My cheeks burned despite the cold air. “Picture it all you want off the ice. I will not let one impulsive decision destroy our chances for a gold medal.” I gripped his hand in mine. “We need to sort this out.”
He sighed but didn’t disagree. “Fine. We can do that some other time, when we aren’t being stared down by two people who are impatiently waiting for us to get started.”
“Okay.” I was relieved, not only that he was agreeing to talk this out, but that he would try to ignore the awkwardness for the time being.
We started skating together, picking up speed as we went until we were moving fast enough to have the momentum we needed. We turned together and his hands made their way to my hips. From there, everything only took a second. I did the three quick rotations in the air that had long ago become our standard and came out of position. My arms were steady as I landed in Dom’s and he put me on the ice gently. We extended away from each other in perfect sync once more.
It wasn’t the best twist we’d ever done, but it was far and away the best one of the day. Everything was technically correct, even if it wasn’t great. That was enough for now, though. Not falling against him or smacking my arm into him was a very low bar, but apparently that was where we were now.
“Finally!” Mark’s voice boomed across the open expanse of ice. “Was that so hard?”
Technically speaking, it was incredibly difficult, but he wouldn’t appreciate sarcasm now. That was reserved for when things were going well. “Do you want us to try that again?” Dom called back.
“I would like to see a better triple, then we can attempt the quad again later,” Olga said. Her voice was softer, but somehow just as authoritative as Mark’s. “One more, please.”
At lunch, I chose a table where I could sit alone. The morning had been more draining than I expected mentally. I was used to the physical exhaustion. I actually enjoyed the aching muscles and the soreness that came with a good day of practice. When I’d pushed myself all day, I felt justified relaxing however I wanted in the evenings. Plus, there was nothing like the deep sleep you would get after a long day of stretching and running and dancing and skating. The mental exhaustion was another story. I felt like I was second-guessing everything I said and did, trying to give the illusion that nothing was different. It should have been easy to interact with Dom the way I’d done for years. Unfortunately, my mind was bouncing between being absolutely blank and sheer terror about making things worse.
As concerned as I was about my unconvincing acting, Dom’s was worse. My stomach was in my throat every time I looked at him, but at least I was trying to meet his eyes. Every time our eyes met, he would avert his gaze so fast you’d think he'd got caught cheating on an exam. If Mark and Olga weren’t there to yell at him that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, he wouldn’t be meeting my eyes at all. When I tried to talk to him, he was looking everywhere but directly at me.
“You have to at least pretend that you aren’t embarrassed to look at me,” I’d hissed as we were tweaking elements of our footwork. “You are acting like I’m Medusa.”
“I am not,” Dom hissed back. His eyes only met mine for a moment before he looked back to Olga. Out of the corner of his mouth, he hissed, "I told you, it's hard to keep my mind on the task at hand."
“You are proving my point right now,” I said. I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at how ridiculous he was being. “So either act professional or go full drama llama and tell Mark and Olga why you are trying your best to avoid me.”
He glared at me. “Don’t exaggerate. Even before this, we would get into spats and act differently around each other.”
“And every time Mark would tell us to leave the drama at the door and act like the goddamn professionals we are supposed to be.” I fiddled with my gloves to keep my hands busy. Anything to get out my nervous energy.
“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll just pretend that it was a random hookup with somebody I wasn’t best friends with. I’ll act like you, like nothing happened between us and we didn’t potentially just screw up the most important season of our careers.” Pink cheeked, he skated off.
Who hehadbeen best friends with? Past tense? It felt like I had been slapped in the face. It hadn’t been smart to sleep with each other, but that was a low blow.
I was still standing mutely, trying to wrap my head around what he had said when Olga called out, “Dominic! Where are you going?”
When he turned back around, most of the anger was off his face. I doubted the same could be said for me. “I just need to get some water.”
I had serious doubts that he was thirsty, but at least it was an excuse Olga wouldn’t question. There were really only a couple of those, the other two being injury or needing to use the toilet. Claiming injury would only cause more problems, since you'd be found out to be a liar at worst or extremely dramatic at best. Needing to use the toilet was a valid excuse, but somewhat embarrassing to announce to everyone. That meant that if you needed a break for whatever reason, your best excuse was that you were thirsty, whether you wanted a drink or not.
I had hoped that at lunch we could have a conversation about what we should do to get back to normal. We wouldn’t be completely alone if we were in the lunchroom, but people were good about ignoring each other if they were sitting at separate tables. When you spent the entire day with people and having to be focused, you got pretty protective of any time you could be on your phone or joking around with your friends. Anything to make the most of the short time you had carved out for relaxation in the day.
Unfortunately for me, Dom walked right past me and sat down next to Hiroki Akiyama. As far as I knew, they weren’t close, but everyone who trained at the same place knew of each other and had at least reached the level of polite acquaintances. Judging by the look on Hiroki’s face, he was just as surprised as I was that Dom had sat with him that day. It took a few seconds for him to wipe the surprise from his face and strike up a conversation.
I stared at the back of Dom’s head as I shovelled my lunch into my mouth. I couldn’t hear the words he was saying, but I could recognize his voice as he pulled things out of his lunch bag. He was using what he must have thought was his enthusiastic tone, but it didn’t sound natural. I don’t know why he would think that talking to somebody he never spent time with and forcing himself to sound eager would convince anyone that nothing was amiss. A stilted conversation with me would seem way more normal to anybody watching him than what he was doing now. They wouldn’t notice if our conversation was weird. Nobody paid that much attention to anyone else. But everyone would notice that he was acting like I didn’t exist. If this was the best he could do, we were going to have problems.
The afternoon didn’t go much better. He spent as little time as possible with me, instead choosing to arrive as close to the start time as he could get away with and leaving as soon as it was over.
When he was getting ready to leave for physio, I had finally had enough. He was gathering his things when I positioned myself between him and the door. It wasn’t much of a blockade for somebody who literally spent his days lifting me over his head, but the message was clear. I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Dom,” as sternly as I could manage.
“Hazel,” he said dryly. He had his bag slung over his shoulder when he turned to face me.
“We need to talk about how weird you were acting this morning. You said you wanted to keep what happened between us a secret, but you might as well have yelled out, ‘Look at me! I can’t look my partner in the eye!’”
“I’m sorry,” Dom said. He sounded more frustrated than apologetic. “The fact that Mark and Olga were there for the first time we saw each other since…” he paused, “it happened threw me off.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You realize that the only reason they were there for it was because you tried to time it so you could get to the rink as late as humanly possible.”
“Why do you assume I did it on purpose?” he countered.
