Chapter 20 #2
All at once I grow so cold, my limbs so stiff, that I could swear I was morphing into the stone.
“Gwen…” I struggle to find the words to comfort her, to soothe her, but I realize there aren’t any.
She was my second choice. Not just that, but my unintentional second choice because I had no idea what I was doing, and Aria was always my number one.
If I hadn’t been fucked up, I would never, never have touched Gwen.
And she seems to know it because she goes on without waiting for an answer.
“When I got to iSkate, I thought I’d finally made it. That I finally belonged to the figure-skating elite. And now they don’t want me anymore.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” My eyes drift to the sky and focus on the tip of Buttermilk Mountain. It looks like someone’s painted it with white paint. “You’re so good. Harper is crap compared to you.”
Gwen casts me a sympathetic smile, but it just looks like she’s in pain.
“Harper’s family’s got money. They donate a huge amount to iSkate every year.
They’d never give her the boot.” She takes a shaky breath.
“Paisley’s my best friend; she’s an extraordinary talent.
I wish her all the best, really, from my heart, and I know she’s going to make it.
But…” Her expression grows tortured. “Does the fact that I am extremely jealous make me a monster?”
A screech pierces the night as a snow owl whisks across the frozen lake.
“No,” I say after a while. “Before Pais showed up, you were the star of iSkate. It’s human to feel something like that, Gwen.”
She takes a deep breath, then drops her head and nods. “That’s why I come here at night. I want to train more than everyone else.”
“Is there any chance you’ll be able to stay?”
A sharp gust of wind blows a blast of snow into our faces.
Gwen wraps her arms around her chest. “Yeah. They’ve given me the opportunity to skate with a partner.
That’d be okay; I mean, the only pair they have is Levi and Aaron, no mixed ones.
But, well…That’s it. If I stay on my own, I’m out.
” She looks at me, her mouth twisted. “Sorry. Here I am going on and on; I know you’re not doing so hot yourself. ”
“I’m good.”
She tilts her head. “Aria?”
“Sure, there’s Aria. There’s always Aria.” I knock my knee against Gwen’s. “What’d be so bad about pair skating?”
A shadow flits across her face. “Nothing. It’s just… I don’t think I could trust anyone enough.”
Her words hover between us for a while before I stand up with a smile and offer her my hand. “It’s easy. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Her eyes grow wide. “The two of us?”
“With all due respect, ma’am, I’m a hockey player. I can do this thing with skates and ice, you know?”
Gwen laughs. Her eyes zip to my hand, and she only pauses for a second before grabbing it and letting me help her up. “Well, all right, Lopez. Seeing as it’s you.”
I go first. I test the ice with my blade to see if it’s thick enough before pulling my other leg after me, turning and skating backward out onto the ice, nodding.
She follows. The moment she takes her first step out on the ice, I see her face begin to glow.
She stretches her arms out for balance and moves so elegantly, so fluidly, that you could be forgiven for thinking the skates were an extension of her body.
In the middle of the lake, she stretches her leg, pulls it up, and bends into an elegant spin.
With Buttermilk Mountain in the background and the stars in the sky, it’s such an overwhelming image that I take my phone out of my pocket and snap a photo.
Not for me. I want to send it to her later so that she never stops believing in herself.
When she comes back up, I stuff my phone back into my jeans, skate over, and move in a half-circle around her. “Okay, Pierce, what are we going to do?”
Moving backward, she skates past me. “Well, what can you do, Lopez?”
Laughing, I spin around my own axis. Not as quick as her, or as elegant, but all the same. Gwen’s face is wobbling when I come to a stop and try to focus. “I can do everything.”
“I’d forgotten how narcissistic you were, sheesh.”
“Hello? You wanna let this broken, bitter guy be proud of what he can still do for a sec?”
Gwen makes a jump whose name I don’t know and shoots me a quick side-eye. “I think you see yourself differently from what you actually are.”
“Naw.” I skate past her, turn around, and look at her. “I am broken and bitter, my love.”
“No, you’re not, Wyatt. You’ve had a spill, yeah, but you’ve been doing that your whole life. And did it ever stop you? No. You got back up and kept on going. Maybe you’ve forgotten how that goes, but you’ll get there.”
My eyes watch her blades make a fine white line in the ice. “And if I don’t?”
Gwen kicks my skate to get me to look up. “Well, I’ll be standing next to you to give you my hand. Because we’re friends, and friends do that for each other, right?”
“Yeah.” With a grin, I give her a soft punch in the shoulder. “That’s what friends do.” For a fraction of a second all that’s between us is the stillness of the night, then I grab Gwen’s hand and quickly pull her behind me across the ice.
“Wyatt!” she gasps. “Wyatt, let go of me! I can’t do this turn in two!”
“I’ll show you how it goes!”
“How what goes?”
“That thing with trust.”
I glide confidently and quickly over the ice, while her yell gets louder and louder, but she’s laughing; she’s laughing so loud! Well, at least I can get my friends to laugh, if not myself or the greater part of my heart that’s called Aria Moore.