Page 8 of Side By Side

“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but you told me that you wanted to be one of those moms one day, and you didn’t want to do that alone.”

“Dad, I’m only twenty-six.”

“I know that. But you’re close to twenty-seven, and I’m not getting any younger. I want to be a grandpa, Belle.”

“Well, you should’ve had a few more kids, then, because it’ll be a while for me. I’d like to meet a woman and, you know, date her a little before I consider having a kid with her.”

Her dad sighed and said, “Fine. I’ll be patient.”

“No, you won’t.” Belle laughed.

“You know your mom and I wanted more kids.”

“I know,” she replied and looked out at the ice, where just a few people were riding out the clock until they closed in a few minutes.

“She couldn’t…”

“Yeah.”

“Did I ever tell you that we thought about adopting?”

“No. You did?” she asked, looking over at him.

“You were about five or six, I think. We started talking about it then.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Her dad cleared his throat and said, “We just changed our minds.”

“How are you this bad of a liar?” she asked, laughing a little. “Dad…”

“Belle, you were all we needed. That’s all that mattered.”

“Dad, what–”

“Honey, your skating was expensive. All of your activities were. You never seemed to want to sleep. When you weren’t in school, we had to keep you busy. Ballet wasn’t cheap, but you only did that once a week, so that wasn’t bad. When you took to skating, we wanted to make sure you had what you needed. When you got into that program, that was great because they gave us some help, but it was still expensive. We just couldn’t afford that plus the adoption process, which is also expensive, so we decided to put everything we had into the daughter we had already and loved more than anything. It was well worth it when we got to see you out on that ice enjoying yourself and beating everyone.”

Belle looked at her father, who was staring out at the ice now. That was all new information to her. She’d had no idea that her parents had given up their chance at another child just so she could ice skate.

“And then, I quit?”

“You didn’t quit. Those girls forced you out.”

“No, I quit, Dad. I mean, they didn’t exactly make it easy for me to stay, but it was my choice to give it up.”

“Well, it was the right choice. I didn’t want you around girls like that anyway, making your life hell just because you liked girls; as if you could help that or change it. I couldn’t believe it when that coach came up to me and told me he’d given you a warning for being inappropriate with one of the girls. Like you’d ever be inappropriate.”

“Well, I did kiss her on the cheek.”

He turned to her and said, “Because she’d had a bad practice and was upset.”

“Well, yeah.” She nodded and looked out at the ice, watching the last pair of skaters walk off. “I also liked her, so there’s that.”

“She kissed you. That’s what you told me when you were crying after they mocked you incessantly.”

“She did. I mean, I think she did. That’s the way I remember it, at least. But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What ever happened to that teenage terror? What was her name?”