Page 88 of Switching Skates

“So, you need to go home tonight then?” She whispers her question with hesitancy in her voice.

“Not if you want me to stay,” I murmur.

We drift together, step by step, and she nods slowly. Her next word is everything I want to hear. “Stay.”

“Then I will,” I state matter-of-factly because the decision is easy.

I’ll have to get up at, like, four a.m. to leave here and go back to my place and pack, but I don’t care if it means I get to be by her side tonight.

Who knows what she’ll decide in the end? Maybe this will be my last chance to hold her. Maybe she wants this one last night together before saying goodbye.

Taking my hand, she pulls me over to her bed, and we crawl under the covers, me first. She puts her back to me, and I wrap her up in my arms and legs, unsure where we each begin.

“Good night, Sunset,” I whisper into her ear and press a soft kiss beneath it.

I know she’s confused. I get it—I do. But, fuck, if she chooses to walk away fromus, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know how I’d ever accept that as an answer. We’re meant to be together—I know that. If I have to, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning her love.

“Good night.”

When did I become the type of love interest in the rom-com who runs away from the one thing they’ve always wanted? I mean, come on. It’s a cliché at this point.

A pathetic, overused cliché.

But somehow, we’re still here.

I’ve never self-loathed as hard as I have today.

From the moment I woke up and found my bed empty, Mason having already left for his team trip, I’ve been spiraling.

My heart has been aching in a way I didn’t even know was possible, as if a piece of it left with him and the rest is crying out in agony.

But I can’t let that consume every thought because this week starts the change in schedule for the practices for my Mini Mammoths.

The summer program is ending, and the fall one is beginning. Instead of night classes three days a week, they are now two days a week at three thirty p.m.

But I wish we had it every day the rest of this week for nine hours a day to distract myself from the never-ending thoughts of Mason. But it’s not, and I’m sure it wouldn’t make much of a difference, as I’ve been distracted by him the entire time I’ve been on the ice this afternoon.

“Ms. Daphne?” Patty, the sweetest redhead girl who always wears her hair in pigtails, skates over to me.

I bend down to greet her at her level. “Yes, ma’am?” I push away every thought but her and skating. “What can I do for you?”

She cocks her head to the side. “Is Mr. Mason going to be coming to visit anymore?”

“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. He’s a hockey player, and he’s a student here. His schedule is very busy now.”

She juts out her bottom lip. “Dang it. He was teaching me how to play hockey.”

“Oh, was he? When was that?” I ask her, taken aback.

“On Tuesdays. But you know that. You were the one who told us about it and showed us tricks after that one practice. He said he’d still come to my ice-skating practices, but he’s not here today.”

Me? Oh, as in me when Mason was in my body.

I haven’t had any complaints from the parents that the classes he taught in my body were off task or about hockey. I certainly would’ve heard from some of them had that been the case. Besides, there was only one that I wasn’t present for, when I had to go show up at a hockey meeting on his behalf.

“I will talk to him and see when he can come visit, okay?”

She brightens up instantly.