“Oh, you think this is funny?” he asked with wide eyes. He laid fully down on the ice and crossed his arms behind his head. “I did that on purpose. It’s nice here.”
“Down there on the ice?” I asked him dubiously. I mindlessly pushed into some twizzles around his head. “There was a girl who used to train with me back in my competitive days, and when she’d fall, she’d mope around the ice crying. And not just regular crying, like scream-crying. It was definitely an attention thing. The next time she fell, she just laid there all splat on the ice crying. So this older gentleman coach, who is an Olympian coach by the way, goes and lays down next to her and starts scream-crying as well. She was so embarrassed she never did it again,” I told him, laughing at the memory.
I thought he’d find the story funny, but his face held agrimace.
“Yeesh. Figure skating’s rough. Sounds like there’s a lot of tears shed?” he asked.
I stopped skating and lowered myself to the ice to lay down beside him and look up into the rink’s wooden rafters. The arena’s soft humming filled the air around us and it felt weird to be out here and not moving for once. He was right, it was nice. It felt peaceful, cold, andfresh.
“Yeah. There are definitely more losses than wins in this sport. Only one girl can get the gold. It’s not like hockey where a whole team wins,” I said. When he didn’t reply I felt the need to explain further. “There’s so much happiness after you guys win, like you all go hug each other. It’s nice to see. When figure skaters go look at the result sheets after competitions, we’re coached to show no emotion. No crying, no happiness. Look, accept, leave.”
“It’s so weird,” TJ finally said, turning to study me.
“What is?”
“We skate side by side in the arena, but we’re in two completely different worlds,” he said. “It’s like hockey and figure skating are on parallel tracks that never meet.”
I reached to lay my hand on his. It felt like we were breaking some kind of invisible barrier.
“Hockey’s not all happy though,” he sighed. “I was pretty damn lucky.”
I looked over at his handsome profile. “How’s that?”
“My parents were girl parents first. I think they kind of softened a bit maybe,” he chuckled wryly. “That’s what my dad thinks anyway. Because I was never yelled at after bad games. I was told, like ‘eh, better work on this,’ or ‘how ‘bout we practice that together, bud.’ But some of my friends… yikes. They’d try to stall in the locker room to avoid the car ride home. Some buddies used to ask me for a ride so they wouldn’t have to face their dads. You’d hear yelling in the parking lot sometimes. Everyone would just turn a blind eye toward it. Doesn’t seem like that happens as much anymore though. The worst guy I saw when I was coaching at the Ice League was Canyon’s birth dad. He’s not in the picture anymore though.”
I’d gathered bits and pieces to know Jules’ first husband was kind of a dick.
“Your parents sound nice,” I offered, choosing to focus on the good.
“Yeah, they’re great.” His face lit up thinking of them. “And I think a lot of those buddies I played with are going to be great parents here someday soon.”
His body shivered against the ice then, and I laughed.
“Not so nice down here anymore, huh?”
He shook his head with a sheepish smile. “Let’s move it to the boards?”
He jumped up onto his skates and held a hand down to pull me up. We glided back toward the visitor’s team box together.
“Know what I’ve always wondered?” he asked as he came to a stop in front of the boards. “How is it competing against your friends in skating?”
I ignored his question and hoisted myself up to a sitting position on the boards. I didn’t want his pity when I explained there really wasn’t such a thing as friends where I grew up skating, only competitors. While I loved the actual sport, I hated the organization of it. I loved skating in the mornings on my own, throwing jumps and sticking the landings and feeling incredibly strong, like I was on top of the world and my body was working perfectly. And I could spend an entire practice session just spinning. But, up here, by myself, this was a different kind of skating. I was old. There was nothing at stake. Downstate where I grew up, practices were always tense because girls were always watching each other and trying to one-up one another. I didn’t want to describe that desperately hopeless feeling that settled to the bottom of your stomach when you’d fall on a double axel during a competition’s practice ice, and then another girl from your own rink would come up right behind you and land one in the exact same spot where you fell just to intimidateyou.
Instead of answering his question, I posed one of my own: “Do you think hockey formedyou?”
He finished taking a sip of his coffee and shrugged his large shoulders. “I guess so. It has its own culture and rules, I think it’s changed in recent years for the better. Before it was all Take it Like a Man,” he said in a mock-gruff tone. “But now I think my generation has kind of seen how pretending you don’t have weaknesses just puts you in a worse position in the long run,” he said thoughtfully. “And before it was a pretty vicious hitting game. Now it’s a lot more finesse- like we’re taking lessons from you and focusing on our skating instead of taking boxing classes. That’s growth, eh?”
“You guys did well yesterday. I was impressed.” His hand was between us again, and in another daring move, I interlaced my fingers with his.
“Why thank you, Ms. Brampton.” He winked and gave my hand a squeeze. “And you become most like the top five people you hang out with, right? All my friends are from hockey. I don’t know one person outside of my fam that I stay in touch with who isn’t from hockey. I think it just happens because you’re all in it together- the struggles, the victories, you can relate. So, yeah, I think it has formed me.”
I liked hearing his thoughts aloud. It was refreshing to be around someone who didn’t hold back what they were thinking. I never got the feeling that TJ was saying things just to manipulate me into thinking a certain way.
“I think it’s healthy to play a team sport. I was always envious of girls who played hockey,” Iadmitted.
He gasped. “You? Hockey? I think you would’ve been too aggressive. It would’ve been dangerous for the other girls,” he teased and shot me a smile.
“Well, that’s just not true,” I pointed out.
