"You know what you are? You're a soft touch in a very expensive coat."
"That's a little better than idiot."
"It's not better. It's the same. I'm being nice." She kept rubbing. His hands were starting to warm up. "Danny, though. That was good. That was a good thing to do."
He looked at her hands holding his.
"I wasn't trying to win," he said. "With Danny. I wasn't trying to beat you, or lose to you, or anything. He was just — sitting there. Somebody had to stop."
"I know," said Gina. "I saw."
And she did not tell him — not yet, not that night — that her father would have stopped too. That her father would have loved him. That she had been skating with her head down and her heart pounding, doing exactly what she had been taught, never looking back, never losing a step, and she had sailed right past the crying boy without seeing him at all.
*