"Has Juniper Hollow always looked like this?"
"I have no idea."
He laughed. "Fair point."
A comfortable silence settled between us. The kind that no longer felt surprising. Now I couldn't seem to go more than a few minutes without wanting to know what was happening inside his head.
"My dad taught me when I was four," I said after a moment.
Kieran turned toward me. "To skate?"
I nodded. "He put me on the ice and let go."
"That sounds irresponsible."
"It was."
"What happened?"
"I fell."
He looked pleased by that.
I continued. "Then I got up and fell again."
"Better."
"And again."
"Excellent."
I laughed. "Eventually I figured it out."
He smiled and looked back out the window. "My elementary school used to take field trips to a roller rink once a year."
"Did you ever get better after your fight with the folding table?"
"Not really."
I shook my head. "You've gone twenty-one years without learning to skate."
"Apparently."
"We're fixing that tonight."
He gave me a look. "That's an ambitious use of the word fixing."
Maybe it was.
But as I drove through the snow-covered streets with Christmas lights reflecting across the windshield and Kieran sitting beside me, I found myself wanting to give him every experience he'd missed.
A few minutes later, the skating rink came into view.
The outdoor rink sat beside a larger building that housed the indoor rink. A towering tree stood near the entrance. Its branches were covered in ornaments and ribbons that shimmered against the snow. Holiday music drifted from hidden speakers as people moved across the ice in slow circles.
The parking lot was half full. Kieran climbed out of the truck and shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
The cold bit at my cheeks as we walked toward the entrance. The air carried the familiar sounds of a rink in winter. Bladesscraped across ice. Laughter drifted from a group of teenagers gathered near the boards.
