Chapter 2 #4
Sergio shrugs and slips his hands into his coat pockets. “I don’t know what I know anymore, except that Adrien has quit on me.”
“He didn’t quit on you,” Holden assures and blows on his hands to warm them up. “He’s doing what’s right for him. And, honestly, for you too, even though you don’t see it.”
Sergio shrugs again. “Maybe. I guess I could hire someone else.”
“Or you can start doing more of this on your own. Stop hiring people to make your life easier.”
“Isn’t that the purpose of hiring people?”
“Isn’t that the real reason Adrien quit? You may have been paying him, but you never treated him like he had a choice in being there.” Holden opens the barn door, effectively ending the conversation as he ushers Sergio through.
Upon entering the rink, Sergio is met with something unexpected.
He thought he was going to see Henry clumsily scooting around on skates, not sitting on the low, raised ledge on the entrance side of the ice, watching Jeremy skate in graceful loops and turns.
His legs, his body, his arms are making impossibly lovely shapes that move in time with the sound of Chris Issack’s voice crooning, Wicked Game, which is softly playing over the speakers.
“Well, this song is a little on the nose, don’t you think?
” Sergio says to no one in particular as he watches Jeremy move, carrying himself on the ice with more confidence and comfort than he seems when he’s in shoes on regular ground.
It’s not an advanced routine, he’s not doing any jaw-dropping jumps, fast spins, or overly complicated footwork, but it is soothing to watch regardless.
Perhaps even more so without the heightened stakes of show-stopping tricks.
It’s pure unbridled movement, flowing to the melody and punctuating the lyrics. It's also surprisingly sexy.
“Hey, guys!” Holden yells out, announcing their arrival.
Jeremy puts a pause on his moves, and Henry waves so enthusiastically from his seat on the low ledge that he falls onto the ice, laughing.
Holden moves quickly to help him off the ice and back onto the low ledge to sit.
He looks at Jeremy. “Routine is looking good. Legs feeling alright today?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy says, smiling. His cheeks are flushed, but not from exertion or the cold needed to maintain an ice rink. This is a happy blush. One Sergio hadn’t realized he missed seeing until now.
“I thought you weren’t competing anymore,” Sergio says, standing against the waist-high wooden wall that lines the rest of the rink.
“I’m not,” Jeremy says and grabs a bottle of water that’s resting not far from where Sergio is standing.
“So, what’s with the routine?”
“Just an excuse to skate, I guess,” Jeremy says, the attractive blush disappearing from his cheeks as he takes a sip of water and averts his eyes from Sergio’s. He turns his attention back to Holden and Henry. “What time are we leaving tonight?”
“A little before eight,” Holden says. “We gotta drop Henry off at the Weirs’ on the way.”
“Alright. I’ll meet you up at the house in a bit, then,” he says, sliding a blade guard onto his right skate before he steps off the ice, holding onto the wall by Sergio for balance and continuing to avoid Sergio’s attempt to make eye contact.
He then slides a guard onto his left skate and walks away from them.
“See you later, Jeremy,” Holden calls after him as he lifts Henry off the ground and places him on his shoulders.
“Did I say something wrong?” Sergio asks.
“Well, you didn’t say anything right,” Holden answers, laughing lightly.
Sergio is sulking, licking his wounds by way of a whiskey neat at the far corner of the bar at the goldenly lit Grand Olympian Hotel.
The New Year’s Eve party is effervescent and alive with the who’s who of Lake Placid elites preparing to count down to the start of a promising new year.
Millionaire sports stars and businesspeople are mingling together, glad-handing and verbally promising endorsements or appearances, or soliciting sponsorships.
With the Winter Olympics fast approaching once again in only six short weeks, the rush to associate oneself with the next big star in sports is running at full tilt.
This should be where Sergio shines. Showing off his connections and who he knows, and most importantly, taking pictures of everyone and making sure the right ones land on the right pages of the right sports magazines, gossip columns, or business press releases is his specialty.
But instead, he’s moping and nursing his drink.
“What’s wrong?” Adrien asks as he squeezes in beside him. “You’re not still upset about earlier, are you?”
“No,” Sergio lies and takes another sip of his whiskey, draining his glass. The acute burn of the drink as it slides down his throat is soothing.
Adrien orders him another one and a gin and tonic for himself. “As your assistant—”
“Ex-assistant.”
“Soon to be ex-assistant. I’m not leaving you in the lurch,” he assures him with a tinge of sympathy in his voice. “Regardless, the assistant in me wants to lecture you for not taking pictures. But the larger part of me that is your brother is glad to see you taking an actual break from work.”
Sergio shrugs and grabs his fresh drink from the bartender.
His eyes wander to where Jeremy and Rose are speaking with a group of sports reporters.
Rose is doing most of the talking. Jeremy seems to be holding his own, but he hides behind his glass of sparkling water with a twist of lime more often than he speaks.
That glass is near empty, and Sergio is tempted to bring him a new one.
But given his track record over the last twenty-four hours of mess-ups every time he talks to Jeremy, he decides to focus his attention on Allison instead.
Allison, standing not far from Jeremy and Rose, is being chatted up by Chadwick Levinson, the French-Canadian who won the men’s gold medal in figure skating four years ago after Jeremy had to exit the competition.
She’s only half paying attention to him, her eyes flitting between Chadwick and the rest of the room.
Her eyes catch Sergio’s, and she quickly averts them.
A faint blush rises in her dark cheeks before she draws her attention back to Chadwick, who’s likely either trying to talk her into switching training camps or leaving the party in favor of his room.
The way he’s crowding her space suggests to Sergio it’s the latter.
Grabbing his drink and one of the many complimentary glasses of champagne off the bar, Sergio bids his brother goodbye with a dismissive nod of his chin, then ambles over towards Allison. He slides into the space beside her and offers her the drink.
“Thanks,” she says, her cheeks still aglow as she takes it. She turns her attention back to Chadwick. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with Sergio.”
“Sergio? Sergio Durand?” Chadwick asks. He beams at Sergio and turns his head in a way that only people who are used to having their good side photographed do automatically.
His chin is lifted slightly, his left cheekbone is angled higher than his right, and a full set of pearly whites is gleaming under the soft glow of the chandeliers.
Sergio feigns ignorance, looking at him quizzically. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“It’s me! Chadwick Levinson!”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Sergio says, enjoying the way Chadwick’s face falls.
“You know me!” he exclaims and playfully swats Sergio’s shoulder. “Chadwick Levinson! You took my gold medal photos at the Olympic Games four years ago in Nagano.”
“Did I? You know, I take so many pictures at events like that. I can hardly be expected to keep track.”
“But it’s me, Chadwick Levinson! I was the underdog. No one thought Jeremy Owens could be beaten.”
“I couldn’t,” Jeremy says, startling Sergio as he steps into their conversation.
Chadwick stands up a little straighter and eyes Jeremy up and down. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he says with a haughty lilt to his voice.
Sergio has the sudden urge to punch him in Jeremy’s defense. A slight ding of an alarm goes off in his head. This is what everyone must have felt about him yesterday.
“I should really thank you,” Chadwick says. “Nike was so focused on making you the future face of figure skating that they completely overlooked me for ages. Once you walked away from that endorsement, I took off. Now, look where I am!”
“I didn’t walk away,” Jeremy says bitterly, and now Sergio really wants to punch the smug look of satisfaction off Chadwick’s face.
Perhaps it will be the thing that lightens the tension Sergio has caused between himself and Jeremy all day.
He does, despite evidence to the contrary, want Jeremy to like him.
“It’s fine. You can admit you couldn’t handle the pressure—”
The sound of Sergio’s fist hitting the flesh of Chadwick’s nose was louder than he expected.
Allison gasps, and the party comes to a screeching halt. The room goes silent except for the Sonny and Cher cover band mercifully continuing to play on the stage that Holden is now jumping onto to divert the crowd’s attention.
“Alright, everyone,” Holden says into the microphone. “Grab a glass of champagne. The countdown starts in less than a minute.”
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Chadwick bellows, clutching his nose—and, to Sergio’s surprise, Jeremy.
“He was being a prick!” Sergio exclaims to Jeremy, pointing at a moaning Chadwick as he’s offered napkins by a caterer to soak up the blood pouring from his nose.
“From where I stand, you are both guilty of being pricks,” Jeremy says.
Sergio throws up his hands in his defense. “I didn’t like the way he was talking to you.”
“I didn’t either, but I can take care of myself.
I don’t need you, of all people, to go all Jeff Gillooly on him for me,” Jeremy says right as Holden yells, “Ten!” from the stage, and a team of security guards comes rushing into the ballroom, heading straight through the packed crowd towards where Sergio, Jeremy, and Allison are standing.
Sergio hangs his head and mumbles, “Why can’t I get anything right today?”
“Nine!”
“What was that?” Jeremy asks over the din, his tone still accusatory.
“Eight!”
“I said, why can’t I get anything right today?”
“Seven!”
“Well, there’s always tomorrow.” Jeremy shrugs and offers him a bit of a smirk with an annoyed stare.
“Six!”
“See you later, Sergio,” Jeremy says and walks away with Allison, who wrinkles her nose at Sergio from his side.
“Five!”
“Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” Sergio says to himself.
“Four!”
He eyes the security team as they begin to close in on him and blindly grabs a glass of champagne off a server’s tray as they walk by.
“Three!”
He drinks it all in one gulp, not bothering to wait until midnight, then puts the glass down and braces for the incoming impact of the hotel’s security team.
“Two!”
“One! Happy …”