Chapter 3 Sloan
Sloan
Then - College
“I can’t believe you’re going out with one of my brother’s teammates.” Tia makes a face behind me in the mirror, nose scrunching with disgust. She shakes her head with an exhale before taking a too-long sip of her terribly mixed vodka cranberry.
I pause, pulling the eyeliner away from my face before I accidentally stab myself. “You guys told me to give him my number!”
“I didn’t think he’d actually call!” She holds her hands up in the air, drink splashing over the rim of one of the plastic cups we’ve had since frosh week, our dorm name stamped and peeling across the neon. “He’s friends with Talon. I figured he’d be the same—you know, gross.”
She gives another exaggerated shudder before scooting forward so she can see herself in the mirror that sits between our two beds in our dorm room. I watch as she tips her face back and forth, like she’s admiring the pink flush on her cheeks from the alcohol.
“Should I—” My grip loosens on the pencil, and I swallow, blinking. “Should I not go? Do you think it’s a mistake?”
Tia swings her head to me, curls flying around her face. “What?”
“Do you think it was a mistake?” I repeat, mouth drying out and the onslaught of my brain starting in. “You say he’s . . . gross, like your brother. Maybe I shouldn’t go.”
She studies me, cheeks softening, brown eyes blinking at me, like she’s trying to figure something out, before she takes a final sip of her drink, sets it down, and somehow scoots closer to me, so our heads are pressed together.
“I think my brother is gross, but I also think he’s one of the best people on the planet.
If Talon thinks Bohdan is worth his time, I think he’s worth yours. ”
There’s a different question I want to ask, and she knows me enough now to know. I can see it as she tilts her head, temple pressing against mine, eyebrows rising with an encouraging lift.
“Do you think he’ll like me?” My voice cracks, and all those things I think about myself peer through the gaping wound of me, and they dig their claws in and they try to force the crack larger so Tia will see them, too.
I give my head a tiny shake and close my eyes, but I think a tear escapes anyway.
Her thumb finds my cheek, brushing the tear away before she grips my chin. “Hey. Sloan. Look at me.”
I press my eyes closed harder.
“Sloan.” Her voice has an edge this time, and I blink my eyes open. “If he doesn’t like you, sounds like maybe he’s taken one-too-many hits into the boards. Now give me your eyeliner, you smudged it.”
And he does seem to like me.
At least I think he does.
He doesn’t look disappointed or left wanting when I walk down the dorm stairs to meet him at the bottom.
He stands there, hands shoved into the pockets of a black jacket, the hood of a grey sweater peeking out, amber hair damp and curling against it at the nape of his neck, jaw set in a firm line as he watches me walk down the steps.
But it’s the way his voice lowers and catches on a rough note when his eyes pass over me and he says hi, and I hear my name on Bohdan Novotnak’s lips for the first time.
“Hello, Sloan.”
The sound traipses across my skin, my shoulders, down my spine until I shiver, and I think my heart starts beating for the first time in my entire life.
I raise a hand when I stop on the stair at the bottom, eye level with him. “Hi, Bohdan. It’s nice to meet you . . . in person, I guess. I’m not sure the Polaroid exchange counted.”
“Can you skate?”
He doesn’t say thank you for coming, that it’s nice to see me, he doesn’t even ask me how I am or what I might want to do. It’s something I learn quickly about him—he doesn’t always say much, but he says what he means.
“Not well.” I blink, wrinkling my nose with a smile. “Are you asking me that because I’m Canadian?”
“No. I’m Canadian, too.” He gives me a sideways grin, pointing his chin towards the other end of campus, where the faint glow of the lights from the Munn Ice Arena are visible against the dusk.
He waits, holding his hand out expectantly, and I nod, warmth flushing across my cheeks when my palm meets his.
Our skin touches for the first time as he helps me step down, and I raise my chin to keep my eyes on his.
It’s just a brush, two palms touching for the first time, old skin that’s already living on both of our bodies, but I think I’m new all the same.
Bohdan looks down at me, too serious for a boy his age, and his fingers curl against the back of my hand for a too-brief moment, before he tips his elbow in the direction of the rink again and shoves his hands in his jacket pockets.
The lamps lining campus flicker on over us, but all that does is illuminate the carved line of Bohdan’s jaw, the planes of his cheekbones cutting across his face, and make the grey of his eyes look like an early morning.
“I didn’t know you were Canadian. Where are you from?” I fold my arms across my chest, falling into step beside him as we weave through the groups of students spilling out from dorms, linked arms and laughter echoing up to the sky.
Bohdan nods once, eyebrows raising and chin tipping up in acknowledgement as people stop and point at him, some students going as far as to scream his name like they’re watching him on the ice.
“Yeah. Recruitment landed me here. I grew up in Ottawa, but my parents are originally from the Czech Republic. We immigrated when I was two.”
He sidesteps a student who stumbles backward from a group, looking like they’ve had far too much to drink for seven p.m. on a Thursday, shoulder bumping mine before his hands reach out with reflexes faster than your average person to keep me from rolling my ankle off the sidewalk.
“Oh,” I say, straightening my shoulders when his hands leave them. “Do you still have family there?”
He nods, stepping closer to me as we walk, and I think it’s probably just to avoid all the students, but a small part of me hopes he wants our shoulders to accidentally brush the way I do.
“My grandparents. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. They mostly live in Brno.” He glances at me. “Where are you from? How’d you end up coming to school here?”
“I’m from Toronto. But my grandparents had a cottage on this side of Lake Huron and .
. . I don’t know.” I shrug, giving him a small smile.
I’m not quite sure how to tell a boy I just met that the only time I ever really remember my mind being quiet and kind was when I was that little, that small, and nothing could touch me when I was there every summer.
“Sentimentality won out in the end, I guess.”
He looks at me, and there’s something in the way one eyebrow rises, the curve of his mouth not quite a smile, that tells me he doesn’t believe me.
Bohdan doesn’t say anything as we walk the last block towards the arena, and neither do I.
Usually, I’d feel so guilty, like the whole weight of carrying the conversation, of making him happy, of entertaining him, of generally being enough would be sitting on my shoulders, but I can feel his eyes on me with each step we take, and he doesn’t seem to mind.
I think I can even see the slant of a smile on his lips.
They’re great lips, actually. Full, bowing slightly in the middle where they part. They might be the only soft thing about him, offset by the sharp lines of his jaw, shadows of stubble peeking through golden skin.
Tia would call them sensuous.
I call them beautiful. Fascinating, even.
“What’s your major?” he asks, voice low, practically drowned out by the loud squeak of hinges when he yanks the arena door open.
“Oh.” I blink. “Anthropology.”
Bohdan pushes the door back, hand splayed wide across the glass, arm raised so I have to duck under it to get inside.
Out of habit, I try to shrink myself, shoulders curving inward, but I brush against the planes of his chest, hard even beneath his jacket and sweater.
His breath whispers across my ear. “What do you want to do with that?”
It could be a rude question, but somehow, coming from him, I know it’s not.
I pause, halfway inside and halfway out, turning my head to look at him.
He’s studying me, striations in his eyes alight with interest, head cocked slightly to the left, and those lips parted just so in the middle.
I inhale, expecting the telltale scent of the arena, whatever it is they use to make them all smell the same way, but it’s just him invading my lungs—pine and snow and quiet nights.
That might be why I give him the real answer.
“Understand people. Maybe understand me.”
He nods once, considering, thoughtful, and I think we might stare at each other all night, me half pressed against him, his eyes nowhere else, but he jerks his chin towards the inside of the arena.
“What about you?” I step out from under him, looking back over my shoulder when he closes the door.
“Geological science.” Bohdan shoves his hands back in his pockets, crossing the concourse of the arena with purpose, like this is where he belongs, and I guess, in so many ways, it is.
I follow, watching, and maybe a bit envious he has a place where he knows he’s meant to be, where he feels so at home. Smiling, I repeat his question. “What do you want to do with that?”
He grins at me, left side of his mouth quirking up just a bit higher than the right—a little piece of him I categorize and file away in my brain under things that make my heart stumble and all the air leave my lungs.
“I won’t do anything with it. I just like it.
” He says it simply, and I follow him through a narrow hallway that doesn’t seem to belong to the general public, until we come out beside the small skate rental shop by the left entrance to the ice.
It’s hardly ever open, and none of the skates stacked neatly in the cupboards along the boards look used.
“This is what you want to do?” I point towards the sheet of ice, stretching and illuminated under soft lights.
“Since I first set foot on the ice.” Bohdan nods before pointing to a small bench. “Sit, I’ll fit you for skates.”