"Deal," she said. "But if you wobble, I'm taking the lapels again."
"Threat accepted. Lapel privileges granted under emergency conditions."
They moved. She was fast and clean, the red wheels whispering secrets to the glossy boards. He was all reverse grace, reading the floor through the backs of his knees and the press of her fingers, steering them wide when a cluster of kids cut across their path without looking forward once. Elena felt the strange intimacy of trusting someone who faced the wrong way on purpose. It was like dancing with a person who insisted on leading while walking away from the music and somehow still hearing it.
"Why can't you stop going backward?" she asked mid-lap, voice low under the bass and the chatter and the scrape of wheels.
Jake's mouth tightened, then loosened, as if he were choosing which version of the truth fit the size of one song.
"Because forward still thinks it's going to hurt," he said. "I wiped out bad when I was nineteen. Wet floor by the snack bar. Ankle. Surgeries. Crutches. The body keeps the receipt even when you try to throw out the bill. Backward was how I came back to this place. Then it was how I stayed. Then it was who I was, or at least who people clapped for."
She squeezed his hand.
"That's not a small confession."