I let out a white puff of laughter. “Thanks. But I’m not really.”
“What? Yeah, you are.”
“No, I’m not. I’mgood—but you need to be great, or it doesn’t count.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees. “And I’m not great.”
“How do you know?”
I pretended to be nonchalant. “I used to compete and stuff. But I wasn’t good enough to be real.”
“Good enough to compete still sounds impressive.”
“Thanks. It was just regional level, though.” I gazed at the sky, which looked like ice with snow spread across it in sweeping lines, all one level. “Then it got to a point where it was only about competing, which made me hate it. And then I wasn’t good enough to keep going, so I had to stop, and then I hated myself.”
He sat upright, pinning me with his blue gaze. “I’m sorry.”
I forced a laugh. “Sorry, that makes it sound very dramatic. It was fine. It’s just...” I traced my mittened hand against the ice. “Sometimes I watch skaters on TV and Iache. I feel like I could have been them. If only I were better. If only I was good enough.”
“How long did you ice-skate for?”
I fixed my gaze on one of the clouds, a cotton puff drifting across the sky. “Eight to fourteen. I started being serious around twelve—basically when I realized I wasn’t going to get better at piano.”
“When did you start piano?”
“Oh, I must have been around four.”
“And now what?” he asked warily.
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t tell me someone who spent a decade playing piano and skating suddenly gave up trying to be best at something.”
“Now I’m a barista,” I said. “It’s much more relaxing.”
“Okay...” he said slowly. “Do you like it?”
“I like not being under a microscope all the time.” I shrugged. “Do I really need to throw myself into yet another activity?Can’t I have some time to myself? To make coffee?”
“If it makes you happy.”
“Skating and piano used to make me happy,” I said. “What if... you found your purpose, the thing you love and want your life to be about, and it turned out you were wrong? You weren’t good enough to go any further, weren’t talented enough, weren’tenough? Then who are you?”
Our eyes met. I felt, for whatever reason, like he understood me, understood this strange, purposeless weight I carried around. “Then I guess you get to decide,” Tyler said slowly. “You get to pick who you want to be next.”
I didn’t know what I wanted to be next. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or even what made me happy. Except for Nantucket, except for my family. Except for Olivia, and, bizarrely enough, Tyler Nelson.
And what did he want?
“What about you?” I gazed up at the cloud-brushed sky. “What’s this miracle you’re looking for?”
“Why do you think I’m looking for a miracle?”
“Everyone wants a miracle.” Who didn’t crave a touch of magic, a sudden, wondrous change to their everyday lives? It felt more possible miracles existed at this point in the year than at any other, as though the goodwill at the holidays generated a kind of magic. The days were long and dark, but people came together with light and joy, and that was a miracle in itself.
I wanted a hundred miracles: to be less stiff and less awkward, to be better at skating or not care about it at all. To know what I wanted to do with my life. To live at Golden Doors with all my family year-round. “Besides, you asked me if I believed in miracles.”
“Just a—psychological curiosity. Because you said Hanukkah is all about miracles.”
“All right,” I said archly. “Don’t tell me the miracle you want. Tell me what you want more than anything else in the world.”
