chocolate like that. We may ruin our dinner.”
The excited look on his face must have rivaled the one I had when I caught sight of the lights.
“It’s hard to knock a dinner of chocolate and cookies,” I said.
“And Christmas lights, especially when it’s with you.” He planted a quick kiss on my cheek.
We found an empty bench, sat with our treats and watched the goings on in the park.
“It’s weird not being home for Christmas, but this,” he motioned with his hand to all of the Christmas grandeur around us, “is worth being away.”
“At least our families understood having Christmas early.”
After finals we went home for a week, but had to get back before Christmas to prepare for this weekend. I liked how it worked out. We celebrated Christmas with my mom at Alex’s family’s house on the twenty-third and then headed back to school on Christmas Eve. That gave Alex and me the holiday to ourselves. We enjoyed it. We traded gifts in the morning and spent the rest of the day in bed wrapped around each other. That night, Coach and his wife hosted Christmas dinner at their house. It was a ginormous family gathering where we ate great food and traded hockey-themed gifts. Alex got a spectacularly ugly, but sorta cool sweater featuring a hockey whiteboard with an offensive play diagramed on it. I got a much more reasonable Pittsburgh Penguins snow globe.
“This is amazing cocoa,” Alex suddenly said. “It’s like drinking the middle of a lava cake. The cookie’s good, too. Wanna switch up?”
He held up his half-eaten peanut butter. I took one more bite from the chocolate chip and we traded.
“You know I could sit out here all night, right?” I said through a mouthful of cookie.
“I do. Just like you sometimes lay across our bed for long stretches of time looking up at the lights on the ceiling or sitting at the desk gazing at the bookshelf. I can watch you do that for hours because it’s so cute.”
Our eyes locked on each other. “You know, you’ve had quite the looks today, too.”
Alex’s brow furrowed. “When? Where?”
“Well, there was the hot chocolate thing just a few minutes ago. But, during the game, every time you were on the bench you looked like a kid watching his first game. On the ice you were all business, but on the bench you kept looking around at everything. Sometimes you’d watch the game like you were a spectator, but sometimes you looked into the crowd, your eyes darting around like you couldn’t decide what to focus on. I nearly made a couple late changes because I couldn’t stop watching you.”
He blushed. A lot. Even in the subdued Christmas lighting, it was clear he was bright red.
“Oh my God. I hope I didn’t look like an idiot.” He tried to bury his embarrassment by taking a long drink of cocoa.
“Well, I didn’t think so, and I don’t think anyone else was paying attention.”
Suddenly the big Christmas tree went dark and loud music filled the park. The Jackson Five sang “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and the tree lights started to flicker in rhythm to the music.
“And there’s that look again,” Alex said. He put his arm around my shoulders and held me close as we watched.
“That’s mad cool,” I whispered.
Alex laughed softly. “Please don’t get the idea to make the lights in our room do this.”
“No?” I tried to sound disappointed, despite being ridiculously happy.
“No.” He kissed the tip of his finger and touched it to my nose.
The park seemed to stop for the show, even the people on the ice rink stopped along the boards to watch the dazzling lights dance to the music.
As the song ended, the lights returned to being fully lit and people went back to what they were doing.
I leaned over and whispered in Alex’s ear: “Can we skate?”
He looked at me with a cute smirk and raised an eyebrow.
“I know. We just finished a game and we don’t have our skates. But, still…”
He interrupted. “It would be my pleasure to skate with you in the Christmas wonderland.”
We chomped the last of our cookies and washed them down. It was a lot of hot chocolate to drink at once, but it tasted so good. I stood, and extended a hand to Alex with a bit of a flourish.
“May I have this skate, sir?”
“You may.” He took my hand as he stood.
“They’re too cute.” I heard a woman’s voice behind us. I wasn’t sure who she was talking about, but hoped it was us.
Despite being pretty far back in the queue, the line to get skates moved quickly. Before we hit the ice, I texted Danny and told him we weren’t going to make it to dinner.
There were fifty or so people on the rink, going round and round. We stepped out and found a good pace among the skaters--not too fast or slow. Alex, once again, took my hand in his. We tended to hold hands a lot, but something about doing it now gave me goose bumps, like there was extra holiday magic flowing between us.
“This is perfect,” I said after we’d been around the rink a few times as Christmas songs played around us.
The crowd seemed to be mostly college students. Many people skated in groups, but there were several couples and a few singles as well. Some skaters were taking a break, standing alongside the boards or hanging out just off-ice in an area with benches.
“This was a great suggestion,” Alex said. “I didn’t expect it to be so magnificent to skate under these lights, near the tree. We should leisure skate more often.”
“We should, right? Skating doesn’t always have to be about hockey. Have we ever even skated for the hell of it?”
He shrugged. “And this is a lot easier than trying to dance with you.”
“Indeed.” I kissed his hand.
Whitney Houston’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?” started playing.
“Awwww…my favorite!”
“Did I miss you requesting this?” His skating picked up speed. I followed suit so we wouldn’t break our handhold.
Alex knew how much I loved this version of the carol. Sometimes I’d put it on repeat, or force it to shuffle up often if I had Christmas music on random. Whitney’s voice was perfect on this song and I could listen to it endlessly.
“Nope. Must be fate.”
Alex didn’t have rhythm when we danced, but he was doing a remarkable job skating to the rhythm of the song, both in terms of speed and how he glided us around people. I matched his speed and moves.
“How is it you can keep rhythm here and not on the dance floor?”
“Am I? I’m just skating.”
“It’s totally in rhythm. Can’t you feel it?”
He shrugged as he kept going. “Just doing what feels right. Skating is more natural, I guess.”
We skated in silence. I let Alex keep the lead as we moved in sync to the song. Since I loved to dance, the sort of dancing we were doing here was a blast for me. As the song came to an end, I twirled us both around for a bit of a showy finish, seamlessly moving us forward as we spun.
“Maybe when we retire from hockey we can become a figure skating pair,” I said.
“I don’t think I’d look good in sequins,” he said while laughing. “I also don’t think either of us wants to pick up the other.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Stop imagining that, mister crazy guy.” He bumped into me as if he were trying to shake the image out of my head.
We circled around by the tree again, skating at a regular pace with the rest of the crowd. Suddenly two huge guys bookended us, and matched our stride. A shot of fear ran through me as there was a real possibility we were about to be bashed for being too out there.
“Um, hi,” said the big guy to my left. He sounded unsure of himself, which surprised me.
I tried not to be uneasy, but I was. These guys were more than a head taller than either of us and were solidly built. I wasn’t used to having to look up to talk to someone. Based on the extra squeeze he gave my hand, Alex was concerned, too.
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“Hi,” I said, glad my voice didn’t betray the nerves.
“Sorry to intrude, but…well…,” the guy continued.
He was interrupted by his friend: “Come on, Jarrod, just ask the question. I doubt they’re going to bite our heads off. You’re Alex and Simon, right?” He pointed to each of us as he said our names.
“Yeah,” Alex said. He looked and sounded confused.
“Told you,” Jarrod said.
“Well why would they be here? They just finished a game. A rink doesn’t seem like the first place they’d go. It’s awesome to meet you guys though.”
There were a few beats of silence. They looked happy. We were baffled.
“Sorry,” Jarrod said, sounding more at ease now, “we’re being rude. I’m Jarrod, as I’m sure you heard. That’s Tony.” Tony waved as we curved around one end of the rink. “We were at the game tonight and we’re fans of you guys. We saw you skating and were trying to decide if you were who we thought you were.”
“Anyway,” Tony continued, “we decided to have a fanboy moment and say hi. So hi,” he grinned, obviously excited. He gestured towards Jarrod. “He’s my boyfriend. We go to school up in Flint and came down for the Invitational. It’s a bonus to skate with you for a few minutes.”
“Very cool,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you guys. I admit, you had me worried. No offense, but you guys are giants. I wasn’t sure if you were going to harass us for holding hands or something. Hockey players or not, I don’t think we could’ve taken you guys.”
“I do know how to lay down some hurt, for sure,” said Tony with a slight laugh. “Actually we both do. High school football. Although neither of us plays