"Many times over, Brian," Nick grinned, taking a step when Brian approached them with no trouble at all. "How come you can skate so well?"
"I told you, it's like riding a bike," Brian responded, doing a lap around both Nick and the girl. "Besides, I never really stopped skating, like you, Nick."
Nick rolled his eyes. "Of course, you didn't," he said, giving Brian a sideways glance as his friend approached him.
Brian put his hands on Nick's back and pushed him along. "Pick up your feet!" When they got the end of the rink, he grabbed Nick's arm and pulled him back the other way. "See this?" he said to the girl, nodding his head towards Nick. "This is what happens when you stop skating for a long period of time."
Nick stumbled again, but caught his balance just in time. "Would you stop? I can skate on my OWN, you know."
The girl nodded as she skated over to them. "Sure, you can." She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along for a second or two. "Go ahead."
Surprising them both, Nick skated a few strides across the rink and glided to a stop in front of them with a smile on his face. "See?"
"Very nice!" the girl told him, mirroring his smile. "You're getting there!"
"Aren't I though?" Nick did his best to make his way closer, but wobbled a little anyway.
Brian turned to the girl. "I never said he didn't have a big head..." he said, making it look discreet, but it was obvious to Nick that Brian meant for him to hear every word.
"Well, if that's the way it's going to be," Nick trailed off, pushing away from them and towards the exit. In a way, he expected Brian to call him back, but instead, he heard him say something to the girl. It sounded like, "So what's your name?" So he just kept going.
It took him a while, but when he got to the warming house, he unlaced his skates and then stepped out of them and into his tennis shoes. "So much for skating," he murmured under his breath as he picked up his things and walked back out to his car.
The ride home wasn't a long one, but that's why Nick hated it. For some reason, he was in the mood for a long car ride to take his mind of everything... or rather to get the into right perspective on his life so he could figure things out. He couldn't be sure which it was, but either way, he wanted to go for a long ride and just blast his music until he felt that it was time to turn in.
"Noelle," she responded as Brian made a little swivel around her. "And you can call me... well, you can call me Noelle."
Brian gave her the biggest smile she had ever seen. "As in the Christmas song?" he asked. "That's really pretty."
"Well, it's kind of like that, but just add an L and an E at the end," she explained, pushing off and beginning another lap around the rink. When she looked over her shoulder, he was right where she expected him to be: following her.
"So," he started as he took a spot next to her as they rounded the turn. "Are you still in school?"
Noelle smiled at him. What a polite way to ask a girl how old they were. "I'm a sophomore in college," she told him. "I'm still deciding on my major, but I've got it mostly narrowed down. At first I told myself that I'd have the answer by the end of Christmas break, but now I don't even want to think about it anymore."
"I'm on break too," Brian said, looking towards the door and wondering if Nick had really left. "It's nice to get a vacation every once in a while."
"So, what is it that you do?"
Thoughts and emotions were swirling through Nick's mind so quickly, that he stopped to wonder if he should be driving. Inside his heart, it was empty, yet it was beating too fast to be called a normal heartbeat. He didn't know why this was happening or what he should do to stop it, so he just kept driving
No one knew what it felt like to be so lonely until they got hit with the awful disease themselves. No one knew what it felt like to have his feelings bounce and echo through the walls of his heart, not getting any response. It hurt, that's what it felt like... but that was in no way the right word. Hurt was a word that had been so watered down, in his case, that it hardly meant anything anymore.
He thought about what had happened that day... at the skating rink with Brian. How he had messed up royally and then how Brian had skated in, saved everything and completely took over. It was typical in his life. He screwed around and other people cleaned up his messes.
He didn't want it to be like that anymore. He wanted responsibility. He wanted to be a real adult; one that made decisions, stuck with them and then something good actually happened because of it.
Too bad he was so weak and so alone. At that point in his life, there was no one there, no one who could lift him up and there was definitely no one to make him see the goodness in others. Not in his opinion anyway.
Chapter 3
The Loneliness Inside
Non-Nsync Fiction
I'll Never Stop {Fiction}
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