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It was so wholesome it hurt.
Except I was walking through all of it like a dark bitter cloud, sick with my own hope and foolishness.
I shouldn’t have come.
This week of practice had been great, to start. The Taylor Swift routine had become part of the team’s warm up program. The guys were really embracing the more complicated footwork routines. I’d really started to feel like I was contributing. That this experimental job was becoming something solid under my skates.
The only downside, Dillon had ignored me all week.
He’d worked hard. He’d done everything I’d asked. He called me Coach Tyler-Branch respectfully…and that was it.
No texts. No surprise visits to my apartment. No mention of this weekend at all.
At one point I’d tried to get him isolated on one side of the rink, away from everyone else, so I could confirm one way or the other if our little rendezvous was still happening.
“Hey, can I talk to you about the Fall Festival?”
“What about it?”
“There is an apartment above a bookstore, I can rent just for the weekend-”
“You should do that if you want. I’ve got to get back to practice.”
That had been it. He’d cut me off about the apartment, then skated away. The sum total of our exchange for days.
Of course I’d already rented it before I’d even talked to him. I suppose I could have canceled and gotten my deposit back, but I decided it could at least be an overnight vacation from my terrible apartment.
Once I got here, I contemplated just curling up in the lovely bed with the window that overlooked the town and reading all weekend. Or maybe taking a hike. There seemed to be a lot of trails in Calico Cove. But that seemed like too much effort and bug spray.
And after twenty minutes of reading the same page of my book, I cried uncle, threw on my shoes and headed down to the festival.
I could still play the games and contests and win shit.
Winning shit would make me feel better.
The clown game was a classic. Shoot water into the mouth with a water pistol until the balloon over the clown’s head filled with air and eventually popped. You had to have a steady hand and clear vision. You couldn’t stand around thinking about a guy who brought you dinner one week and then ignored you the next. You couldn’t think about how he made your knees weak and infuriated you at the same time.
You couldn’t remember how his kiss had made you wonder if you’d been doing sex wrong your whole damn life.
“Hey, excuse me,” A woman said from behind me. “My son would really like to play the clown game, but you’ve taken up a spot now for almost thirty minutes.”
“The sign says I can play until I get beat,” I said, pointing out the sign on the side of the booth.
The woman, holding the hand of a boy I imagined to be around ten, gave me that look. That look that I’d seen so many times from skater-moms who all sort of hated me because I was better than their daughters.
I didn’t take it personally.
“These games are for the children.”
“One of the prizes is an aura reading from a psychic,” I gave her a sideways smirk, not taking my eyes off Bozo and the balloon I was filling. “I think these games are for everyone.”
A spot opened up two slots down and the woman huffed and pushed her son into it.
I handed over another dollar to the teenage kid working the stand.
“Am I being a jerk?” I asked. The kid had a name tag that read Nick.
Nick smiled. “Yeah, a little bit, but I think it’s hysterical. I sort of have a…competitive family, so I understand where you’re coming from.”
