The problem was that understanding didn't make wanting go away. I could know that Joel was bad for me and still feel mypulse pick up every time his name showed up on my phone. I could watch Ro spin Chase on the dance floor and still want the guy who couldn't give me that.
Ro pulled up outside my building and put the car in park.
“Thank you,” he said.
I frowned. “What for?”
He glanced back at Chase, who was asleep in the back seat. “Discretion,” Ro said simply. “You understand, yes?”
“Yeah, man. I understand.” I got out of the car and I stood on the sidewalk watching until his taillights disappeared around the corner.
My apartment was cold and dark. I turned on the heat and stood by the window, looking out at the city. The strip glittered in the distance, all that light pollution turning the sky a dull orange. Somewhere out there, Joel was probably doing the same thing.
Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was already asleep, or at a party, or with someone else. I didn't know what his life looked like when he wasn't texting me.
I pulled out my phone and looked at our conversation. Two texts from him. Two texts from me. The most we'd talked in weeks, and it barely added up to a sentence.
I thought about deleting his number. I'd thought about it a hundred times before, usually around three in the morning when I couldn't sleep and the silence was too loud.
I never did it. I probably never would.
I plugged in my phone and got into bed. Maybe this year would be different. Maybe Joel would figure his shit out, or I would figure mine out, or we'd both just keep doing this dance until one of us got tired enough to stop.
JANUARY
The warm-up area smelled like hairspray and sweat.
I stretched against the barrier while the skater before me took the ice, some kid from Boston who'd peaked at Junior Worlds and never recovered. His free leg wobbled on the landing of his opening triple, and his shoulders hunched on the step sequence like he was bracing for a blow. By the forty-second mark, I'd counted six technical errors and a costume malfunction waiting to happen. The rhinestones on his left shoulder were catching wrong, throwing light into his eyes on the back crossovers.
He'd place fifth, maybe sixth. The judges would give him the benefit of his reputation for another season before they stopped pretending.
His coach was saying something encouraging while his mother cried in the stands.
Natalia appeared at my elbow with my water bottle and the particular expression she wore when she was managing me. "Your father called."
"And?"
"He wanted to remind you about the Meridian meeting tomorrow and to land your quads."
"Groundbreaking advice. I'll write it down."
"I told him you were focused."
"I am focused."
She studied me the way she always did before a competition, looking for cracks. I gave her nothing. That was the deal. She worried, and I performed, and we pretended the worry was unnecessary.
"Red texted," she said, quieter now.
My spine straightened before I could stop it. I rolled my shoulders, stretched my neck, and forced the reaction back down where it belonged. "What did he say?"
"Just good luck. I told him you were warming up."
The Vegas game had been last night. Two assists, plus-two, fourteen minutes of ice time. He'd taken a hit in the third that had made me want to reach through the screen and break someone's arm.
He was still in LA, probably, unless he'd flown out this morning.
"Focus," Natalia said.
