Chapter 5 #2
My eyes follow Riley and Freddie as they crisscross the ice. They’re good. I mean, of course they’re good, they qualified for Worlds too, but they’re not as good as we are. Their lifts and the overall complexity of their routines just aren’t where they need to be in order to really challenge us.
Not yet, at least.
One day soon, though—maybe even later this year if some of the things I’ve seen them working on in the videos Riley’s always posting work out—they’ll be nipping at our heels.
I make myself stop watching and start jogging back and forth, swinging my arms around in circles to get my blood pumping against the cold of the rink.
We’ll be working on our rhythm dance today, so I turn the volume all the way up on my earbuds and let the sounds of Billy Joel’s “Vienna” totally overpower everything around me.
It’s kind of an old-school choice, but Brayden got to pick the song for our free dance, so it was only fair that I got to choose the rhythm dance music.
“Vienna” was my mom’s favorite song, and it was barely out of my mouth before Camille agreed to it.
Skating to it is like having Mom at practice every day, sitting in the bleachers silently and then smiling widely afterward, asking me if I had fun, because that was the most important thing about skating, even when you dream about gold medals.
As my muscles loosen and my body feels ready to put in a full workout, I start running through some of our choreography, arms held out as if Brayden is standing opposite me, one hand across the middle of my back, the other holding mine in his firm grasp as we waltz together over our frozen stage.
I’m halfway through the section when my imaginary partner becomes flesh and bone, and I don’t even open my eyes when he falls into step with me and I let him lead me through the last bit of choreography.
Dancing with Brayden, on the ice or the solid ground, is as natural as breathing.
He’s the kind of partner who knows how to bring out the best in whoever he’s skating with. I’m lucky to have him.
I spin under his arm one final time before he draws me close for our final pose and I bend back over his arm.
He follows, his forehead resting against my neck, his face buried in my shoulder.
Then as the music cuts, he pulls me right back up.
I finally open my eyes, and his gaze meets mine immediately and holds.
These are the moments on the ice when I don’t struggle with expression, when we look at each other. It’s easy to look into Brayden’s eyes and react, reflect the emotions I see playing across his face. And this one is easy to identify. Want.
Something in my chest twists pleasantly at that thought, especially after thinking about what Freddie told Maria. Even if he’s playing it up for the performance, it’s nice to be looked at like this, like someone wants me.
“Good, you’re both here,” Camille says, coming over and breaking the moment.
I pull out of Brayden’s grasp and turn to face her, hoping she didn’t notice what she interrupted, but Camille, being Camille, misses nothing.
She only raises an eyebrow at me and continues talking.
“Finish warming up. I don’t want to waste a minute of ice time.
You should consider today the beginning of World Championships.
You’ll be skating against your fiercest competition every day from now through the final skate in Paris.
That’s the level of focus I expect of you each and every time you’re out on the ice between now and then, am I understood? ”
“Loud and clear,” I say. It’s what I want to hear.
I want to throw myself into training for the next few weeks.
I want to block everything and everyone else out and keep my sights set on one thing, a Junior World Championship gold medal, the perfect jumping-off point for a four-year run to the Olympic Games.
Brayden nods and salutes, but without the usual accompanying smirk spreading over his face, which is about as serious as he ever gets.
Freddie and Riley are leaving the ice and Camille motions for us to follow her.
“Twizzles today,” Camille says, and Brayden groans.
We’re a great ice dancing pair, but if we do have a weakness, it’s in our twizzle sequence.
Ask us to do a complex lift that even some of the senior ice dancing pairs would shake their heads at, no problem.
Brayden and I have this sort of innate trust and we’ve had it from almost the first moment we started skating together. He’s not going to drop me.
Twizzles, though? It might sound like a ridiculous made-up word, maybe a candy or a kid’s TV show, but when we first started skating together, twizzles were the bane of our existence.
They’re multiple turns done across the ice with your partner, but unlike most of the rest of the program, there’s no contact between us, so it’s easy to lose rhythm and fall out of sync.
We’ve improved vastly over the last two years, but every once in a while, problems still crop up and it’s always super obvious when it does. You can’t fake a good twizzle sequence.
“Hey,” Riley says, leaning over to put on her skate guards. Freddie and Georgia are already out the door. “You’re coming tonight, right?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, team dinner at the Kellynch House. We’re gonna eat and then watch the first episode of Elisa’s show.”
I blink in surprise. “I forgot that was airing tonight.”
It’s funny that almost as soon as Elisa and Dad left, all my attention centered on the people surrounding me instead.
I stopped focusing on everything they talked about for months: sponsorships and Beijing and what exactly would have to go right for her and wrong for everyone else in order to medal.
It was all replaced by Paris and Brayden and our chances at Worlds and Freddie O’Connell’s reentrance into my life.
I guess tonight those two worlds are going to converge.
Riley rolls her eyes at me and giggles. “It’ll be fun, and you didn’t come last night, so you cannot say no. Besides, I need you there as my eyes.”
“Your eyes?”
“You’re so good at reading people. I need you to observe Freddie with me and see if there’s any hope.”
“You can’t tell if he likes you? Freddie’s not exactly a subtle guy.”
What you see is what you get with Freddie. He wears his heart on his sleeve, so open and free and, yeah, a little bit wild. Willing to try anything once and always down for an adventure, like giving up hockey for a one-in-a-million chance at going to the Olympics.
Riley’s eyebrows furrow and her head tilts. “Freddie? Freddie O’Connell? My partner? He’s the least obvious person in the world. We spend almost all our time together and I can never guess what he’s thinking.”
“Really?”
The Freddie I know wasn’t like that at all.
He always shared what was on his mind, even if it was the most random thing, like the time he spent an entire training session thinking out loud about how whenever people talk about their past lives, they always talk about famous people, but that it wasn’t possible for everyone to have been famous in a past life, which turned into a weeklong debate about whether or not either of us believed in reincarnation.
I thought no.
He thought yes.
I wonder what he thinks now.
“See? This is why I need you there tonight. You’ve known him a long time. You’ll be able to tell. Please say you’ll come. Six o’clock!”
“Adriana!” Camille calls out.
“No excuses!” Riley says.
“Okay, okay,” I finally agree as Riley disappears through the doors and I turn toward the ice.
Joining Brayden at the far end of the rink, we wait for Camille to count us in to the steps.
“What was that about?”
“Apparently tonight’s dinner at Kellynch House is mandatory attendance.”
“Huh,” he says, “I guess my invite got lost in the mail.”
“If I’m invited, then you’re invited. Come with me?”
“Ah, how the tables have turned! I’m always inviting you places, and you never say yes.”
“Because you’re always going to keggers and clubs and that’s so not my thing.”
“And team bonding night seems like something that’s my kind of thing?”
“Please? I don’t want to go to this thing alone,” I say, and then press my lips together, widening my eyes at him in a silent plea, sticking out my bottom lip, just for effect.
“How can I say no to that?” he asks with a laugh as Camille’s voice echoes out to us.
Pushing off together, we spin over the ice. Keeping no more than arm’s length apart the entire time, less if we can manage it, we rotate one way and then the other, arm positions firm and sharp, our footwork matching exactly for a dozen rotations across the rink.
“Excellent!” Camille skates over and applauds. “That was the best I’ve ever seen you two do the first time out. You feel good about it?”
I nod, hands falling to my hips as Brayden and I circle her, waiting for our next instructions.
“You know what? If you’re both feeling it like this today, let’s start with a run-through of ‘Vienna.’ Don’t want to waste the good vibes.”
She skates to the gate and we head for the center of the ice while she cues up the music.
Brayden holds out his hand to me and I stand a few feet away with my back to him.
Then, as the tinkling of the piano signals the start of the song, I drift farther away while he follows, easily catching up, grabbing my hand and leading me into the first steps of our program, as Billy Joel’s voice implores us to slow down and he calls us crazy, ambitious children.
He’s not wrong, but we’re definitely not going to slow down. Not now. Not ever.
· · ·
The shower after a great practice is always the most rewarding one, and I’ll usually let myself linger there for a while, but I don’t have time.
A full day of training, even one as good as today’s, is exhausting, and I’d like to fit in a quick nap, but I got a text from Riley a few hours ago that she wants to bake a cake for tonight before we get started on dinner, and I am definitely not letting her loose in my kitchen without supervision.
With my makeup already done and my damp hair wrapped in an old T-shirt (no terry cloth towels on the curls!), I stare into my closet, wondering what the hell to wear.
This isn’t fancy. There are a lot of us, but it’s only a team dinner in the huge Kellynch House kitchen.
It’s not a sweet sixteen or a party or whatever…
it’s dinner next door. Still, I want to look nice.
I want to make a good impression on my teammates.
And, yeah, I might as well admit it to myself, I want to replace that last image Freddie has of me in his head.
I push hanger after hanger of workout clothes out of view and finally reach the portion of my closet usually reserved for skating events beyond the actual skating part, the ceremonies and parties, like the other night when we sent off my dad and Elisa.
My eyes catch on an oversize cropped sweater, which I totally made fun of when I saw it at the store, because what exactly is the point of cropping a sweater?
But when Elisa made me try it on and I saw myself in the mirror, I loved how it looked.
It shows a sliver of skin when I pair it with high-rise jeans, which make my legs look, somehow, even longer than they actually are.
A disadvantage on the ice, for sure. Longer limbs make it harder to spin and twirl and be lifted into the air, but off the ice? That’s a different story.
Outfit in place, I turn toward the mirror in the corner of my room. The T-shirt hair wrap looks ridiculous, obviously, but the rest of me? The rest looks pretty good. I pull the cotton fabric out of my hair and let the curls shake free. Okay, that’s even better. They’re a wild, shiny mess. Perfect.
“Adriana, are you ready?” Maria asks, not even bothering to knock as she comes into the room. “Whoa.”
“What?” I whirl around, panicked.
She shakes her head. “Not a bad whoa. A good whoa.”
“Yeah?”
Nodding, she reaches out for my hand. “Come on. Charlie is already downstairs waiting.”
“You’re going early too?”
“Well, if Riley’s cooking, then Charlie’s going to want to help his sister, which means I’m going to go too, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I repeat with a little bit of exasperation. I thought she was moving on.
“I know, I know, but I can’t help it,” she says, tugging on my arm, and I let myself get dragged out of the room, managing to snag my phone off my dresser.
Maria stops dead in her tracks when we make it down the stairs. “Selfie,” she says, leaning into me, and I quickly snap a picture of us, her blonde locks tangling with my brown curls as we smile for the camera.
I lower the phone and see Charlie waiting in the front hall, along with Brayden.
“Hey,” he says.
“I said six.”
He acknowledges it with a nod. “You did, but then Charles here”—Charlie practically swoons when Brayden says his given name—“texted me that he and Maria were going early, and so here I am.”
“You’ve never been early a day in your life,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him while I grab my coat. Kellynch House is only a few yards away, but it’s still below freezing outside. “Something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up. Why would anything be up?” he asks, stepping forward and holding out my scarf for me when I turn to face him. His eyes are alight with mischief.
The next few hours are going to be very interesting.