Chapter Nine

brYAN

“ O h shit, oh shit, oh shit! ”

And, well, he’s called it, because Oliver’s axis is practically horizontal as he takes off into the air into a triple Lutz. There’s no chance of saving it as he falls flat on the ice.

I can’t help but laugh. “I think that was the best one yet.”

He throws me a dirty look, but it’s a little hard to take him seriously with all the snow in his hair. “Shut up.”

I lean through the door to the ice and give him a hand. “Man, you need a haircut. I think that’s your problem right there, that you can’t even see where you’re going.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ollie reaches past me for his slime green guards on the ledge. “How’d it go?”

I play dumb, which isn’t all that hard. “How’d what go?”

“Dude, I’m gonna hit you with this.”

It’s an inch-wide piece of floppy plastic, so I don’t think it would really do much, but I don't fight him.

“Was it better than yesterday, at least? Worse? Come on, give me something.”

You can always rely on Oliver Kwan to be the nosiest damn person you’ll ever meet, and it’s a good thing when you need someone to talk trash with. I look around for Lian first, then lean in when I’m sure no one can hear me about to bash my supposed partner .

“This girl is freaking psycho,” I tell him, handing him his water bottle from his board bag.

He suppresses a snort, then takes it, chugging greedily, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. “Like, hot psycho, or psycho-psycho?”

“Who cares? She’s crazy. She’s mean, for one, and she’s obsessed with being the best. Plus, she makes fun of me constantly.” I honestly don’t know how I’m going to put up with all her crap for the next twelve months.

“You sure you’re not talking about me?” he quips, and I roll my eyes, leaning my back against the boards.

“Believe me, I wish you were still the most annoying person in my life. Anyway, I really am starting to think that my golden years might be over at twenty,” I sigh. “And I didn’t even go to college. What a waste.”

Ollie snorts. “Why do you think I go out so much? I’m making up for lost time we could’ve spent going to parties and getting dicked down.”

“I don’t know what you mean by we , but go off.”

“Tomato, to-mah-to. The glories of young adulthood aren’t about to be totally lost on me just ‘cause I made a decision as a young, impressionable gay child to become Jason Brown,” Oliver says nonchalantly, and I burst out laughing.

“Oh, god, do you remember your ponytail phase?” I choke out, and my best friend groans, burying his face in his hands in embarrassment.

“I don’t know how my mom ever let that happen. Between the hair and the tights, people would confuse me and Nina all the time.”

I’m howling with laughter at this point. “And then—and then at competition, the introduction guy would think it was a typo and call you Olivia!”

“I think that was the same year I tried doing a Riverdance routine,” Oliver recalls miserably, and I double over, clutching at my stomach, struggling to breathe.

He swats me. “Asshole. Don’t think I forgot about your Whitney year. The little disco outfit, with the ruffles and the—” He does a hand flourish straight from that absolutely appalling choreo. I kick him, but he ducks out of reach, cackling. “Oh my god, baby Bryan, skipping and hopping around to ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’ was something I would pay to see again.”

“Yeah, not a chance in hell.” Oliver’s Jason Brown era might have been bad, but I think that program might have been even worse. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Whitney Houston, but not enough to go through that traumatizing experience again.

“That’s a shame. Really though, even that was miles better than whatever weird shit you had this year. Some people can pull off mopey instrumental, Bry, but you aren’t one of them.”

He’s right. The fact that I absolutely hated the music Lian and the choreographers picked out for me this past season didn’t help. “Yeah. How much you wanna bet that Katya’s going to suggest some boring, totally overdone piece of music?” I huff. “God, I miss doing fun programs.”

Oliver shrugs, unlacing his skates and replacing his guards with the soft blade covers we use to make sure they don’t get rusted between practices. “Tell her that.”

“That’s not gonna go over well, trust me.” I run a hand through my hair, and a memory hits me. “Do you remember that year, when you, me and Nina all did musicals for our free programs, and we’d learn all the lyrics and do insanely bad karaoke and piss everyone else off?” I laugh, remembering that particular Nationals when Oliver broke into song in the middle of my skate so loudly and obnoxiously that Mia, Juliet and Nina had to gag and restrain him because I could hear his terrible rendition of The Room Where It Happened all the way on the ice.

As if he can read my mind, Ollie grins. “No one else was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened…” he starts warbling, using one of his guards as a mic, and I grab the other one, beatboxing terribly.

He barely gets through two more lines before he can’t breathe; he's laughing too hard. “Those were some good times, Young,” he says. “When did we get so boring?”

I smile, not altogether happily. “I don’t know. It’s depressing.”

Ollie sighs heavily before shucking off his boots, rifling through his bag and pulling on his off-ice sneakers. “Tell me about it. At least you’ve got a new opportunity with this girl, right? Even if she is totally loca, she’s a crazy good skater, we’ve all seen her. Try not to worry about it, alright? It could be worse.”

“How?”

“You could be irreversibly injured. Or just be a way worse skater, like yours truly.” Oliver shrugs. “I mean, I don’t want to quit, not really. But it’s pretty clear I’m not going to get much further than this, you know?”

This is…new. I frown. “Don’t say that, man. You’re a great skater.”

He laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Come on, Bry. We both know that the only reason I even finished fourth is because you pulled out after the short.”

I crease my brow. “Are you kidding? You saw how bad I was. And you always finish ahead of me, anyway.”

“Oh my god. Please be serious.”

“What?”

“Dude, come on. If you got your shit together, I’d be screwed.”

“You’re kidding, right?” He has to be. But he doesn’t usually joke about this.

He looks at me pointedly. “Are you ? Don’t you remember all those times you’d be twenty, thirty points ahead of me? All those years—”

He stops, seeing the look on my face, then sighs. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just…I don’t know, man. It’s almost like you gave up.”

I tense my jaw, tapping my knuckles against the Plexiglass, trying to ignore the way my heart has all of a sudden started thumping against my rib cage.

We’ve never talked about this before. He decides to bring this up now?

Oliver looks extremely uncomfortable, and I’m tempted to say something like yeah, how do you think I feel? Or even, I didn’t fucking give up, you should know that better than anyone, but I don’t say anything. Just keep tapping.

“So…how was it? Your first pairs training?”

Oh, as if talking about that’s going to make me feel better.

W hen I get called back to the other rink, my coaches and Katya are waiting, all of them already changed back into their street shoes. My partner looks like a kid in time-out.

“Katya and I have discussed some things,” Lian announces. “And she’s come to the decision that she’ll do the trial period with you. One season together. We go from there.”

I make eye contact with the red-haired girl, who’s staring me down with a glare that could probably keep the rink frozen, no cooling system required. “Alright,” I say, not taking my eyes off her. “Sounds good.”

She seriously looks like she’s eaten a lemon, and I almost laugh. “No need to look so excited, sunshine.”

She sniffs. “It’s nothing personal. You’re just not as good as me.”

Jesus . I smile, and I hope it’s as mean as she is. “Maybe I should try shoving down all my feelings until I don’t have any anymore. Seems to be working out pretty well for you.”

I almost think I’ve hit a nerve, but I must have imagined it, because she looks as uncaring as ever a split second later.

“Maybe you should,” she says calmly, taking a step closer. “And it is.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say dryly, doing the same. “Guess you’re not stuck here because you were kicked out of your own country, then. I must be imagining things.”

She does flush then, taking another couple of steps, angry red splotches appearing on her pale skin, spitting out something in Russian.

“Yeah, use the curses I can’t even understand, real effective.”

“I think she said, ‘I hope your kids crap in your soup,’” Lian says nonchalantly, but neither of us are listening. Katya grabs her bag and starts walking off, not that it stops her from continuing the argument.

“How’s this? Fuck your dad! ”

“Joke’s on you, I actually agree with that one!” I yell after her. She just fires off a middle finger without turning around, clomping off in the direction of the locker rooms.

Juliet smiles nervously. “Well…that was Day One.”

Lian shrugs, picking up her thermos. “I think it was a success.”

I snort. In what world?

Juliet looks like she has the same question, but my coach just smirks.

“They haven’t killed each other yet.”