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After midnight the roller rink exhales. The last birthday balloons bump noses with the dark, the rental counter counts its scuffed half-sizes, and the disco ball hangs like a sleepy planet. She locks the front, kills the fluorescents, and leaves the colored lights—blue, raspberry, a patient gold—because silence looks better with a little neon.
She laces her own skates at the end of the bench where the vinyl squeaks like a small confession. Wheels click, bearings say we remember. She taps her phone against the DJ booth and the speakers wake politely: side-B soul, a synth that knows how to whisper, drums that keep their promises.
Alone on the lacquered oval, she pushes once, twice, and the whole week loosens. The floor is a smooth sentence she can finish without rushing. Corner by corner, she collects pieces she dropped between errands: a laugh from Tuesday, a good idea from Wednesday, the unremarkable kindness from a stranger at the gas station that somehow weighs more now.
Past the mural of lightning and the cartoon comet, she practices an old crossover, left foot stealing right foot’s job until the turn becomes a little magic. The exit signs hum their institutional lullaby. Somewhere in the office a timer forgets to buzz. She imagines the rink the way it used to be—hair bigger, jeans louder, couples hand-in-back-pocket—then lets the picture skate off on its own.
She is not lonely here. She is inventory: of speed she can trust, of balance she earned. The booth light paints her shadow in slow, colored stripes; she learns her outline again at 9, at 12, at 3—clockwork body, uncomplicated rhythm. She dips a knee and feels the floor answer. Gravity is kinder in wheels.
On the straightaway she closes her eyes for three beats and knows where the wall is by memory of wind. When the song swells, she points at the disco ball like it might sign the night’s permission slip. It does: stars everywhere, portable constellations clipped to the ceiling, tiny yeses sliding over her hair and shoulders.
She thinks of people she loved and the ones she could have if she weren’t so careful. She lets the thought pass her on the inside, faster, and does not chase it. Another track glides in—cassette wobble, impossible groove—and she laughs out loud because nobody here needs her to be reasonable.
By the third lap the air smells like warm bearings and cotton candy that doesn’t exist. A line of forgotten wristbands winks from the counter like low tide treasure. She coasts backward, toes light, and reads the rink in reverse: lobby, door, parking lot full of moths doing their best to be comets.
When the playlist ends, the room sits with her. She unlatches her skates and her ankles feel taller than they should. The colored lights blink their gentle goodnights. She wipes a small circle of dust from the DJ booth with the corner of her shirt and leaves it cleaner than she found it.
Outside the night has its own smoothness. Her keys chime once, deliberate. She doesn’t call anyone. She doesn’t narrate. She drives home with the kind of quiet that fits. In the rearview, the rink shrinks to a single soft planet, still spinning, happy to wait for morning.
