Chapter 13 Sound of Silence
Sound of Silence
Paisley
Training was hard. For some reason I cannot fathom that Polina seems to think I am ready for a triple axel.
The triple axel! I can just about pull off the simple one with perfect form now.
I can land the double, too, but on really unsure legs and not without some balance issues.
So how on earth am I supposed to pull off the triple?
That’s why today’s training wasn’t exactly all that great, and my mood could certainly be better.
“You coming along to the diner?” Gwen asks.
Levi is holding open the iSkate door for me, and the icy wind immediately cools my shower-warm cheeks.
“I’d be happy to,” Aaron says. He runs a hand across his stomach. “I could eat a bear. Levi?”
“Wherever you go, I will follow.” The glances the two share are heartwarming.
I look at my watch. “I’ve got about an hour, then I’ve got to start cooking dinner for the tourists.”
“Oh, right, today’s your first day at the resort!” Gwen gives an excited squeak. We walk over to her Jeep, and she raises her hand toward Aaron and Levi, who are already standing by their own car.
“Yep.” My instep hurts from all the unsuccessful jumps. I lean over and undo my laces as Gwen starts the engine. “And I would happily stay here all night practicing the triple axel rather than helping out at Knox’s party later.”
“Ughhh.” She drives out of the parking lot and shoots me a glowing look from the corner of her eye. “You excited?”
“No. Why should I be?”
Gwen ignores my question. “Listen. There’s just one thing that should absolutely set off the alarm bells for you. And that’s when Knox walks around shirtless. Cause it means that either he is on the hunt for a new piece or his new piece is already past. Both suboptimal.”
“Why?”
“Well…in the former case, you could be his quarry, which, at first sight, might sound good. But seeing as that Knox is known for his short-term stories, that wouldn’t end well.
The latter case wouldn’t be all that much better because it would clearly hurt you to learn that he had something going on with someone else. ”
“What?” I let an unbelieving laugh escape. “That wouldn’t hurt me in the least.”
“‘Sorry to my unknown lover,’” Gwen sings, quoting Halsey. “‘Sorry I could be so blind.’”
I roll my eyes. “‘Babe, I’m gonna leave you,’” I sing, grinning. “‘Oh, baby, you know, I’ve really got to leave you.’”
“Led Zeppelin!” Gwen’s eyes widen. “I can’t believe it. You’re a fan? I didn’t think that anyone other than me knew who they were anymore!”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I like you,” she says. “I’m gonna hold on to you.”
Walking into the diner I stop in my tracks.
“Oh,” Gwen mumbles, following my glance.
Of course, Knox, Wyatt, and the many long-legged women in crop tops that would cause me to catch frostbite within a second are impossible to overlook.
They are sitting at one of the backmost booths; one of the I-feel-like-it’s-summer girls lolls about on Knox’s lap like an Egyptian cat.
“I totally forgot that they might be here.” My friend looks at me apologetically.
“The boys often get warmed up by eating here before a party.”
Knox’s eyes bore into me as if he wanted to take an X-ray. I feel extremely uncomfortable under his gaze and quickly turn to Kate. She is hurrying about behind the counter, gives us a quick, stressed-out smile, and disappears into the kitchen.
“Levi and Aaron are back there.” Gwen grabs my hand and pulls me along.
I make sure to walk on her left side in order to ignore Knox better.
But as we come by their booth, it’s as if neither Gwen nor I even existed.
One of the girls gives a shrill laugh in response to something Wyatt has said.
Knox says, “Dude. With our history teacher? You’re nuts. ”
“Thanks for keeping a place,” I say to Levi and Aaron, sitting down across from them.
Unfortunately, right in Knox’s line of sight, who looks up at me briefly from his burger before putting his arm around his red-haired companion.
I’d really like to ask Levi if we couldn’t switch places, but that would mean that the situation is too much for me. And I do not care to admit that at all.
“Of course,” Aaron replies. He takes a sip of his ginger ale. “This place is hopping.”
Gwen grunts, almost spitting out the lemonade she pilfered from Levi’s glass. “Aaron. No one says ‘this place is hopping’ anymore.”
Kate comes over to our table, a trayful of glasses in hand.
“Okay, looks like I’ve got a special Coke here that William supposedly didn’t order.
” She looks over to the counter where William is sitting and rolls her eyes.
“And an iced tea from I don’t know who.” Gwen’s mother pouts. “Take pity on me.”
I laugh. “Give me the Coke. I could use some caffeine.”
Gwen narrows her eyes, leans back, and crosses her arms. “Dear lady, I don’t know,” she says. She begins tapping her arm with a finger as if in thought. “What should I think about your work? Am I, a paying customer, not worth a thing?”
“You’re worth this iced tea, my child.” She puts it down in front of her daughter and winks. “It’s great that from now on you intend to pay. I’ll remember that.”
“Oh, my God, what a joker my mom is! May I have a nibble of you?” Gwen makes a move to grab her, but Kate avoids her hand, the tray wobbling, laughing all the while.
There’s an awful tightness in my chest, and I can’t stop the memories of my mother from coming.
I wish she’d been a little more like Kate.
A little more normal. Sometimes we goofed around, but that was rare.
Mostly when she’d had a few well-paying clients and her excitement over her next shot had put her in a good mood.
Kate looks at the clock. “If you want to eat something, it better be now. In twenty minutes, we’ve got two reservations.”
I order a wrap, the others order cheeseburgers, and after they arrive, we talk about our free skating and what kind of outfits we’d love to have. I even manage to block out Knox’s presence, until Wyatt sits halfway up from his booth and looks over at us.
“Hey, chalet girl,” he calls out. He’s clearly drunk. “Am I gonna get your number?”
I can feel myself turning red.
“Just ignore him,” Gwen says. “He’s a total idiot.”
And that’s exactly what I do. Wyatt whistles once more like an immature teen and then falls back into the booth next to his date.
I can’t understand why she doesn’t pick up her little designer bag and go.
In reality, it doesn’t seem to bother her at all.
She nestles into Wyatt’s shoulder even deeper than before. Incredible.
I secretly look over at Knox. I don’t want to, but I cannot stop myself. Which I immediately regret, for, right at that moment the girl on his lap is whispering something in his ear with a dirty smile on her face. Knox emits a coarse laugh, turns to her, and runs his lips across her temples.
I’m jealous.
The unexpected realization hits me all at once and with full force, but I can’t deny the ice-cold stab of pain I feel move through my body. At this moment there is nothing I could wish for more than undoing the night at the movies. It complicated everything.
Confused, I bend back down over my wrap as a pickle falls out of Gwen’s mouth and she emits a surprised sound.
“Take a look at this,” she says, laying her phone down on the table and pointing to an article in Ice Today.
I’d uninstalled the app when I turned my back on Minneapolis.
“Ivan Petrov is presenting his new skater. He aims to take her to the Olympics.”
The ground beneath my feet begins to give way. A kind of tinnitus blocks out all the conversations going on around me. I no longer catch what Levi and Aaron are saying.
Ivan Petrov.
I feel sick. The name alone makes me dizzy and brings up images I’d rather not see. All of a sudden it’s like the pain never stopped. I can feel it throughout my entire body.
“Who?” It’s more of a gasp than a word but, all the same, getting it to cross my lips is incredibly tough. I spit it out.
Levi runs a hand across his beard and bends over the table in order to read the article better.
“Kaya Ericson. Hmm. Don’t know her.”
It’s like I’m frozen.
Kaya. My Kaya.
She was my best friend for over a decade, but apparently my disappearing act doesn’t bother her. The only thing that seems to matter to her is her success.
“I know her,” Gwen mutters. “A few years ago she got first place at Skate America. Figure skating.”
She did indeed. I remember the championships.
It was rainy, and I cried and cried because I couldn’t compete.
Because of him. He had been preparing for that day for a long time, had invested all of his strength into my performance only to break me and to rejoice in my pain.
It was the worst form of psychological terror: at first building up my hopes to the skies only to then destroy them at the deepest level.
I think that’s the year everything started.
The hell on earth that crept into my life.
Quietly and dimly, on black claws. Ready to dig into my insides and tear me apart.
“Ivan Petrov…” Levi murmurs before sticking the last bite of hamburger into his mouth and reflecting. “I haven’t heard anything about him in ages. And he used to be a real media whore.”
“Truth.” Aaron nods while rubbing the freckles on the bridge of his nose. “Back in the day he used to always get first place. Back when he used to skate. When I was a kid, I remember cheering him on whenever the championships were on TV.”
Gwen tilts her head. “I didn’t know he was a trainer now.”
Well, I did.
I’m ice cold, and I’ve only heard his name. I cannot manage to look at Gwen’s phone. I know why Ivan’s creeping back into the media. With Kaya of all people. He has no interest in making his new figure skater famous, but…
It’s got to do with me. He wanted me to see this article.
Even now, with over one thousand miles between us, he won’t give up.
He simply won’t give up wanting to humiliate me—wherever I am.
There is nothing I’d want more than to tell him it won’t work.
That he lost. But that’s not the case. With nothing but a single act, he’s managed to tear back open the wound that had begun to heal so well over the last number of days.
Ruthless and cold. A monster beneath his human mask.
I’m overcome by panic. What if he finds me? What if people find out I’m training at iSkate? It’s just a matter of time before that goes public. At the latest, with the first competition… Ivan, he…he could wrest my new life away from me again with one clever chess move. And he knows it.
The first notes of a melody dance through the diner and pull me out of my state of shock.
I blink and slowly things come back into focus.
Levi appears and then Aaron’s profile begins to take on shape as he wipes ketchup and a lonely roast onion from his boyfriend’s mouth.
Gwen is busy putting her phone away again.
The tune is coming from the jukebox, a song I know all too well. I know the lyrics by heart. Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”
My heart is pounding in my throat. I turn toward the jukebox and see Knox going back to his table.
His eyes dig into mine. I am incapable of looking away, so it’s up to Knox to break eye contact first. He sits back down next to the woman who had whispered in his ear and yet: I can’t be angry at him anymore.
Maybe he doesn’t know, but the simple thing of playing a song by my favorite band pulls me out of the darkness.
I don’t know how long that darkness would’ve lasted otherwise.