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She held up a whole set of keys. “Zane told me you were closing up, but that you’d probably lock the doors and stay late. So he gave me his keys. His truck too, actually.”
My smiled widened as I hugged her again. I’d been so worried. It had been a few days since… well…
“You came here just for me?”
Ariana laughed. “Well I didn’t come to go ice skating.”
I’d spent the past few days working out, skating hard, and deleting text-messages. I’d ignored calls. Turned down every groupie and puck-bunny who had the courage to approach me. And of course, I spent the whole time thinking about Ariana. Hoping against hope that what we’d done together hadn’t frightened her off for good.
Zane had let me close the place down more than once this week, even though it meant he’d have to run the Zamboni in the morning. But it helped me get things straight in my mind. It cleared my head.
“Wanna sit down?”
Ariana gestured and together we plopped into the bleachers. Immediately my legs thanked me. I realized it had been hours since I was off my feet.
“The others are worried,” she smiled. “They tell me you’ve been here for days.”
“Off and on,” I agreed. “But yeah. I guess so.”
“You missed a game over at Inline the other night,” she pointed out. “And you never miss games.”
I looked down at the floor. Unlike the new Inline rinks, which were sleek and modernized, this one was covered with the stink of old carpet.
“The team was fine without me,” I told her. “It’s not like they—“
“Axel, what’s going on?”
A warm hand closed over mine, as Ari put her head on my shoulder. The proximity of her body felt nice. She smelled absolutely amazing.
“This place is almost over,” I sighed wistfully, looking around. “Its days are numbered.”
She nodded against me. “And that’s depressing to you?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Very.”
“Liminal spaces,” she murmured.
“What?”
“The uncertain transition between where you’re going and where you’ve been,” explained Ari. “This place is about to be something else, and there’s a sadness to that. A nostalgia. The reminder that everything moves forward, even when you don’t want it to.”
“Especially when I don’t want it to,” I agreed.
“Yes. But that’s life.”
I looked up at the exit and saw my mother, waving goodbye as she dropped us off all those years ago. I saw Ryan; lacing up my skates before he taught me how to do it myself. Jamie, bringing back a fistful of candy bars from the vending machine that used to stand in the corner. These and other forgotten ghosts faded in and out, as I scanned my way across the big empty space.
“I have such fantastic memories of this place,” I sighed. The nostalgia was a bowling ball, sitting on my chest. “Of doing things that I’ll never do again.”
“I know,” Ari commiserated. “It sucks.”
“It does.”
“But you’ll do other things, in other places,” she went on. “You’ll make new memories — bigger and brighter ones. And know what the best part is?”
“What?”
“That this place will always be. It’ll live in your memory forever. Or for as long as you’re around, anyway.”
