"Whoa!"
The world spins around her as she tries to stand up on the silly skates, and Alfredo catches her before she falls. Her eyes meet his huge brown ones and her heart falters at the adoration she sees in them. Alfredo's like no other man she's seen before: normally, men can't wait to lord it over her, to take advantage of their superior knowledge in any field. But he doesn't give her instructions, doesn't deliver a lecture on balance; he just holds her up until she can find her feet at her own pace.
"This is hard!" she exclaims, but he just smiles encouragingly and holds her tighter. Colette feels safe in his arms, and this is something she's never allowed herself to do, to feel protected; she's honest enough to admit she likes it. She supposes she should feel threatened by this change in herself, but she looks up into the innocent brown eyes, and finds herself giggling like a schoolgirl, like a simpering idiot, and she can't find it in herself to stop.
She knows why she doesn't mind, too. Alfredo's only been her boyfriend for a week, but what she loves about him is something she's never found in any other man: he doesn't mind her being in control. She's always scared men off because she won't pretend to be the sweet, helpless little female; she won't defer to anyone's nonexistent superiority. Oh, she respects her true superiors and defers to those who know better, but she won't act sweet and helpless just because females are meant to be. And it's always put men off – until now.
But Alfredo thinks her strength is sexy. He doesn't have the insecurities, the hang-ups that she so hates about men, the need to be lord and master of all he surveys. He's even admitted to her that she's his first girlfriend, and that stuns her; most men would never let their womenfolk know their lack of experience. But Alfredo doesn't see it that way, and it raises him inestimably in her sight. He knows he's klutzy and diffident and green, and he looks up to her, and that in itself is enough to make her melt.
But today she discovers that 'klutzy, diffident and green' melts away when he gets on skates.
It's the strangest thing. Considering his culinary talents, she'd have expected him to shine like this in the kitchen, but no – not even when he's cooking does he have this radiance, the way someone glows when he's found his true vocation. The moment he's on his skates and gets moving, Alfredo, who can't walk across a room without tripping, who can't pick something up without fumbling it, who makes walking normally look like a hard-won achievement, suddenly transforms into a flying figure, graceful as a swallow, moving faster than the eye can see, faster than humanly possible. He flits past her, swooshes back in a blur so rapid its turbulence ripples her hair, flick-flacks his way back and forth on the local kids' obstacle course so fast that they stare open-mouthed for a moment, then shout and break into applause. His grace awes her, makes her realize that here is something she can look up to, respect, learn from.
She's never seen anything like it. And she wants him to teach her.
And so it is that she's here, in his arms, taking her first wobbly steps on wheels. And it's great to find that there's something she can learn from him, great to look up to him in this. Because she finds that, when no-one is lording it over her, it's quite fun to feel safe in a man's arms. Well – not any old man. Just Alfredo. Her Alfredo.
She grins like an idiot and holds onto her Alfredo as, slipping and sliding, they make their way across Pont Alexandre III – towards, she hopes, their future.