Chapter 3

“I’m [y/n],” you say.

It comes out a little small. A little careful. But she receives it like you’ve handed her something wonderful, her smile doing that thing where it reaches her eyes and makes them crinkle slightly at the corners and you have to look back down at your laces because apparently you have forgotten what to do with your face.

You hear her unzipping her bag. The soft rusttle of her pulling her skates out. The bench shifts again as she settles and starts lacing up beside you, and the domesticity of it — just two people, side by side, doing the most ordinary thing — makes something in your chest feel strangely, stupidly warm.

You’re almost done with your left boot when she speaks again.

“Okay, I have to ask.”

You glance up.

She’s nodding toward your skates, expression lit up with something genuinely curious and bright. “The laces. Are they custom or—”

“Oh.” You look down at them. The pale pink, soft as anything, threaded carefully through white boots you’ve had for two years now. “No, I just — I re-laced them myself. They’re just ribbon laces, honestly.”

“They’re so pretty though.” She says it simply, like a fact, not a performance. Like she just thought it and let it out without filtering it first. “They really suit you.”

They really suit you.

You process this.

She noticed your laces.

She has been close enough at some point to notice your laces — no, wait, she can see them right now, she’s sitting right next to you, that’s a normal thing to notice, you are being completely normal about this.

“Thank you,” you say, and you are miraculously normal about it. Barely. “I’ve done them in a few different colours but I always come back to this one.”

“I like that.” She’s lacing her own skates as she talks, fingers moving quickly and easily, and you notice hers are standard — white boots, well-worn in a way that says she’s been skating a long time. There’s a small charm hanging off the side of her bag. Something silver. It suits her. “It’s like a signature thing, you know? I feel like everyone who skates long enough ends up with one.”

“What’s yours?” you ask, and then immediately wonder where that came from. You don’t usually ask questions this easily. You don’t usually talk this easily.

She seems pleased that you asked. “Honestly? I always warm up to the same playlist. Same order, every single time. If one song plays out of sequence I feel like the whole session is cursed.”

A laugh escapes you before you can stop it — small and soft and startled out of you — and she points at you like you’ve just proven something.

“See, everyone thinks it’s funny until they have their own weird ritual.”

She is so—

She is just—

You have said hey to this person for months and she has been like THIS the whole time and you had no idea.

“That’s fair,” you say, because your internal monologue is not her problem. “I re-lace mine every few weeks even when I don’t need to. So.”

“Okay that’s actually really sweet.” She tilts her head slightly, a small smile on her lips, and for a moment she’s just looking at you the way people look at something they find genuinely charming without meaning to.

You look back down at your laces.

Your ears, you are fairly certain, are the exact same colour as them right now.