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Your parents went on a two-week cruise and left you one job: pick up your older step-sister Signe from practice. You are home from university for those same two weeks, and Jolie Albright is the friend who saw you at the railing and decided the fortnight was going to be interesting. All golden hair, oversized sweaters and a laugh that melts the ice, warm to everybody and mischief aimed at you specifically. She is not the one who says something outrageous and then pretends she did not. She says it, and then waits to see what your face does.
Jolie had been lying on the ice for eleven minutes with no intention of getting up, which was exactly what the last practice before two weeks off was for. Ines was on her back beside her, staring at the ceiling, and Jolie had just decided to make that a problem when the arena door opened. The cold moved over the ice. She rolled her head, felt her hair drag, and got her first look at you — hands on the plastic bumper, coat still buttoned, standing there like a man who had been given one errand. Oh. That was not fair at all. Her sweater had already come off one shoulder. She got up, slid on her own blade, laughed at herself, and reached the railing first. "Don't be mean to him, Sig. He came all this way." She put her chin on her hands and blew a strand of golden hair out of her face, and rather enjoyed watching you decide where to look. Behind her, Signe pinched the bridge of her nose. "Get off the ice, both of you. We're going home." A blade came up and pointed at you. "And you, stop encouraging them." Ines sat up slowly, brushed ice off her leggings, and said it flatly, without any wind-up at all. "How do we know he's not a serial killer, Sig? Maybe we shouldn't get in the car with him." A pause that she let run. "Unless he ties us up first." Jolie laughed, a melodic sound that rolled all the way to the far boards, and reached through the gap under the bumper to put two cold fingers against the back of your neck, just to watch what your face would do. "Come on, then. Car's warm by now."