Chapter 4 #2
“Go, before I change my mind,” I warn, and she’s off like a shot, totally unaware there’s zero chance I’ll be changing my mind. This is the perfect excuse. I can go give this lesson and then come back to the house, and for at least one more night I can avoid Freddie.
I turn back to Georgia, who is eyeing me curiously. “I’ll leave you to get settled in.”
“Yes, a nap is calling my name,” she says, pressing her palms against the mattress, and when the memory foam conforms around them, she moans. “I think I’m going to like it here.”
By the time I grab the keys to the rink and my skates, Mrs. Tarasi and her son Julian, a nine-year-old who would much rather be playing hockey than figure skating, are already waiting for me out in the cold.
“I’m so sorry for the oversight,” I say as she glares at me while Julian chucks icy snowballs at the building. “All the lessons this week and going forward were supposed to be canceled, but obviously I’d be more than happy to give Julian his lesson now, no charge.”
Mrs. Tarasi sniffs her agreement, possibly because her mouth has frozen shut standing out in this weather, and when we walk inside, I motion to the coffee machine in the far corner.
“There’s change at the front desk,” I say. “Please have a hot drink on us. Julian, this way.”
The lesson is a total nightmare. The kid doesn’t want to be here, but his mom refuses to let him play hockey, which I totally get.
He’s undersized for his age, and hockey in Boston is no joke.
Kids around here leave the maternity ward with little hockey sticks and skate before they can walk.
Once they start to grow, there’s no stopping them on the ice.
There are technically rules against checking in the lower levels, but it’s still rough, and even if Mrs. Tarasi is kind of a jerk, she understandably doesn’t want to see her little boy get decapitated by some peewee hockey goon.
We run through some standard skating drills, working on long, smooth strokes across the ice, but Julian is super bored and we’re only halfway through when he’s complaining about wanting to jump.
“Maria said I’d be able to do a waltz jump this week.”
“Oh, did she?” I ask in total disbelief. This kid is nowhere near ready for a waltz jump. He’s not terrible, but sometimes he still randomly loses his balance just skating. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Julian.”
But it’s too late. He’s streaking across the ice backward before swinging his leg out to leap into the air, but instead his toe pick gets caught underneath him and down he goes, face-first into the ice.
The rink is silent and then his mom, who looked up from her phone at exactly the wrong moment, screams in terror.
I skate up to him frantically before falling to my knees beside him.
There’s blood coming out of his nose and leaking onto the ice in tiny rivulets.
His mom’s screams finally seem to register for him and that’s what makes him start to cry.
His hands come up and clutch his face, probably making it way worse, and I try to pry his hands away.
The blood running from his nose starts to leak into his mouth and he coughs against it, splattering the ice, which sets his mom off again, but I can’t worry about her right now.
“Julian,” I say softly, my hands over his. “Julian, you have to let me see, okay? I promise I won’t touch it, but I need to see how bad it is, okay? I need you to be brave.”
His eyes are filled with tears and they’re streaking down his cheeks, mixing with the blood that’s already slowing. His hands come down and I hold his face gently in my hands, turning his head back and forth. The blood has completely stopped now.
“You look okay,” I say. “How does it feel?”
He sniffs and then reaches up to touch it. “All right, I think.” His fingers press against his nose and he doesn’t even flinch. “I think I just got scared.”
“Okay, we’re gonna get you up,” I say, and take his hands. “On three—one…two…three.” I lift him, and he’s back up on his skates, holding my hands tightly as he finds his balance. Together, hand in hand, we make our way to the edge of the rink.
“Julian!” his mom shouts, her voice echoing up into the rafters of the empty rink. “Get off the ice right this instant.”
I can’t hear whatever bullshit Mrs. Tarasi is spewing at me and I’m about to scream in this woman’s face when the doors to the rink open and Freddie O’Connell strides through them.
The air leaves my lungs and I can’t seem to pull in another breath.
Mrs. Tarasi is still yelling, but my focus is drawn to Freddie and Ben Woo, who walks in behind him, as I fumble with grabbing the first aid kit.
Ben is a Korean American singles skater who qualified to Junior Worlds too this year.
They’re both in skates and each has a hockey stick in his hand.
They grew up playing hockey before swapping over to figure skating.
Freddie took a lot of heat from the kids we skated with when we were little when he made the choice.
He’s even sort of built for hockey, broad shoulders and really strong legs.
I asked him once if he regretted giving it up, but he just scoffed at me, green eyes sparkling, like the answer was obvious.
My heart had stuttered in my chest when his eyes met mine.
That was the first time I wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy.
Then for a moment, as Ben turns to say something to him, my eyes meet Freddie’s for real this time.
Oh God.
It’s worse than I thought.
His eyes are the same, a soft green, but there’s no sparkle, not for me. Not anymore.
I’ve seen him in the two years since we stopped skating together, obviously. We stood on the same medal podium at Nationals, went to the same events, but there’s something about this moment, back at Kellynch, that’s too much. And immediately, I know what it is.
We’re only feet from where we were standing when I told him we couldn’t skate together anymore.
That I needed to find a new partner and so did he.
In fact, Julian is sitting in the exact spot Freddie was on the bleachers while he stared back at me as I cried and tried to get the words out, tried to explain.
The feeling is wildly familiar to the blood rushing in my ears and the knot in my chest, climbing up into my throat, my eyes burning with the effort to just not cry. And now, of course, when I need it to most, my head won’t let go of that memory, not fully.
It’s Mrs. Tarasi’s rant that finally pushes it to the back of my mind, tearing my gaze away from Freddie, trying to make all of this end. “Please, Mrs. Tarasi, I’m so sorry. I have some wipes and gauze for Julian. It looks like he’s okay, but…”
“And how would you know if he’s okay?” she shoots back. “Forget it. We’re never coming back here after this disaster anyway.”
“As I said earlier, Kellynch is closed to lessons for the next month and we’ve rescheduled all our usual students with other rinks, but please don’t let this incident affect your future plans,” I say, but she cuts me off with another tirade until…
“Mom!” Julian yells from behind me, which should be impossible because the rink is behind me. “Mom, look!”
“Julian?” Mrs. Tarasi asks, blinking over my shoulder, and I turn to take in whatever she’s seeing.
“He shoots!” he yells with sheer joy, the laughter clear as a bell. Ben’s skating alongside Julian as he pushes a hockey puck forward with Ben’s stick, Freddie gliding backward in front of him as they approach two cones set out on the goal line. “He scores!”
And he’s laughing and smiling, tears long gone, with a bunch of tissues stuffed into his nostrils.
“Well,” Mrs. Tarasi says, “it looks like he’s…okay.”
“Yes, it seems that way. You should probably get him checked out anyway. Just in case.”
She hums in approval and her rage seems to have faded. “Julian, let’s go. I want to stop at urgent care on the way home and make sure you haven’t broken your nose.”
Freddie and Ben turn and bring him toward the door before swinging him between them and letting him land lightly through the gate and onto the floor outside the rink.
Then Freddie corrals the puck Julian was using and takes off down the ice immediately without even glancing in my direction, and Ben shoots me an apologetic grin before following his friend.
I follow Mrs. Tarasi and Julian off the ice, locking up behind us and walking them to their car, carrying Julian’s skate bag for them. Finally, they’re gone, and I sigh in relief.
For a moment I turn back to the rink and think about going inside to thank Freddie and Ben for their help, but there’s no way I can face Freddie.
I’ll have to eventually, and getting it over with is probably the smart thing to do, the brave thing.
But today, I can’t. After two years of near total silence, and the first time he really saw me was in the middle of that—it’s too much.
Instead, I’ll grab some food, and barricade myself in my room for the rest of the day.
I’ve had enough.