Page 2

Café on Ice

I f it’d been warmer, Liam would have taken her on a walk. Perrymont’s campus had some great outdoor views, even in the winter, and a robust set of walking paths through that scenery. He might still recommend they go for a walk, but he doubted they could spend a whole afternoon outdoors—not without ending up sniffling like a pair of wheezing vacuums. And his dorm was the final place to visit, not the first. He’d put plenty of thought into where he would take Anna on their date. Even a little research.

Which was how he knew about the Café on Ice.

It was a well-regarded café, so it wasn’t just the gimmick that had caused him to take Anna there. Still, pretty much the second he’d found out about it, it’d leaped up his list of options. Primarily because, based on the café’s online pictures, it had a small ice-skating rink behind it. You ordered your drink, put on skates—the place rented them out if you didn’t have any— and then stepped onto a diminutive rink shaped like an infinity symbol. When your drink was ready, you could pick it up from a spot on the ice, like runners in a marathon pausing by the sidewalk to get some water from spectators.

Because who didn’t love drinking something warm while skating?

At the very least, he thought—he hoped—Anna would find it charming. Furthermore, to keep up the ruse for as long as he could, he’d invoked the aid of a devil of mischief. That was how Liam, but not Anna, knew that her skates were in the back of her vehicle. She’d know pretty soon.

Along the way, they passed the time with a banal conversation about how each of their semesters had gone so far. Around halfway to the café, Liam guided the conversation toward their upcoming—though still unfortunately distant—exotic spring break trip.

“No, I don’t mind where we end up going,” Anna confirmed once he floated the question.

“What about Avril? She’s claiming to be impartial about it all, but—”

“But we both know her well enough to find that suspicious,” Anna said with a smile. “However, in this one instance, I think she might be telling the truth. She hasn’t tried to sway me toward casting my votes anywhere in particular.”

“If it weren’t you, I’d think you might be lying to me—that you were in on it with her.”

“No such attempts like that have happened either,” she confirmed. “She really is leaving it up to us. So, to you. ”

“After me, you should have the most sway on where we go,” he protested. “If you, Victoria, and Tess all formed a coalition, I think you could outvote me.”

“A coalition against our resident card shark,” Anna said, amused. “That didn’t work out so well for us last time.”

Liam shrugged. “What can I say?”

“Nothing,” Anna said. “If you apologize for how badly you thrashed us, I’ll know you’re lying. If you act humble, I’ll know you’re lying.”

Liam ended up grinning as he led Anna’s vehicle into the parking lot of Café on Ice. Immediately, any interest toward what beach they’d end up on in a few months vanished. Leaning forward while he parked them, Anna read the icy blue and pink sign planted above the quaint building. Next, she leaned to look out her window. Peeking out from behind both sides of the building was the infinity-shaped rink.

“Shall we?” Liam asked, shifting the SUV into park. “Our last time skating together got ruined.”

By an asshole, he finished in his mind.

Anna eyed him, though she certainly didn’t deny the truth of his statement. Even if it had, in a way, led to their relationship becoming what it was now, he suspected that neither of them looked back on that particular day—one where a rightfully titled asshole had basically stalked Anna to her favorite ice-skating rink—too fondly.

Today was a chance to put a pleasant memory between then and now.

“I’m going to sound awful,” Anna said, “but I’m really picky about my skates. I… don’t think I’ll enjoy using this place’s skates.”

“Don’t worry,” Liam said, grinning anew, “you won’t have to.”

About thirty seconds later, as Liam popped open the trunk of Anna’s SUV and moved aside the neatly folded blanket covering her skates, he felt the dryness of her look even before he found it with his eyes.

“Avril.”

Liam simply nodded at what had never been a question.

Collecting her white ice skates, of a quality far, far above what they could have rented inside, they found the café itself unsurprisingly cramped in terms of space. There were about six tables available for those who wanted to escape the cold or who, for some reason, hadn’t come here with any intention of skating. After placing their orders and getting him a pair of skates from a friendly server, they headed back outside through a glass door.

Upon seeing the rink, even with its relative diminutiveness, Anna immediately smiled. Liam stole a bit of her joy and smiled beside her. After they slid on their skates at a bench near the rink’s entrance, dropping their shoes off at the same daycare as everyone else, they joined the other skaters on the ice. This was hardly a place to show off skills. With the path really only being wide enough for maybe four skaters to skate side by side, and with the entire concept wrapped around drinking something hot while skating, none of them were skating particularly quickly. It was pretty much all couples or groups, each enjoying conversation, warm cappuccinos, and a bit of lazy skating.

“I’ll eventually get you to show me your real skills,” Liam said as his blades touched the ice. Using a rope fence for support, he soon pushed away and began skating with Anna, who glided over the ice with effortless grace. This was as much her habitat as the ocean was a dolphin’s.

“Maybe,” Anna said, a step from how she usually replied when someone—usually Avril—tried to goad her into showing off.

“You did promise,” he reminded her, which caused her to nod softly.

They made their first sweep around the infinity calmly. The only “dangerous” spot was where the looping rink pinched together in the middle. But with only a few skaters on the ice right now, all of whom seemed steadier than him, there wasn’t even any congestion, much less a danger of collision.

“It’s only fair,” he said, glancing at the area where they could collect their drinks once they were ready. It was basically a fast-food drive-thru, complete with a glass window that could slide out of the way once the server was ready to hand out their drinks. “I mean, I’ve shown you everything I know how to do with cards. That was my secret talent.”

“Somehow, I doubt you’ve exposed all your secrets in that arena,” Anna said, turning and beginning to skate backward as they moved into their second loop. Even at their lazy pace, she was still better in reverse than he was going forward.

“Maybe,” he imitated, which caused Anna to smile. “Could be that I’m expecting at least Avril to come for my title on spring break.”

“I’d say Victoria, too. Even if I somehow ended up with more points than her, she’s the next best, right? You said it yourself. She seemed to want to win very badly.”

“I don’t think any of you were bad.”

“Just not as good as you,” Anna said, finishing his statement for him.

Grinning, Liam shrugged. “Maybe.”

They were just beginning their third loop of the rink, passing by the bench where their shoes sat, when the server opened the window and called out their names. With a lifted hand, Anna signaled that she’d heard the call, and the server left the drinks on a small stone shelf just inside the open window. Once they made it all around, they collected their respective cappuccinos and warmed their hands around two pillars of Styrofoam heat. Eventually, they began carefully sipping—well, he did, wary of the act of skating and drinking at the same time—their drinks. Anna, naturally, showed no difficulty in combining the two.

On their fourth loop, Anna’s shoulder brushed against his. He’d grown a little silent while focusing as he did on keeping either type of spill—of him or his drink—from happening. But he didn’t miss the brief contact—an unquestionably intentional meeting between their coats.

Careful that his grip was firm, Liam released one of his hands from his drink—and then he finally lowered the warm object from where it’d been hovering inches away from his mouth since he’d placed it there. The act helped relieve the tense hunch on his shoulders. Freed of its purpose, his hand dropped to his side, where it then searched for something else to hold.

It only took a few seconds for a pair of recently warmed hands to connect.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Anna said, voice quiet but charged with meaningful appreciation. “Embarrassing as it is, this is still a little novel to me. Dates, I mean.”

Liam smiled and squeezed her hand affirmingly. “I’m glad to have found this place. And we’ll keep going on dates until it stops being novel. We’ll make it so, so ordinary.”

Blushing slightly, Anna’s eyes sang their contentment when she looked at him. Her mouth—her everlastingly luscious mouth—framed a smile. He could survive a single blow, but not two. Not from weapons as powerful as these.

Feeling as if there were no better time than the present, Liam leaned over. Briefly overcoming his mediocrity as an ice skater, he managed to kiss Anna while avoiding going off course. Instead, after initiating the kiss, he only needed to stay attached to a far more skillful skater. She didn’t need to see ahead to keep them flowing around the symbolic rink.

After their kiss ended, they spent about twice as long staring into one another’s eyes. In the dead of winter, on an ice-skating rink, there was somehow no place warmer in all the world. Fiji, Maldives, and Maui had nothing on the space between them.