Unable to keep the same level of composure as Dom, I averted my gaze. “It’s his face, Mark. If you want to know, you’ll need to ask him.”
"But youdoknow what happened," Mark said, confident in his assessment. “He told you why he looks like he got into a brawl or drunkenly hit his head.”
I looked over Mark’s shoulder at Dom. He gave me the tiniest nod, so he knew I had his back. “Yes, I know. And he’s fine. He’s not concussed or drunkenly doing stupid things. It won’t happen again; I can assure you. Now, can we move on?”
The conversation had gone only marginally better with Olga. She hadn’t pressed for an answer but had instead focused on how it looked. “You will get good makeup to cover that,” she said moments after she arrived, pointing at the bruise. “You cannot look like a fighter.” She shook her head as she walked past me. I caught a whiff of perfume and her muttering under her breath about not caring how he looked for our first competition.
Mark and Olga’s willingness to move past the bruise lowered my stress levels. I’d done my best to prepare myself to shoulder the blame for what had happened, but I didn’t want the details of my dirty laundry aired. They had expressed concern about Brandon getting in the way of skating when he had randomly showed up at the rink. That had been embarrassing enough. If I had to explain how he had snapped and punched Dom at a bar after yelling at me, I would have melted into a puddle. Mark and Olga were around us all the time. They knew everythingthere was to know about our work, our schooling, and the major events of our lives. What they had not known and we had never shared were our personal lives. Outside of the other skaters, they didn’t know who we had dated or who we were friends with. I think all four of us liked to keep it that way.
I hadn’t expected that Dom to keep it a secret from his parents. Richard and Debbie were supportive of him and had always been nice to me. While they hadn’t been involved with people I’d dated outside of the occasional hello at the arena, I couldn’t imagine Dom had hidden everything from them. Changing the topic away from the double entendre, I asked, “Why didn’t you tell your parents what happened?”
“I didn’t want to get into the reasons he was angry,” Dom said. He shifted and looked over my shoulder. I must have caught him off guard. He took a few steps closer and lowered his voice, clearly not wanting to be overheard. “I don’t know how much you told your parents, but I didn’t like the idea of telling my parents that your boyfriend was accusing me of feeling you up or that he was convinced that you were secretly cheating on him with me while we were supposed to be practicing.”
I blushed again. “The only thing I told them was that he was jealous. I didn’t get into the specifics of his accusations.” I shuddered at the thought. “But I thought you would have told your parents something. Even if it was just that you were defending me or standing up for yourself.”
“I said that somebody hit me at the bar because they were paranoid I was going after their girl.” He licked his lips and added, “I just didn’t mention that the girl in question was you.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what else there was to say. “I would have deserved the judgement, you know.”
“Nah,” Dom replied with a shake of his head. “Don’t get me wrong, Brandon has always been jealous, and I’m glad he’s outof the way, but I didn’t want to repeat what he said. Not just because he made you seem…”
He trailed off. I suspected he didn’t want to say the next part. “Like a slut?”
“Your word, not mine,” he said. “Or maybe Brandon’s word. Anyway, I thought the best way to stop the questions was to be vague. I didn't want my mom to ask if there was something between us again.”
I had started walking to the living room, but stopped after a couple of steps. Water sloshed over the side of my glass and over my hand. I spun on my heel as the last word registered in my brain. “Wait, what?”
Dom’s cheeks were bright red. “Never mind,” he said. He clearly hadn't meant to let the last part slip out.
“No, tell me,” I said. The word “again” was playing in my head on a loop. “When did she ask that?”
From the living room, my father’s booming voice called, “Hazel! Dominic! It’s back on!”
Dom made a move to go, but I grabbed his wrist. I suddenly had a burning need to know what the answer was. He looked at my fingers looped around his wrist before meeting my eyes. “Please?” I asked quietly.
He sighed. “A few times,” he said, voice rushed. “She asked a couple of times when we were younger. Then again she heard about the short program. She thought that maybe… I don’t know, she thought maybe there was more to it than a natural chemistry and friendship.”
My hand fell to my side. I wasn’t surprised that the unspoken crush I’d had as a kid had been noticed by his mother, especially now that I knew I hadn’t hidden it past Dom like I thought I had. What I hadn’t been prepared for was that even she had thought maybe something was going on recently.
Before I could think of anything to say, Dom was heading back to the living room. “Come on, Hazel,” he called over his shoulder. “You know what we might see in the first free skate.”
The quadruple twist, I thought as I watched him go. One of the only pairs that did it routinely was at Skate America this year, and they were scheduled to go first in this flight of skaters. We didn’t know if they’d have one today, but they were the only ones who were likely to have one before we skated next week. And while we both knew all the technical things we needed to do if we wanted to land the twist consistently, it was nice to see it done where I could watch.
I slipped into the room as the music started and sat back in my spot. Dom’s arm was over the back of the couch again, and he had placed himself nearer to the middle than before. I sat next to him and glanced at our parents. They were all watching the TV, but I couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would think of us sitting like this now.
About twenty seconds into the skate, the announcer stated they were preparing for a triple twist. Dom’s hand was suddenly on my far shoulder. He pulled me closer and said quietly, “Even they aren’t doing it now. We have plenty of time.”
I risked a glance at him, knowing that the twist would be over almost as quickly as it started. He was smiling at me and looked much more relaxed than I felt. “Focus,” he whispered, pointing back to the TV. “Check out the competition.”
I did as I was told, turning back around just in time to see them step out of the twist. Dom’s hand was gone, freeing me to move again, but I let myself lean into him. It was nice to have something to support me and, despite the strange conversations of the past week, it was comfortable leaning against him.
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Therewerealotof things to get used to when you travelled for competitions all the time. Living out of a hotel room and not having a home-cooked meal took some adjusting to. Eating out constantly had been exciting when I’d first started travelling as a teenager. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take full advantage of eating out because I tried to limit myself to chicken, fish, and veggies in the lead-up to a competition. I gave myself some cheat days when I was back home, but on the road I knew I had to treat food like fuel rather than eating what I craved. I knew other people had a hard time adjusting to sleeping in different beds, but I’d never had that problem. After a full day of training hard, it was easy to fall into bed and sleep until my alarm went off.
The issue that I’d always struggled with the most was jet lag. When I was first starting out, all the competitions had been in the same time zone, so I hadn’t realized the impact it had on my body. Nowadays, they could take me halfway around the world. Trying to be in peak condition after travelling day and night was a challenge. If Dom and I made it to the Winter Games, it wouldbe a major problem. So much so that we planned on giving ourselves the better part of two weeks to adjust. Thankfully, our first competition was only a three-hour time difference. The three days we had to get used to the time change would be plenty.
