Head Over Wheels

by Diana Morland

  “And roller derby? Thinking everything was perfect wasn’t the way to get on the all-star team.”

  “I still made it to the tryouts.”

  “What about with your last girlfriend? Hannah, right? Did you think everything was going to be bedtime kisses and wedding bells with her, too?”

  Ice trickled down Mindy’s spin. “Hannah has nothing to do with this. This is a completely different relationship and you’re a completely different person. Anyway, she and I never could have stayed together.”

  Shayna raised her eyebrows. “Why not?”

  “She left me to move to New York. I was never going to follow her there.” Mindy rubbed her eyes. “I should go. I have to get back to work.”

  “Good.” Shayna’s shoulders relaxed. “I shouldn’t be keeping you here.”

  It hurt to have Shayna send her away so easily—Mindy hadn’t even seen her bedroom. But she was hardly going to ask now. It was obvious what was really going on: Shayna didn’t trust Mindy. Why else would she be so private about her apartment—the apartment that wasn’t even really hers—and not be willing to move in with Mindy?

  This wasn’t a problem that Mindy knew how to fix. Time might be the only thing that would do it—time and getting to know each other better, like Shayna said.

  “Okay.” Mindy made her way slowly back to the coat rack and slipped into her shoes. “I’ll see you on Sunday, then?”

  Part of her hoped Shayna would say no. That this was the end. But her heart still lifted when Shayna said, “Of course.”

  She put on her coat, gathered up her supplies, and turned to Shayna, expecting a goodbye kiss. But Shayna just stood there behind the couch, and Mindy didn’t want to walk on that nice hardwood floor with her shoes on. In the end, she just nodded and left, taking the shiny brass elevator back downstairs alone.

  Chapter 17

  Nowhere was safe anymore. Not for Mindy’s brain.

  Extra roller-derby practice with Shayna was not exactly back to normal; it was still fun, but things were a little tense between them. And then other people’s relationships intruded—Shelly stepped down as team captain, Tara took over, and suddenly there was all new tension among members of Monstrous Regiment. The new weight lifting regimen definitely wore Mindy out, and jamming still let her blow off a lot of steam… but it was like she couldn’t relax.

  She met Shayna at the track where they practiced as usual, and gave her a kiss in the locker room while they both got ready, but she wondered if she was doing the right thing. She felt like Shayna had rejected her by refusing to move in with her—they hadn’t broken up, but was their relationship really going anywhere if Shayna was choosing a living situation she explicitly disliked over Mindy’s apartment with Mindy in it?

  If their relationship was doomed anyway, then they should break up. There was no sense in continuing to date and spend time together if the relationship wasn’t going to last—that was time they could be spending doing other things, like work.

  Not that Mindy thought the relationship was doomed, of course. But it seemed like that must have been what Shayna thought. If she didn’t trust Mindy, well, Mindy would just have to convince Shayna that she was worth trusting.

  “Okay!” She clapped her hands together. “Are we ready to skate?”

  Shayna looked at her in surprise, then grinned. “You’re never this enthusiastic.”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Not about all the extra derby practice. Is it finally starting to be fun for you?”

  “It’s always been fun for me,” Mindy protested. “It’s just… more fun when I’m not trying to accomplish something with it.”

  Shayna skated toward Mindy, took her hand, and pulled her toward the track. “I’m surprised. I’d think, as a freelancer, you’d be all about the accomplishments.”

  Mindy followed without protest. “That’s different.”

  “Well, I like the accomplishment. So let’s go.” Shayna positioned them both on the empty track, their wheels on the same line and a few feet of space between them. “Have you done your twenty-seven in five lately?”

  Mindy grinned. “It’s been a while.”

  “Okay, we’ll see how many laps we can each do in five minutes.” Shayna pulled her phone out, pressed a few things on the screen, and stared at it. “And… go.”

  They both took off, skating flat-out, as hard as they could go. Mindy was afraid, for the first few laps, that she would hurt herself by skating without having warmed up first, but as she reached higher speeds and higher exhilaration, she just let herself have fun.

  The only problem with having fun was, she forgot to count her laps. She saw Shayna slow to a stop by the first line, pulling her phone out of her pocket, and slowed down, letting herself coast for the last several feet. “How did we do?” she panted.

  “I almost hit twenty-eight,” Shayna said, glancing over at her. “How about you?”

  “Uh…” Had they passed each other at all? Shayna had been ahead of her at the very end, but how far ahead had she gotten? “Did you pass me at all?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Then I got twenty-seven, too.”

  Shayna shook her head, rolling her eyes. “You didn’t count?”

  “What can I say? I need a coach or a captain or something to keep me on track, or I just drift off.”

  They skated back to the locker room, where they’d left their water bottles. After that much intense speed, they needed to sit. Mindy plopped down on the bench and sucked down half her water bottle in one go.

  “I guess I should make you go for it by yourself next time,” Shayna said once she’d had some of her own water. “I’ll count and be your coach.”

  Mindy grinned. “You’re a good coach. Maybe you should join Monstrous Regiment—we need a new team captain.”

  “What happened to Shelly?”

  Mindy shook her head, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “She doesn’t want to be captain anymore, apparently. It sucks—she’s a great captain. But we can’t force her to stay on if she doesn’t want to.”

  “No, of course not. Well, I’m not switching teams, but I hope you get a good captain.”

  “Thanks.” Mindy took a deep breath, glad Shayna hadn’t decided to push further. “Let’s get back on the track.” She stood.

  Shayna stood up with her, but she was still frowning. “If you can’t push yourself in derby without external accountability, how do you do it in your work?”

  “That’s part of the reason I have a membership in a coworking space,” Mindy said. “If I go there, I have to work. And I go there most days—if I don’t show up, people notice.”

  “You can’t have started out there.”

  Mindy shrugged. “I just pushed myself. I knew I had to do it if I wanted to make a living and not get a stupid job.”

  “You just seem like you’d do a lot better with the external force of having a job and a boss.”

  “Well, maybe I would, and that’s why I haven’t paid back my family yet. Is that what you want to know?”

  Shayna pushed backward on her skate a few feet. “No. I’m just wondering what exactly motivates you, so you can use it for roller derby. And because… I’m kind of jealous. I don’t have anything that motivates me the way you’re motivated to work.”

  Mindy followed her but stopped short of getting close enough to touch. “You’re a lot more motivated to get good at roller derby than I am.”

  “Because I thought I’d make it onto the all-star team, but I didn’t.” Shayna tossed her ponytail and smiled. “Maybe you just have to hit my ego to motivate me.”

  “Doesn’t it bother your ego to be living in an apartment your parents pay for, instead of getting a better job and living with your girlfriend?” The words were out before Mindy could hold them back—but she couldn’t regret having said them, since they were true.

  Shayna’s face fell. “Mindy…”

  Mindy shook her head. “Let�
��s do some more skating. What exercise should we do next? Did you have something in mind?” She skated past Shayna to get on the track.

  Shayna followed her. “You can’t just fling that at me and then act like you didn’t say anything.”

  “We’ve been doing a good job avoiding it so far. Why let my screw-up stop us now?” Mindy tried to push down the resentment simmering inside her. “Anyway, we’re supposed to be here to practice skating. If we’re not going to practice, I should go home and do some work.”

  “I thought you liked spending time with me.”

  “I do. Of course I do. But I’m getting behind on things and…” She took a deep breath. “The money’s not coming in like I thought it would be.”

  Shayna frowned and took another step, closer to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. I know that’s important. Why don’t we cut things short today? The next all-star tryouts won’t be for months, so I don’t think a short practice in January is going to harm our chances.”

  Mindy shook her head and took Shayna’s hands. “No, this is important to you. And you’ve inspired me, too. I want us both to get really good.”

  Shayna’s lips turned up just a little. “I inspired you? I was doing this on my own for a couple of weeks before you finally joined me.”

  Mindy couldn’t help grinning. “Okay, Gayle and Megan inspired me, because they were good before they went out to the all-star team, but when they got back they were a lot better. It seemed like less fun skating alongside them and comparing myself, so I figured if I got a lot better, it would be more fun. It was the same way with art in college—I practiced a lot and stretched myself because I kept comparing myself to the other students, and the more I did, the more fun it got.”

  She had really reached for the comparison, trying to come up with it only because that seemed to be the best way to make Shayna understand how she was feeling—but she surprised herself by suddenly grasping how true it was. She had worked hard in college, just like she did now, and she had and still did compare herself to other artists, but she’d never realized that art was more fun the better at it she got. She’d always thought that art was always fun no matter what—and it was, just like roller derby, but for both she had more fun the more she developed her skills.

  “Okay,” Shayna said, grinning now as well. “That’s pretty awesome. See, I really wish I had something like that.”

  “Your something can be me.” Mindy pulled her close and wrapped her arms around her. She bit her tongue, though, before asking Shayna to move in with her again. She still hadn’t managed to get Shayna to spend the night; she didn’t want to push them back into a fight again.

  Shayna looked up at her. “How come every time I think I’m going to have a fight with you, you say something sweet like that?”

  “It’s impossible to stay mad at me,” Mindy said. “I’m too perfect.”

  Laughing, Shayna reached up and pulled Mindy’s head down to kiss her. “Yeah. That’s true. Okay, come on.” She pulled herself out of Mindy’s grip. “Let’s do some falling drills. We can’t slack off now!”

  Chapter 18

  “Shayna?” Mindy walked past the track for her next practice with Shayna, head down in her sketchbook, unable to take her eyes away from the drawing she was working on. She’d started it on the subway and couldn’t stop working. She needed to get this right, now that the idea was in her head, before it slipped away.

  “Mindy? Hey, watch out.” Mindy felt Shayna’s hand on her shoulder, guiding her through the doorway to the locker room. “You all right?”

  Mindy nodded and made a few more lines. “Thanks, shayna maidele. I need to work on this for a bit, okay?” She found the bench with her shin and sat down on it, finally dropping the derby bag that she’d been carrying awkwardly over one arm. “This is where my head is right now. As soon as I get my head out of this drawing, I swear, I’ll be all over practice with you.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart.” Shayna sat down on the bench next to her and kissed her shoulder. “Take your time. I know this is your thing. Do you mind if I watch?”

  “Not at all, but you might get bored.” She erased a bit, then sketched a little more, extending the character’s nose to cartoonish depths.

  “Never,” Shayna said softly.

  Mindy zoned back in to the drawing, letting her focus go entirely there—though she wasn’t focused as deep as she normally would be, either at home or at ArriveSpace. And that wasn’t a bad thing. She could still hear Shayna’s soft breathing, steadying and soothing her as she brought the cartoon to life.

  After several minutes, she decided she was happy with the state of the sketch—she’d at least captured the image that two people fighting on the subway had brought to mind. Later, she would scan it in to her computer, ink the lines, probably tweak them some more, and add color. Then she’d try to sell it. She had no idea who or what she would sell it to, but at least creating a cartoon that was all her was better than the five to seven designs she produced a week to the contest website that ended up not being chosen for the project.

  She took a deep breath and closed the sketchbook, then turned to see Shayna still staring at her. Mindy managed a smile. “Sorry to make you wait, doll.”

  That made Shayna smirk. “Doll? That’s not the right decade for either of us.”

  “Yeah, but it suits you, with your pretty little lips.” Mindy threw her arm around Shayna’s shoulder and kissed her on those lips. She felt good all over; she’d created something and things seemed to be back to the comfortable norm with her girlfriend.

  “But we should get to practice,” Mindy added, realizing there was just one more thing to make her day perfect. “You didn’t have to wait.”

  “I told you, I don’t mind,” Shayna said, standing and stretching. “In fact, I kind of enjoyed watching you draw. You’re even more you when you draw.”

  “Even more me?”

  Shayna nodded. “You’re not trying to impress me or come up with something clever to say to me. Not that I think you’re faking, not really, but it seems like when you’re working, everything comes from your core.”

  “Huh.” Mindy stood up, but she couldn’t get started changing right away. She couldn’t stop staring at Shayna. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. When do I ever not mean what I say?”

  “When you’re being sarcastic.” Mindy grinned. “But I recognize your sarcastic voice, and this isn’t it. So, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. But I think you’re making this a bigger deal than it needs to be.” Shayna raised her eyebrows.

  Mindy shrugged. “Maybe. But I worry, when I’m really deep into my art, that I’m not paying enough attention to you.” And yet, when she had been deep into it just then, the only other thing she could pay attention to was Shayna’s breathing. It hadn’t taken away from her focus, but it had been indisputably there.

  Shayna rolled her eyes. “Please. You pay plenty of attention to me. Not that I’m complaining, of course, but my ego can take a break from the fawning every once in a while.”

  That made Mindy snort and broke the spell so she could start changing. “I think the only thing your ego can’t take is losing at roller derby. Oops—I shouldn’t have even suggested that’s possible.”

  Shayna smacked her in the arm, laughing. “If that’s the way you feel, then I’ll meet you on the track, and by the time you get out there I’ll have done five laps already, just to show you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mindy sped her movements up, getting into her clothes and sitting down to lace up her skates. “I’ll do another ten laps around you, just to get you back.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see about that!” Shayna skated out of the locker room. Mindy was only a moment behind her, but Shayna was already halfway around the track.

  Mindy skated after her, and four laps later, she’d finally caught up. She threw her arms around Shayna’s waist and pulled her close. They were both laughing as they crashe
d into the protective wall.

  “Hey!” Shayna looked up at Mindy. “You don’t have all your gear on. That’s cheating.”

  “What? I’m fine.”

  Shayna pointed at her mouth. “You didn’t put in your mouth guard. What if you fall on your face and break your teeth?”

  “What, you don’t think dental implants are sexy?” Mindy kissed her. Admittedly, the fact that Shayna was wearing her own mouth guard diminished the pleasure somewhat, but she liked being able to move her own lips.

  “Go get your mouth guard,” Shayna said. “I’ll set up some jumps for us. Might as well practice those today, while I’m thinking about how we shouldn’t fall on our faces.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mindy skated back to the locker room to grab her mouth guard out of its case.

  When she returned, Shayna had set up a pretty decent-looking obstacle course with mats and cones, so they would have to either jump or do some tight precision skating to get around each obstacle. Mindy was a blocker, but she played pivot sometimes, and she supposed this would be a useful drill for a jammer—if the pack had fallen in a tangle, being able to jump over or skate around the blockers and opposing jammer would be an easy way to rack up the points.

  And she definitely needed to keep her jammer skills up, not just focus exclusively on blocking, if she wanted a shot at the all-star team. They needed all their skills. She was pretty sure she’d actually seen Gayle play jammer in a scrimmage or two since they’d come back from the tournament.

  “Ready to go?” Shayna called. Mindy grinned to show that she had her bright pink mouth guard in place.

  Shayna gave her a thumbs-up. “All right, see if you can catch me!”

  Mindy’s eyes widened as Shayna sped off toward the obstacle course. Chasing each other around the track was one thing, but over and around the obstacles?