Chillax

Out there on the rink and hand in hand, the couples were having fun. Out there in their heavy coats and mittens, the children were having fun. Hell, even the grandparents were having fun, and they were probably the ones most at risk of injury.

Eyes wide, Audrey turned to her companion, her friend, her hanger-on who just so happened to be a guy she liked and kissed more than most other guys and nearly all girls. Just liked. "I'm telling you again. This is a fucking horrible idea. I don't know how to skate."

"Best time to learn, sweetheart," he retorted.

She saw it coming and she tried to dodge it, but his hand came to shove her forward, and before she knew it, Audrey was on the ice, spastically waving her arms out as she jerked her head back and forth before slipping across the rink and falling flat on her face, and all in front of a ten-year old who was in the midst of executing something that looked like it came out of Swan Lake.

She should have known there was a reason he had been so cheerful on the way here. She should have known the prick would try to get back at her for that night when she found and recorded him asking the shower nozzle why it was crying while he was preparing a bath for himself. Not her fault he ignored her warning about what the weed would do. There was a reason the dealer called it Silver Haze.

She heard him come to her, his skates rasping as they slid over the ice. "A real gold medal performance," he quipped as he came to a stop standing over her. He clapped, the sound muffled by his gloves.

Audrey would reply, but her face was burning from embarrassment and resentment despite it being pressed up against ice. She tried to stand and felt his hands go under her arms and lift her up. She turned, opening her mouth to swear a blue streak at him and demand he take her home, but found that she couldn't get the words out as he had somehow managed to get his tongue in first.

"Chillax," he whispered against her lips before breaking off the kiss and patting her cheek. "Happens to all first-timers."

Then he was pulling away, and a shrieking Audrey was pulled along by both hands for the ride, fingers tightly coiled around fingers and palms pressed together. If either of them let go, they'd risk the both of them falling. If neither of them did, it showed that they trusted each other to not let the both of them down.

It would strike Audrey a lot later that that sort of situation was how some people would describe a relationship.

She would find the epiphany and its implications equally disturbing and exciting.

"Just do as I do," he murmured, brow furrowed in concentration as he watched Audrey's skates scramble for some semblance of the gracefulness which all the other skaters in the rink somehow managed to grasp with infuriating ease. "Move your feet one at a time, lower your centre of gravity and don't try to fight your momentum," he ordered, pretending not to see the frightened glare she had leveled at him. "It's just like learning to walk again."

Fucking prick. But she did as he said. She could yell at him of course, and on most days she would, but she was scared of falling, and he was trying to help her stand on her own two feet, and even she could see that. Teeth biting hard on her lips, Audrey looked away from him and watch his own skates as they moved in time to some dance, to some beat that only she was a stranger to. Left and right. Left and right. Left and right. Fuck. Her legs gave way, she fell forward and head-butted him in the chin. He helped her up. Left and right. Left and right. Left and right.

It took her ten minutes to start to feel the dance come to her too. It took her three seconds after to love it. She had an ex who was training to be a pilot. Before she dumped him, he used to take her on dates in his plane. They'd go all the way up to the clouds at dusk, and he'd show her what the city looked like from the heavens in all its glory with its lights.

But this, this she felt was so much better. This was how she really imagined flying would be: frightening, thrilling and with that little spark of something she forgot existed. If she could find a way to bottle a moment, she'd take this one instead of all the party highs she experienced and would experience. And on the days when she was down and the booze and the dope couldn't do the trick, she'd get the bottle, yank out the cork and give herself a whiff and remember what it was like to be a young girl again.

On second thought, fuck the booze and fuck the dope. Just let her have this moment forever and ever, and she'd want for nothing more. She'd take on her addictions cold turkey and save up for her own pair of skates this Christmas. She'd spend her nights here instead of at the clubs and she'd fly for as long as possible, no longer trying to lose herself in the moment of the music but to find herself in the eternity of the dance. And when the morning came, the staff would arrive for the day shift to find her still out here on the ice, having rejected the idea of sleep to hold onto a vague dream.

She told herself all this as she found herself warming to the discovery of this newfound grace. She would forget it all afterwards, but occasionally, it would come back and catch her from behind in between the daily happenings of her life to make her hesitate: when she's in the middle of crossing the road, right as she downed the shot of tequila, after she woke up in a stranger's bed with the mother of all hangovers and before she fell asleep at night while staring at the ceiling in the dark, alone with her most unwanted thoughts.

"There you go." He pulled her closer, and his hands went up to her elbows, and so did hers. His breath came out frost-white and pale blue under the glowing lights of the stadium. It looked cleaner than the smoke he blew after hitting the blunt. Purer. "See?" He queried, raising both eyebrows as he caught the trace of a grin through her messy red hair before it disappeared. "What I tell you?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Chillax," they both said at the same time.

They looked around. The children were sitting down and pulling off their skates in the seats outside the rink, despondent at how good things had to come to an end as their parents waited patiently. The grandparents had arms around each other's shoulders and were slowly making their way to the exits, huddling together not for the warmth but for the intimacy.

But the couples. The couples were still on the rink with them. Around them they circled, chest to chest, face to face and eye to eye, stuck in their own staring contests of which neither of them seemed willing to lose at.

He caught her looking at them all, and he shivered as a thought just occurred to him. "You want to keep going?" he asked. Audrey glanced at him, turned his way and nodded.

"Yes."

I know that there's a lot of stories which deal with Audrey and her backstory with a very dark tone, so I reckoned this might be a welcome change of scenery.