After a few minutes, I became aware of Mark and Olga standing near the boards. They seemed to be talking to each other more than focusing on what I was doing, which suited me just fine. Any extra time to myself was a good thing. It was strange that we weren’t starting exactly on time, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Olga’s sharp voice finally brought me back to reality. “Hazel, come. We must start.”
I turned sharply and skated over to her. I stopped a few feet away from where she and Mark were still standing. “Are we starting without Dom?”
“I’m here.” Dom’s voice came from behind the boards. A split second later, he came into view. “I was just tying my skates.”
My heart was in my throat as he stepped onto the ice. I objectively knew that he looked the same as he did every other morning. His hair was falling onto his forehead and his stubble from the weekend was nowhere to be seen. He was even wearing his typical outfit, athletic wear in shades of black and charcoal grey. Yet the first thought that popped into my head was how much harder it would be to strip him out of the clothes than jeans. He nodded stiffly in my direction, making my cheeks flush, with his hands shoved in the pockets of his sweater. His eyes darted to Olga when he said, “Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”
Bullshit, I thought. He had always arrived with plenty of time to spare. There was a growing sense of dread in my stomach. I suspected he had tried to time his arrival as late as possible to avoid having to interact with me on our own. It must have been bad for him to risk putting himself on Olga’s bad side. Sure enough, she sounded stern. “You will be on time tomorrow.”
The voice in my head was telling me to say hi because that was what I did every other morning, but the one word was difficult to get out. Finally, I managed it. “Hey.” My voice somehow wavered on that one syllable. It was going to be a long day if I didn’t pull myself together quickly.
Mark slid his feet back and forth as he spoke. “I think it would be a good idea to start with the twist today. We can assess that and then move onto the other elements you have been working on.” He gestured for us to skate away from them. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes to warm up before getting started. Olga and I need to iron out a couple of potential changes.”
Of course, this would be the day he would want to focus on the twist, I thought. If there was any single element that required perfect synchronicity, both physically and mentally, that was it. It was an absolutely terrible time for Dom and me to be even the slightest bit off. I was going to do my best, but judging from the way he wouldn’t even look me in the eye, we were going to struggle.
Sure enough, half an hour later, we had several failed attempts under our belts. That in itself wasn’t unusual. We’d been practicing and steadily getting better, but we were not consistent. We had steadily worked our way down to smaller mistakes, though. Unfortunately, “had” was the key word of the day. Where we had been doing the twist cleanly about half the time and dealing with relatively minor issues the other half, we had progressed into major mistakes.
After I had crumpled against Dom for the third time in a row, Mark threw his arms out to his sides in bewilderment. “What is with you two today?” he asked. He could not keep his frustration out of his voice.
I looked over at Dom, who was stubbornly avoiding looking in my direction. “We’re just having an off day.”
“This is more than an off day,” Mark said. “When you are too close on your landing or your hand bumps him, that is because you are having an off day. This is more than that. You aren’t even close to landing correctly today.”
“Yes, this has been bad,” Olga said. Trust her to be blunt and to the point. “You have not been this bad in a very long time.”
Her words would have stung if I hadn’t been thinking the same thing myself. Even when we had first attempted the quad twist, we weren’t this bad this consistently. I wasn’t getting enough time in the air to complete my rotations because my takeoff was consistently mistimed. “We are aware,” I said dryly before trying to sneak another glance at Dom in the hopes that a bit of humour would put him at ease.
“You cannot have any hope of gold if you do not return to your usual grade of execution,” Olga said. “It was one of your best elements, but now you cannot land even one well.”
Harsh, but fair. I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned to Mark. Even if he was thinking the same thing, he would be diplomatic about telling us how much we sucked.
Mark’s pale eyes looked from Dom to me and back again. His furrowed brows made me anxious without him even needing to speak. “Olga, please give us a moment.” Olga didn’t look pleased at the request, but she skated away without comment. As soon as she was out of earshot, Mark asked, “Okay, what is up with you two today?”
“Nothing,” I said, at the same time that Dom said, “Why would you ask that?” He still couldn’t bring himself to look at me.
He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve known you both for too long to buy that. Something happened, and it is affecting your skating.”
A string of curses ran through my head. We should’ve known that he would be suspicious when we suddenly regressed. Suspicion wasn’t a problem on its own. He could think whateverhe wanted if he kept it to himself. But him bringing it up that was the problem. “We’re fine, Mark,” I said. I was trying to keep my desperation for him to drop it out of my voice. That never worked with parental figures in your life. “Dom said it was an off day, and I think he’s right. We will get back on track.”
“You better or you will have no hope at the Grand Prix Finals,” Mark said. For once, he was as blunt as Olga. “Never mind the rest of the season. If you can’t get the quad, then fine. It won’t be great, but we can make do with the triple if it is clean. If it isn’t, you will need your opponents to screw up as badly as you do if you want any hope of winning.”
I swallowed hard. He was right, of course, but that didn’t mean I was happy to hear it. “We will try to get it together,” I assured him.
“Then show me you can handle the pressure,” Mark said. He pointed to the other end of the rink. “Now get over there and show me one of the triple twists your fans expect of you.”
Dom took off before I had fully processed the instruction. “Damn it,” I muttered to myself as I pushed off, trying to catch up with Dom before he reached the end of the rink. Unfortunately, he also seemed to want to get there as quickly as possible because he was already in position before I caught up.
“You ready?” he asked, his dark eyes focused somewhere a few inches to my left.
“Dom,” I said, louder than perhaps necessary. “We need to pull ourselves together. They shouldn’t be able to tell that we are having issues this fast. Or at all, but definitely not this early.”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to hide that things are… different between us.”
“Because you won’t talk to me and are avoiding looking at me,” I retorted. I was moving very slowly into the proper position, trying to buy as much time as possible before Olga or Mark snapped at us to get moving. “It is kind of hard to do this blind.”
He stared at me so intensely it pushed all other thoughts out of my head. “Every time I look at you, I can’t get that night out of my head.” His eyes drifted to my lips before meeting mine again. “And I can’t focus when that is on my mind.”
