6. Mer - Move Forward: 16 years ago: fall

After our kiss, I thought things would change overnight. I daydreamed that we’d talk every day, that he’d take me on dates, and that I’d suddenly have a friend group because he’d include me in on fun with his friends.

I should’ve known that was delusional thinking.

Centre Ice Arena was our place of work.

His hockey season started.

Mine and Dmitry’s debut together loomed closer every day.

Life went on as normal.

The only difference was that we both watched each other.

Every once in a while, I’d catch him sitting in the stands by himself, watching our ice. When I looked up at him, he’d grin at me. I didn’t dare look back at where he was sitting for a full ten minutes, but in those minutes that I thought he was watching me, I tried my absolute hardest, performing like I was at the Olympics. When I’d finally let my eyes wander back to where he was sitting, he’d always be gone.

One time, we were both in the workout room at the same time. He was across the room with a group of guys, while I was with a group of figure skaters. When I wandered over for some water, he totally caught me staring at him while he lifted weights.

“Sorry,” I whispered, my face practically on fire.

“Don’t be,” he whispered back, raking a hand through his sweaty dark hair. “I wanted you to watch.” He grinned at me, making his dimple pop out.

I had no clue what to say back to that. I just blushed harder for a second before the workout instructor called me back to my group.

On the rare occasion that his team would walk past our ice on their way to warm up before a game, he’d clap for me when I landed a jump. One time, his whole team started clapping, which was cute, but kind of embarrassing. The other girls on the ice looked at me like I’d suddenly grown a third head. All I could do was shrug back.

It wasn’t until a Friday night about four months after our kiss that we were finally alone again…

Everyone else had cleared out of the locker room after practice, but I just sat there, slumped against the cool cinderblock wall.

Even though my feet were now burning, I didn’t want to take off my skates just yet. If I did, that’d signal another day of practice gone, and that just meant I was that much closer to regionals.

Plus, it was Friday. As soon as I left the rink, I’d be alone for the whole weekend.

My mom left this morning to go spend time back home with my dad. We lived about three hours from the rink, so when Iryna agreed to take me on as a student, Mom and I moved into an apartment right across from Centre Ice. The plan was always for dad to move out this way too, but he couldn’t find a job out here. So now we kind of just lived in this funk where Mom would spend the week here with me, then go back to him on the weekends.

I knew I had absolutely no room to complain about the loneliness I felt over the weekends because it was a sacrifice I had to make if I wanted the opportunity to skate with Iryna and hopefully make the next National team.

I just really hoped I wouldn’t completely blow the opportunity.

Instead of unlacing my skates, I closed my eyes and tried to mentally run through a perfect program. I was just landing a perfect throw jump in my head when someone shoved open the door.

My eyes flashed open to see a hockey player storm in, whip off his helmet, and throw it against the wall with force.

I jumped at the noise. At the violence.

He bit out a curse and whirled around to see me.

It was him.

His tense face went slack when he saw me. His padded shoulders fell. He shook his head and bit out another curse. “I’m sorry. This is…” He lifted a hand to gesture at the room. “Not my locker room, is it?”

I practically held my breath as I shook my head at him.

He grabbed at his damp hair for a second. “Worst fucking day,” he muttered under his breath. Even under all his equipment, I could tell his chest was moving rapidly with uneven breathing. He stalked over to his helmet. “Sorry,” he said again without looking at me.

He was about to storm out of the room, but I didn’t want to let him walk away. Not yet, not when he was like that. “Is everything… okay?”

He paused. He looked so much larger on skates and in his uniform. He looked as big as a man. But his face was the same. The face I couldn’t seem to get out of my head. He dropped his forehead against the locker room door. “No,” he breathed out.

“Okay,” I whispered.

He waited a full minute, then slowly turned and looked around the room, taking in that we were alone. When he finally spoke, his eyes darted around, like he was scared to see what I was thinking. “My coach, he’s… he’s such a dick. He basically called us all pathetic, saying we were giving out love taps instead of real hits. Said he’d bench us if we didn’t start playing rougher. So I threw some hits. Some…” his chest heaved, “big ones. And now…” He clenched his jaw and looked away. “The kid went into the boards weird. It wasn’t…” He shook his head. “And then after, he was holding his arm. It looked bad. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I… God,” he choked out, squeezing his eyes shut. “I fucking hate when stuff like that happens. Now I can’t play the rest of the game, whatever, but he’ll probably be out for a while, and that just doesn’t feel right. I didn’t mean for that… for that to happen.” His Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow and his shoulders fell, like he had no clue what to do with everything he was feeling.

“Can I… say something?” I asked hesitantly.

His wary eyes finally landed on me. He nodded.

“You guys are going a million miles per hour and slamming into each other. Stuff is going to happen,” I said. “It was an accident; you can’t beat yourself up about it. It’s not like you went out of your way to hurt him, did you?”

“No.” He closed his eyes and sucked in air through his nose. He gave a slight nod. When his eyes finally opened, he pointed to the bench next to me. “Can I sit here?”

I gave a quick nod.

He plopped down about two feet from me and leaned against the wall, his long legs sprawled out. He raked a hand over his sweaty hair, making it stick up at odd angles. “So, why are you in here all alone?”

I shrugged.

He glanced at me, then did a double take. “Woah, what happened to your neck?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” I zipped my jacket up further, trying to hide it.

His eyes narrowed. “It’s all red. Did someone hurt you? Did someone…” His face hardened and his throat bobbed with a swallow. “Did someone put their hands on you?”

“No, no,” I said quickly, touching his jersey-clad arm. “Nothing like that.”

He stared down at my hand on him. “Then… What happened?”

“I’m… allergic.”

His eyes flew back to mine. “Allergic?” His eyebrows knit together. “To what?”

“It’s… Well,” I pulled my skate up to the bench and hugged my knee, “I don’t know if it’s an allergy for real? But it is a rash.”

“And it’s from…?” he coaxed.

“Stress,” I breathed out.

His forehead creased. “No shit?”

“No shit.” I smirked. I never swore, but it felt right to say.

“Does it… hurt?” he asked, eyeing my neck in sympathy.

“It’s not pleasant,” I said with a tight chuckle. “I’m trying very hard not to scratch my neck all up right now.”

He frowned like this upset him. “It’s itchy?”

I nodded.

“Can I see?”

I laughed. “Why? It’s all ugly looking.”

His face was serious when he said, “Nothing about you could ever be ugly, Bennett.”

I paused at his words. He didn’t call me pretty, but saying not ugly was kind of the same thing, right?

“Well, how do you fix it?”

“Stop stressing,” I said with a snort. “Basically like telling me to stop skating.”

He sighed and stretched his legs out. “And that’s basically like telling you to stop breathing.”

My eyes locked on the side of his face. He wasn’t calling me a baby or saying I was weak or that I should quit. He understood . “Yeah.”

“A figure skater who’s allergic to stress,” he mused with a lopsided grin.

“A hockey player who hates hitting,” I matched his tone.

A deep laugh rolled out of him, and I loved the sound. “What a pair we make, eh?”

“We?” I questioned.

“Mmhmm.” He scooched closer to me and reached his large hand over and squeezed my thigh, making butterflies dance in my stomach. I wanted him to keep touching me. “We,” he said firmly. “Wait, so why are you in here all alone then? Not that I'm not grateful for it.” He dipped his head and a shy grin played on his lips when he said, “Finally get a chance to talk to you and it’s when my head’s all…” he trailed off and shook his head.

He’d been wanting to talk to me. It was exactly what I dreamed of him saying.

And his use of we echoed in my head.

I wanted that so so badly. I wanted someone I could confide in. Someone who was on my side. Someone that would tell me everything would be okay.

I just wasn’t sure if he could be that someone– even though I desperately wanted him to be.

But what if we went back to just sneaking glances at each other? If that happened, I’d feel stupid knowing that he was walking around with all my secrets.

After a beat, I decided on playing it safe and keeping it short. “I just don’t want to take my skates off.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Why?”

My eyes slid to his. “Promise you won’t judge?”

“Of course,” he said with a scoff. “I just told you all about how my coach is a dick.” He grimaced. “Please keep that to yourself.”

He had a point. He did open up to me.

Taking a deep breath, I told him what I’d never said aloud to anyone else: “As soon as I take my skates off, today is over, and that means I have one less day of practice before regionals.” I swallowed. “I want to win and everything, and we have a really good chance at making it far this year. I’m just…” My body involuntarily shivered thinking about it, “really nervous about it.”

Every time I thought about regionals, anxiety ate me up from the inside out, and then the anxiety was quickly followed up by guilt. Because it wasn’t just my time and effort and hard work that went into this. It was my family’s too. I gulped.

Colt leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his jaw in thought.

“What? You’re thinking I’m pathetic?” I asked, suddenly feeling small and stupid for saying all of that.

His eyebrows flew up. “Not at all. I’m thinking, wow, she’s human .”

I just rolled my eyes.

“I mean, here I was, thinking you were this… this angel.” He grinned shyly. “You really look like one out there on the ice. You fly. It’s like you’re not even trying, you just float right up in the air. You’re… beautiful.”

“You mean my skating is beautiful,” I corrected him.

“No,” his voice was thick. “You.”

My heart practically stuttered in my chest, and I was suddenly too nervous to look at him.

“Alright.” In a shocking move, he reached down to grab my skate. He pulled it into his lap, shifting my whole body towards him so I was forced to face him.

“Woah, what are you doing?” I asked with a laugh.

“Taking your skates off for you,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His tongue peeked out the side of his mouth while he concentrated on the laces, making him look impossibly cuter.

“Okay, but why?”

He cocked his head to the side. “To help you move forward. It’s a good thing, you know? To move forward.” He flashed me his cocky grin.

“Oh, why’s that?” I asked, humoring him.

“Because,” his eyes were serious, “we’ve got a lot of good stuff ahead of us, Bennett.”

My heart stumbled. “Do we, now?”

“Yupp,” he said, popping the p .

Jitteriness coursed through my body, but it wasn’t the nervous kind, more like the excited kind. “Like what?”

He carefully tugged my skate off, then massaged my foot in his large hands for a second, which felt glorious. “Like our second kiss.”

Butterflies exploded in my lower stomach. All of my worries over skating vanished. Instead, I just saw him and his playful grin.

“Is that… okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

He leaned forward on the bench and his hand went to the side of my face as his mouth claimed mine.

He teased my lips apart with his tongue and my body was flooded with attraction for this boy. He groaned and deepened the kiss and suddenly he was grabbing me, scooping me up so effortlessly and sliding me onto his lap. My legs fell to either side of his waist.

His strong hands ghosted down my body, then moved to my chest. My hands went into his sweaty hair.

His thumb swiped across the center of my workout top, making it feel like I was hit with a current of electricity, and I gasped into his mouth.

“Sorry, is this… okay?” he whispered against my lips. His mouth moved to my jaw, down my neck, making my entire body tremble.

Was this okay? Was I allowed to be doing this? I knew one thing for sure– I liked it… A lot.

“I don’t know, is it?” I asked in a breathless voice.

He stopped moving and pulled back, slightly laughing. His hands dropped to hold my hips. “You have to decide and tell me. Because everything with you is good with me. My brain doesn’t really work right around you. I should probably-”

I decided right then that I didn’t want him to stop. My arms looped around his neck and I pulled him forward to kiss me more. He groaned in pleasure, making me feel elated. Absolutely elated.

But then the hockey boys’ signature “wooo!” erupted from the other side of the door. We both froze like we were waiting for someone to come in and find us like that.

When the noise passed, he sighed. “That’s probably my team.”

I reached out and slid my thumb over the faded freckles under his eye. He closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh, like he enjoyed the touch.

“You have to go?” I asked.

He nodded with his eyes still closed. When they opened, they darted over my face, like he was memorizing every detail.

“I love your eyes so much,” he said in a husky voice. “They’re like… they’re like the sky on a sunny winter day.”

My heart flip-flopped in my chest.

More cheers erupted in the hallway, and he dropped his head back against the cinderblock wall. “I should probably get back. Gotta get screamed at before I can leave.”

Nodding, I scrambled off his lap, still feeling a little dizzy from that kiss.

“Thank you,” he said, reaching down for his helmet.

“For what?” I rolled my lips together.

“For being my angel around here.” He dipped his head and a blush crept into his face. “Sorry, you’re not mine. That sounded weird.”

If that was weird, I was weirder. Because I suddenly wanted to be his.

“I just mean… When it’s a shit day, I like watching you.” He started swishing over to the door. “You make it better.”

I stared at his back while he walked to the door and my heart beat faster. I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to go back to wondering about him. We just made out, but what would happen next? Would we slide right back into sneaking glances at each other? I couldn’t go back to building up false hope over him just to be disappointed when nothing happened.

“Colt,” I forced out, right as his hand was about to push open the locker room door. “What you said to me last time… did you mean that?”

He turned and blinked at me.

Oh God. He didn’t even know what I was even talking about. My face started burning with embarrassment. He probably totally forgot about his bet and how he said he’d see me around and now I felt like the most pathetic girl in the world because my mind drifted back to it way too often. Practically every time a guy ignored me at school or when Dmitry and Iryna insulted me, I thought of that day in the hallway. I thought of how he looked at me like I was special, like he wanted me.

He stalked back toward me and used his finger to gently move my chin.

“I meant every word of it,” he said firmly.

My breath hitched.

“Hundred bucks, baby.”

And then his lips claimed mine one more time.

__________

After a long weekend of replaying Colt’s words over and over in my head, I couldn't wait to get back to the rink on Monday.

He was apparently thinking the same thing because I caught a glimpse of him watching our side during my first session. This time, when I looked back at where he’d been sitting in the stands, he was gone, but his hoodie was still there.

I struggled to focus the rest of my lesson with Iryna because I was just hoping no one would come by and grab his hoodie before I could get it. Having it in my possession meant I’d have an excuse to talk to him again.

When the buzzer finally went off, I practically ran off the ice and over to his hoodie, just to realize that he left it on purpose. For me.

A little folded note lay on top of it with “Bennett” written across it in messy boy handwriting. Inside, he’d scrawled his number and a little line that said - “I should've given both of these to you weeks ago.”