Chapter 4
FOUR
SIERRA
ONE THING’S FOR sure, I did not miss Dalton parties.
If I wanted drunk and horny college students bumping into me, I’d go to a frat party.
Aren’t sororities supposed to be primmer and more proper?
Beta Phi hasn’t received that memo, because marijuana smoke sponges the air, and the floors are sticky with alcohol.
From the number of sweaty bodies in here, I’d say the entire Dalton population is present.
On top of that, I can’t find my best friend.
Scarlett insisted that this party would be a good idea after I’d flopped at the rink with Lidia and felt the shame burning through me.
I was moping and knitting on our dorm couch while listening to the voice of The Weather Channel host, Dale Thunderman, until Scarlett threw her white skirt at me and told me to get ready.
For some deluded reason, I tried to fit in. Tiny skirt, equally small top, a red lip. It felt like a chance to rediscover myself after the sport I’ve loved my whole life chewed me up and spit me out. Sometimes I think I’m still lying unconscious and bloodied on that ice rink.
What I didn’t expect tonight was for that side of me to come out. The confrontational, opinionated, bitchy side that I buried long ago. But the hockey player pulled it out of me like a loose thread.
It wasn’t just the sight of his jeans slung low, white Calvin Klein waistband bold against his golden skin, or how the dim moonlight caught the sheen of sweat on his chest. It was the handprints—colorful, smudged, pressed like memories on his skin, as if everyone wanted to leave their mark on him. As if they already had.
But all those thoughts puffed away the second he opened his mouth.
Or when he smirked and the tiniest dimple appeared.
I’ve seen his type—the tall, popular kind of guy who’s too good-looking not to know it and juggles hookups like an extracurricular.
Scarlett’s dad had warned us away from enough of them.
But even as I’m consciously aware that that’s the last guy I’d end up with, I couldn’t help but feel my heart racing when his amber brown gaze slithered down my body.
“Si!” I turn to find Scarlett at the kitchen sink wearing a new top.
“Where’d you get laundry detergent and a new shirt?” It’s a cropped tank top, revealing the intricate tattoos that cover her arms and lower back.
“I used to live here once upon a time, remember?” she says. “Where’d you go? I thought you were behind me when I came inside.”
“Oh, um. I was …” Scarlett hates when I confront people on her behalf, but she’s a textbook people pleaser, and I’d never let anyone walk all over her. In second grade when a boy stole her favorite pen and lied about it, I threatened to give him cooties until he fessed up.
“You went to yell at the guy who bumped into me, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” I say, and she raises her brows. “Okay, yes. But he was rude, arrogant, and totally deserved it. Besides, we are now in possession of an IOU.”
“Of course we are.” Scarlett wrings out her top and stuffs it in her purse. When she takes my arm in hers and pulls me along, I feel the weight of gazes again. They know who you are.
The thing about falling at a world-renowned event?
Your accident is on video, plastered on every social media and news outlet for anyone to see.
US FIGURE SKATER’S NEAR-FATAL FALL ON OLYMPIC STAGE FUCKS UP EVERYTHING.
Okay, that wasn’t the headline, but it was the one running its own print shop in my mind.
Tonight though, the stares are more perusing, but that’s expected at these parties.
You hook up and avoid attachments. I’ve never done that, but sometimes I wish I could.
A blond guy with his arm around a girl winks at me.
“I think that guy is trying to recruit you as their third,” Scarlett whispers.
I recoil. “Lucky me.”
Scarlett pulls a drink from a case underneath a table and hands one to me.
A loud crash snaps my attention to where Jenga pieces scatter and a guy throws up his hands in drunken defeat.
His upset doesn’t last, because he leans over to whispers in a girl’s ear.
Her expression sharpens, and when she saunters toward the stairs, his eyes lock hungrily on the curves of her body.
An unexpected wave of envy surfaces. Even though I’ve performed for most of my life, I could never be confident enough off the ice that someone would look at me like that.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never cared about what boys thought.
In high school, guys would approach me, but later Scarlett found out it was because they bet on who could bag the hottest girls in our grade.
It was disgusting. So I skipped the teenage sex phase.
I had my first kiss at nineteen and lost my virginity at twenty.
Neither were memorable. I got it over with so no one could say I’d given up my whole life for skating, even though, deep down, I knew I had.
And maybe that’s what’s always made me feel different, like I didn’t live up to the experiences everyone else seemed to treasure. Like I wasn’t something desirable or wanted.
To this day when someone’s gaze drifts down my body, I become almost desperate to know what they’re thinking.
“Save me!” Scarlett grips my arm but is pulled into a game of beer pong. The loss is brutal. It’s only ten minutes later that a buzzed Scarlett shuffles back to me. “That game sucks.”
She shoves a cup in my hand. I drain the Solo cup before she pulls me to the makeshift dancefloor.
When our favorite song plays, I stay with her and out of my head.
And for a moment, I let loose. I don’t even mind the drunk guy invading my space.
But when his hand touches my waist and travels beneath my shirt, I jolt and quickly pull it back down.
The thing about a near-fatal injury? It leaves you with scars.
I expected the one on my head from the depressed skull fracture, but I didn’t expect the one on my abdomen.
The collapsed lung, courtesy of the broken rib after I fell onto the exposed skate of my partner, Justin, left marks.
When I took my first shower alone in the hospital, I caught my reflection in the mirror.
A jagged red line carved into my abdomen from his skate, and the hole from the chest tube insertion.
It hit me all at once what I had just been through.
It was the first time I’d seen something so permanent, so far from my faded bruises, so undesirable.
I crumpled on the bathroom floor with a sob, trembling and broken, until my mom came in and pulled me into her arms.
A soft hand pulls me back, and I turn to find Scarlett glaring at him. Even her glare is polite. I laugh, but when she spins me, all those feelings burst like a bubble.
Because my ex-partner, Justin Petrov, is dancing on the opposite side of the living room.
The Justin I knew didn’t drink and would never be in the vicinity of marijuana smoke. He’s adamant about keeping his body at peak performance, but now he dances freely with his new partner, Julia Romero. He never would have done that with me.
I’ve known Julia for years, not personally, but from the rink.
She’s talented, just never quite enough to win.
When I took first, she’d land in second.
She’s always seen me as a rival, always trying to one-up me.
It’s like she’s spent her career mirroring mine.
When I left singles after years of misery, I figured she’d be happy.
But apparently not, because now, with Justin, she has a real shot at winning in pairs.
My throat is clogged with memories of betrayal and a yearning for a part I miss so badly. Then, like shards of ice, his blue gaze catches mine, and I forget how to breathe.
“Hey, what’s wrong—oh,” Scarlett says. “Want me to throw my drink in his face?”
“Not before I throw my fist,” I mutter, following her past the sweaty bodies.
“Sierra,” he says when he catches up to us. “Scarlett. It’s been a long time.” I’ve seen this smile on his face before. It’s the one he’d give our competition before he turned right around and talked shit about them. If we’re talking about the toxic skating culture, Justin is full of it.
“Yeah? Whose fault is that?” Scarlett retorts, taking my arm to pull me along.
“Wait. Si, we should talk.” Justin stops me with a tight grip on my shoulder, and I glare at his hand until he pulls it away like I’ve burned him. I wish I could.
“No, you shouldn’t,” says Scarlett.
“But—”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” My words push him back, and I follow Scarlett. My throat is raw from swallowing the words I feel like I’ve been waiting to say to him for months.
In the kitchen, Scarlett starts mixing drinks. “You gonna be okay?”
The look she gives me makes me feel fragile, and I hate that she sees me that way. Even more, I hate that I feel it too. It’s been over a year; I was prepared for this.
I was sixteen when Justin and I partnered.
It was right after I won gold as a singles skater.
Everyone around me—my parents, my coaches, Team USA—was ecstatic with that win, but the medal felt like a noose.
I’d hit the pinnacle of my solo career, and it didn’t make me enough.
Instead, it felt like I’d come up against a concrete ceiling.
That’s when Justin swooped in, and I reawakened.
I would be enough for him because I was never enough for myself.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, trying to smile, but I’m not sure it’s convincing. Luckily, some girls from Iona House wave at us, and we’re pulled into a conversation. The music is loud, but it doesn’t drown out the flashbacks. Not when the cause of them is in the same room.
I can’t handle the burn spreading in my chest. “Scar, I’m the worst and I’m sorry but—”
“Let’s go,” she interrupts. “The music sucks and the drinks aren’t even good.”
When I’m about to tell her she can stay and that I hate to ruin the one night she has time to go out, she doesn’t let me.
Scarlett requests an Uber, and we wait on the curb in silence.
She never lets me apologize, doesn’t let me pay for the Uber, and not once does she release my hand from her unshakable grip.