It had been a joke, but Brandon looked disgusted. “He doesn’t want you eating?” His lip curled.
Shit. That wasn’t going to get him to warm up to Dom. “No, I was kidding,” I said hurriedly. I placed a hand by his elbow inwhat I hoped was a reassuring way. “Dom has never made any comments about my weight. I just tease him sometimes because he has to carry me around on one arm a lot.”
Brandon hadn’t been able to stay long that day, but the fact that he’d come at all made me happy. Any time he increased his investment in this and tried to learn more about the skating world, it was a nice surprise. Maybe I hadn’t given him enough credit during the summer. There was a lot of work that needed to be done in the off-season to get our programs ready for people to watch. Maybe Brandon had wanted to make sure we were progressing before stopping by. Or maybe he had been worried about stepping on my toes, since we hadn’t been together that long when the last season had ended.
My excitement didn’t last long. He had stopped by twice more in the last week and a half. Both times he hadn’t bothered to tell me he was coming until he was already here. One time he had shown up right as we were about to step onto the ice. Olga had actually tutted when I ran over to greet him. Mark was quieter about his disapproval, but I could feel judgmental eyes on me. We had limited ice time. Every second I spent greeting Brandon cut into it. I hadn’t been able to do more than give Brandon a hug and tell him he could watch for a few minutes before excusing myself to tie my skates. I’d tried to keep myself from looking at the observation window to see if he was there, but it had a magnetic pull on my eyes. Finally, after about ten minutes, he disappeared. Only then did I manage to fully focus on practice.
At least this time I wasn’t scheduled to be anywhere, I thought. My thumbs tapped out a text for him, explaining that I was finishing lunch. As my message asking where he was appeared in a blue bubble, I was glad that my irritation was hidden.
His reply came through quickly, before I’d finished packing up my bag.
“Where are you going?” Elodie asked, checking the time on her own phone. “I thought you had another ten minutes.”
“Brandon’s here again,” I said. I’d tried to keep my annoyance out of my voice, but failed miserably even to my own ears. Seohyun and Elodie exchanged a look I didn’t like over their matching containers of fragrant stew. “What?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to know the answer.
“He’s just been showing up a lot lately,” Elodie said. She spoke slowly, which made me think she was choosing her words carefully. “I think we’re both surprised since he’s been a lot more involved lately than he’d been before.”
She’d phrased it as delicately as she could, but I still could read between the lines. Everyone had noticed how he’d been stopping by lately. Most of them had commented on it and I’d seen the surprise on the faces of those who’d been smart enough to keep their mouths shut. I tried not to be annoyed with their reactions. I knew they were all happy that he finally seemed to be interested in my skating, but it was just something else that got on my nerves. Brandon may have claimed that he wanted to see where I was working and see what I did here, but I had my suspicions that there was more to the story than that. I had to keep that to myself, though. If I told anyone, even Elodie or Seohyun or Dom, they might judge him for his insecurity. Or worse, they might judge me for putting up with his attempts to catch me doing something.
I took a few deep, slow breaths as I left for the viewing area. I found Brandon there, standing and watching a petite figure in a vibrant pink long-sleeved shirt on the ice. Katya Pavlova, Olga’s teenage phenomenon. He didn’t react as I approached. “Hey,” I said to announce my presence.
“Hey,” he said, walking over and giving me a firm kiss. “I was wondering what you were up to.”
“You could text me, you know,” I said, half teasing and half serious. “Or if you want to stop by, you could let me know beforehand. I could let you know if we’re doing anything interesting. Then you don’t keep wasting your time driving over here only for me to be eating or doing something boring.” One of the other times he had popped in definitely fell into the latter camp, since I was working on my flexibility when he’d shown up.
“I don’t mind,” he said. He couldn’t meet my eyes when he spoke. It undermined the effectiveness of the offer. “I don’t want to get your hopes up that I’ll come if I don’t actually end up doing it.”
Whether he stopped by was the least of my worries, but I couldn’t tell him that. “That’s sweet, but I’d be glad to let you know when it would be more interesting for you.”
“Don’t feel like you have to change what you’re doing for me,” he said.
He didn’t need to worry that his arrival would change my plans. He could stop in all he wanted, but I wouldn’t rearrange things to suit him better. “Now you probably think that I spend half my time here eating, since you always show up at lunchtime.” I was trying to keep the conversation light, but I did also want to make him realize the benefits of doing this my way.
“I want to see what you really get up to here. Texting beforehand might make you try to change things up to make sure I’m entertained,” he said.
That was the crux of the issue and what had been worrying me. If he really wanted to just see what was happening, we could video chat, or I could record a typical day and show him. The way he was doing it, he decided when he came by and saw what I was doing. He had no concern about whether it was a good time for me. There was an uneasy feeling in my gut, like he was trying to catch me doing something he wouldn’t like. I had nothing to hide. Being treated like I did was grating.
I turned towards the rink, watching Olga’s young prodigy work her way through jumps I would never be able to master. Even at twenty, my body was too old to push myself to do quads. It felt easier to watch the things I couldn’t do than Brandon when I said the thing that had been weighing on me. “I know this is silly, but when you keep showing up out of the blue, it makes me feel like you think there’s something I’m keeping from you.” I got the nerve to look his way after the words were out. The anger on his face showed my fears had been warranted.
“So now I can’t show up to surprise you without being accused of something?” he snapped. “I’m sorry for wanting to see you more and spend time with you.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Keep your voice down. This is my workplace,” I hissed, looking around to make sure nobody could overhear us. “I want to see you too, but there are better ways to go about that. You can’t keep showing up at my job unannounced whenever you feel like it. If you wanted to plan ahead, so we could actually find a time that was good for both of us, it would be one thing. But we barely get to see each other this way. You always show up five minutes before I need to be on the ice or meet with the physiotherapist or the dozen other things I have to do.”
He pressed his lips into a firm line. “So you don’t want me here, is that it?”
“That’s not what I said and you know it,” I retorted. “I’d be more than happy to see you after work or to text you, but you need to treat this like the job it is. You need to run it by me before showing up here. You wouldn’t do that if I worked in an office.”
“This is different than if you worked in an office.” His words were sharp.
“How?” I prodded. I was going to make him put his problem into words. Then I would know that I wasn’t just being paranoid and that he didn’t have innocent intentions. I didn’t care if hewas reluctant. If he felt dumb saying it out loud, maybe that would clue him in that it was a problem.
“It just is,” he said.
This was clearly back to Dom. Brandon had only started showing up after he’d seen the speculation that Dom and I were on a date. That couldn’t be a coincidence. “If you want to see what I’ve been working on, come to the rink after work nextFriday. My parents and Dom’s parents are going to come by to see both of our programs, along with a few of our friends. It would be great if you came by, too.”
Brandon turned away from me again and didn’t speak for a while. The silence hung heavy in the air between us. When he finally spoke, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
I wasn’t entirely sure why, to be honest. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until that moment. “It is a silly old tradition. I didn’t know how you’d feel about taking part in it. Every year, both sets of parents would stay to watch us perform our programs before we did any competitions. A few friends have joined in over the years, but not consistently. After we’re done, everybody goes out for dinner and we celebrate. Now that I know you want to be more involved with this part of my life, I’d love it if you came to it. It’s always fun.”
