Barely Holding On

Chapter 4

We pulled up to the skate park and got out of the car. It looked like a really cool place, but it wasn’t necessarily my ‘scene’. Nash grabbed two skateboards out of the backseat and we headed over to his friends.

I knew all of them; I mean we all did go to school together. There was Taylor, Matt, Shawn and of course, Cameron.  

“Wipe the drool off your face,” Nash whispered into my ear. I shot him a death glare.

“Hey Violet!” Matt said. He always seemed to have a smile on his face. I wondered how he did that…

“Hey guys,” I said a little awkwardly. I knew them, but that didn’t mean we were friends.

“So, are you any good at skateboarding?” Cam asked me. Oh my god. He was talking to me AGAIN. Holy shit. Breathe Violet.

“I don’t know, I’ve never done it before,” I said honestly.

“No worries! We will help you!” Shawn said.

We were about to go over to an area where it was flat so I could work on ‘basic skills’, when a bunch of girls came over and started asking all the boys for their picture and stuff. I stepped out of the way and let them do their thing.

I wondered over to the snack bar to grab a soda. When I came back the girls had dispersed and were admiring from afar. They had their phones out recording everything the boys did.

Nash took the soda right out of my hand and nearly downed it all. “What the fuck?” I said shocked.

He just shrugged and handed it back to me. There was like a sip left, so I drank the rest and threw it away. All the other boys had already gone ahead and were pulling off some pretty crazy moves to impress the girls. So it was just me and Nash. Great. Why did I even bother coming along?

“Follow me,” Nash said as he walked over to a flat area of concrete. “Since I’m left babysitting you, I might as well teach you how to use one of these things.” He set one of his skateboard on the ground. “That is a skateboard,” he said pointing to it.

“No shit.” I said.

He ignored me and kept talking. He was explaining about balance and stuff, but I wasn’t really listening because I could see Cam in the background skating and he looked HOT.

“So are you ready to try?” Nash asked bringing me back to the real world.

I felt back for having ignored him, so I just said yes. I mean honestly how hard could it be?

I got up on the board and pushed off. It was going great, until I realized that I didn’t know how to turn or stop. I was also kind of going downhill, so just rolling to a stop wasn’t going to work.

I was quickly coming up on a large block of concrete, so it was a life or death situation. I had to abort now. I tried to put my foot down to stop, but that clearly wasn’t how one was supposed to do it because I wound  up lying face first on the concrete with scraped up knees.

I could hear Nash crying of laughter behind me. I was going to kill him.

He walked over to me wiping tears from him eyes, “Are you ok?” He offered me a hand to get up and I gladly accepted it.

“Oh you know, I’m just fine. That wasn’t humiliating or anything.”

He laughed some more and then he looked down at my knees, “Come on, I’ve got some band-aids in the car.”

We started walking back to his car when I caught a glimpse of Cameron.  God he was beautiful. I had it bad for him,

I focused back on Nash who was talking to me, “So why didn’t you stop like I told you too?” he asked.

“Because you didn’t do a very good job explaining how to,” I sassily replied.

“Whatever. Just next time be more mindful of the board, you got a scratch on her.”

“God forbid,” I said in pretend horror.

He glared at me. We finally arrived at his car. He opened the driver’s side door and said “Sit.” So I sat, facing out of the car. He reached into the side of the door and pulled out a box of band-aids.

He squatted down so he was eye-level with my knees, “Eh, it’s not that bad.”

“It hurt’s pretty damn bad.” I said.

“Stop bitching and it won’t hurt so badly,” he said as he put the band-aids on. He stood up with a sly smile on his face, “Are you ready to go again?”