I slide an arm around Gideon’s waist and whisper sorry as Lucia snaps several photos, presumably for her scrapbook or something. I don’t know.
“Was that so hard?” she says when she’s done, and comes forward to give me a hug, then a kiss on each cheek. She repeats it with Gideon, who blushes furiously. “Have a good time and be safe,” she says, in a way that makes it clear she doesn’t mean we should drive under the speed limit. I wonder for a moment if she saw the condoms I put in my purse, then remind myself that it doesn’t matter.
“Thanks,” we both say, and manage to escape at last.
“I thought I might need to send a search party,” Reid says from the back seat a few minutes later.
“My aunt wanted pictures,” I explain, buckling my seatbelt, and Gideon snorts.
“Ugh. Adorable,” Reid mutters. “Now I feel even more like your chaperone. No funny business up there.”
“Reid,” Gideon says, but he’s still blushing and he leaves it at that.
I know exactly the moment Gideon discovers the tights I’m wearing are actually the thigh-high kind with a built-in garter, because the car stops mid-parallel-park and he’s staring at my lap in mild alarm. My skirt, which was on the short side to begin with, has ridden up during the hour-long car ride to Blythe, just enough that the top band is visible around my thigh.
He glances at Reid in the back seat, Gideon’s hand still behind my headrest, then at me again, and finally clears his throat and continues backing into a parking spot. I pull my skirt down and try to make a demure face while Gideon blushes in the driver’s seat and focuses on parking like no one has ever focused before.
It’s adorable and sweet and makes me want to ride him like a pony all at once, because feelings can be multi-faceted.
“Izzy says they’ve got our names at the front,” Reid says, disturbing the silence. “Are we done parking, or…”
The roller derby match is in an older building close to the edge of town, near the river, surrounded mostly by other old buildings. Warehouses or something, probably, the streets quiet and empty and dark even though it’s only seven forty-five. Reid walks a good twenty feet in front of us, wearing a hoodie under a denim jacket and checking his phone every ten seconds or so, practically humming with nervous energy.
“Yeah, they should be here any—hey, guys, come get wristbands,” he calls from the lit doorway when we walk up to the derby venue. “Here. Yeah. Gideon and Andrea? Thanks. Thank you.”
Reid scowls at his lime-green under 21 wristband for a second, but then we’re inside and there’s already a hubbub and Reid shoves his hands into his pockets and looks around in a way that reminds me, a little, of a meerkat. He pays no attention whatsoever to the crowd as we walk over to where Silas and Kat are standing, a little off to the side, and knocks into at least two people.
“Reid,” Gideon says. “Fuck’s sake, look where you’re going.”
“Sorry,” Reid says, still not looking where he’s going. “Izzy said she was—”
“Reid!” a woman exclaims, and a second later a short girl with blue pigtails elbows her way through the crowd and launches herself at him. “You came!”
They hug, and Reid is wearing the goofiest, dopiest grin I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Hey,” he says, when the hug ends, and then shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “Yeah, of course. I like your—” he sort of nods at her entire being, which is wearing knee-high rainbow socks, ripped hot pink fishnets, short gold spandex shorts, a Blue Ridge Bruisers tank top, and an impressive amount of glitter. “Looks like a good turnout,” Reid finishes, cheeks mottled pink.
“It usually is when we play Richmond,” Izzy says, and then she’s excitedly talking a mile a minute about roller derby stuff while Reid stays quiet and makes the biggest heart-eyes I’ve ever seen on a human. It’s not what I expected from Gideon’s sometimes-sweet, sometimes-surly little brother, but it does make sense.
“Is this why we’re here?” I whisper to Gideon. “And are we chaperoning him? What are our responsibilities right now?”
“Don’t let him get into any white vans that say free candy on the side, probably,” Gideon says, his voice low and right in my ear. “But otherwise…” he shrugs.
The building where the derby is taking place is the old gym complex for the satellite campus of Virginia State University in town—the college built a newer one a few years ago, Gideon’s friend Wyatt tells me—and it’s got a charming, midcentury athletics feel to it. There are basketball hoops pulled up against the ceiling, padding at either end of the gym, and wooden bleachers that pull out from the walls. They’re only halfway out right now, and between them the oval track is demarcated with thick black tape on the floor.
“I’d get a couple levels up in the stands at least,” Wyatt is saying cheerfully, a beer in his hand, his orange hair flopping forward over his forehead. “Sometimes they lose control and go into the crowd, which is always kinda fun, but you probably don’t want it to be you.”
“How is that fun, exactly?” I ask as Gideon walks up silently and hands me a beer in a plastic cup.
“Oh, the crowd loves it,” he says. “And everyone knows not to stand there unless they’re willing to get knocked over, maybe, so it’s win-win.”
“What? No one is winning,” Gideon says. “One person gets a penalty and the other gets plowed into.”
“It’s a win in the spirit of roller derby,” Wyatt says confidently.
“Sure,” Gideon says. He sounds utterly unconvinced. “You guys seen Reid?”
“I thought we weren’t chaperoning.”
“We’re not.”
I lift an eyebrow and try not to feel a little squishy inside at the way Gideon is looking out for his little brother while also acting annoyed about it.
“If it helps, I also haven’t seen any free candy vans.”
“There’s a free candy van?” Wyatt asks, taking another sip of his beer.
“Yes. They lure children and kidnap them,” Gideon explains, and Wyatt grimaces.
“Oh, that kind. Is that really a thing?”
“Probably.”
“Anyway,” I start. “I think Reid is—”
I am interrupted, again, by a hand mysteriously appearing from Gideon’s other side and going for his beer.
“Hey. No,” Gideon says, glaring as the rest of Reid also appears. “You’re underage.”
“I’ll be twenty-one in, like, five months,” Reid says, tugging his sleeve over his lime green wristband. “C’mon.”
“Then in five months you can have some of my beer.”
“Really?”
“In five months, I’ll buy you a beer,” Wyatt offers. “We all know Gideon’s not sharing.”
“It’s unhygienic,” says the man who’s recently discovered a fondness for ejaculating on my breasts.
“You spend way too much time in the woods for anyone to believe that,” Wyatt says, cheerful as ever.