Chapter 15
The pulsing beat of some kind of EDM I don’t recognize is pounding in my chest, but it sets the perfect beat for Riley, Gillian, Katya, and I to bounce around, arms in the air, completely unknown in this sea of people.
Maria and Elisa drifted away at some point, and the boys are somewhere in the crowd too.
Every once in a while, I’ve spotted them rocking out to the music.
This was such a good idea. We needed this. I needed this.
The song fades for a second and Riley leans in. “I have to pee!” she yells.
“I have to pee too,” Gillian says, wheeling around.
“Me too,” Katya agrees, and they look at me expectantly.
“I don’t. You guys go. Meet me back here.”
They give me a funny look, but then they’re disappearing into the crowd.
Someone behind me stumbles and I have to spin out of the way to avoid flying into a sea of gyrating bodies.
As I catch my balance, I look up and Freddie’s right there, blinking at me like maybe he thinks I’m not really there.
The crowd surges a little and forces me closer to him.
I reach out and brace myself against his chest.
There’s no air on the dance floor, but that’s okay.
He’s so close, his hands at my hips, fingertips pressing into the silk of my dress.
I look up into his eyes, the green blown out almost entirely black, meeting my gaze and holding it.
One of his hands slides around to the small of my back, drawing me closer, so close he can lean down and press his mouth to my temple.
His cheek brushes against the damp strands of my hair pasted against my forehead.
“Is this okay?” he rasps, his voice somehow carrying over the thump of the bass.
“Yeah.” I don’t know if he can hear me, so I nod.
We shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be doing this. Freddie doesn’t belong to me and I don’t belong to him.
But it’s easy to dance with him. We’d skated together since we were little kids and when his body moves, mine follows reflexively, as my arms come up and rest on his shoulders, his hand twitches against my hip and then pulls me in, our bodies totally pressed together.
And it’s that cinnamon scent and his lips brushing against my temple and his strong arms around me, being totally surrounded by him. It’s everything.
We lose ourselves in it and the crowd closes in around us, insulating us, making us just another couple in an anonymous mob, and there’s a freedom in that lets us stay like this. All I want to do is stay like this, with him, for as long as I can.
But then he’s gone, and my eyes fly open—when had I closed them?
—and Riley and Katya are there in front of me.
When I look around, the rest of the group has found us, and Freddie’s retreated to the edges of the tight circle they’ve made in the midst of the crowd.
Riley shoves a water bottle in my hand, and I take a sip before handing it off to Gillian and it’s almost like it never happened, but it did.
I know it did because he won’t meet my eyes, instead shouting something down at Ben before sliding away from us, and then when Brayden finds me and smiles widely, before pulling out his phone to take a picture of us to post, I lose track of him and don’t see him again for the rest of the night.
· · ·
“Ugh, turn it off!” Maria demands as the alarm on my phone blares out its usual morning sirens.
I answer with a groan, rolling over and swatting at it on the nightstand that separates our beds.
I slide my feet out from underneath the covers immediately. If I roll over or do anything other than get up right away, I’ll fall back to sleep, and it’ll be twice as hard to get up. “We should not have stayed out that late.”
Standing, I stretch my arms above my head and twist at the waist, trying to get my blood flowing. We have practice and there will be judges milling around. I don’t want them to be able to see any weaknesses when Brayden and I take the ice, even in training.
“It wasn’t that late,” Maria says, before she buries her head under her pillow, but it’s too late to block out the sun as I tear the curtains open. It’s not even that early. Our training is during the afternoon session.
I’m not really awake either, though, but I have to at least put on a show to get Maria going. “It was late enough. Come on, let’s go! I get first shower.”
There’s a small café attached to the hotel and most of the team is there when we make it down, mostly because I literally had to pull the covers off Maria’s bed and threaten to dump a pitcher of water over her head to get her out of bed.
Brayden waves me over to the bench beside him and nudges a bowl of fruit and a croissant in my direction, along with a steaming cup of coffee.
“You’re my favorite,” I say as I lift the mug to my lips.
“Damn right I am,” he agrees, and sits back as Charlie leans over to tell him something.
I don’t really hear anything, though. I allow the caffeine to do its thing. I’m sleepy, sure, and like I told Maria, we shouldn’t have stayed out as late as we did, but I’m actually feeling okay. I take a bite of some melon and chase it with a flaky piece of the croissant and another sip of coffee.
“Hey, everyone,” Freddie says, looking around the table and finding the only open seat next to me.
I shift over as much as possible on the bench and he slides in beside me, and I try not to think about the last time he was this close to me, just last night, bodies moving together in the dark…and yeah, I’m definitely thinking about it.
“Adriana, what do you think?” Riley asks from across the table.
“Sorry, what?” I blink at her and she laughs at me.
“Did the caffeine kick in yet?”
“Almost, what am I supposed to be thinking about?” I assume it’s not how Freddie felt pressed up against me at the club last night.
“Is winning the most important part of the sport?”
I furrow my brow and take another sip before answering. “I mean, that’s sort of the point of sports, isn’t it?”
“See, I don’t agree. Most people showing up at this competition are pros or want to be pros soon and they know they don’t have any chance to win and they’re still here. Are they all just delusional?”
“Ooh, philosophy in the morning after a late night, sign me up,” Jimmy jokes, and my partner laughs and leans back, putting his arm over the back of the bench, which basically puts his arm around me while the boy on my other side stiffens and I can’t help but let my eyes drift to him.
He’s looking back at me for once and I shift forward on the bench away from Brayden’s arm.
“What do you think?” I ask, turning toward Freddie.
Freddie’s eyebrows lift in surprise at the question, but he considers it. “I…I think that the love of something is the most important part. Does winning even matter if you don’t love it?”
And that makes me think, really think. It’s never occured to me before, that some people skate without loving it. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d want to win without loving it. But I also really want to win.”
“Yeah, I know.”
And suddenly we’re not talking about ice dance or hockey or anything other than each other.
Then Freddie tilts his head, thoughtfully. “But don’t you think that there’s something admirable about people who do this just because they love it, knowing they won’t win?”
“That makes sense. For some people, skating is necessary, like breathing.”
“And we’re back to it depends on the person because what’s necessary to me might not be necessary to you. You need, what, three cups of coffee to function in the morning? I don’t need any. It’s not necessary for me, but it is for you.”
“Right,” I say, “but as long as we’re up and doing what we need to in the morning, does it matter?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘need.’ Do I need to get up and train every morning? No, but I do it because I love skating. So maybe I’m more like that than I thought.”
“And because by training every morning, it gives you a chance to win.” I smirk, thinking I’ve won.
“If winning was the only reason I got up to train every morning then I’d have a hard time getting up. Haven’t won anything outright in a while.”
My smirk disappears.
The last time he won anything outright was with me.
The Intermediate National Championships.
We were so good that night, skating to “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing because I was obsessed with it.
It was our first and last gold medal together.
One year later, Brayden and I won Junior Nationals, proof positive that I’d made the “right” decision. Had I, though?
“I said a chance to win, not actually winning, which you agreed with a couple of seconds ago,” I say, managing to correct him slightly, but it doesn’t matter. “If everyone who didn’t win quit, the sport wouldn’t exist.”
“There are more important things than winning.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you.”
“It sounds like you are.”
“No, it sounds like you are.”
“Okay, you two,” Brayden says, interrupting us with what sounds like forced laughter. “Save it for the ice.”
The rest of the table seems to agree, and more than one of our teammates are shooting us a confused look. I sit back against the bench, not realizing how much I’d shifted forward in my seat.
“Sorry,” I mutter, mostly to myself, but Freddie clearly hears me.
“Me too.”
He has nothing to be sorry for, I want to say, but somehow it feels like he’s not apologizing for whatever that stupid argument we were having was, but something else.
Was he saying sorry for last night? It feels like it didn’t even happen, like maybe I dreamed it, but he must be.
My eyes fly open wide at the thought, but then he’s gone, just like last night, pushing off the bench and heading toward the café’s counter, probably to order something.
For a half a second, I think I’m going to follow him, though what the hell I’m going to say, I have no idea.