Out of my league

9.

   "Wren I swear to God you better not push me." Dahlia says as she hangs on to the sides of the rink. I roll my eyes at her while laughing at her. I wasn't going to push her, I was just going to guide her out onto the rink. Instead of her hanging onto the sides the whole time.

   "I wasn't going to push you, I was going to guide your hips so you can actually skate." I say to her while skating past her and turning around so I can face her. She gives me a death stare, and tries to say in a serious tone, "this is skating,"

  I give her 'are you serious?' Look. Then I laugh while I go to skate beside her.

  "Here, take my arm. I'll hold onto you." I say to her with the softest smile I can muster up. She still gives me the death stare, but eventually takes my arm. She hold onto my arm with both of her hands.

  As she starts to slowly get the hang of it, I hear Avie come up from behind us. I feel this gust of wind as soon as she passes. She then starts to make circles in the middle of the rink, that's when she sticks her back leg into the air then brings it down doing several turns.

I applaud her as she starts to skate towards Dahlia's other side, so now she will have two supporters. I look over Dahlia; as she is only 5'3 and I'm 5'8- to talk to Avie.

"Avie those have gotten so much better over the years, it's hard to think that you weren't able to do them two years ago." I say to her as I go to catch Dahlia as she starts to wobble. Her legs have started to shake with how hard she is trying to stay upright.

"Well... yeah that was two years ago," Avie says to me with a tiny hint of pride in her voice. This woman can not take a compliment if her life depended on it. I roll my eyes and stick my tongue out at her acting like a 7 year old again.

She blinks at me several times then gives me a dry 'haha'. But as she turns her head to the other side, I can see a small smile start to form on her lips.

Got her.

"Okay Dahlia... do you want to try by yourself?" I ask her as if she's never done it by herself.

  She huffs and gives me an 'are you kidding?' Look. "You know I face planted right into the barriers last time right?" She asks me, but is really trying to guilt trip me into not letting go of her.

  "I remember.. but that was seven months ago... everything will be alright, I promise." Hopefully. I say to myself in my mind. Hopefully everything will be alright, or else I don't know how we would ever get her back here.

I move to where she isn't grabbing my arm anymore, just my hand. Avie see's me do it out of the corner of her eye so she follows right behind me. Now Dahlia is only holding one of our hands on each of her sides.

  After a couple minutes when it seems she has gotten her rhythm Avie and I move to where she is only holding our fingertips. As soon as we move Dahlia wobbles forward, then backwards.

  I grab onto her with my other hand out of instinct and she starts to settle again.

  "Okay that's enough I'm hungry," Dahlia says as she starts to turn towards the open door. That means Avie and I have to follow.

   "If I buy you food, will you come back on the ice and try it by yourself?" I ask her as we all head out of the door one at a time.

"Duh." She says immediately with her back to me and she starts to take some baby steps towards the hole in the wall that is the kitchen.

I come up with her, since I'm the one who is paying and I stand next her in line. When it's our turn she tells the worker she wants a corn dog and a bag of red Doritos.

  I hand him my card, and after he is done swilling it he hands it back to me. We move to the side to wait for the food to arrive. I see out of the corner of my eye Avie stomping towards us while scrunching her face. I lift my eyebrow to her and give her a weird look. Why she is stomping?

  She comes up to Dahlia and bumps her head on Dahlias shoulder. She mumbles something under her breath but neither of us could hear a single word she said. We ask her to lift up her head, but when she does, she doesn't say anything.

  They call Dahlias order and when she goes up Avie walks to a bench to take a break I'm assuming. I shrug my shoulders and let her be so she can cool off.

  I walk back to the opening of the rink and as soon as I set foot on the ice I take off. I skate around the rink a couple of times then I start to circle bringing my back leg up. I hold onto the back part of my skate. Biellemann spin. It used to be my least my favorite movement, then my coach added it to my routine so I had to practice it over and over again, and ended up loving it.

  I come out of the spin and go to skate around the rink again when a little girl and I both slam into each other. We go to fall forward, which means I would fall on her. I grab her and spin us both to where we I would land on my back and she would land on me.

  As soon as I hit the ground I feel the air leave my lungs, and I start wheezing. Trying to speak through my wheezing I look at the child and ask her if she's okay.

  "It hurt more for you than it did for me," the little girl says as she stands up and dusts off her baby pink leggings. She looks down at my face, and i immediately recognize her.

"Josie?" I say her name at the same time she screams mine. "Wren!"

She tackles me and I fall back onto my back and I lose my breath once again.

This is going to hurt tomorrow.