“I don’t go there to share my drinks.”
“You drink water with fish pee in it,” I point out.
Gideon makes a pained face. “It’s filtered.”
“I don’t think you can filter out pee,” Reid says.
“What do you know about filters?”
“I know that if I peed in one, when the pee came out the other side it would still be pee.”
“Alchemy’s fake, you know,” adds in another voice, belonging to a man who’s just inserted himself next to Wyatt. “Hi. If anyone says they can turn pee into gold, they’re lying. Or very dehydrated.”
Gideon closes his eyes briefly, as if maintaining his composure.
“Andi, this is Javier. Javier, my girlfriend Andi.”
“Charmed,” Javier says, grinning like it’s true.
“Gideon doesn’t want to share his beer,” Wyatt says, as if that’s an explanation.
“Does he need to?”
“No,” says Gideon. “He does not.”
“The alcohol kills the germs,” Reid says.
“Beer’s not nearly that alcoholic,” corrects Wyatt.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Reid goes silent and looks very thoughtful.
“Anyway,” Javier says. “Where are the best seats?”
“You know how this works?” Gideon asks me, so close his lips are practically against my ear. The derby players are lining up on the track, and the music is loud and the crowd is also loud and there’s even a few spotlights swirling around.
“Sort of?” I say, because I went to the derby once in Brooklyn but it’s been a couple of years.
Gideon leans in further and rests a palm on my thigh, right where my stockings end. I have no idea if it’s an accident.
“So, it’s divided into two-minute segments, which have a goofy name I don’t remember right now,” he says, his voice all rumbly and his hand warm. “See Lainey and the other woman with the star on her helmet?”
“I don’t know who Lainey is,” I remind him.
“Oh. Sorry,” he says, pointing at the track. “She’s the Black woman with the helmet star. I don’t know the other one. Lainey is, um, friends with Wyatt.”
I can’t see her very well from here, but I’m pretty sure she’s wearing rainbow fishnets and a lot of pink glitter, so she’s probably cool.
“Sure,” I say.
“They’re the ones who score points,” he says, “Which they do by skating through this pack of other women—” he points at a cluster further up the track, “—and then the goal is to lap the other team as many times as they can in two minutes by skating fast.”
“That’s it?”
He shrugs. “More or less.”
Silas and his girlfriend Kat come sit in front of us right before kickoff, or skateoff, or whatever it’s called. She’s quiet but knows way more about derby than either Gideon or Silas, so I wind up sitting next to her on the bleachers, leaning back against Gideon’s knees. He talks to Silas and keeps playing with my hair and then stopping, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.
It’s good, seeing Gideon like this: relaxed and happy in public. Ever since we’ve been back he’s been stuck in the middle of all his siblings, trying to mediate The Sadie Situation. I’m not even sure any of them remember what sparked it, but I know that now they’re arguing about whether Matt went to a wet t-shirt contest in college one time or if Jacob secretly dated someone before he met his wife, if Zach’s wife is allowed to know the Secret Family Biscuit Recipe, or how Ariel might, sometimes, wear a two-piece swimsuit.
Watching over all this are William and Emma, Gideon’s parents. They’re either staying out of it (Gideon’s words) or allowing their progeny to kill each other, Lord of the Flies style, until the final remaining child has proven his or her love for them by strict adherence to their impossible rules (my words, which I haven’t actually said to Gideon). I’ve seen his dad twice and his mother once since I moved back to Sprucevale, both times in passing. We didn’t speak. I’d be happy if we never spoke again, because as much as I can forgive Gideon for what happened back then, William and Emma can have my forgiveness when they ask for it on their knees and maybe not even then. So, yeah, I’m still mad.
My mom died when I was nearly three. Aneurysm. Her name was Gloria. I don’t really remember her much, but I know all about her because my dad and Rick talk about her all the time, still. She grew up here and went to high school with Rick, then met my dad in college; after she died, her best friend and her widower spent a lot of time together and eventually started dating. I’m pretty sure that “started dating” is a polite euphemism for something else, but I’ll never ask, and anyway, they’re married now.
The other person who loved to talk about my mom was her mother, my Grandma Millie, whose house was full of doilies and throw pillows and ceramic figurines. She always had cookies in a jar, chocolate milk in the fridge, and let me watch as much TV as I wanted. Grandma Millie was also casually bigoted and racist in a way that I wouldn’t realize until years later, when she found out from Gideon’s parents that my dad and Rick were together and tried to have the state take custody of me away from them because of it.
Not the best time in my life. I had nightmares about being dragged away from my parents because my best friend had betrayed me. My dad lost his job teaching eighth grade science. We moved to New Jersey, where my dad’s family is, the moment the court case with Grandma Millie was over, and I never saw her again. I didn’t go to her funeral. I hope no one did.
I wouldn’t be mad if I never saw Gideon’s parents again, either, but for his sake I could probably force three or four minutes of politeness if I really had to. Maybe five if the situation really calls for it.
But right now, I’m leaning against him and he’s half playing with my hair and talking to Silas about some movie I don’t think I saw and Kat and I are trying to decide on our derby names, and this, I think, is what I want for him.
“You look good like this,” I tell Gideon two hours later. I’m standing behind him on the bottom riser and I’ve got both my arms slung around his neck, pulling him back against me. It’s dark in the gym, just the emergency lights on, the scent of beer and sweat and too many people slowly fading.
“Sweaty and a little tired?” he asks, voice buzzing through my palms where they’re flat against his chest.
“You look happy,” I tell him, the thing I’ve been thinking all night when I haven’t been coming up with a derby name or lowkey ogling him because he’s wearing a button-down plaid with the sleeves rolled up that is, frankly, very slutty.
Gideon reaches up and puts a hand around my forearm, then slides it down to my wrist, touching me like he’s thinking. It’s fascinating, the way I’ve learned his minutiae since we met again.
“I am,” he says, and the words hang in the air.
We’re still here because roller derby is a community activity as much as any church potluck, and if you know anyone on the team, you’re getting roped into helping with cleanup. That means I got to peel tape off the floor while I watched Gideon and his friends stack chairs, carry them to a storage room, put away sound equipment, and generally lift heavy things in a way I found very pleasing.