Watermelons

CW: implied abusive relationship; stalking.

Hannah’s fingertips sweep over the ice as her knee bends to absorb her impact. She smiles up at me, skates cutting across the rink to where I wobble, gripping the wall. The scratching of her skates gives me goosebumps.

“Show off,” I call out.

Ginny was supposed to be here with us. She was supposed to fall with me—maybe back out of this part with me—while Hannah went flying. She’s the only reason Hannah and I are ever in the same room, anyway. But when Ginny got called in to work, she decided that my birthday wasn’t worth disappointing her boss. So here I am, hanging out one-on-one with Hannah. It’s been oddly nice, actually. The apple picking in the frosty morning, the much-needed coffee stop on the way here. And somehow, she keeps finding things to talk about when I go quiet.

She comes to a deft stop and reaches out to me. “Come on,” she urges. “I got you.”

“We really don’t have to do this.” I see her cheeks fall, so I backpedal. “I mean, I’m having a good day anyway. If you want to skate, go for it. I can check out the snacks.”

She shakes her head. “Snacks are for skaters.”

Her hands are warm in mine when I push off the wall. We start slowly, snaking through the metallic cold. She coaches me through the ‘watermelons’ that are supposed to train my legs, ankles, nerves into some facsimile of comfort. How can she skate backward with such control? And how am I so unsteady? It’s just ice. Just frozen water, the stuff of life. It’s not like I’m scaling a skyscraper. It isn’t healthy to shake like this.

Despite her suggestion to lift my gaze, I can’t tear my eyes from my feet. I need to know they’re still there. When I glimpse her face through my bangs, she’s looking at me like I’m a math problem in need of solving.

God, she’s intimidating. So adult. Maybe it’s because I only know her as an adult, unlike Ginny—audience to my adolescent stumbles. Hannah is a fresh start, a blank page. The pressure not to mar it.

“What’s your favorite Disney movie?” she asks, probably to distract me from my own toes, the lines carved into the ice.

I search for an answer, any answer, any words.

“Uh.” My right blade slips farther away from me than my balance can handle, but Hannah crouches, becoming my Atlas, stabilizing me. I take a breath, then wheeze out, “101 Dalmatians? Is that Disney?”

“Really?” She eases us through a left turn. My feet flail to keep up, buzzing over the small inconsistencies in the ice’s surface. “Deep pull. Which version?”

I listen to the scrape of her blades, let the sound become a metronome.

“Live action. It’s been forever since I watched it, though.” I find a new rhythm, pushing against the ice as if I know what I’m doing. “I’m pretty sure most of what I remember didn’t actually happen.”

She laughs, an honest throaty sound.

“Like what?” she asks.

“Like…” I surprise myself by closing my eyes for just a second. When I feel my feet start to drift behind me, I rip my eyes back open. “Uh… There’s some colorful goo? But more, um…” My legs seem to have run out of shake. “There’s a scene where the main woman is getting ready for a date. She’s asking her dog for help picking out clothes, and the clothes are simple and sheer and blush, and it just seemed like that’s what the future was.” Hannah lets go of my hands, taking her warmth with her and letting my palms hover unsupported. I take a breath. “That one day I would grow up, have clothes like that, go on dates like that, and meet someone life-changing.”

I miss that angle of love. Looking up at it from below, there was hope in it. At thirteen, I entered the only real relationship I’ve ever been in. I went into it, ballooned by little-kid hope and romanticism, rose-colored blind to the possibility of disaster. First, I ignored the smell of rot because I deluded myself into thinking that gross, sticky feeling was just a part of love that no one talked about. Then, the fear arrived and held me down. The weight of what might happen if I didn’t do what he wanted, if I ripped it all away. Leaving took four years. I haven’t so much as kissed anyone since. Ginny’s never let me live it down.

I’m not sure anything will ever feel the way movies promised.

“You’re doing it,” she whispers.

Hannah twists into the empty space beside me so we’re skating side by side; the rink blooms in front of me. Empty seats cascade from the high corners all around, an avalanche careening toward the ice, held back by the glass. A young family skates together on the other side of the rink. The father stands just beyond the glass, shielded by a cup of popcorn. The children are graced with that foolish but effective confidence that makes balancing easier, thoughtless.

I’m watching the two kids gain speed when my blade catches on nothing, and the ice flies up to meet me. Somehow, down here on the floor, the scent of ozone is strongest.

“You good?” Hannah asks from above. Down here, in hell, the ice is less slippery than I thought it would be. Just cold and unforgiving and gritty with powder.

“Yeah,” I force a self-deprecating laugh, but she doesn’t follow my lead. Instead, her face stays serious, concerned, unwelcoming to the levity that I want so badly to fake. I want to go home. I want to be alone. I want to burrow into my bed until Ginny comes home and then tell her everything, that Hannah is just as overbearing as ever. But I also want to skate with Hannah some more. I want to see how fast we have to go for her to fall. I want to talk to her about Ginny’s abandonment, her fair-weather turns. I want to see how long it takes for me to bore her away.

The speakers overhead transition into a familiar song, and a smile splits Hannah’s face open, revealing the pearl of her teeth, the bubblegum of her tongue. “Come on!” She grasps my good wrist. “You can’t be on the floor for ‘Island in the Sun.’”

Grudgingly, I let her help me up. It takes a minute of slow, hand-in-hand skating for my legs to gain any confidence back, but they get there. She goes right on skating with me.

Hannah’s humming along to the music when I ask, “What’s your favorite Disney movie?”

Her head bobs to the beat. “Easy. Lilo and Stitch.”

“Explain.”

She looks up toward the ceiling to consider.

“I think because of Nani.” Hannah peels off our path to do a quick jump before continuing. “I think I liked the idea of having someone looking out for me the way that she does for Lilo.”

I watch her skate. Her blades carve confident slices into the ice.

“Have you ever had a Nani?”

That throaty laugh is back, warming the air around me. “Hell no. I have an older sister, but she ditched as soon as she could.”

“What about someone else? Not your sister?”

Hannah’s eyes cut to me, and her smile slips just for a second. Then she’s back to her tall, assured self. “No.”

She glides away again and folds herself into a spin—low to the ground and beautiful, a lily pad twisting on a pond. When she returns to the slow-moving track I’m paving, she changes the subject.

“The rink back home was always so busy. I love how open this one is.”

“I have no comparison.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell.”

I launch a sarcastic scoff at her and surprise both of us by reaching for the soft curve of her arm. “I’d school you at basketball.”

“Challenge accepted.” She places her hand over where mine rests on her forearm. Her gaze holds mine for a moment. Our hands stay connected as we coast across the ice. Finally, I pull my gaze up to meet hers.

“You don’t always have to be the person who has it all together, you know,” I say. “Nobody has it all together all of the time.”

She bites her lip. She’s just parting her lips to respond when my phone rings.

“Crap,” I mutter. We make our way over to the wall.

My phone screen is alight with Ginny’s face. “Yeah?”

“Dude, he’s calling me again.”

I glance up to where Hannah stands beside me, face full of concern and questions. I whisper into the phone, “Why don’t you block him?”

“I tried, but he keeps changing numbers!”

I can hear the clattering of dishes. Ginny must be hiding in the back room of the restaurant where she works. “Don’t answer random numbers, Gin.”

“Don’t blame me,” she spits. “You’re the one who dated a psycho; you’re the reason he calls me to find you. Do you understand how much chaos this has brought into my life?”

I don’t respond. I look at Hannah for any sign that she can hear what Ginny is saying. She definitely can.

“You haven’t been talking to him again, right?”

“No,” I tell Ginny, but really I feel like it’s Hannah I’m talking to. “I haven’t been answering.”

“Good.” With that, Ginny ends the call, and I’m left wanting to hurl my phone across the rink, right into the opposite glass. But then I would be a psycho, too. So instead, I push the phone roughly into my back pocket.

Hannah’s standing just a bit too far away. “You know you don’t have to babysit me today,” I say. I know it’s the wrong thing to say, but I can’t stop myself.

She is silent for a painful moment. Then, quietly: “I’ve had a great time.”

I can’t look at her. I can’t bring myself to see whatever pity or disgust might be waiting for me.

“After hearing that, though…” Hannah continues, pulling some strength back into her voice. “I’m glad she didn’t come, actually. This has been better without her.”

My brows scrunch at the thought. Ginny is the glue. She’s the only reason I haven’t spent the past few birthdays alone. I owe her everything.

But then I think about the years that I spent in that relationship. The decade that I’ve spent trapped in its shadow. My own stubborn refusal to let in any light, any childish hope.

I look up again and catch Hannah’s eyes, and there’s no pity there—just the unflappability of someone who knows how unreliable other people can be.

Alright. Jump.

And I kiss someone for the first time in a decade. And her lips taste like watermelon lip balm. And when my right skate starts sliding away, she pulls me closer, letting me reset my footing.