“Yeah. About last night.”
Jeremy turns away again. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
Sergio grips Henry a little tighter with one arm, then reaches for Jeremy with the other. “It’s not fine. It was insensitive, and I shouldn't have said it.”
Jeremy’s shoulders creep up towards his ears as he turns to face Sergio again. “It’s not like you knew.”
“No, but I should have,” he says, and he means it. Any decent human being would have continued to follow their love interest’s story even after they had asked them to put their mutual interest on hold, no matter how briefly.
“Why?” Jeremy asks sincerely, tugging at his left eye in his familiar way. “Would it have made a difference anyway? Would you have come to my hospital bedside and held my hand after I collapsed from that migraine? Would you have helped me stand up when I woke up from it, and my right foot no longer worked as it was supposed to, and my back ached and refused to straighten with ease, making me hunch like a rigid old man? When I was released from the hospital and shipped back to the States, would you have taken me to endless physical therapy appointments and rehab only so I could function as a shadow of myself?”
He tugs at his eye again, and Sergio grabs his hand and cradles it in his own. “Why do you do that?” he asks gently.
“Because I can’t always see out of it,” Jeremy snaps and pulls his hand back.
Henry, always intuitive, reaches for Jeremy in Sergio’s arms. Jeremy smiles at him and ruffles his hair. “Listen, I gotta rest up,” he says. “It’s gonna be a long night. Do you know what time we’re leaving?”
“A little before eight,” Sergio says, feeling worse than he had before he tried to apologize. “We gotta drop Henry off at the Weirs’ on the way.”
“Alright.” Jeremy nods. “I’ll meet everyone up at the house in a bit.” He turns on his heel and walks away, presumably to take his skates off and head up to his little apartment in the barn.
“Well, that went horribly,” Sergio mutters as he watches Jeremy go.
Henry shrugs and looks at him. “You tried.”
“Yeah, kid. I did try.” But not nearly hard enough. Thankfully, there’s always tomorrow.
Spotting Sergio sitting on the rink’s ledge with Henry on his lap, Jeremy slows in his tracks, gracefully dropping his arms to his sides, and comes to a stop a few feet away, blushing. “I thought Henry was my only audience.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Sergio says and places his best smile on his face, reminding himself to get it right this time.
“It’s alright, I guess,” Jeremy says. “Honestly, I haven’t had an audience in four years. I was hoping I’d never have to get used to that again.”
“I hardly count as an audience,” he says, hoping that not mentioning how much he was enjoying watching Jeremy skate yields better results.
“Anyone other than Rose counts as an audience.”
“What about Allison? Does she get to watch you skate?”
Jeremy shrugs and braces himself against the half wall as he slips a blade guard on. “Not like this, no.”
“Then I guess I should consider myself privileged.” With one arm wrapped around Henry, Sergio rises to his feet and offers his free hand to Jeremy to help him step off the ice.
Jeremy takes it. “Where’s Holden? I figured he’d grab Henry.”
“I told him I wanted to do it instead.” Sergio pauses as Jeremy places a guard on his other blade.
“What for?”
“I wanted to take a moment and apologize to you for yesterday.”
Jeremy tries to brush him off. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I have been worrying about it. All day, in fact. And I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
Jeremy looks at him with his head cocked slightly to the side and his brows pinched together. “Are you?”
Even after days of experience, he’s still not prepared for Jeremy’s skepticism. He tries not to show his frustration on his face. After all, it’s not Jeremy’s fault that he keeps living the same day over and over and over again. And even though he’s been trying and failing to do this for several days now, it’s not as if Jeremy knows that. Nor does he even want to try to explain it to him. Nothing ruins an apology more than an unhinged proclamation of living in a torturous time loop as an excuse for unacceptable behavior.
