The guys told me that Connor played hockey in college. That it was his dream to go pro. What they didn't tell me, what Connor didn't even tell me, was that his uncle owned the St. Louis Blues. I found out on our second date. If I had known before he picked me up I would have been even more nervous. I would have convinced myself even further, to a much harder degree, that I was trash, that I was beneath him. When I was ten years old, I was called trailer trash for the first time. It was on the school bus by a kid named Fisher who was a year older than me. He said I was skanky trailer trash. The insult was aimed at me and my brother and it pissed me off more that my brother heard it. I didn’t want him hurt. I pulled my brother into a seat and sat down, facing forward when I heard it. There were too many cool kids in the back of the bus. I didn’t stand a chance. I thought idly about asking my mom to start taking us to school but I couldn’t handle the humiliation. We lived just three miles from school and it would have been easy for her to take us in, but we would have heard about it at recess. Would have been called cowards. I would take the teasing over that. So yeah, if someone had told me that Connor came from money I still would have gone on the date, but I would have worked myself up even more before it. He knew who I was and where I lived, my reputation and all that, but it would have been there, boiling under the surface, that little voice telling me I wasn’t good enough. I’m so glad I hadn't known yet. Because it was a great date.

He was different one night at the bar, a few days before our second date. I let him be more forward. His hand was on my thigh underneath the table. He was whispering into my hair. I let him be tender and forthcoming with me. I let him be affectionate in the open. It wasn't really my style. Affection needed to lead to sex. With someone I didn't care much about losing.

This was a guy I had just went on a date with. Someone who liked me. I was thinking maybe I deserved it. To be into a guy who was into me, too. For the right reasons. Maybe it would be more than a distraction. More than just someone to get my mind off Avery for a night. Maybe someone to help me move on. Fully. Completely.

It was a pretty far-fetched idea. But I could dream. When he brought me back to my trailer that night, I wasn't embarrassed. I drank enough to forget about the fact that I was in an expensive car with a man who wore expensive clothes. And I was wearing some cheap low-cut shirt from Walmart. Living in my uncle's shitty trailer. He really didn't seem to care where I lived or about the shitty car that I drove anyway. He was into me the way I wanted to be into him.

There was something familiar, but foreign to my idea of him, in his eyes that night. I worried he was too innocent, too kind to keep my interest. But tonight was flipped, frantic with new energy, a buzzing.

When he put his car in park, I crawled over the gearshift on top of him.

His hands were under my shirt and my skirt bunched up around my thighs. I moved around, pushing off my little boots. I found his neck, traced my tongue there. His fingers were inside of me before he even kissed me and I moaned.

This is what I wanted. I wanted to see this side of him. See if it matched up with mine. See if he liked to play the way I did.

He seemed so clean-cut. Audioslave played through the speakers of his car as he worked me up close to the edge. He wouldn't push me over. No man had been able to. But I like the ascent.

Suddenly his phone started ringing on the dash, the vibration blasted through the car and we stopped, startled, looking out the windows, and then locking eyes and laughing.

"I’ve been waiting for you to kiss me that way.”

“What way?” I brushed a strand of hair from my sweaty forehead.

“Like you mean it,” he said as he kissed me on the forehead, and then the spell was broken a little. It was such a tender act and it wasn't what I wanted.

I didn't deserve tender acts from tender men. I deserved the hell I had been living in. I untangled myself from him and fell back into my seat as he grabbed his phone. He looked at it briefly before tossing it in the backseat, then turned to me.

"Can we go out again this weekend?" he asked, reaching for my hand. He rubbed my bare ring finger.

"Yes," I replied to the window, watching my breath cloud it. "What do you want to do?"

"I really would like to take you skating," he said timidly. "I know you're scared but I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you."

I'd heard lies like that before. "Where would we skate anyway?" I asked, warming to the idea.

"I know a place.” He laughed.

I wasn't sure what was so funny but I didn't press. Instead, I leaned forward and looked at my trailer, at the broken blinds in the living room. I felt a little less high from the touch of him. I was coming down.

I didn't like to linger out in front of the trailer, especially with a guy who was infatuated with me. I was afraid his feelings for me would fall away. It didn't matter how nice he was. He would start to wonder why he was infatuated with the girl who lived in a dirty trailer and worked at a department store.

A girl who had never been to college.

A girl with shitty poetry stashed under her mattress.

A girl who never thought she would amount to much.

The night of our second date we showed up at the ice rink late, after ten. Connor walked to a plain looking door like he owned the place. He still had his car keys in his hand. He opened the door and turned to me, his eyes more predatory than they had been on our first date, more like the last night I saw him. I felt a shiver, and a blush formed, just at the base of my neck. I wanted him this way.

I didn’t want to be treated like a delicate flower, like broken glass, though I was often that fragile. I needed to be treated like an object of desire. I wanted to be possessed and I wanted to possess someone. Avery had been so sure in his pursuit. I needed that again.

I walked through the door, shoving aside wants and pulls for my ex. He was lacking. I wondered where he had sold his soul. If his new wife wounded others the way he did.

I stopped just inside the door, my eyes adjusting to the dark hallway I was standing in. “How do you have a key again?” I agreed, reluctantly, to let Connor take me ice skating. I expected him to take me to a rink in town, not the St. Louis Blues Stadium.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, taking my hand. He didn’t sound dismissive. He sounded like a storyteller who wasn’t ready to give his secrets away.

I followed him in the dark, his hand in mine, watching the ice skates slung over his shoulders sway with his gait. I loved his walk. Shoulder back, head high, the sway of his narrow hips almost like a dance.

I reached with my other hand up to my opposite shoulder, giving my center a half hug. The air was chilling; we were getting closer to the ice.

When we made it to our destination, I let out a sigh. The stadium was dark, the ice lit by a dim overhead light. Connor dropped my hand and walked into the dark. “Where are you going?” I hissed, hugging myself fully.

“Getting us some light,” he called over his shoulder.

I looked down at the skates he left behind. He bought me a pair before our first date. I still remember the text, asking for my shoe size, and the way he dodged my questioning. It was a strange thing to ask a girl you were about to take on a date.

I found a bench and started to take off my boots. I squeezed my feet, covered by a double layer of socks, into the first skate. When I was done, I ran my hand up my calf. I felt like a live wire, my senses more heightened. I was being pulled apart. Being pushed closer and closer into a deeper attraction to Connor.

When my date returned, he found me staring at my skate-clad feet, creating a light show with the silver of the blade onto the short wall in front of me.

“Don’t be nervous,” he said, sitting down next to me with his skates in hand.

“I don’t like doing things like this,” I confessed, dropping the mask. I didn’t like driving fast, climbing rock walls, skating across ice.

I lived my life with my feet firmly planted on the ground. My anxious heart kept me from doing things other people found thrilling. This was our second date, and traditionally, this is where I would lie, keep playing the part of the cool girl. The girl up for anything. But that wasn’t me. I’d sooner drop to my knees and take him into my mouth than dance my way across the ice. I didn’t think he would protest but he was on to my tricks already.

He wanted to get to know me, and I wanted to distract him, with my body, with the things I could do. It was better to show a man what you wanted to see, convince yourself it was what you wanted, than to have him root you out, then discard you.

Connor finished with his skates, then dropped to his knees in front of me, his large hands inspecting my own feet, undoing the laces. “These aren’t tight enough. You don’t want your ankles to get hurt. They need to be strong and secure.”

I liked watching him there, fixing my mess, his full bottom lip pulled in, secured by his teeth, in concentration. I wanted to reach out, run my hands through his dark hair, but I didn’t. Instead, I wrapped my arms right around myself again.

When he was finished, he stood, his hand outstretching to me. I grasped it, let him pull my weight up. He kept his grip tight as we made our way out onto the ice. His arm was solid under my frantic pull. I pulled him close, my heart thudding. I was only 5’2”. The ice below me wasn’t a steep drop, but I feared falling. I feared being unbalanced.

Connor pulled my chest to his. “It’s okay. I won’t let you fall.”

“You underestimate my ability to pull others down.” There was a heaviness to my words. I’ll pull you down. I’ll watch that smile leave your eyes.

“You underestimate my ability to lift people up,” he said, into my hair. God, I liked him. Why did he have to be so airy? So much like the spring on the horizon? The air around us tasted like me. Cold, biting.

“Can you imagine if we had done this on our first date.” I laughed, pushing out just a bit so I could see Connor’s brown eyes. He locked his forearms with mine, our hands wrapped tightly around each other’s.

“It would have been great,” he smiled, genuinely enjoying the sight of me off balance.

Maybe that was the appeal. This power struggle, that's all dating was, right? I wanted a drink in my hand, my fingertips grazing him lightly. There was my power. I needed it.

“Think you can stand on your own?” he arched his eyebrow and my face fell.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t let me fall?”

“That’s just because it was the nice-guy thing to say,” he laughed. “You underestimate yourself. I know you can do it. I'm not asking you to move. Just to stand on your own, test your weight, test your movements.”

I hated him a little then. I glared to show him how pissed I was, and he showed me more of his teeth. I dropped his arms in protest, willed myself not to breathe. I couldn’t fall over in my act of defiance. Connor skated backward, away from me, his eyes never leaving mine. “Good. You’re fine. I know you can stay on your feet.”

My fists were clenched. I slowly tapped them on my hips, needing to feel my weight, my steady base, when nothing felt steady. I watched Connor skate away, it was a dance, he was walking on water, ice cold permanence. I wouldn’t dare move, and here he was, skating in circles before me.

It wasn’t an act of showing off, nothing to shame me, but to draw me in. I wondered who he knew, who gave him access to the rink; I didn't know the truth yet. How often did he skate? His walk was art, but seeing him on ice made me breathless. It was as if I wasn’t there, he was lost to the cold, at home.

When he came back to me, I hadn’t moved, his approach was from behind. He wrapped his arms around me, his fingers sliding over my clenched fists. “Show off,” I muttered in a quiet reverence.

“Gotta impress you somehow. It’s not easy.” He skated around me, threading his fingers into mine. “I need you to move, move with me.”

I grimaced, my earlobes bright red. The next hour was an excruciating dance of desire and fear. I fell once but didn’t hit the ice; Connor immediately pulled me back to a standing position.

He kissed my hair later that night after he walked me to my door when he dropped me off at my trailer. I didn't want to fall. I felt it there, in my belly. So I built my walls up, higher.