“Cadence, I won’t let you fall,” Mark replied.
She stood up and almost immediately, her feet went out from under her. Mark reached out, but he missed her by an inch. She fell backwards on her bottom, hurting her wrist in the process.
“This is what I’m talking about!” she cried.
Mark stood over her and helped her up. He rubbed his hands all over her bottom while he kissed her cheek. “Better?” he asked softly.
“Hmmm.” Cadence preferred to be noncommittal. She rubbed her wrist.
“Bend it backwards?” Mark asked. She nodded, and he took her hand in his and rained light kisses all over the inside of her wrist.
She pinched his cheek
“Come on, you little cutie. Be my skate partner. I won’t let you fall. I swear,” he said.
“You already did!”
“I meant out on the rink,” he clarified.
She peeked over the half wall. “That wood looks very slippery.”
“It’s gotta be. You wanna be able to glide,” Mark explained. “Let me tell you, back in the day, I tore it up out there.”
Cadence giggled. “Can you skate backwards?”
“Of course.”
“Can you do turns?”
“Yep. I can skate like the wind, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I can’t even tell you how many times I got in trouble and had to sit out.”
“For what?”
“Speed skating when I wasn’t supposed to. See, you can only skate so fast during regular skate times. Then they’ll pull everyone off the rink and let the crazies on the floor for speed skating. But even then, you can’t skate recklessly. I wonder if they still do that.” Mark looked Cadence over. “You ready?”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
He held her hand and led her slowly to the nearest opening. He pulled her on to the waxed floor and watched her eyes go big.
“A little different from the carpet, huh?” he asked, smiling.
She nodded vigorously, then shook her head. “I can’t. Oh my God, I’m so scared!”
A few kids skated past her, one nearly bumping into her.
“There are a lot of people out here, Mark,” she said uncertainly. “Who the hell goes skating?”
“Didn’t you know it’s back in style?” Mark asked. He skated backwards slowly, pulling her along, letting her get used to how easy her skates rolled over the shiny floor.
“It’s not back in style,” Cadence argued. She felt her hands start to sweat. “All these people are dorks.”
Mark laughed and squeezed her palms. “Start to move your weight side to side. Left then right. Left then right.”
She obeyed, feeling even more vulnerable and certain she’d fall to the floor at any moment.
“Good,” Mark said. “Now put a little pressure on the ground and push off. Right then left. Right then left.”
She shook her head.
“I won’t let you fall,” Mark said gently.
“We’re coming to a corner. Oh my God, we’re coming to a corner!”
“Cadence, it’s all right.” He couldn’t help it: The look on her face made him laugh, and she narrowed her eyes at him. And then they went wide again as she felt herself turning.
“Lean to your left,” Mark instructed.
“I’ll die! I mean fall! I’ll fall!”
“I have you.”
She wouldn’t lean. She tensed as hard as she could, feet spread apart and toes pointing forward as he turned her around the corner.
“Why?” she asked desperately. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He pulled her to the carpeted “rest area” on the far side of the rink. She sighed relief as she sat down, pulling her feet in and hugging her knees. They sat side by side for a few moments observing the skaters. There were many, and Cadence noticed most were older. Nostalgia. A yearning for something old. Past memories that were everyday and ordinary while they were happening, but grew to something special and sorely missed as the years passed by. She could see it in their faces as they whizzed past her. A longing for yesterday because, in hindsight, it was so much better than the present.
“I gave you two really huge reasons not to trust me,” Mark said softly. “Once, when I broke up with you after our pregnancy scare, and then when I kept my past marriage from you. I hurt you in the most significant way, and I realized I have no right to ever expect that you’d trust me again. But I don’t want you to live in fear and doubt.”
“So you bring me skating?” she asked.
Mark smiled. “I wanted to share something with you from my past. Something really special to me. Before my dad died, he’d take me skating all the time. It was our thing. He taught me. We competed.” He paused, remembering. “Dad always won.”
Cadence listened intently.
“When you get good at it, you can pretend something bad is after you,” Mark went on. “And it’s chasing you, but you’re faster. It’s an awesome feeling, to charge around the rink, outskating that bad thing. A broken heart. A fear. A regret.”
Cadence took his hand.
“A death,” he whispered.