Chapter 67

Chapter 67

I imagined my official reunion with Heath Rocha a thousand different ways.

He would run toward me like a third-act rom-com hero in an airport terminal. He would give me a cordial smile and a firm handshake as if we were rival CEOs negotiating a merger. He would stare in shock, then refuse to skate with me, because this had been some elaborate scheme on Bella’s part, and he did hate me after all.

The reality was far less dramatic. On a Tuesday afternoon in early February, a taxi dropped me off at the Lin Ice Academy. Heath and Bella were finishing up a session with one of the junior teams, who looked like babies to me but were probably around fourteen or fifteen.

The girl spotted me first. Her eyes went wide like a cartoon kitten, and she made a strangled sound of surprise. Heath turned.

“Hello, Katarina,” he said.

He didn’t seem happy to see me. He didn’t seem disturbed by my presence either. His expression was like the lake on a still night: placid on the surface, shadows below.

“Right on time,” Bella said. “Let’s get started.”

The two young skaters exited, the girl still staring at me. I smiled at her, and she almost tripped over her skates.

I’d become so accustomed to my compact private rink, the regulation-sized ice surface felt vast. Bella stood off to the side while Heath and I looped the perimeter, picking up speed with each circuit. On the fourth time around, he took my hand.

His palms were slick with sweat. So he was nervous too.

As soon as our fingers interlocked, our blades fell into a steady rhythm. Our breathing synced. Heath drew me into a dance hold, and we moved through our standard warm-up sequence without a single misstep, as if we’d been doing it every day.

Bella switched on a low-key bluesy instrumental, and we began to improvise, seamlessly blending old choreography with spontaneous new elements. I’d worried skating with him again would be awkward, stilted, difficult. Instead, it was easy. So easy it terrified me.

When Bella started calling out guidance from her spot beside the rink, that felt easy too. Heath could respond to her feedback before she’d even finished the sentence, and his experience as a choreographer had turned him into an even stronger lead. The slightest pressure of his hands, and I could sense exactly how he wanted me to move.

Eventually the music stopped, and so did we. Center ice, chests pressed together, close enough to kiss. Eyes locked, my entire world shrunk to the deep brown of his irises.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Bella said.

I felt like Heath and I had been on the ice for ten minutes, tops, but it had been over an hour. We were both covered in sweat—our own, each other’s. As we unlaced our skates and chugged from our water bottles, we avoided eye contact like we’d woken up after a regrettable one-night stand. There was the awkwardness I’d been expecting.

Bella had more work to do, so Heath and I walked out together, still silent. He held the door open for me as we stepped into the golden hour light.

“I guess I’ll see y—” I started, just as he said, “Katarina, I—”

Another voice interrupted us both. “Ms. Shaw?”

The young girl he and Bella had been working with earlier waited at the curb.

“Yes?” I said.

“Would you—I mean, if it’s not too much trouble…could you please sign this for me?”

She thrust something into my hands. A program from the 2009 Stars on Ice tour, with Heath and me on the cover.

“Sure,” I said. “Do you have something to write with?”

“Oh! No, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Here.” Heath took a pen from his bag and passed it to me.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.

“Madison. Madison Castro. My older sister took me to see the tour for my birthday. In Dallas, that’s where I’m from. Well, like twenty miles outside of Dallas.”

Once Madison conquered her fear of speaking to me, she couldn’t seem to shut up. Heath didn’t bother trying to hide his amusement, but she was too enraptured to notice.

“Seeing you skate is what made me want to become an ice dancer. I’m going to go to the Olympics one day, and—” She caught herself. “I mean, I hope I will.”

“I’m sure you will. And hopefully you’ll do much better than I did.” I handed the program back, my signature scrawled under her name. “Good luck this season, Madison.”

“Thank you!” She bounced off, beaming, the program clutched to her chest.

“Well, well,” Heath said. “Guess you’re a role model after all, Katarina Shaw.”

I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling; if nothing else, Madison’s enthusiasm had shattered the uneasy silence between us.

“Where are you staying?” Heath asked. “Around here?”

“I found an Airbnb over by the beach.”

“Marina del Rey?”

I shook my head. “Playa.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Don’t tell me Heath Rocha, committed hater of Los Angeles, has turned native enough to express sincere and deeply held neighborhood beliefs.”

“Hey, I’m just looking out for my skating partner’s safety and well-being,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to get mowed down by a double stroller. It’s wild out there in MDR.”

“Next you’ll tell me you’ve gotten into hot yoga and juice cleanses.”

“Hot yoga is so last year. It’s all about SoulCycle now.” Heath smiled, and a stray curl fell across his forehead, shining in the waning sunlight. “So you want a ride home?”

“Don’t tell me you drive some obnoxious sports car now.”

“Worse.”

He gestured toward a small motorcycle parked alongside the curb. A black helmet with gold racing stripes hung from the handlebars.

“Seriously?” I said. “You’re a biker dude ?”

“You want a ride or not?”

I hesitated. But what was the issue? We were colleagues. Colleagues could engage in friendly banter. Colleagues could give each other rides home.

Heath handed me the helmet and climbed onto the bike. I mounted the seat behind him, cinching my arms around his waist. We’d touched far more intimately during the training session, but that was work. This was…I wasn’t sure what it was.

He took the scenic route along Vista del Mar. The day had been calm and cloudless, so the setting sun poured over the ocean like molten metal. Suddenly I wasn’t in such a hurry to get back to my small, starkly furnished rental.

I tugged on Heath’s sleeve. He nodded and turned toward the coast.

The weather was chilly by California standards. Aside from a woman tossing a Frisbee to her chubby pit bull farther down the shoreline, we had the beach to ourselves.

“Where are you living these days?” I asked as we trudged toward the water, shoes in hand. “Somewhere better than that shitty studio over on Higuera, I hope. Remember that dump?”

“How could I forget?” Heath looked down. “No, I’m over in the Palisades now.”

“An apartment?” I said. “Or—”

Heath’s jaw ticked. Oh.

“We each have our own space,” he said. “But Bella was all alone in that huge house, and we’re—”

“Friends. Yeah, she told me.”

At the Academy, I’d been on the lookout for any simmer of attraction between them. What I saw instead might have been worse: Heath and Bella had an easy rapport, a relaxed intimacy that made it impossible to ignore how close they’d gotten while I was gone.

Heath turned to face me. All that golden light reflected in his eyes.

“What else did Bella tell you?” he asked.

I met his gaze. “She told me you were a choreographer now. And that you missed me.”

“Of course I miss you, Katarina.” He stepped closer, stumbling in the sand. I had to rock back, or we would have collided. “And I’m so sorry, about what happened in Vancouver. If I could go back, I—”

Click.

We both stiffened at the all too familiar sound of a camera shutter, slicing through the crashing waves and seagull cries.

“Behind you,” Heath said. “On the bike path.”

“Just like old times.”

“What do you think?” He smiled, leaning in. “Should we give ’em a show?”