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I glance down at the red fabric and then smile up at Charlie. “But I still want to take this dress out on the town.”
“Leave it to me,” he grins, pulling into the next lane. “I’ve got plans.”
19
GRACE
I spendthe evening of my ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend’s wedding admiring Charlie Fox’s handsome face by candlelight. Did I ever think he was annoyingly good-looking? Well, I take it back. I’m a fan. He takes me to his favorite tapas spot, where we sit close, talking and laughing. The whole world seems to disappear around us. There’s the ambient sound of other conversations and glasses clinking. There are low lights and the softest touch of music. But all my senses point toward Charlie.
After we’ve eaten, I privately decide on our next activity. I love surprising him, love watching him light up at something unexpectedly fun. The event I have in my mind will do this for sure.
“There’s something I’ve never done with a guy,” I confess, moving close to him, “that I really want to do with you tonight.”
Charlie grins, wolfish. “I’ll get the check.”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?” I bite my lower lip as I smile at him. Then, in a sultry voice, “Can you… Roller skate?”
“Can I… What?” He pauses, clearly trying to imagine what sexual act could include roller skates. “… Sure. I mean, I think so.”
“Good,” I say, satisfied with both the answer and his confusion. “Then let’s head to Brooklyn.”
We stopby my apartment for a white feather boa that is stuffed in my closet. It’s leftover from a murder-mystery dinner party that Skye and Jen threw last year, but now I need it for ‘90s theme night. When I run back out to the car, Charlie shakes his head. “You’re all decked out. I think I need a better costume.”
“No way.” I had him lose the jacket and unbutton his white oxford so that it’s hanging loose over a white undershirt. “The beauty of Josh is that his clothes are non-descript. Everyone will know I’m Cher, and they’ll figure out who you are.”
“Or they’ll be… Clueless,” Charlie says. He grimaces against his own bad joke, and I laugh. I love every peek behind-the-scenes at Charlie Fox, right down to the corny jokes he’d never try in public.
We walk the rest of the way, holding hands and chatting through the paths of Prospect Park.
Charlie stops when the skating rink is in view.
“I had no idea this was here,” he marvels.
For tonight, there’s an enormous banner: Wonderland Roller Nights, and already, the rink is filling up with skaters under neon purple and blue overhead lights. There’s hula-hooping, glittery outfits, and reveling in ridiculous fashion. The pulse of a remixed Mariah Carey song reaches my ears.
“Did you go to birthday parties at that place in Hayworth?” Charlie asks, eagerly. “That roller rink that had planets hanging from the ceiling?”
“Solar System Skating? Ofcourse.”
“It reminds me of that,” Charlie says. “Only… Trippy.”
We grab our rental skates, and hit the rink. Somewhere in New York, Nadia and Miles are probably having their first dance, but I’d take this any day, skating past all five Spice Girls while Boyz II Men plays overhead.
The comparison doesn’t matter to me—it’s not like a contest, anyway. What matters is that I’m better now, a year later, than I ever was with Miles. Not because Charlie Fox flew into my life with an elbow bump and a proposition. But because he saw past all the stuff I couldn’t—and made me see myself in a new light, too. Now I know, I’m way more than a dumped, menial PA doomed to bad dates and even worse bosses.
I always was, I guess, I just couldn’t believe it.
If someone tells you a story about yourself often enough, you start thinking it’s true. You start repeating it. But now I’ve broken out of that narrative, I know, there’s so much more I can be. I’m capable as hell, flirty, seductive… I’m
the one trying to skate backward, laughing as my feet trace a figure eight. I’m the one who doesn’t second-guess the look on Charlie’s face right before he kisses me in the middle of the roller rink.
I’m the one having the time of my life.
With him.
By the time we get back to Charlie’s place, we’re drunk on the wild magic of the evening’s events. The muscle memory of skating—gliding forward—is still in my legs, and I keep gripping Charlie’s arm for stability.
“God, that was so fun,” Charlie says, once we’re inside the door. “I never would have guessed the rink was there.”
