Skate Love Quotes

I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going. I stopped breathing. “I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.” Holy. Fuck. “I love you so fucking much, Jasmine, that if I broke my ankle during a program, I would get up and finish it for you, to get you what you’ve always wanted.

I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.

And I love you too.” His fingers skate the edge of my jaw, dance briefly over my lips. “You should know that. You have to know that.

Party lights hang over the street, yellow and red and green. Sadie stumbles over someone’s chair, but I’m ready for this and I catch her easily by the arm. “Sorry, clumsy,” she says. “You always were, Sadie. One of your more endearing traits.” Before she can ask about that I slip my arm around her waist. She slips hers around mine, still looking up at me. The lights skate across her cheeks and shine in her eyes. We clasp hands, fingers folding together naturally, and for me the years fall away like a coat that’s too heavy and too tight. In that moment, I hope on thing above all others: that she was not too busy to find at least one good man … She speaks in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music. But I hear her – I always did. “Who are you, George?” “Someone you knew in another life, honey.

Champions never sleep, the eternal spirit keep them alert and awake.

Dance less in motion and more in spirit; awaken the dreamer within.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.

Love: a burnt match skating in a urinal.

Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.

It was hard to hear him, but she turned around, and when she faced him again he was smiling broadly. He pulled his glove off and held up three fingers, then kissed his palm and pressed it to the glass. She pressed her hand against his, and said, “Good luck.” Shea skated off with a nod. “Oh. My. God. Y’all disgust me. That was straight out of some sappy love story,” Harper complained.

Music does not need language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation.

It is not over. Champions extend their limits and make things happen.

I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going. I stopped breathing. “I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.” Holy. Fuck. “I love you so fucking much, Jasmine, that if I broke my ankle during a program, I would get up and finish it for you, to get you what you’ve always wanted.” It was love. All I could feel was love. I was going to cry. I was going to fucking cry. Right. Then. “You mean so much to me that that’s why whatever happens doesn’t really matter to me. Not like it used to. Not like it ever will again,” he finished, pressing his forehead against mine, his eyes intense and heartbreaking. “You’re not ever going to be anyone else’s partner. Not while I’m alive, Meatball. I will drag your stubborn, beautiful ass kicking and screaming back to me because nobody else will ever be good enough for you.” I blinked. I blinked so fast I knew I was about two point five seconds away from losing my shit. And then Ivan ended me. He ended every worry I’d ever had about there being someone after him. He did it right there with the tip of his nose touching my own and his forehead against mine too. “Because I’m okay with you having ten other people be your favorite. But you’re always going to be my favorite person,” he finished. “Always. No matter what.

I love the smell of the ice... And the cold. The sound the puck makes when it's sliding across the ice or when hits the net for a goal... as long as it's our goal. I love the sound of sticks crashing against one another. The sound my skates make when I come to a hard stop. The roar of the crowd. The way I feel when i'm playing. I can do things on this ice that I can't do anywhere else.

Dance resides within us all. Some find it when joy conquers sorrow, others express it through celebration of movements; and then there are those... whose existence is dance,

Soar like an eagle beyond skies of heavens reach; as wings of dreams dance with winds of reality.

One way or the other, come back to me, in a month, or a year, when you’re old, a haunt in my dreams, an invasion of my sanity, make a way to come back.

When the melody plays, footsteps move, heart sings and spirit begin to dance.

Do you remember that old TV series, Get Smart? Do you remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everyone keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.

When you read as many books as Klaus Baudelaire, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not become useful for a long time. You might read a book that would teach you all about the exploration of outer space, even if you do not become an astronaut until you are eighty years old. You might read a book about how to preform tricks on ice skates, and then not be forced to preform these tricks for a few weeks. You might read a book on how to have a successful marriage, when the only women you will ever love has married someone else and then perished one terrible afternoon.

Yes, Mom, I know that I'll never find anybody who loves me with blue hair. That's why I dyed it pink.

We fell into the love that had been lying beneath our love like water below ice, and understood that while we had been having a lot of fun together we had only been skating on the surface, and now we were in as deep as we could go.

She calls me 'bird boy' and Hawkeye every time she gets a chance. Last year she bought me a bow and arrow for my birthday and told me it was for when the Avengers were called into action.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

Oh. A bigger studio. It dawns on me, stupid me, that Henry could win the lottery at any time at all; that he has never bothered to do so because it's not normal; that he has decided to set aside his fanatical dedication to living like a normal person so I can have a studio big enough to roller-skate across; that I am being an ingrate. "Clare? Earth to Clare..." "Thank you," I say, too abruptly.

Skating was a gift given to me, and it's a sport I love. I go out there every single day and there isn't a day I don't want to be out there

I don’t really care about your love life, but if you’re going to date, I want it to be someone like Alec, who looks at you like he knows how lucky he is.

Live or die, but don't poison everything... Well, death's been here for a long time -- it has a hell of a lot to do with hell and suspicion of the eye and the religious objects and how I mourned them when they were made obscene by my dwarf-heart's doodle. The chief ingredient is mutilation. And mud, day after day, mud like a ritual, and the baby on the platter, cooked but still human, cooked also with little maggots, sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother, the damn bitch! Even so, I kept right on going on, a sort of human statement, lugging myself as if I were a sawed-off body in the trunk, the steamer trunk. This became perjury of the soul. It became an outright lie and even though I dressed the body it was still naked, still killed. It was caught in the first place at birth, like a fish. But I play it, dressed it up, dressed it up like somebody's doll. Is life something you play? And all the time wanting to get rid of it? And further, everyone yelling at you to shut up. And no wonder! People don't like to be told that you're sick and then be forced to watch you come down with the hammer. Today life opened inside me like an egg and there inside after considerable digging I found the answer. What a bargain! There was the sun, her yolk moving feverishly, tumbling her prize -- and you realize she does this daily! I'd known she was a purifier but I hadn't thought she was solid, hadn't known she was an answer. God! It's a dream, lovers sprouting in the yard like celery stalks and better, a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchings, picking roses off my hackles. If I'm on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. And if I'm ice they simply skate on me in little ballet costumes. Here, all along, thinking I was a killer, anointing myself daily with my little poisons. But no. I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar. Even with the witches' gymnastics they trust my incalculable city, my corruptible bed. O dearest three, I make a soft reply. The witch comes on and you paint her pink. I come with kisses in my hood and the sun, the smart one, rolling in my arms. So I say Live and turn my shadow three times round to feed our puppies as they come, the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown, despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy! Despite the pails of water that waited, to drown them, to pull them down like stones, they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue and fumbling for the tiny tits. Just last week, eight Dalmatians, 3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood each like a birch tree. I promise to love more if they come, because in spite of cruelty and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens, I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann. The poison just didn't take. So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.

You can stay home,” V muttered. “You really can totally f-in’ stay the f home, you f’ed-up mother-f’ing f-twit.” Lassiter clasped his breastplate, and swooned like Julie Andrews. “Don’t you love it when he can’t swear? Warms my cockles—it’s like watching a drunk on roller skates try to play dodgeball in the dark—

Because I look at you, and I think, you and me, we’re going to get married one day. And then, if you’re a very good wife…” His eyes skated over my face as he paused, and it felt like a loving caress; but it also felt possessive and dangerous. His cadence dropped, deepened, as his stare settled on my lips. “If you’re a very good wife, we’ll have a mortgage.

And don't think that has anything to do with this." He points to his eye. "I'm aware in the moments I lack emotion. You and Garrick don't need to share little oh no glances. I already feel it. It's like sliding over a frozen lake while a shrinking part of me screams that I'm supposed to be swimming in those pieces I've bartered away, and those feelings are right beneath the surface, but fuck is skating faster and a hell of a lot less messy. This shit?" He swings his finger back toward the house. "It's messy and painful and infuriating, and if I could choose to give this portion of myself away, so help me, Malek, I would. I get it now. It's not just the power that's addicting; it's the freedom to not feel this." "Xaden," I whisper, all but bleeding out by the time he finishes. [...] "Don't barter it away." I beg as he stares at the sea and the words spill out of me faster and faster as his eyes harden and he resurrects the defences it took me a year to break past. "The pain. The mess. Give it to me. I'll hold it. I know that sounds ludicrous, but I'll find a way." I lace our fingers. "I will hold everything you don't want to feel because I love every part of you." "You already hold my soul and now you want my pain? Getting greedy, Violence." He brings my hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss over my knuckles before letting go.

Hearts shall dance once again; when canvas of ice is painted with the brush of skates.

Worrying about what other people were doing was a waste of time and energy; I’d learned that as a kid when other girls had nicer costumes and newer skates than me. Being jealous and bitter was what people who didn’t have anything better to do, did. I knew that. No one did anything with their lives if they spent it comparing themselves to other people. I knew that too. And I never wanted to be that person.

He enjoyed a brief fantasy as he sat on the bench of pressing Shane against the glass after scoring a goal and kissing him breathless. That would shut this fucking crowd up. “Man,” Bood said as they skated to the bench, “this town hates you.” “Nah. They wish I played for them.” Bood laughed. “Hollander would hate that.” “My good friend Shane Hollander, you mean?” “There’s no way he likes you that much.” “He loves me,” Ilya said plainly. Honestly. Bood, of course, thought he was kidding. “Now you’re really dreaming.” Ilya chomped on his mouthguard to avoid smiling.

Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed?

He wagged his finger in my face. "You're not SUPPOSED to do anything. YOU'RE the one trying to change ME. Remember? As far as I'M concerned, YOU can do anything you want." "Except criticize you." "Hey," he said, "if that's how you want to spend your life, getting on my case"--he threw out his arms--"be my guest." He turned his deep blue eyes on me. "And anyway--" He let it hang there. He was smirking. Suddenly I felt as if I were on roller skates. "What?" "I know why you're doing it." I stopped. He walked on. "Doing what?" I said. "What? Why?" I think I was babbling. He flipped his answer as blithely as a candy wrapper over his shoulder: "You know.

All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit's children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road that bounded the deep-grassed acres of Tohoga House, their home.

World seems like a void of silence every time footsteps are deprived of dancing shoes.

She loved hockey. Loved the speed, the agility. The fights. The men. Brawny, sweaty, messy. They let their hair grown, though no one would ever accuse them of being feminine, not with perpetual five o'clock shadow and bulging muscles. They skated with the grace of ballet dancers and fought at the drop of a glove.

The moms I knew when I was little didn't have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It's assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don't you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I'm not cis. I'm trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I'm constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it's not unnatural or twisted that I want a child's love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with — and you too, Katrina, for that matter — have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, I'll explain mine. And do you know what I'll say? Ditto.

No, you don't write about love for the very same reason you refuse to learn to roller skate. You dislike the idea of introducing anything that requires hurting yourself repeatedly before you get good at it.

There’s a folding chair by the water and there I think you sit and laugh and feel a love so rare. There’s ice around your island, you’ve got your skates, There goes a boy whose beauty never fades. You’re playing a game, don’t even feel cold, There plays a boy who’ll never grow old. You’re everything you wanted to be You’re safe and happy, wild and free.

I was obsessive. I had ignored my family for the last ten plus years. Nothing and no one else had mattered as much as figure skating had… at least on the outside. I had taken them for granted until I thought I had lost this sport. Nothing else had mattered as much as the chance to win something. To be someone. To make them proud.

The boldest little girl places her fists on her hips and sneers up at me. "You're too big to be a ballerina." My arms cross over my chest. "Yeah? Well you're too small to ride the really fun roller coasters." She sticks her tongue out at me. I stick mine out right back.

Skate, if it were possible to choose who we fall in love with, no one would ever get it done, because we’d all be chasing after this ideal person who doesn’t even exist.

Nothing's wrong. But a lot is right.

The way you look tonight, there is no way I can upstage you. I’m just going to look like a lucky-ass dude holding hands with the prettiest girl at the skating

I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.

Figure skating had always made me feel invincible. But more than anything, back then, it had made me feel amazing. I hadn't known it was possible to feel like you could fly. To be so strong. To be so beautiful. To be good at something. Especially something I cared about.

Everyone looked better at a distance. Everyone sounded sweetest when you did not have to hear them talk too long. After her husband hung up, Natasha skated past her brother at the wall, their mother cleaning her glasses beside him. Loving someone close-up—that was difficult.

1. I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates. 2. The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.” 3. Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay. 4. The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies. 5. You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice. 6. Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.” 7. You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent. 8. I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it. 9. I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.” 10. I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave. 11. I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help. 12. Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself. 13. I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.” 14. The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.

I loved school. I loved new shoes and lunch boxes and sharp pencils. I would hold dance contests in tiny finished basements with my friends. I roller-skated in my driveway and walked home from the bus stop on my own. We never locked our door. I had a younger brother whom I loved and also liked. I thought my mother was the most beautiful mother in the world and my father was a superhero who would always protect me. I wish this feeling for every child on earth.

It’s not often for me that reality is better than fantasy.  This is one of those times.  Reed next to me, in my bed, breathing against my chest.  She was the Diane Court to my Lloyed Dobler.

I love this woman like I’ve never loved anyone or anything. I love her more than the sun on my face rising over the mountain, the feel of fresh ice under my skates, or hoisting that cup over my head. I love my little firefly like I have no other option, and the truth is maybe I never have.

Love derives from friction between two people. Like matches, like an ice skate, like falling stars that light up when they scratch the air, we need friction in order for something to happen in our lives.

It was here in the darkness of night and warmth of my bed that I made my confession, inside myself and silently to her.  I loved her.  It was too fast, too rushed, too new, but I didn’t care.  I loved her.

I made it three days before the text messages started one afternoon while I was trying to finish warming up before our afternoon session. I had gotten to the LC later than usual and had gone straight to the training room, praising Jesus that I’d decided to change my clothes before leaving the diner once I’d seen what time it was and had remembered lunchtime traffic was a real thing. I was in the middle of stretching my hips when my phone beeped from where I’d left it on top of my bag. I took it out and snickered immediately at the message after taking my time with it. Jojo: WHAT THE FUCK JASMINE I didn’t need to ask what my brother was what-the-fucking over. It had only been a matter of time. It was really hard to keep a secret in my family, and the only reason why my mom and Ben—who was the only person other than her who knew—had kept their mouths closed was because they had both agreed it would be more fun to piss off my siblings by not saying anything and letting them find out the hard way I was going to be competing again. Life was all about the little things. So, I’d slipped my phone back into my bag and kept stretching, not bothering to respond because it would just make him more mad. Twenty minutes later, while I was still busy stretching, I pulled my phone out and wasn’t surprised more messages appeared. Jojo: WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME Jojo: HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME Jojo: DID THE REST OF YOU KEEP THIS FROM ME Tali: What happened? What did she not tell you? Tali: OH MY GOD, Jasmine, did you get knocked up? Tali: I swear, if you got knocked up, I’m going to beat the hell out of you. We talked about contraception when you hit puberty. Sebastian: Jasmine’s pregnant? Rubes: She’s not pregnant. Rubes: What happened, Jojo? Jojo: MOM DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS Tali: Would you just tell us what you’re talking about? Jojo: JASMINE IS SKATING WITH IVAN LUKOV Jojo: And I found out by going on Picturegram. Someone at the rink posted a picture of them in one of the training rooms. They were doing lifts. Jojo: JASMINE I SWEAR TO GOD YOU BETTER EXPLAIN EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW Tali: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS THIS TRUE? Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: I’m going on Lukov’s website right now to confirm this Rubes: I just called Mom but she isn’t answering the phone Tali: She knew about this. WHO ELSE KNEW? Sebastian: I didn’t. And quit texting Jas’s name over and over again. It’s annoying. She’s skating again. Good job, Jas. Happy for you. Jojo: ^^ You’re such a vibe kill Sebastian: No, I’m just not flipping my shit because she got a new partner. Jojo: SHE DIDN’T TELL US FIRST THO. What is the point of being related if we didn’t get the scoop before everybody else? Jojo: I FOUND OUT ON PICTUREGRAM Sebastian: She doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t tell you either. Tali: I can’t find anything about it online. Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: Tell us everything or I’m coming over to Mom’s today. Sebastian: You’re annoying. Muting this until I get out of work. Jojo: Party pooper Tali: Party pooper Jojo: Jinx Tali: Jinx Sebastian: Annoying ... I typed out a reply, because knowing them, if I didn’t, the next time I looked at my phone, I’d have an endless column of JASMINE on there until they heard from me. That didn’t mean my response had to be what they wanted. Me: Who is Ivan Lukov?

I had a very clear vision, of Selina with her hair about her shoulders, a crimson hat upon her head, a velvet coat, ice-skates - I must have been remembering some picture. I imagined myself beside her, the air coming sharply into our mouths. I imagined how it would be if I took her, not to Italy, but only to Marishes, to my sister's house; if I sat with her at supper, and shared her room, and kissed her - I cannot say what would frighten them most - her being a spirit-medium, or a convict, or a girl.

The public is fortunate. Everything pleases them: icecream cones, rock concerts, singing, swinging, love, hate, masturbation, hot dogs, country dances, Jesus Christ, roller skating, spiritualism, capitalism, communism, circumcision, comic strips, Bob Hope, skiing, fishing murder bowling debating, anything. They don’t expect much and they don’t get much. They are one grand gang.

Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.” “I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess. I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah. “Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue. I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.” “A long time… like how long?” That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?” “Because of figure skating?” “Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.” Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.” I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.” Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything. All he said was, “Hmm.” A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?” “I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.” I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense. He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.” It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?” Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.” I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.” “Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.” I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.” Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.” All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—” He smiled. “—in hell.” That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.” “Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.” “They’d try,” he countered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. There was something wrong with us. And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.

And how do you feel?" she whispers, like she doesn´t know she stole my heart, piece by piece, that first day in biology class, and that night we got frozen yogurt, and at our roller-skating date, bruised forehead and all, "Like I´m so in love with you, Molly Parker

My seven a.m. teacher was from France. And he spoke Frenglish. Sometimes it was funny, but when he announced which chapters we should study and the names came out in English, but the chapter numbers came out in French, I wanted to strangle the sacre bleu out of him.

All too often I try to skate away from the things I'm afraid of and things I don't like and am unwilling to accept. I'm selfish and difficult to handle. I give my men cause for concern. I worry them, but they haven't given up on me yet and I love them all the more for it.

She had no doubt the man would kill her. Stupid things went skating through her mind--she'd never told her mother how much she loved her chocolate cupcakes... or Felicia what a kind friend she'd been... or Keith that it was cool and mature that he owned a house, even if it was in Brooklyn.

Hence, Orlando and Sasha, as he called her for short, and because it was the name of a white Russian fox he had had as a boy—a creature soft as snow, but with teeth of steel, which bit him so savagely that his father had it killed—hence they had the river to themselves. Hot with skating and with love they would throw themselves down in some solitary reach, where the yellow osiers fringed the bank, and wrapped in a great fur cloak Orlando would take her in his arms, and know, for the first time, he murmured, the delights of love. Then, when the ecstasy was over and they lay lulled in a swoon on the ice, he would tell her of his other loves, and how, compared with her, they had been of wood, of sackcloth, and of cinders. And laughing at his vehemence, she would turn once more in his arms and give him, for love’s sake, one more embrace. And then they would marvel that the ice did not melt with their heat, and pity the poor old woman who had no such natural means of thawing it, but must hack at it with a chopper of cold steel. And then, wrapped in their sables, they would talk of everything under the sun; of sights and travels; of Moor and Pagan; of this man’s beard and that woman’s skin; of a rat that fed from her hand at table; of the arras that moved always in the hall at home; of a face; of a feather. Nothing was too small for such converse, nothing was too great.

Nellie, when are you going to straighten up?” “Never Mom, never.

Just like trying to ice skate on two sticks of butter in the desert, my love for her melted and was no good to anyone but a chef.


Just like trying to ice skate on two sticks of butter in the desert, my love for her melted and was no good to anyone but a chef.

Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn't. My first love was figure skating.

We clap and cheer as the couple shares their first married kiss. Then they head back up the aisle and Alexa leans in. "Are you ready to hora?" I frown. "What did you just call me?

We can’t date. Maybe we could fuck occasionally. But that’s it. Anything else is ridiculous.” A shiver ran through him as Baz’s body brushed his, hands skating over his arms. “Let’s be ridiculous.

The world stopped spinning. The wind paused in a spell of meditation. My heart sped past the sound barrier. The moment was so perfect that it couldn’t be contained by science. Magic shimmered all around us.

Candlelight flickered in the adjacent bedroom. She followed the ambient warmth to the threshold and paused there, marveling at what she saw. Lucan’s austere bedroom had been transformed into something out of a dream. Four tall black pillar candles set into intricate silver sconces burned in each corner. Red silk draped the bed. On the floor before the fireplace was a cushioned next of fluffy pillows and even more crimson silk. It looked so romantic, so inviting. A room intended for lovemaking. She took a step farther inside. Behind her, the door closed softly on its own. No, not quite on its own. Lucan was there, standing on the other side of the room, watching her. His hair was damp from a shower. He wore a loosely tied, satiny red robe that skated around his bare calves, and there was a heated look in his eyes that melted her where she stood. “For you,” he said, indicating the romantic setting. “For us tonight. I want things to be special for you.” Gabrielle was moved, instantly aroused by the sight of him, but she couldn’t bear to make love the way things had been left between them. “When I left tonight, I wasn’t going to come back,” she told him from the safety of distance. If she went any closer, she didn’t think she’d have the strength to say what had to be said. “I can’t do this anymore, Lucan. I need things from you that you can’t give me.” “Name them.” It was a soft command, but still a command. He moved toward her with careful steps, as though he sensed she might bolt on him at any second. “Tell me what you need.” She shook her head. “What would be the use?” A few more slow steps. He paused just beyond an arm’s length. “I’d like to know. I’m curious what it would take to convince you to stay with me.” “For the night?” she asked quietly, hating herself for how badly she needed to feel his arms around her after what she’d been through these past several hours. “I want you, and I’m prepared to offer you anything, Gabrielle. So, tell me what you need.

The way you are doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. You are exactly how you’re supposed to be. YOU ARE PERFECT. And you might not have met them yet, but there are people who are going to love you BECAUSE of the way you are.

THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT All persons entering a heart do so at their own risk. Management can and will be held responsible for any loss, love, theft, ambition or personal injury. Please take care of your belongings. Please take care of the way you look at me. No roller skating, kissing, smoking, fingers through hair, 3 am phone calls, stained letters, littering, unfeeling feelings, a smell left on a pillow, doors slammed, lyrics whispered, or loitering. Thank you.

I love hockey!” She looks the part in her Mitchell jersey and Titans beanie, and I’m a little jealous I didn’t get to go. “Not as much as I love figure skating, obviously. But hockey has more drama; it was like an opera, but with sticks. I’m obsessed.

We all love you, Rach,” she says with a watery smile. “You deserve your happily ever after. You’ve got three knights in shining skates out there, waiting to show the world what your love means to them.” She holds out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go find them.

I paused, causing her to stumble into my chest. My thumb and forefinger grasped her chin, forcing her to look up at me. “Try me.” Ava blinked, her breaths coming out in short, shallow puffs. “My favorite color.” “Yellow.” “My favorite ice cream flavor.” “Mint chocolate chip.” Her chest rose and fell harder. “My favorite season.” “Summer, because of the warmth and sunshine and greenery. But secretly, winter fascinates you.” I lowered my head until my own breath skated over her skin and her scent crawled into my nostrils, drugging me, turning my voice into a hoarse, sinful version of itself. “It speaks to the darkest parts of your soul. The manifestations of your nightmares. It’s everything you fear, and for that, you love it. Because the fear makes you feel alive.

And one of the best lessons I'd ever learned figure skating was that when you fell, you got right back up and acted like nothing had happened to begin with. You made things important, or you didn't. And if you got up and smiled and held your head up high... you still had your dignity.

It did feel good, every once in a while, to have a family, people who knew you, the rumpled, unadorned you, and loved you no matter what. Sometimes it was like they were each whipping around a skating rink, flying past each other, a waving blur, and sometimes they slowed down at the exact same time and glided together for a while.

I want to wear flip-flops for the rest of my life.  They’re not just mere footwear.  They can act as makeshift fly swatters, they clap for you when your hands are tired.  And once I saw a lady take off her flop and swat her kid on the butt.  Yeah, that was probably going to be me one day.  ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I leaned back against him, my hair splayed out across his hard chest, my head resting on his shoulder, my throat exposed. "You feel so good," he said, his breath hot on my neck. It was pornographic, the scene we made. Me with my knees up close to my chest, my legs spread, his fingers still working on me. Somehow the fact that he was still wearing his jeans, that I could only see the outline of his knuckles through the thin cotton of my underwear, only made it feel more so. But it was a vulnerable position, too, the way I was so open to him, the rasp of his voice in my ear. When I came it was so sudden it surprised me, my body clenching around his hand even as I grabbed his wrist, holding him there until the last of the aftershocks rippled through my body. Finally, his hand skated back up over me, leaving a streak of wetness on my nipple from where he'd been inside me. I watched Sam's profile from under my lashes. The way his mouth parted as he rubbed that wet nipple with his thumb, the way he bit down on his lower lip.

Ev, sweetheart, we’ve all had sex in a bathroom.” Merrin made a strangled sound from the overstuffed chair next to my bed. “Oh, don’t even pretend, girl. I heard about you and Bill Foster at the skating rink.” “We were only kissing!” she shouted indignantly, her face turning the same deep red as her hair. “For God’s sakes, Shel, we were 13 years old!

She’d fallen in love with a man who risked it all to stoke the embers of desire created that first night and turn those sparks into flames of love. Who saw what she couldn’t because her heart was closed to the possibilities. Who respected and cherished all she was. Ford “Killer” Callaghan slayed her every time, and she was happy to die in his arms every night.

thought, even as my head told me nothing good would come of posting pictures of myself online. I should probably also admit to her that I was going to need… extra help. But I couldn’t. Not if it meant I would lose this opportunity, which it might. This was my chance. More than likely my last one. I could be safe. Couldn’t I? I could watch what I posted. Be more careful. I could be smart about it if things started happening again. Especially if this opportunity was real and mine. I could record our sessions so I could practice them more later on by myself. I’d done it before. My mom and siblings would help if I asked. I could be more focused and make Ivan skate everything first once we got to doing choreography. I could figure it out. I could make it work without telling them.

Well. You clean up nicely." Geri's black gown sports a fierce cape billowing behind her as she struts beside us. "Thanks, Coach. Dope dress. You look hot." Oh. There's an adjective. Maybe not the one I was going for, though . . . and I frantically backpedal. "For a mom, I mean. Like a hot mom." Alexa side-eyes me and only half muffles her giggle. Amusement dances on Geri's expression. "Why, thank you, Charlie.

He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .” We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn’t war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it.

We found ourselves on a smooth, spacious but narrow track of ice or glass. We floated along it, as if on marvellous skates, and we were dancing too, for like a wave the track rose and fell beneath us. It was delightful. I had never seen anything like it and I shouted for joy, ‘How glorious!’ And overhead the stars were shimmering, in a sky that was strangely all pale blue and yet dark, and the moon with its unearthly light was shining down on us skaters. ‘This is freedom,’ said the instructress, ‘it’s something very wintry, and cannot be borne for long. One must always keep moving, as we are doing here, one must dance in freedom. It is cold and beautiful. Never fall in love with it. That would only make you sad afterwards, for one can only be in the realm of freedom for a moment, no longer. Look how the wonderful track we are floating on is slowly melting away. Now you can watch freedom dying, if you open your eyes...

What’s it like to roller-skate in the ballroom with your sister, or to read a book about a pony and wake up the next morning to find one wearing a big velvet bow in the marble foyer, and to love it, to love it so much you name it after the swan you lost, and tell yourself that maybe, somehow, it is the swan, come back from beyond the grave to care for you, because while everyone around you takes care of you, you aren’t really sure that any of them care about you?

Could you love reading and still love punk? I had assumed that you couldn't be a skate punk and geek out on books, but Philip had changed that perspective. I had wanted to ensure that I would fit in, and suppressed my nerdiness as anathema to punk rock. But Philip had obliterated that premise in an instant with a copy of The Stranger. Maybe this was my opportunity to be regarded as someone different, more interesting and complicated than the Vietnamese kid or a skate punk.

The unexpected gift suggested small hopes, a vague but promising human connection. She felt a delight but also a fear of it, for it momentarily seemed to eclipse her impatience to skate. She lived only for skating, she told herself; there was no room for anything else. Not love, school, or scraping the walls of memory. Negotiating a bouquet of confusion, the lace on her skate broke in her hand. She quickly knotted it, then unfastened the skirt of her new coat and stepped onto the ice. -I am Eugenia, she said, to no one in particular.

I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.

We were a minor league team that didn't feed into any majors, in a town that loved just about every sport but ours. We were going nowhere and we knew it, so why not have fun? In the forties, when I was playing, we were officially the most violent team in the country, and that means probably the whole world, and by the way, that's why I could skate with no toes. A figure skater, a speed skater, an NHL forward, sure, you need your toes for control, but all that finesse takes a backseat when all you're trying to do is slam somebody into a wall and break all his teeth.

When you're making whoopee, it's most like which Olympic sport: marathon running, gymnastics or ice hockey?' When Cam came home from the station, she'd asked him what he thought. 'Hockey,' he had said without hesitation. And he was right – there was a fury to their lovemaking, as if they were punishing each other for being something different from what they each had hoped. Many nights after that game show she had lain awake, listening to the tide of Cam's breathing, wondering why one of the multiple choices hadn't been something slow and lovely, like pairs' skating or water ballet, something partnered in grace and beauty and trust.

Only date people who respect your standards and make you a better person when you’re with them. Consider the message of the movie A Walk to Remember. Landon Carter is the reckless leader who is skating through high school on his good looks and bravado. He and his popular friends at Beaufort High publicly ridicule everyone who doesn’t fit in, including the unfashionable Jamie Sullivan, who wears the same sweater day after day and gives free tutoring lessons to struggling students. By accident, events thrust Landon into Jamie’s world and he can’t help but notice that Jamie’s different. She doesn’t care about conforming and fitting in with the popular kids. Landon’s amazed at how sure of herself she seems and asks, “Don’t you care what people think about you?” As he spends more time with her, he realizes she has more freedom than he does because she isn’t controlled by the opinions of others, as he is. Soon, despite their intentions not to, they have fallen in love and Landon has to choose between his status at Beaufort...and Jamie. “This girl’s changed you,” his best friend yells, “and you don’t even know it.” Landon admits, “She has faith in me. She wants me to be better.” He chooses her. After high school graduation, Jamie reveals to Landon that she’s dying of leukemia. During her final months, Landon does all he can to make her dreams come true, including marrying her in the same church her mother and father were married in. They spend a wonderful summer together, truly in love. Despite Jamie’s dream for a miracle, she dies. Heartbroken, but inspired by Jamie’s belief in him, Landon works hard to go to medical school. But he laments to her father that he couldn’t fulfill her last desire, to see a miracle. Jamie’s father assures him that Jamie did see a miracle before she died, for someone’s heart had truly changed. And it was his. Now that’s a movie to remember! Never apologize for having high standards and don’t ever lower your standards to please someone else.

If you're not able to see all the other parts of me that I shamelessly wear on my sleeve, lass... I'm happy to break it down for you. I'm honest. Sometimes, as brutally as my kills. You're wrong about me not knowin' love. I love just as hard as I fuck. I'm nothin' if not loyal, Seven Grey, and I might be a horrible singer, but it comes straight from my black heart. I knew you were mine the minute I looked into those eyes, and I'll do whatever it takes to put a smile on that face, even if I have to dig my own grave to do it." His breath skated over my chin, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. "I'm gonna go take this rapist van back. It's not doin' much for my image.

A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which I skate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess on the doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.

As she grew up, as her character was built, as she became headstrong rather than pert, and clever enough to know when to hide her cleverness, as she discovered friends and social life and a new kind of loneliness, as she came from country to town and began amassing her future memories, she admitted her mothers's rule: they made their mistakes, now you make your mistakes. And there was a logical consequence of this, which became part of Martha's creed: after the age of twenty-five, you were not allowed to blame anything on your parents. Of course, it didn't apply if your parents had done something terrible - had raped and murdered you and stolen all your money and sold you into prostitution - but in the average course of an average life, if you were averagely competent and averagely intelligent, and more so if you were more so, then you were not allowed to blame your parents. Of course you did, there were times when it was just too tempting. If only they'd bought me roller-skates like they promised, if only they'd let me go out with David, if only they'd been different, more loving, richer, cleverer, simpler. If only they'd been more indulgent; if only they'd been more strict. If only they'd encouraged me more; if only they'd praised me for the right things...None of that. Of course Martha felt it, some of the time, wanted to cuddle such resentments, but then she would stop and give herself a talking-to. You're on your own, kid. Damage is a normal part of childhood. Not allowed to blame anything on them anymore. Not allowed.

Maybe we’ll get a skate in at the pond down the street,” Gigi pipes up. “I want to see a shootout between you two—” She flicks her finger between Wyatt and me. He scowls at her. “Please don’t force me to play hockey.” “You’re good at it.” She sounds exasperated. “Yeah. Do you know how exhausting it is to be good at something you don’t want to do?” Garrett snickers. “Ungrateful little shit. I give you all my talent, and what do you do with it? You sing songs.” “Hey, that’s my talent,” Hannah says. He’s quickly shamefaced. “Sorry, Wellsy. Your talent is way better than mine. Hands down.” I think he truly means that. And the sheer love in his eyes almost has me feeling like a voyeur. I never saw my parents look at each other like that. I’ve never seen anyone look at each other like that.

You, sir, have a lovely and talented son. You should be proud of him. You should be encouraging him. He clearly loves to skate, and he’s bloody marvelous at it, particularly given his age. But beside the fact that you may be too ignorant and bloody-minded to see that, you’re also a monster if this is the kind of thing you say to that child at home. There is nothing inherently queer about figure skating, but even if there were, it’s what Christian wants to do. And if he does happen to be gay, that’s not a choice. It’s not a decision you can influence. It either is or it isn’t, and to try to turn that into something ugly, into something that might make that kind, clever young man turn to self-loathing, puts you among the most despicable creatures I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. You don’t deserve that boy. And he certainly deserves better than you.

Seek out adventures that aren’t in either of your areas of expertise. You don’t want to attempt a sport where one of you has a natural advantage or to play a game that one of you has played for years. To build intimacy, you want to both be novices so that you feel inexperienced and curious together. You both feel similarly uncomfortable. You’re both going to learn something new. You’re going to need and rely on each other. A challenging hike, a visit to a haunted house, spelunking, roller skating, or (my favorite) an escape room. Intimacy builds as you expose yourselves to each other in a vulnerable moment. Once Radhi and I went to a paint room where they had easels, canvases, brushes, and paints. We were given overalls to wear, and they let us go crazy. It was new and liberating to spray paint wherever we wanted and to create without worrying about the end product.

We think we make bucket lists to ward off regret, but really they help us to ward off death. After all, the longer our bucket lists are, the more time we imagine we have left to accomplish everything on them. Cutting the list down, however, makes a tiny dent in our denial systems, forcing us to acknowledge a sobering truth: Life has a 100 percent mortality rate. Every single one of us will die, and most of us have no idea how or when that will happen. In fact, as each second passes, we’re all in the process of coming closer to our eventual deaths. As the saying goes, none of us will get out of here alive. [...] Who wants to think about this? How much easier it is to become death procrastinators! Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we’d been skating by on the project: our lives.

We think we make bucket lists to ward off regret, but really they help us to ward off death. After all, the longer our bucket lists are, the more time we imagine we have left to accomplish everything on them. Cutting the list down, however, makes a tiny dent in our denial systems, forcing us to acknowledge a sobering truth: Life has a 100 percent mortality rate. Every single one of us will die, and most of us have no idea how or when that will happen. In fact, as each second passes, we’re all in the process of coming closer to our eventual deaths. As the saying goes, none of us will get out of here alive. [...] Who wants to think about this? How much easier it is to become death procrastinators! Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we’d been skating by on the project: our lives.”-Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, p.79, Lori Gottlieb “It’s no surprise that we often dream about our fears. We have a lot of fears. What are we afraid of? We are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid of being humiliated. We are afraid of failure and we are afraid of success. We are afraid of being alone and we are afraid of connection. We are afraid to listen to what our hearts are telling us. We are afraid of being unhappy and we are afraid of being too happy. We are afraid of not having our parents’ approval and we are afraid of accepting ourselves for who we really are. We are afraid of bad health and good fortune. We are afraid of our envy and having too much. We are afraid to have hope for things that we might not get. We are afraid of change and we are afraid of not changing. We are afraid of something happening to our kids, our jobs. We are afraid of not having control and afraid of our own power. We are afraid of how briefly we are alive and how long we will be dead. (We are afraid that after we die, we won’t have mattered.) We are afraid of being responsible for our own lives. Sometimes it takes a while to admit our fears, especially to ourselves.

But then, as I’m leaving school, I see John parked out front. He’s standing in front of his car; he hasn’t seen me yet. In this bright afternoon light, the sun warms John’s blond head like a halo, and suddenly I’m struck with the visceral memory of loving him from afar, studiously, ardently. I so admired his slender hands, the slope of his cheekbones. Once upon a time I knew his face by heart. I had him memorized. My steps quicken. “Hi!” I say, waving. “How are you here right now? Don’t you have school today?” “I left early,” he says. “You? John Ambrose McClaren cut school?” He laughs. “I brought you something.” John pulls a box out of his coat pocket and thrusts it at me. “Here.” I take it from him, it’s heavy and substantial in my palm. “Should I…should I open it right now?” “If you want.” I can feel his eyes on me as I rip off the paper, open the white box. He’s anxious. I ready a smile on my face so he’ll know I like it, no matter what it is. Just the fact that he thought to buy me a present is so…dear. Nestled in white tissue paper is a snow globe the size of an orange, with a brass bottom. A boy and girl are ice-skating inside. She’s wearing a red sweater; she has on earmuffs. She’s making a figure eight, and he’s admiring her. It’s a moment caught in amber. One perfect moment, preserved under glass. Just like that night it snowed in April. “I love it,” I say, and I do, so much. Only a person who really knew me could give me this gift. To feel so known, so understood. It’s such a wonderful feeling, I could cry. It’s something I’ll keep forever. This moment, and this snow globe. I get on my tiptoes and hug him, and he wraps his arms around me tight and then tighter. “Happy birthday, Lara Jean.

Over the next few days we spent every waking moment together. We made up silly dances, did puzzles in the evening, and she stood smiling on the beach waiting for me as I took my customary New Year’s dip in the freezing cold North Atlantic. I just had a sense that we were meant to be. I even found out she lived in the next-door road along from where I was renting a room from a friend in London. What were the chances of that? As the week drew to a close we both got ready to head back south to London. She was flying. I was driving. “I’ll beat you to London,” I challenged her. She smiled knowingly. “No, you won’t.” (But I love your spirit.) She, of course, won. It took me ten hours to drive. But at 10:00 P.M. that same night I turned up at her door and knocked. She answered in her pajamas. “Damn, you were right,” I said, laughing. “Shall we go for some supper together?” “I’m in my pajamas, Bear.” “I know, and you look amazing. Put a coat on. Come on.” And so she did. Our first date, and Shara in her pajamas. Now here was a cool girl. From then on we were rarely apart. I delivered love letters to her office by day and persuaded her to take endless afternoons off. We roller-skated in the parks, and I took her down to the Isle of Wight for the weekends. Mum and Dad had since moved to my grandfather’s old house in Dorset, and had rented out our cottage on the island. But we still had an old caravan parked down the side of the house, hidden under a load of bushes, so any of the family could sneak into it when they wanted. The floors were rotten and the bath full of bugs, but neither Shara nor I cared. It was heaven just to be together. Within a week I knew she was the one for me and within a fortnight we had told each other that we loved each other, heart and soul. Deep down I knew that this was going to make having to go away to Everest for three and a half months very hard. But if I survived, I promised myself that I would marry this girl.

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions. If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive. When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold. I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was

As the sun set, I ate a hospital meal and watched TV. Every few minutes, I glanced at the girl on the bed and tried to see Raven. I struggled to remember her smile and laugh. With her face so swollen, she didn’t seem like my love. I worried I’d lost her because I brought Caleb to Ellsberg. Eventually, the nurse showed me how to turn the chair into a pull out bed. I thanked her, but the thing was too damn small for me to fit on. Besides, I didn’t want to sleep until Raven woke up. Finally, I gave into my weird little urge to kiss the sleeping beauty. I needed to know she was okay. Know she wanted me to stay because she still loved me. I felt nervous until her swollen lips twitched into a smile after my kiss. “Tell me a story,” she mumbled while gripping my shirt with her good hand and tugging me into the bed with her. I adjusted our bodies just enough for me to rest next to her. While the position wasn’t comfortable, I finally relaxed at knowing my woman wanted me close. Caressing her battered face with my fingers, I loved how she smiled for me. Even in pain and after a hellish day, she soothed my fears. “Once upon a time,” I said and she smiled again, “there was a lonely fool who wasted one day after another of his life. One day, he met the most fascinating chick and she quickly wrapped the fool around her finger. She loved him in the best way and saved him from himself. He loved her too and only wanted for her to be happy and safe.” Hesitating, I frowned at the sight of her suffering. As if knowing what I was thinking, she reached up and ran a finger of my lips. “More.” “After the evil… let’s call them gnomes because I hate those ugly little fuckers. So, once the gnomes were destroyed, the fool and his lovely savior bought a big house for all the beautiful blond babies they would have together.” As Raven smiled at this idea, my uneasiness faded. “Their kids all had names with a V in them to honor their hot parents.” Raven laughed then moaned at the gesture. Still, she kept smiling for me. “The fool, his beautiful woman, and their army of glorious babies played videogames, bowled, and roller skated. They were always happy and never sad in a town with their friends and family. They all lived happily ever after.” Raven swollen lips smiled enough to show her missing tooth. Even though she was essentially blind with her battered eyes, she knew I’d seen her mouth and covered it with her hand. “You’re beautiful, darling. Nothing will ever change that.” Raven grunted, unconvinced. “There’s more to love about you than your beauty.” Another grunt followed by a hint of a pout. “Sugar, if I got all banged up and my stunning good looks were damaged, you’d still love me, right?” Raven laughed, but said nothing, so I answered for her. “Of course, you would. My amazing personality and giant brain would keep you horny even if my hot body wasn’t at its best.” Laughing harder now, Raven leaned against me. “I liked your story.” “Unlike most fairytales, this one is coming true.

If you are feeling confused about the road ahead, ask yourself what is the thing you truly love and dream about? Dreams don’t shine, but it’s the people who chase after their dreams who shine brightly.

I am The Black Book. Between my top and my bottom, my right and my left, I hold what I have seen, what I have done, and what I have thought. I am everything I have hated: labor without harvest; death without honor; life without land or law. I am a black woman holding a white child in her arms singing to her own baby lying unattended in the grass. I am all the ways I have failed: I am the black slave owner, the buyer of Golden Peacock Bleach Crème and Dr. Palmer’s Skin Whitener, the self- hating player of the dozens; I am my own nigger joke. I am all the ways I survived: I am tun-mush, hoecake cooked on a hoe; I am Fourteen black jockeys winning the Kentucky Derby. I am the creator of hundreds of patented inventions; I am Lafitte the pirate and Marie Laveau. I am Bessie Smith winning a roller-skating contest; I am quilts and ironwork, fine carpentry and lace. I am the wars I fought, the gold I mined, The horses I broke, the trails I blazed. I am all the things I have seen: The New York Caucasian newspaper, the scarred back of Gordon the slave, the Draft Riots, darky tunes, and mer- chants distorting my face to sell thread, soap, shoe polish coconut. And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing. I am the sound of my own voice singing “Sangaree.” I am ring-shouts, and blues, ragtime and gospels. I am mojo, voodoo, and gold earrings. I am not complete here; there is much more, but there is no more time and no more space . . . and I have journeys to take, ships to name, and crews.

And how do you feel?” she whispers, like she doesn’t know she stole my heart, piece by piece, that first day in biology class, and that night we got frozen yogurt, and at our roller-skating date, bruised forehead and all. “Like I’m so in love with you, Molly Parker.” And... it feels right. The words I’ve been so scared of for years suddenly come easier than I ever thought possible. “I love you too, Alex Blackwood,” she says, and it’s all the things I never knew an “I love you” could be, meeting me exactly as I am, without a single condition. It’s coming home instead of running away.

I didn’t know how Etienne could breathe in that costume, let alone skate and shake his ass. The red pants did make his ass look great, though. Not that I was really looking or anything.

I loved her the way I loved breathing, the way I loved the feel of fresh ice under my skates and fresh snow on the mountains. I loved her as if there was no choice.

I've always loved watching figure skating and even tried my hand at sewing a skating dress years ago, but instead of twirling figure skaters, a group of hockey players in mismatched practice jerseys are out on the ice. There doesn't seem to be any teacher or coach. Nor are any of them doing much besides horsing around.

Tali: She knew about this. WHO ELSE KNEW? Sebastian: I didn’t. And quit texting Jas’s name over and over again. It’s annoying. She’s skating again. Good job, Jas. Happy for you. Jojo: ^^ You’re such a vibe kill Sebastian: No, I’m just not flipping my shit because she got a new partner. Jojo: SHE DIDN’T TELL US FIRST THO. What is the point of being related if we didn’t get the scoop before everybody else? Jojo: I FOUND OUT ON PICTUREGRAM Sebastian: She doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t tell you either. Tali: I can’t find anything about it online. Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: Tell us everything or I’m coming over to Mom’s today. Sebastian: You’re annoying. Muting this until I get out of work. Jojo: Party pooper Tali: Party pooper Jojo: Jinx Tali: Jinx Sebastian: Annoying

Anyway, to me he’s just Sunny. Come on up, Jacks, don’t be shy.” His eyes are wide, and he’s mouthing, “What the fuck?” At me while his friends shove him. “Sunny.” “What’s going on, Starlight?” His words are too quiet for the mic to pick up clearly. “You know I love you. I wouldn’t be here in this amazing city with this fantastic group of ladies if you hadn’t come crashing into my life. Literally.” His laugh has a nervous edge to it. “We might not seem like a perfect match from the outside, but somehow, we work. You make every single day a little lighter, a little more fun, and you drive me freaking insane sometimes.” He smirks. “But I love how you challenge me to be a better person. You make me whole. And so....” I scrabble in the waist pouch Jo passed to me after the bout. “Will you drive me crazy for the rest of our lives? Will you marry me, Jackson?” He leans into the mic. “Are you kidding me, Starlight? Way to steal my thunder.” “What?” I pull back. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans. “I was going to propose to you. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks. It was all planned out.” He pulls out a small grey velvet box. My chest shudders with laughter. “You always were too slow to keep up with me. Better get your skate coach to work on your speed.” “You like it when I take my time.” “Wait. So, is that a yes?” I shove at him to get a little distance. It’s entirely possible I could self combust if he doesn’t give me a bit of space. “No.” I gasp as he drops to one knee. “Starlight. You’re my world. That day I knocked you over at that shitty roller rink was the best day of my life. I say was, because every day I’ve gotten to have you in my life has been a little better, and the day I get to slide my ring on your finger to make it permanent. I can’t wait for that. So, Tasha Scar, will you marry me?” My smile spreads all the way up my face, his eyes falling to the dimple I’ve grown to appreciate. “Fine. But just remember. I asked first.

He gives the customer an apologetic smile. “It’s my first day.”  She lifts an unimpressed eyebrow. “Cool.”  Rolling my lips together, I stop by his side. He leans into my space. “I feel so demeaned. I love it.” His whispered words are hot as they brush over the shell of my ear, and an involuntary shiver skates down my spine.

We all understand where you've been and how you're feeling right now, no matter what choices we've made. Although God offers everything we need, sometimes God isn't everything we want. It wasn't easy to come out in the Methodist church either; even though we may display an air of more literate sophistication, Black churches are based on the same ideology no matter how we sing a song or how we praise. Leviticus 20:13 is the most common passage in the Bible used against us to damn our souls to hell for loving someone of the same sex. Yet Exodus 20:14 and Matthew 5:28 specifically refer to adultery in a marriage, which is often skated over. We all struggle with our desires—our need to want more than God. Because we do need love other than God, and in my mind and heart, there's nothing wrong with that, Rose.

And one of the best lessons I’d ever learned figure skating was that when you fell, you got right back up and acted like nothing had happened to begin with. You made things important, or you didn’t. And if you got up and smiled and held your head up high… you still had your dignity.

He even thought about his love for skating itself, and how much skating had done for him as a person.

The most successful athletes are self-motivated. “The most important thing is to love your sport,” said Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic figure-skating champion. “Never do it to please someone else—it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work needed to achieve success.

He loved her. More than he’d thought it possible to love someone. And it wasn’t a new love born of mere lust and attraction, the sort of infatuated love that skated over the polished surface and was afraid to look too closely at what might lie beneath. No, this was love that had started before he understood what it was. A love that had faced every difficult thing and had endured.

How much easier it is to become death procrastinators! Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we'd been skating by on the project: our lives.

Why does the world take the people who are loved, ripping holes in the fabric of other people’s souls, while I’m allowed to skate by unscathed?

Biting her lip, she eyed the nervous expression on his face before deciding she knew what to do. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” she whispered, planting her hands against his chest and giving him a little shove. He didn’t fight her. Imber rolled onto his back, allowing her to straddle him and to gently move their connection to her right. She wanted that cord within sight, but she also didn’t want to think about it. Distractions had no place here. Then she forgot about the dangers of being underwater and instead focused on the handsome creature splayed out underneath her. She skated her fingers over his chest, letting her fingers dip into the hollows where muscles created shadows. He was warmer than she expected. Normally, he was a rather chilly creature to touch. But every time she pressed down on a new muscle, or moved farther down his body, he seemed to radiate even more heat. As she watched, the gills on the side of his neck flared out, shaking just a bit with nerves or perhaps with want. “Alys,” he murmured, licking his lips as his eyes went even darker. “I don’t know that you’ll like what you find.” “Hm?” She leaned down and flicked one of his rib gills with her tongue. “I don’t know why or how you’re still thinking.

There’s no coming back from this, Red.” Jude grazes his lips over mine, back and forth, and I wonder if he’s enjoying that I’m out of breath and wants to feel it. “I understand.” “No, you don’t.” He shakes his head, skating his lips over mine, before finding my jaw and peppering kisses on every inch of skin he can reach with me tight in his arms. “You don’t understand. Because if you did, you’d have turned around the moment you walked into my shop and never looked back.

You fucking love bossing me around. Think how good it’s going to be teaching me to figure skate. Please say yes.” “I don’t think this is a good idea…” “But say yes anyway.” Blowing out an exhausted, tension-riddled laugh, I nod. “Okay. Let’s be partners. Yes.

Do you love the ocean as much as Brendan does?” There she went, asking him questions that made him think. Questions that wouldn’t allow him to skate by with a quip—and he didn’t really like doing that with Hannah, anyway. He liked talking to her. Loved it, actually, even when it was hard. “I think we love it in different ways. He loves the tradition and structure of fishing. I love how wild nature can get. How it can be more than one thing. How it evolves. One year, the crabs are in one place, the next they’re in another. No one can … define the ocean. It defines itself.

I love how he skates his arm around my waist to pull me tighter. How he holds me like I can never be close enough. How our bodies might as well be a singular heart beating in this room, and I don’t think one could survive without the other anymore.

Penguins skate. Penguins spin. Penguins love to make you grin.

For years he had watched her skate and grow into her potential.  She was a natural and had won several world and national championships in addition to the silver medal from the last Olympics and a bronze in Turin.  For most skaters, that would be enough.  Not for Kerri, though.  She was a fighter who loved competition.  Her coach, Petra Baranski, told him what Kerri was going through and what she wanted when he saw Petra again at the Grand Prix tournament in Oslo two weeks ago.  Jake knew that this was his chance.  He didn’t know if another one with Kerri would come, and he wasn't going to let this one go by.  He was the kind of man who reached for what he wanted and was not the kind who let things just happen in the hopes that it would work out in his favor.  The plain and simple truth was that he wanted Kerri.  He wanted her. After he stepped away from his window, he crossed the hotel suite and sat down on the white, leather sectional sofa located in the sitting room.  Then he leaned back, pulled his legs up onto the chaise sectional, and set his cup of tea on the side table.  Once he picked up his cell phone again, he pressed the button that would connect him to the person he most wanted to talk to now.  The phone rang several times and was eventually answered by one of the servants in his home.  He spoke in rapid Japanese to the woman and then waited patiently at his end.  It didn't take long before the female voice he most wanted to hear came on the line.  Jake grinned broadly as she spoke, and he leaned back on the chaise to listen to her tell him about her day.  His heart lifted with each of her words.  But all too soon the conversation ended, and he switched his phone off and prepared for bed.

Anne tried to dazzle him with her high spirits and her beauty. She kept her temper with him, though he was sour and dull. She danced, she gambled, she laughed, she skated, she was all joy, all light. She threw Jane Seymour into the background, no man ever had eyes for another woman when Anne was in radiant mood. Not even the king could look away from her as she went through the dancing court, her head high, that turn of the neck as someone spoke to her, surrounded by men who wrote poems to her beauty, musicians playing songs for her, the very center of the excitement of the court at play. The king could not take his eyes off her, but his gaze was no longer entranced. He stared at her as if he would understand something about her, as if he would unravel her charm so that he might see her unwoven, robbed of everything that had made her once so lovely to him. He stared at her like a man might stare at a tapestry that has cost him a fortune and that he suddenly sees one morning as valueless, and wants to unknot. He stared at her as if he could not believe that she had cost him so dear, and repaid him so little. And not even Anne’s charm and vivacity could make him think that the bargain was a good one. While

Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.

Tuesday and Wednesday flew by. Dylan from 5B came over on Thursday. I didn’t smoke any pot, but I let him hotbox my apartment so I was even more completely stoned than I was the time before, except this time my eyebrows remained intact. We watched three episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and laughed our asses off. Dylan was actually pretty cute. He was tall and skinny and pale with buzzed hair, but he had these really blue eyes. That night he helped me carry my laundry to the basement. “Hey Kate, you wanna go to the skate park with me tomorrow night?” “I can’t, I have a date with a lesbian.” His eyes shot open. “Oh, cool.” “It’s not what you think.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s your business. Aren’t you still dating that douche wad in 9A?” “Stephen? No, he dumped me last week. He’s dating someone else already.” “His loss.” He said it so quickly and nonchalantly that I almost believed him. We got to the basement door. Dylan pushed it open and walked in but paused in front of me. I leaned around his body and saw Stephen making out with a different girl than he had been with earlier that week. At first I didn’t recognize her, and then I saw her token pink scrunchie bobbing above her head. It was the bimbo from the sixth floor. Every time I saw her she was with a different guy. Stephen turned and spotted me. “Kate, I thought you did your laundry on Mondays?” I contemplated sharing my thoughts on women in their thirties who still wear colorful hair pretties, but I chose to take the high road. Anyway, one or both of them would undoubtedly have a venereal disease by the end of the week, and that was my silver lining. “Don’t talk to me, Stephen.” I coughed and mumbled, “Pencil dick” at the same time. Dylan stayed near the door. Everyone in the room watched me as I emptied my laundry bag into a washer. I added soap, stuck some quarters in, closed the lid, and turned to walk out. Just as I reached the opening, Dylan pushed me against the doorjamb and kissed me like he had just come back from war. I let him put on a full show until he moved his hand up and cupped my breast. I very discreetly said, “Uh-uh” through our mouths, and he pulled his hand away and slowed the kiss. When we pulled apart, I turned toward Stephen and the bimbo and shot them an ear-splitting smile. “Hey, Steve”—I’d never called him Steve—“Will you text me when the washer is done? I’ll be busy in my apartment for a while.” He nodded, still looking stunned. I grabbed Dylan’s hand and pulled him into the elevator. Once the doors were closed, we both burst into laughter. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “I wanted to. That asshole had it coming.” “Well, thank you. You live with your mom, right?” “Yeah.” “Please don’t tell her about this. I can’t imagine what she would think of me.” “I’m not that much younger than you, Kate.” He jabbed me in the arm playfully and smirked. “You need to lighten up. Anyway, my mom would be cool with it.” “Well, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea.” “Nah. We’re buddies, I get it. I’m kind of in love with that Ashley chick from the fourth floor. I just have to wait until next month when she turns eighteen, you know?” He wiggled his eyebrows. I laughed. “You two would make a cute couple.” If only it were that simple.

I call Graham as I drive. I know, shame on me. But it isn't illegal! Although, with the way I drive, maybe it should be—for me anyway. “On your way home?” his voice greets. Home. His home and my home are the same home. Deep sigh. “Yeah, but I have a favor to ask.” “Okay.” This is so like Graham—ready to do anything needed of him without hesitation. “It's sort of bad.” I pull out in front of a Nissan and wave when they honk at me. It isn't like we crashed. He laughs. “I doubt it's that bad. What do you need?” “My dad called me. He wants us to come over.” “All right.” Answered immediately and without any snark. He is a good man. “I'm supposed to find his remote while you get to endure his worshipful eyes admiring your every move.” “I can handle that.” “I know. My dad loves you. He wishes you were his son instead of me.” “I don't think that's it.” He pauses. “And you're not his son.” “Oh. Right. Silly me. How could I forget that?” “It'll be fine. I promise.” I nod even though he can't see me, feeling better just from our short conversation. “We'll probably be there a while. I don't know about roller-skating tonight. I'm sorry. I suck.” “You don't suck.” Do not respond to that, Kennedy. “I like your family,” he adds. “I know. You're weird.” “I like you too.” “Exactly my point.” I pull the car into the parking lot of the apartment building and turn it off. Only the key won't turn off. I glance down at the gear shifty thing and note that it isn't in park. Muttering to myself, I put it in park and it shuts off. “What was that?” “I forgot to put the car in park again.” His laughter washes over me and I find myself grinning. “I take it you're at the apartment?” “Yeah. Where are you?” “I'm pulling into the parking lot now

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

So why did Sydney – a pretty girl, whose greatest enjoyments in life were sailing, visiting France and ice-skating, and who loved the parties and dancing she attended as a débutante – marry David, who was a countryman at heart, actively disliked meeting new people and regarded ‘abroad’ with suspicion and horror? There can be no other reason but that she fell in love with him. He was a kind man and he was very funny. He made her laugh and unquestionably loved her. Many successful marriages have been founded on less.

The Internet has co-opted the word “browse” for its own purposes, but it’s worth pointing out the difference between browsing in a virtual realm and browsing in the actual world. Depending on the terms entered, an Internet search engine will usually come up with hundreds, thousands, or millions of hits, which a person can then skate through, clicking when she sees something that most closely echoes her interest. It is a curious quality of the Internet that it can be composed of an unfathomable multitude and, at the same time, almost always deliver to the user the bits that feed her already-held interests and confirm her already-held beliefs. It points to a paradox that is, perhaps, one of the most critical of our time: To have access to everything may be to have nothing in particular. After all, what good does this access do if we can only find our way back to ourselves, the same selves, the same interests, the same beliefs over and over? Is what we really want to be solidified, or changed? If solidified, then the Internet is well-designed for that need. But, if we wish to be changed, to be challenged and undone, then we need a means of placing ourselves in the path of an accident. For this reason, the plenitude may narrow the mind. Amazon may curate the world for you, but only by sifting through your interests and delivering back to you variations on your well-rehearsed themes: Yes, I do love Handke! Yes, I had been meaning to read that obscure play by Thomas Bernhard! A bookstore, by contrast, asks you to scan the shelves on your way to looking for the thing you had in mind. You go in meaning to buy Hemingway, but you end up with Homer instead. What you think you like or want is not always what you need. A bookstore search inspires serendipity and surprise.

God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.

Daniel, if you . . . if over the next several days you change your mind . . . I just want you to know it’s okay. I do love you, and that’s never going to change.” He lifted the hand still held in his and kissed the tender flesh of her inner wrist. Gooseflesh skated down her arms. “I won’t change my mind.” His words were a pact, the look in his eyes a signature on the dotted line. She couldn’t tear hers away from his. They were so blue, so mesmerizing. He

 “I’m a selfish bastard. You should know that about me.” I set the liquor down on the desk, tilted my head to the side, watching him. “What makes you think so?” “Because I look at you, and I think, you and me, we’re going to get married one day. And then, if you’re a very good wife…” His eyes skated over my face as he paused, and it felt like a loving caress; but it also felt possessive and dangerous. His cadence dropped, deepened, as his stare settled on my lips. “If you’re a very good wife, we’ll have a mortgage.” I blinked.  The lull of his voice masked the meaning of his words for a split second. “A mortgage?” He nodded. “Yes. And several children and perhaps a dog.

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

He exuded pure sex appeal from the ruffled blond hair on his head down to his black skate shoes and every carved muscle in between.

A few years from now, far away from here, a young woman will be sitting on a sofa at a party. Everyone around will be dancing and drinking but his eyes will be glued to the television. It's just a short clip from concert by one of the country's most female performers right now. Her name is Maya Andersson, and the young man has always loved that name. How ordinary it sounds. He's never thought about her accent, has never reflected upon why it sound so familiar to hin, But now he sees her on television and she's singing a song about someone she loved,because it's hit birthday, and on the huge screen behind ger a photograph of him flashes up for moment. She knows no one will really see it, a thousand more images flash past right after it, she just inclided that particular photograph for her own sake. But he man on sofa recognizes it. Because he remembers fingertips and glances. Beer bottles on a worn bar counter and smoke in a silent forest. The way snow feels as it falls on your skin while a boy with sad eyes and a wild heart teaches you to skate. The man on the sofa pack almost nothing. He takes just a light bag and the case containing his bass guitar and travels to the next town on Maya's tour. He elbows past her security guard and almost gets knocked to the floor and he he calls out: "I knew him! I knew Benji! I loved him too!" Maya stops mid-stride. They look each other in the eye and see only him, the boy in the forest, sad and wild. "Do you play?" May asks. "I'm a bass player," he says. From then on he is her bass player. No one plays her songs like he does. No one else cries as much each night.

I’d always said it was just a joke, and it had been, in a way. But jokes had also always been one of my safest ways of expressing myself—sometimes allowing me to skate around what I wanted to say, other times allowing me to crash right into it and then later deny I’d meant to.

love visiting the Christmas markets up north. Mia would too. Vienna, Prague, Budapest. When it’s snowing outside and there’s ice-skating and Christmas trees everywhere. Desserts everywhere. Mulled wine, hot cider. Everyone is so happy, running around in their thick jackets and wool hats. It’s a fairy tale.” “Wait, Budapest. Is that part of Europe?” “Sí, it’s part of the EU, but it’s less expensive there. A different currency. You can stay in these, emm, great historic apartments for very little. Last time, my friends and I stayed in a place overlooking the Danube with a piano in the living room. We hired a pianist and violinist to play for us . . . for barely anything.

was the intimate ways I connected with her—us alone in her basement, me silently sneaking skates into her locker, us sitting together at a bookstore—where I saw her fall for me. I came in trying to win her over, and she came in and changed my entire path. The best love I could possibly give

Last night I almost had my first kiss with Prince and I was surprised at how comfortable I was becoming with him. He made me feel so at ease in his arms while we were skating, and I wasn’t ready to pull away.

We went back out into the night, the three of us together, skating hand in hand.

Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we’d been skating by on the project: our lives.

In the darkness, you’re my sunshine. You’re the sun at dawn, chasing the shadows from my wicked soul. I love you, and I’m so sorry, kitten.” A tear fell and skated down my shoulder.

He threw his hockey stick in anger, then skated to get the stick and marched off to the locker room. Next thing he knew, his mother was in the locker room, too. She bounded right up to him, oblivious to the fact that the guys around her were in various states of undress. She grabbed him by the jersey in front of everyone. “You punk,” she yelled at him. “If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win. If you don’t know this, you don’t belong anywhere.” He paused for a moment, recalling the memory. “She was a powerhouse,” he said. “I loved her beyond comprehension.” She

Not as much as I love figure skating, obviously. But hockey has more drama; it was like an opera, but with sticks. I’m obsessed.

Determine and embrace relevant and meaningful trends. Too many companies ignore important trends for far too long. It is not very hard to identify the important trends. What's hard is to help the organization understand how those trends can be leveraged by your products to solve customer problems in new and better ways. Skate to where the puck is heading, not to where it was. An important element to product vision is identifying the things that are changing—as well as the things that likely won't be changing—in the time frame of the product vision. Some product visions are wildly optimistic and unrealistic about how fast things will change, and others are far too conservative. This is usually the most difficult aspect of a good product vision. Be stubborn on vision but flexible on the details. This Jeff Bezos line is very important. So many teams give up on their product vision far too soon. This is usually called a vision pivot, but mostly it's a sign of a weak product organization. It is never easy, so prepare yourself for that. But, also be careful you don't get attached to details. It is very possible that you may have to adjust course to reach your desired destination. That's called a discovery pivot, and there's nothing wrong with that. Realize that any product vision is a leap of faith. If you could truly validate a vision, then your vision probably isn't ambitious enough. It will take several years to know. So, make sure what you're working on is meaningful, and recruit people to the product teams who also feel passionate about this problem and then be willing to work for several years to realize the vision.

Daria weighed five pounds, four ounces, and was in perfect health. But she was by far the smallest baby in the observation room. And every other baby in there had a full head of hair. The fact that she had no hair drove me crazy. I don’t know why. That first night I was so upset that I cried all night long. I was thinking, I did a bad job. I didn’t eat properly, I skated too long, and that’s why Daria has no hair. I was such a sad, funny little mom, and very far from home.

On the fifth date of Shagmas my true love gave to me, One gay man dancing, One date of drinking, One fireman skating, One vegan weeping And a no-show outside the Pear Tree!

One time, at the final hockey game of his senior year, against rival Beverly at the hockey rink in Lynn, the score was tied at two after regulation. Jack had scored both goals for Salem. The game went into overtime, but shortly thereafter, Jack’s team lost. It was the team’s seventh loss in a row. Jack was pissed. He threw his hockey stick in anger, then skated to get the stick and marched off to the locker room. Next thing he knew, his mother was in the locker room, too. She bounded right up to him, oblivious to the fact that the guys around her were in various states of undress. She grabbed him by the jersey in front of everyone. “You punk,” she yelled at him. “If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win. If you don’t know this, you don’t belong anywhere.” He paused for a moment, recalling the memory. “She was a powerhouse,” he said. “I loved her beyond comprehension.

Erica acted as though she didn’t even see him, rambling on about hucking off ledges and pulling kangaroo flips in the terrain park, until we were well past him and at the ice rink again. Then she turned to me, fluttered her eyelashes, and announced, “Let’s go ice-skating!” I stared at her, thrown. There weren’t any bodyguards around for her to be acting in front of, and yet “Let’s go ice-skating!” was one of the last things I would have ever expected to hear Erica Hale say, along the lines of “I love scrapbooking,” or “Unicorns are awesome.

in that groggy hour before her demanding day job began, she skated. And she skated and skated and skated. And yes, she loved it, as much as ever. She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy.

Nothing was better than being on the ice. Nothing. The way his skin went tight when the cold hit it, the crunch beneath his skates, the sounds: laughter, pucks colliding with the glass, pinging off the goalposts, the Zamboni rumbling to life. He even loved the smell.

this ice-skating anime Mariam and I both love,

Putting flow-prone kids into high-flow environments means a lot of flow. Arming them with advanced flow-hacking techniques means even more. All this flow makes the activity deeply rewarding, both fulfilling a child’s innate need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose and further increasing their sense of intrinsic motivation. When Tom Schaar says, “I love being with my friends at the skate park — that’s the greatest feeling,” what he’s saying is no one has to force him to practice, the autotelic nature of the activity — the fact that it drives him into flow — is the source code of his motivation.

She’s super strong and loves to do pull-ups

How do you do it?" Jed asked. "Oh, Miss Fowler loaned me Arnold Bennett's book, How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day." But then, because she could really talk with Jed, she grew serious. "I filled my winter up in a sort of desperation. I just couldn't seem to face it that I wasn't going to college." They were having cocoa in front of the coal stove after a skating expedition. Jed looked at her with a puzzled expression. "What made you feel so badly about not going to college?" "I love to learn." "But you certainly haven't stopped learning." "I'd like to be - a really cultured person." "Well, you're certainly on the way to being. And Emily - it's a good thing for the Syrians of Deep Valley that you didn't go to college." Her eyes filled with tears. Jed reached over and patted her hand. "Speaking of Syrians, that board meeting's coming up Friday night. May I call for you? Miss Bangeter has asked me to present our case, but if I run into difficulties I'll turn to you like Jerry Sibley did before the St. John game.

I would have crushed him gladly, I loathe children...One should reserve, on busy streets, special tracks for these nasty little creatures, their prams, hoops, sweats, scooters, skates, grandpas, grandmas, nannies, balloons, and balls, all their foul little happiness in a word.

Pair skating was about unity, about trust, timing, anticipation, and synchronization. It was about two people almost becoming one, but still somehow maintaining their individuality.

Amat walks toward his locker, his heart sinking in his chest like a lead weight. He loves that girl more than he loves skating.

When Gaby finds Benji she starts by telling him she loves him. Then she says it’s damn lucky for him that their mom had to work today and couldn’t come, because if she’d known that her son had played almost the entire third period plus fifteen minutes of overtime with a broken foot, yet still skated more than anyone else, she’d have killed him.

Years of pain have taught me that if you want to know Christ deeply—not skating the surface but intimately—it will mean journeying through deep suffering. Think of it: When Jesus gave you his most amazing, life-transforming display of love; when he showed you the height, depth, and breadth of that love; when he withheld nothing but wrung himself inside out to death, pouring out all of his love to the last drop…it happened on a torturous cross, his greatest point of horror and anguish. It seems then that if we are to know Jesus in an intimate way, it will take place in our own points of horror and anguish.

Maybe the best way to hold on to her wasn’t to obsess over her paintings or wear her skates or listen to her music or copy her style or worry over what would happen when I finally lost Peanut. Maybe the best way to keep her with me was to embrace her spirit. To emulate her courage. To bring the warmth and love to the world that she always—fearlessly—had. She had loved us without reservation. She adored us wildly. And laughed. And danced. And soaked it all up—every atom of her life—every moment of her time She felt it all. She lived it all. That’s what I loved about her. Not just that she was a great mom or a great wife or a great dog rescuer. She was a great person. She knew some divine secret about how to open up to being alive that the rest of us kept stubbornly missing. She’d wanted me to know it, too. She’d wanted me to say yes to everything. She’d wanted me to go all in.

Don’t ever let a bitch slide, or she’ll start thinking she can skate.

A girl named Brittany or Ashley would have fallen in love with the spandex costumes and the white skates of a figure skater, but when your name is Joanna and everyone calls you Jo, you grow up in Cleveland watching your older brother play hockey in the shadows of the steel mills and dream of the day when you can wear a jersey and carry a stick, waiting for your chance to slap that puck home.

I always loved the sounds you’d hear at a practice. The silence in the cold rink, no one in the stands and then as the guys skated around, you could hear the blades crunching into the ice. When I would step on the ice for a practice, game or even a public skate, the second I heard that sound of ice meeting metal, I’d smile.

Circumcision was invisible to the public. A once and done. All male. Decided by parents. The mark of the new covenant is visible and public. It involves daily decisions. It’s not gender-specific. It’s an all-skate. And while it doesn’t require surgery, it’s painful. Love requires sacrifice, and sacrifice is always a bit painful.

- It's a side effect of loving a girl who likes tiny condiment bottles as collectibles and skates when she's waiting on a death tally.

done.” He shoots me a stern stare with his steely ice-blue eyes, colder than his sister’s, more calculating. “See you at morning skate on Sunday. And don’t forget what I told you earlier.” I fight off a grimace and paste on a smile. “We’re all good.” As Christian heads to the players’ lot exit, Everly rolls her eyes, then says, “Let me guess what he told you earlier. Is it the antiquated, sexist, don’t touch my sister rule?” She asks it like she wants to step on that rule and stub it into the ground with her heels. “Um, yeah,” I say, embarrassed on behalf of testosterone and its stupidity. “Men,” she says with a heavy sigh. “Seriously.

Where did you get roller skates?” She pulled out her lollipop. “Lyr found them for me. I told you he’d become your boyfriend and you two would fall in love. I have psychic powers.” “No, you said Irdion would be my boyfriend, and he remains dead after I shot him.” She shrugged. “Close enough.

I loved the idea of outdoor skating so much, I booked the entire place for the evening so that we could be alone.

I trusted you with my heart once. I won’t do it again.” “I know I bruised your feelings.” “You did nothing of the sort.” Reaching down, she snatched up her skates. “I won’t give up,” he said. “Not until Christmas.” “Why that particular day?” “Because your love is the only gift I wish to receive.

My favorite season.” “Summer, because of the warmth and sunshine and greenery. But secretly, winter fascinates you.” I lowered my head until my own breath skated over her skin and her scent crawled into my nostrils, drugging me, turning my voice into a hoarse, sinful version of itself. “It speaks to the darkest parts of your soul. The manifestations of your nightmares. It’s everything you fear, and for that, you love it. Because the fear makes you feel alive.

How could I bear it, if you were my mate and resented me?” His fingers skated over my cheek. “Nothing in this world is permanent, except this: I love you. I have loved you for more years than you knew I existed. I watched you from a distance, on orders from the Emperor. But he didn’t order me to admire you. To respect the woman and protector you became, or to want nothing more than to keep you safe from the dangers you could not overcome alone. I want to make certain you have everything you desire… and what you want has never been riches or power. It’s freedom.

Well, I must be redefining the word impossible, because I love everything about you, Sutton Rae Jones. I love your Star Wars obsession and how you hate the new movies but cried when Kylo Ren died. I love how you open presents like you’re trying not to ruin the wrapping paper even though it’s going to be thrown away. I love that you have a list for everything and that you have expensive taste but don’t want anyone to know it. I love seeing your face light up while you’re ice skating and the furrow in between your brows when you’re working on something. I love your witty remarks, your smile, and your brown eyes that look like rich hot cocoa. I love you.

Alexa emits a sad but fond chuckle and once again reaches over to gently slip her hand into mine, When she lets go, I can't help but wish she didn't.

In my dreams, I go viral for sinking a sick trick shot or delivering a brilliant body check. Instead, I'm Hockey Rocky—but, like, the one where he blows the big match at the end.

Okay, so I'm beyond shitty at math, but even I can't screw up this equation currently ripping me in half: the Blizzard's hockey rink seats about 2,400 spectators, which means there are roughly 1,200 people cheering for me to score . . . and 1,200 people screaming for me to choke.

I ignore it, Charlie. I'm a pacifist." He musters a slight shrug. "Yeah? Cool. I'm not." Without much concern for my own well-being, I stride up to Gavin Davis, grip him from behind, and slam his broad back against the nearest locker, holding him there with my forearm across his beefy neck.

Carmen herself had used this route to the china closet every night, her stocking feet silent on the polished wood floor. She knew the location of every creaky board, every potentially light sleeper. She knew how to flatten herself into the shadows when someone came around the corner headed for the bathroom. She could skate those floors as quiet as a blade drawing over ice. Carmen was trained, an expert at remaining silent. Still, she could sense the depth of Mr. Hosokawa’s ability to be quiet. Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.

For a long time, I thought I wouldn’t know what to do without hockey in my life, and now I have it figured out. I have a new purpose besides the sport I love. Something bigger and more important than hitting a puck and lacing up my skates. I can have two favorite things, because it involves proving to Lexi every goddamn day she’s worthy of being treated right, worthy of being told she’s special and brilliant and beautiful, and I won’t stop until there’s not an ounce of doubt in her mind that she’s one in eight billion. One of a kind, my favorite person, and the woman I’m falling in love with.

I’m trying to figure out if you’re crazy or romantic,” I murmur absently. “Both,” he deadpans without hesitation. “It’s a side effect of loving a girl who likes tiny condiment bottles as collectibles and skates when she’s waiting on a death tally.

It’s my unique challenge, keeping my books light as a feather while still conveying a meaningful message and not, now to quote Amelia, “all the super-boring stuff” that weighs people down. Rom-com, unlike my Water Under the Bridge, is unique in that sense. Laugh and fall in love and resolve some of your existential crisis while you go. Spend a few hours with your eyes skating over pages of happiness, all while the more serious bits of your life get to rest their legs. Take a break. Laugh your heart to healing, I like to say. Now there’s a tagline. Because laughter is a part of life too, isn’t it? Something not to be dismissed as it stands side by side with more serious matters of growth and grief.

Fanny’s “gift,” her talent for “being herself,” becomes apparent in the film when Keeney finally relents and allows her to perform with the chorus in a roller-skating number (“I’d Rather Be Blue”). Woefully incapable of roller skating, Fanny utterly destroys the integrity of the number, but sends the audience into hysterics. She comes out on top in the end, as the stage manager pushes her on to the stage to sing “I’d Rather Be Blue,” still on roller skates. Alone on the stage, she comes alive, demonstrating the star talent she had promised them. Florenz Ziegfeld decides to hire her for his famous Follies and gives her a song, “His Love Makes Me Beautiful,” which Fanny is supposed to sing, dressed as a beautiful bride, against a backdrop of stunning women, all taller, more elegant, and less ethnic-looking than herself. Fanny protests that this will never work, that the audience will laugh at her. He insists that she do it anyway. She agrees, but at the last moment, stuffs a pillow under her dress, pretending she is pregnant and turning the number into a hugely successful comic turn.

Why does the world take the people who are loved, ripping holes in the fabric of other people’s souls, while I’m allowed to skate by unscathed? Where is the justice in such a random system, and if there’s no justice, then why are we here?

I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive." -Alyssa Liu