“The bus didn’t show up when it was supposed to,” Kendra said, dark curls bouncing as she turned to Alexis, who was nodding, “but we made it!”
“Barely,” Alexis said. “We hadn’t even gotten to catch up with your parents when Dominic came in and told us you guys were ready.”
It always seemed odd to hear Dom called Dominic. His family and I had always called him Dom, so I rarely heard his full name outside of our introduction in competitions or with people who didn’t know us very well. “You’re coming for dinner too, right?”We wouldn’t all fit in my parents’ car, and they’d be much slower on the bus.
“Zain is going to give us a ride,” Alexis said, looking over her shoulder at Dom’s friend. When she turned back to me, she mouthed, “He’s hot.”
I laughed. “Do you want me to see if he’s single?” I lowered my voice enough that I wasn’t sure that she could hear me at first, but her wagging eyebrows assured me that she had.
Brandon walked down from the spot he had been sitting then. “I knew you were great, but it’s so much faster in person than it looks on TV.”
People had always praised Dom and me for our speed, but I knew the feeling of surprise. The first time my parents had bought me tickets to see a show made up of retired skaters when I was a kid, I couldn’t believe how fast and talented everyone was compared to what I was used to. On TV, they were so tiny that it didn’t seem like they could move that fast. With the scale of a full-sized rink, it was much different.
“Thanks,” I said, sliding my feet backwards and forwards with a nervous energy that was building in anticipation of the next skate. Now that it was only minutes away, I felt like I needed to keep moving. Maybe then the criticism wouldn’t be able to reach me.
A couple of moments later, Dom stopped short beside me, a dark figure coming into my peripheral view. “Almost ready for the next one?”
Turning from my friends, I nodded. “We probably should get it started.” Maybe it was like ripping off a bandage where it was better to do it as quickly as possible. I couldn't imagine it could be worse than the knowledge that it was coming. Turning back, I said, “One more short skate, then we can talk.”
I skated to our starting position, keeping a couple of extra feet of distance between Dom than I than usual. He looked at mecuriously as we got settled, but didn’t push. He must have known what was on my mind. The fear of doing the routine had never been so bad for him. He had never been very serious with Emma, and she didn’t seem to have nearly as much jealousy as Brandon. Now that he didn’t have somebody he was dating here, all he had to worry about was his parents. His friends may tease him or joke around similarly to the way Alexis and Kendra would treat me once we were away from Brandon, but at least there wouldn’t be any judgement from them.
I waited for him to get properly into position so I could get settled, but he kept the distance between us. He moved closer, but didn’t fully get into position, only touching me ever so gently. I still needed to support myself. He barely moved his lips as he said, “Don’t think, Hazel. Just go with it.”
He was right, damn it. We both knew it. We could deal with whatever happened off the ice when we were done. Mimicking his volume, I said, “Okay. Now hold me properly.”
He gave me a lopsided smile, one corner of his mouth raised much higher than the other. He held me tighter, so he was supporting my weight, and I relaxed.
The music started. The beat proved as effective as Olga and Mark had hoped. If I weren’t already moving, I would want to. The world seemed to fade in the background and I focused on Dom as we pushed off from our positions, keeping our eyes on each other. We usually had to focus on each other, but in this routine we had been told that we should never look at anything else. If we were supposed to play up our chemistry and the fact that we were supposed to be into each other, we needed to maintain eye contact.
The side-by-side Lutz jumps went smoothly, without the same problem the jumps in the first program had suffered from. I was more tired than I would have liked thanks to the back-to-back performances, but we managed to do things well. We settled ondoing a double twist to make things easier, and it went perfectly. The rest of the routine went as smoothly as I could have hoped. When we came out of the footwork sequence across the rink and were still in sync, I felt a sense of accomplishment. That was another required step Olga had really pushed us on. Having done it well was a relief.
We moved onto the dance. The steps were the same as the ones that had made me feel awkward weeks earlier, but after so much practice, they came naturally. When I stopped moving my hips and turned back to Dom, chest to chest and staring at each other, it felt like things were going as they should. He twirled me and we were off again, hand in hand to prepare for the next lift.
By the time the last bars of the music met my ears, I knew we were in the clear. All we had left to do was a spin, similar to one we’d done hundreds of times before. When the last note played, Dom had one arm around my waist and the other against my upper thigh, while I arched backwards so I was looking upside down. We held the pose for a moment before he let my leg down so I could support myself.
My cheeks felt like they were burning and my chest was tight over my thumping heart, but I was thrilled. We had done it. My anxiety had washed away. We had made it through everything without messing up, even though we were more tired than we would otherwise be going into this skate. Dom’s hair was tousled and sweaty, but he was beaming.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and spun me around, letting out a whoop. I threw my head back and laughed. “Let me down,” I said, tapping his biceps.
Dom obliged and grinned back. “Only because it's time for us to get dinner. I’m fucking starving.”
My nerves must have been affecting my appetite more than I thought. Beforehand, I hadn’t been hungry at all. My anxiety about what everyone would think had gnawed at my insides toomuch for me to want food. Now, I felt like I could eat a small horse.
We skated off the ice together. We’d see everyone once we had changed into street clothes and would get the chance to talk then. The entire process of slipping on my skate guards, grabbing everything from where I’d left it while I stretched, and getting changed went by in a blur. In the locker room, I checked my makeup in the mirror to make sure that it wasn’t full of smudges and pulled a brush through my hair. A spray of dry shampoo later, I shoved everything into my bag and headed out. I’d need to organize it later when I got home, but I didn’t want to keep everyone waiting.
When I made my way down the hall, I could hear everyone before I could see them. They were all waiting outside the door they had exited the arena from, the sounds of so many conversations jumbled in the empty expanse around them. Dom was already there, nearest to the locker rooms, talking with his friends. I walked past them to see my own, but my mother ran over and gave me a giant hug only a few steps from the door.
“Hazel!” she said, squeezing me tighter than necessary. “We’re so proud of you. You must have worked so hard to get your endurance up. And those lifts! Who would have thought that the scrawny teenager we met could spend so much time picking you up with one arm?”
My father hugged me after, much more loosely. “You did great.”
Only then did I see Brandon standing behind them. He had his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, his expression was hard. He was still dressed up more than everyone else, having clearly left straight from work without changing. When my parents moved out of the way, he didn’t come closer. I had to close the gap between us. “I’m glad you could make it,” I said,reaching out to grab his arm, since his hands were out of reach. “What did you think?”
There was a flashing moment where his eyes gave him away. He was pissed. After a weighty silence, he said, “The first one seemed much better now, with music.”
He was trying to be diplomatic, but it still stung. The other time he had seen part of that routine before, when he’d shown up unannounced. He’d also commented on it when I was at the boards, after he’d come down in the middle of the conversation I was having with my friends to say hi. His decision to talk about that and not the one that was new to him was a very clear message about his view of the short program. He was not happy when I’d told him about the music choice. He hadn’t been happy when I’d tried to explain it to him. And after seeing it, he was angrier than ever.
“What did you think of the short program?” I asked. It was a risky question. The answer was probably not going to be something I wanted to hear. But it seemed much safer to ask it now, with people in earshot. When there wasn’t anybody around later, there would be nothing to encourage him to keep his criticisms constructive.
