck out. Not on her, never on her. You’ll walk out on everybody else.”
I close my eyes and my head falls back against the wall with a thunk. “That’s pretty rich coming from you. Aren’t you and Bex a thing?”
“I didn’t walk out on you.” Joe pinches the skin at the bridge of her nose. “Derby wasn’t fun anymore.”
“We were the top seed in the league.” Stella’s voice goes loud and pleading.
“So what?” Joe throws out her arms. “So what? My girlfriend and I were fighting, you were pissed that she’s a better jammer than you, and you blamed me for everything. It didn’t matter that we were the top seed. I needed a goddamn break. Why do you think that when I came back, when I started this team, I didn’t fucking skate?”
Stella reels back. “We lost the semifinals because you quit. And now what? You’re making the same mistake all over again with a brand-new team. You keep giving me derby teams to love and then abandoning us.”
Ouch.
“Oh my fucking God, Stella. I am not some god of derby. I just want to have a good time. Yeah, I wanna fucking win, who doesn’t? But you didn’t lose because I wasn’t skating. You lost because the other team skated better that day. Exactly how we won today because our girls skated their asses off.”
Stella starts to say something, but I can’t watch them shred their friendship like this anymore.
“Stop.” I hold up both hands. “Stella. When Joe started a new team, did she ask Chloe to be a part of it?”
Joe scoffs behind me.
“No.” Stella mutters and looks away.
“Joe, is Stella your best friend in the whole world?”
“Yeah. She fucking is.”
“Okay, so stop bitching at each other about what’s done. Tell each other what’s really important.”
They stare at me for a minute. Then at each other.
“Don’t worry; I’ll go wait outside.”
I straighten my dress, make sure all the buttons are secure, and head back to the party.
Back in the bar, I collect Elvis and take him outside, Chase’s words from earlier running through my mind. “They still have to put in the work, but they want to because you believe they can.” Like Lauren and her 27/5. Like getting Jeremy back on track after his ablation.
Like believing Joe and Stella can fix their friendship.
Have I been trying too hard to fix everything myself—pushing people away when they just wanted to be there for me? Maybe, all this time, I’ve been worried not about the way Lisa fixed things for me, but that if she couldn’t fix it, our marriage wasn’t fixable. And did that mean I was broken?
But I’m not broken. I’m the girl who believes in people. And sometimes they believe in me back.
“Hey.”
I give Elvis a little more slack on his leash and turn around—there she is. My Joe.
Her suspender is still down, but she’s tucked in her shirt. She’s beautiful.
“Everything okay?”
“Almost.”
“What did you tell her about you and me?”
“I told her the truth, that I have a heart condition. It’s one of those sneaky ones you don’t realize you have until it wrecks you.”
I look down at Elvis and try to fight the smile. Hell. I can’t play it cool. Heart on my sleeve, whatever condition it’s in.
“Is it serious?”
“I think . . .” Her voice breaks a little; she licks her lips and glances away, then back at me, all intense and gorgeous. “I think the actual diagnosis is ‘twitterpated,’ but I might need a second opinion, because I’m also showing symptoms of ‘smitten.’”
“Wow, you should definitely get that checked out. It sounds serious.”
“Very, very serious.”
“What treatment do they prescribe for this?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I hear kiss therapy is showing some promise.”
Her kiss is soft, and sweet, and I can feel her smiling against my lips.
I pull back and touch her smile with one finger, trace it, catch myself smiling back.
“What’s going to happen now, with you and me?”
“Well, your derby wife knows. And my derby wife knows. And I told everyone else before I came out here that I wanted to date you, and if any of them had a problem with it, I would make them do suicide sprints on Monday night—”
“You did not!”
She laughs in my arms. “No. But I did tell them my personal life, and yours, aren’t up for debate.”
“And Stella? What about her?”
“Stella is hurt. It’s not about you—except in the sense that you’re the reason this is coming up now. A catalyst, or whatever. We have work to do, you know?”
I nod. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
She shakes her head. “No, not tonight. I want to take you home and work on that kissing therapy thing more.”
My heart seems to flutter in my chest. “I told you, that first night we came here, that I didn’t think I should get involved in a complicated thing. I was wrong. Between you and skating and everything, this summer was the best—complicated, yeah, but the best summer. Even the weeks when we weren’t together were amazing. I feel like I’m a part of something now.”
Her smile lights up her face. “You are. It wasn’t just a summer thing for me. I mean, it’s October now, and we’re going into the skating season. If it was just a summer thing for you, and you want to focus on the skating, I understand, but—”
I cut her off with a kiss, then say, “It wasn’t just a summer thing for me either.”
“Then let’s go home.”
When the whistle blows, I’m sprawled out in a tangle of limbs, one of Paula Fast One’s locs tickling my ear.
“Damn, Hooch, you can really hit,” she wheezes around her mouth guard as we struggle to untangle ourselves. “Was that your penalty, or mine?”
We clashed so hard, neither of us managed to fall small, and if this were a real match, we’d have both been sent to the penalty box for endangering the other players. As it is, we’re supposed to be demonstrating—as vividly as possible—the importance of safe falls.
Joe skates over to us and reaches out a hand. I grab it first—girlfriend’s prerogative—and then turn to help Chloe to her feet.
“Okay, so, that is an example of how not to fall, courtesy of Hoochie Glide and Paula Fast One.” Stella’s voice is full of mirth as she explains to the Central Florida Derby Campers what just happened. “Y’all know what’s coming next though, right?”
The campers groan.
“Not suicides!” Thomas pipes up, throwing me a desperate glare.
“You shouldn’t have said anything,” the girl next to them says. “Now we’re going to have to.”
“Yes, suicides. But first, let’s give a great big Derby Camp thanks to Hoochie Glide and Paula Fast One!” Stella claps her wrist guards together and the campers follow her lead, the plastic echoes of their clapping filling the roller-skating rink.
I give the kids a wave, and so does Chloe, and then we skate away, following Joe off the floor.
“Are you both okay?” Joe waits for us to catch up and then wraps her arm around my waist when we reach her.
“Fine.” I grin at he
r.
“I’m going for an ice pack.” Chloe shakes her head. “My ass hurts.”
We say our good-byes, and Joe and I skate over to the water fountain off to the side of the rink. After taking a few deep gulps of water, I wipe my mouth and grin again.
“That was fun.”
She laughs. “Your boss is on cloud nine. He stopped by to watch the demonstrations.”
“Nate did?” Oh God. Derby Camp had been my idea. I brought it up as a possible revenue stream—and he’d given me free rein to run with it. “He was really nervous about the liability stuff. Just yesterday he pulled me aside during a weight session to tell me he thought we were going to get sued.”
“He’s fine, I promise. Katie went over everything with him before we opened the doors this morning. He’s never run a program for kids before; he’ll get used to it.” She grins wickedly. “He’ll have to. We have a waiting list for the next three preteen sessions, and teenagers are sold out six months in advance.”
Holy shit.
“So . . .”
“So your boss and Katie just found ways to keep both their respective businesses open thanks to your brilliant idea. And we’re training up the next generation of Lake Lovelace Rollergirls.”
“And boys and enbies,” I add.
“And boys and enbies.”
She leans in and kisses me, and even though we haven’t hidden these kisses for months, I still get that thrill from kissing her—the same sweet rush of heat and longing. It was never the secrecy that made it special.
“I love you,” I murmur against her lips.
“Yeah,” she sighs, and then nips at my earlobe. “Love you too.”
Somewhere behind us, plastic wrist guards clap together, children shriek, and wheels hum along the wooden floor.
I’ve got my arms full of Joe—and it hits me all over again. This is my life, and it’s real and it’s fine.
Explore more of the Lake Lovelace series: www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/universe/lake-lovelace
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Vanessa North’s Roller Girl!
Roller Girl Page 13