Olga’s mouth was set in a firm line and Mark didn’t look much happier. “If you can land it consistently and cleanly, it could put you ahead. If not, you are tossing out one of your strongest elements.”
We had already debated the risks and rewards of putting a quad twist into at least one of our skates many times. It was a familiar discussion from the earliest stages of our skating relationship. Whenever we learned something new, the question remained if we could do it well consistently. If we couldn’t, we could hurt our score by replacing a simpler move with the new one.
“Not now,” Dom muttered out of the corner of his mouth, reaching a hand out so we could continue. “Let’s get through this first.”
I gave him a brief glare before gripping his hand and moving on. We did our best to go through everything else in turn. We were in the middle of a lift, with Dom’s right hand supporting me from my hip while my legs were in a full split, when Mark asked us to pause for a minute.
On command, I froze. Legs splayed open, I tried to keep my core solid so I wouldn’t move. I could feel Dom’s hand move ever so slightly, his fingers tightening. Most people wouldn’t even notice the change in pressure, but I could. We had done this so many times that I could practically tell what he was thinking from just the way his hand moved against my body. Now, with the tiniest difference in his grip, he was doing his best to keep his arm straight above his head without wavering.
Mark moved around us. He was in and out of my vision, looking us up and down like he was about to haggle over the price of something at a market. He and Olga started talking rapidly, debating the flow and artistry of the lift we were frozen in against a slightly different one. They were talking to each other, as though we weren’t there, frozen like a pair of oddly positioned statues, so I didn’t pay attention to the words. Anything they discussed would be relayed to us directly after. I had done this so many times that I didn’t even need to putthat much thought into keeping my position. Whoever said that muscle memory was a powerful thing wasn’t lying.
“Dominic, you can put her down for a second,” Olga said. Mark hardly spared a glance over his shoulder as he nodded absentmindedly. This wasn’t the first time he got so wrapped up in a conversation that Olga would direct us to stop what we were doing and save our energy.
I dismounted, body turning and legs swinging through the air as I did. Even though I’d been more than six feet in the air, I landed gently. For all his faults, I had complete confidence that Dom would take care of me on the ice. I had to. When we were spinning with our blades next to each other’s heads or when he was throwing me around, we had to rely on each other. More specifically, I had to rely on him to keep me safe. Our first coach had drilled that into Dom’s head from the first days of practice together: he was responsible for my safety. In that, he’d never let me down.
As they continued their discussion in hushed voices, Dom exaggerated shaking out his arm and his shoulder. With a grin, he said, “Want to change spots next time? It could be fun to make you do the heavy lifting for once.”
“As long as I get to wear pants and you have to wear a dress.”
Dom looked like he was going to retort when Olga, in her heavily accented English, said, “Resume and hold.”
A moment later I was up in the air again, Dom standing beneath me, steady as ever. “Hazel, arms,” Mark said.
I straightened my arms out more, ensuring my hands were properly positioned. My hands were extensions of my arms, I told myself. They couldn’t be flopping around, even in practice.
“How are you doing, Dominic?” Mark asked.
I couldn’t see his face from the position I was in, but I could imagine a look of intense concentration on it. That or a grimace. The difference between the two was incredibly subtle, but I couldalways tell. A lot of times, it veered closer to a grimace when we hadn’t been able to practice as much. Or, to be honest, when I’d put on a few pounds.
“I’m fine,” Dom said. In sharp contrast to his words, his fingers moved along my hip again. It wasn’t a tightening, but more like he was trying to get comfortable. It couldn’t be very comfortable to have the weight of my entire body supported on one of his arms, but he didn’t complain.
A single nod from Mark. “Okay, continue with the rest.”
A second later I was down again, and we were off. We talked through the spot that would contain side-by-side jumps on the ice and spins. Mark and Olga had a lot more to say about our step sequence. We didn’t have room to do straight across like we would on the ice, so we had to make the best with the room that we had. Olga made us repeat it three times, pointing out areas of weakness each time and making a minor change the second time, before she let us continue.
We were breathing hard as we went into our last move, a lift where my legs would swing through the air before getting settled in position above Dom’s head.
“I want this to become one-handed,” Olga said, “if they prove they can execute it flawlessly.” Even though she was standing somewhere behind me, I could picture her face: lips pursed in judgement, eyes showing doubt that we would ever be able to meet her definition of flawless. Even if the judges at a competition gave you amazing marks for execution, she would never say that it was the best you could do. In her mind, there was always something to improve on and that was the part you should focus on before the next competition. It wasn’t a bad thing, even though it had taken some getting used to when you were used to being the star of your local competitions. Dom and I had never discussed it in so many words, but I knew the desireto have her deem something you had done as perfect was one of the things that pushed us to improve.
Dom was breathing heavily as he set me down. He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, brushing stray strands of sweaty hair out of his face. “You want us to focus on that instead of the quad twist?”
“Ideally, you would master both,” Olga said. “What you do best will decide what we should put into your skate.”
I turned to Dom, my shoulder brushing against his chest. “It sounds like we have a lot to work on.”
“I don’t know why you would ever expect anything less,” he said.
He had a point, I thought as I walked over to the spot near the door my water bottle was. I drank quickly before retying my hair on top of my head in a messy bun. I didn’t need any distractions, not even my own sweaty hair sticking to the back of my neck.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
BythetimeItossed my bags into the trunk of my car, I was more than ready to leave. It had been a longer than normal day, since we had so much to decide for the upcoming season. Thoughts of skating had melted away when I stepped into the warm summer air. Wearing a loose t-shirt and cut-off shorts, I was in a very different headspace than in practice. My muscles were pleasantly sore and I was looking forward to sitting down on the couch to watch brainless TV for a while once I got home.
“Hey.”
I jumped. I had been so focused on my plans for the evening that I hadn’t heard anybody approach. It took me a second to register that it was Dom’s voice. “Oh, it’s just you.” My heart was still pounding from the unexpected greeting.
