Made of Glass Chapter 9

Back to Dolly. Edward and Dolly are having great fun on their little skating adventure until a little mishap reveals a bit of Edward's true nature.

I started to worry when the sky became a dangerous shade of grey from the overcast. If God ruined my day with Eddie with something stupid like rain I was going to be seriously pissed with Him. It was cold enough outside that the sun would have been a welcome addition to our little party this afternoon. I was glancing out the window all day long praying that the clouds would magically disappear.

Finally, ten to two I saw his shiny Volvo drive by the front of the bar. I grabbed the skates and ran out to greet him.

Every time he smiled after seeing me sent my heart into a rampant sprint. There was so something wrong with me.

He walked toward me with a pair of slick rollerblades in his left hand. I looked down at my decrepit roller skates. I tried not to draw the analogy between the shoes and the bearers.

“Hey there, Buttercup!” I called out a chipper greeting.

“Are you ready?” he seemed just as excited as I was.

“I thought we could go out back. The parking lot will be mostly empty so we can practice there.”

“Great!”

We walked around to the back of the bar and I plopped down on the curb and started to remove my shoes.

“Some high class equipment you got there,” Eddie teased.

I held up my skates. Part of one of the soles was falling off so the wheels hung away from the shoe.

“I think they’ve been back there since the civil war,” I said.

“I don’t think Washington was even around during the civil war, or roller skates.”

“Wrong on both accounts, Washington was established as a territory of the United States under the Oregon treaty in 1846 and roller skates have been in use since mid 18^th century although the first patent wasn’t claimed until 1819,”

“How do you know these kinds of things?”

“I did a little research on them.”

He threw back his head and let out a laugh, “You think that if you know the history of the roller skate then you’ll be better at it?”

“It couldn’t hurt,” I mumbled.

“You are so bizarre. And the bar definitely wasn't around back then.”

"I'll need to see some proof to believe that one," I said finishing tying up the shoe. I put on the helmet I had brought with me and clipped the strap under my chin. Eddie looked like he was holding back another round of laughter.

"What?!" I demanded. "We all know there's a very real possibly of me falling to me death in this little experiment."

"I wouldn't let that happen," he said quietly.

He stood looking confident on the four wheels below each of his feet and effortlessly glided over to me and offered his hands to help me stand up.

I debated accepting help or making a fool of myself as I tried to struggle to my feet on my own. In the end I cautiously slipped my hands into his. They were very cold but seemed strong and comforting at the same time. With one gentle tug I was up on my feet. He immediately released my hands to let me stand on my own, but I wasn’t on my feet for more than three seconds before I fell into his chest. He seemed to tense up at the sudden close contact, but it faded as he laughed at my clumsiness.

“It seems we have some work ahead of us,” he said.

I pushed myself upright away from his rock hard chest. When I gained my balance and stood confidently on my own I gave him a great big triumphant smile.

“This isn’t so hard!” I said proudly.

“Alright,” he skated backward away from me a couple of feet and then gestured for me to come toward him. “Let’s see what you got,” he dared me.

I set a determined focus on my target. I was going to do this. Only I wasn’t moving at all.

“How do I go?” I asked puzzled.

He chuckled again.

"Just push off with one foot and glide the rest of the way,” he coached me.

I gave a gentle push off my right foot and wobbled a bit as I started moving forward. I held my arms out to steady myself but thankfully didn’t fall on my face. I slowly closed the distance between us but when I got close to my target he started to move away from me again. He made it look so freakin easy and he was doing it backward.

“Now just turn by putting more pressure on one foot,”

I leaned a little to the left and made a slow arching turn. I ran out of momentum and gave another push off my foot again. With another wobbled I righted myself and attempted to make another right turn.

“So how do I stop?” I asked.

“You have a stopper on the front of both your skates. Just point your toes down.”

I make a quick glance down at my feet where I noticed the brake and then did as he told me.

Something went terribly wrong and I toppled forward throwing my arms wildly in front of me to protect my face from hitting the hard concrete ground.

The ground stopped approaching me as two strong arms arrested me mid-fall.

“Breaking’s the hardest part,” Eddie tried to comfort me while setting me back on my own feet again. I knew he was lying to make me feel better.

We continued on like that for the better part of an hour. Slowly I gained more and more confidence as I learned how the dangerous wheels below me would respond to the different amounts of pressure. Under Eddie’s careful teachings I was soon doing figure eights and quick tight little turns. We even retrieved a trey and put a couple glass of water on it to test my balance. By the end of it we were both soaked. I fell a lot more often when focusing on the drinks instead of my feet. Eventually I got the hang of it all.

Except for the stopping part. I almost always started to fall whenever I tried. Eddie found it hilarious how I would turn around in tight circles till I slowed down instead of using the break. He never wobbled once throughout the whole exercise even when I crashed head long into him. He was very patient with my slow progress and gradually stopped tensing every time I touched him. Apparently he disliked human contact just as much as I did. Only I never had any problems when it was Eddie touching me. He never made me feel uncomfortable.

After I had mastered the basics we just goofed around for another hour. He tried to teach me some more advanced tricks but we quickly gave up on that. When the sky finally did release its hold on the moisture held high up in its clouds we laughed and skated through the puddles. We were already all wet so why not stay out a little longer. Eddie was unnecessarily worried about me catching a cold or some such nonsense but I told him to stuff it. He was having too much fun too care that much about it.

A few minutes before we had to quit because my shift was starting I got it in my head that the big hill slanting away from the bar would be the ultimate test of my new abilities.

“I don’t know, Dolly. That’s a pretty big hill. You can build up speed pretty quickly.”

“Yes, but I am fearless Dolly of the Blue Flame,” I flexed my arms in a display of macho confidence. “No hill is too big for me to conquer.”

He chuckled and shook his head as I made my way over to the top of the hill.

“But you don’t even know how to stop,” Eddie called from across the parking lot.

“There’s enough straight road that I can just coast to a stop. Stop worrying,” I brushed him off and with one hard push started myself down the steep hill.

In the beginning I was feeling smug. The speed was building slowly and I was fully in control. I wanted to call back to Eddie and taunt him for doubting me but I decided I needed to stay focused. I did not need to wipe out because I was being cocky. I crouched down over my knees like an Olympic skier trying to coax all the speed out of the hill that it had. Then I quickly stood straight back up as the speed starting building at an even faster pace.

I heard Eddie laugh a long ways off. He wasn’t going to be here to catch me this time if I fell.

I was only about halfway down when the speed really got going. The wind blew my hair in all crazy directions and the whoosh of it by my ears blocked out any other hearing. I started panicking a little as my wheels started to bounce unsteadily along the uneven road.

Dang it. Eddie was right after all. This was a bad idea. But I wasn’t going to give in I would just have to focus till I reached the bottom. I was almost there.

I think I would have made it too if it hadn’t been for the pot hole. Just a few feet from where the hill leveled out the mother of all pot holes appeared directly in front of my path. I was going too fast to make a controlled turn. Either I attempted to turn and risked turning too fast and face planting that way or just take the hole like a man and hope that I could make it out alive. I spent too much time debating and lost my opportunity to turn.

I didn’t make it safely out the other side. The hole gobbled up my skates and latched onto them refusing to let them out the other side. My body on the other hand just kept right on going.

I tumbled to the ground and rolled the last few feet to the bottom.

I sat up immediately once I stopped rolling and gave an angry face to the fiendish pothole. We needed someone to come in and repave these roads. They were a serious danger.

“Are you alright?” Eddie’s panic-stricken voice assaulted my ears much closer than I thought possible. All of a sudden he was at my side staring down at my bloody mess on the ground. I had torn up my knees pretty bad as well as the palms of my hands.

“Just a little scratch,” I answered him. “How’d you get down here so fast?” I looked back up the long hill. He must have followed down after me. Otherwise there was no way he could have made it that fast.

The question made him extremely uncomfortable.

"I would have made it! I would have, but that damn hole got in my way!” I said playfully turning to Eddie. He stood a little ways away with a serious look on his face breathing deeply. I held out my bloody hands to him wondering why he wasn’t offering to help me stand up.

“Are you sure you should be moving?” he sounded like he was being suffocated. What a big baby.

“I’m fine, Eddie. Trust me I’ve had worse,” The scraps weren’t really bad at all. My palms were just shallow cuts. My right knee was bleeding pretty profusely. A bright red trail was being forged down my shin starting at my knee but it looked a lot worse than it felt.

Since Eddie wasn’t coming anywhere close to me I struggled to get myself up to my feet.

I noticed Eddie’s eyes weren’t trained on me but the blood that was spilling out of my knee. He looked even paler than usual.

“Eddie? You’re not like hemaphobe or anything?”

He just shook his head stiffly and finally moved toward me. He held his hands out like he wanted to support me but he didn’t actually touch me.

I looked up the gigantic hill with a sigh. I hadn’t thought this all the way through. Now I had to go back up that thing. All around a bad plan.

I bent down to start removing my skates. There was no I would make it up on those things.

“Can you make it back up?” Eddie still sounded sick.

“Oh my gosh, relax, Buttercup. It is really not that bad,”

“Um . . . okay, well it’s uh late so if you can make it back. I . . . uh . . . have somewhere to be.”

With that he turned and took off like a rocket on his skates in the opposite direction of the bar. I stared after him incredulous.

“Jerk,” I muttered. His car wasn’t even in that direction. Where was he going? It wasn’t even late.

And really what was his problem?

I limped back up the hill and retrieved my shoes before heading inside.

Elaina and Bucky eyes just about bugged out of their head when I staggered into the kitchen.

“Do we keep band-aids somewhere around here?” I asked ignoring their stares. “Like big ones?”

“What happened to you?!” Elaina burst.

“It was not my fault! That pot hole had it out for me!”

“Are you alright?”

“It’s just a little scratch. Do you have like an old rag or something I could use?” the blood had poured down my leg and was seeping into my sock. It looked quiet gory. I could understand why Elaina and Bucky were so concerned but it didn’t really hurt at all. I tried to comfort their concerns while cleaning myself up but they wouldn’t be soothed.

“What happened to Edward? I thought he was out there with you?”

“He had to go,” I said simply, hoping the anger wasn’t seeping into my voice.

“He just left you like that?” Elaina asked shocked.

Yes, yes he did.

“Well, no. He made sure I was okay which I am. It’s really nothing to get worked up about.”

I slid onto one of the counters and demanded some first aid supplies which my two companions flew about trying to retrieve.

Bucky could have been a pretty good doctor in a different life. He picked out the little pieces of gravel from my wounds with expert precision and then wrapped up my knees in bandages without causing me any extra pain.

I looked down at my mummy knees, “Do you think Mrs. Weston will let me wear pants this week?” I mused.

“This is no time to be worried about something like that!” Elaina cried. “Maybe we should take you to the hospital!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You never know when these things are really serious. I was watching this episode of Grey’s Anatomy last week-“

“Elaina, let’s not turn to Grey’s Anatomy for our medical advice alright? I am almost a doctor so trust me when I say it’s really not bad,” So I didn’t really know anything about doctoring yet since it was only my first semester but I didn’t feel too bad about the lie.

“Alright . . .” she reluctantly agreed. “But you’re taking off work tonight aren’t you?”

“No, I can handle one little shift,” I hopped down and did a couple of squats to prove that I was fit as a fiddle.

“I’m just going to change and I’ll be down in a bit. If the-“ I was going to say she-demon but then I look at Bucky and reconsidered my words. “If Ashley comes looking for me tell her I’ll be down in five minutes.”

“Alright, honey,” Elaina said stepping out of my way as I headed up to my apartment. “Take it easy.” She called after me.

I ran up stairs and shut the door firmly behind me and began shedding layers. I had completely torn up the knees in my jeans and most everything was splattered with blood. I was going to have to buy new ones. Expensive.

I ruined my t-shirt too. I looked like a complete mess. I set to making myself look more presentable.

Then my mind started wandering. Why had Eddie been acting so strangely after I fell? We had been having a great time, hadn’t we? And then he just wigged out and disappeared. What kind of guy leaves a bloody girl to hobble back up a hill? It just didn’t seem like him. Maybe he was just really afraid of blood and didn’t want to admit it. Well he would be back. Maybe not tonight but if not then tomorrow I would ask him what was up. I hoped nothing was wrong with him.

And he called me bizarre.

Reviews

[Summer]

I swear I laughed. I thought it was so funny that she happened to be alone with him and she cut herself. LOL! Smooth Dolly, smooth.