“Nick,” I whispered. “Where’s Sav?”
He motioned to me like he didn’t know and was clearly scanning around for her too.
“I thought she mighta been with you getting her skates sharpened too,” he said with a serious face. Nick was rarely serious, and the fact that he was caused my stomach to churn uncomfortably.
We pulled back from the group and went to look down at the figure skater’s side.
The workout instructor yelled at us to get back in line for workouts, but Sav was sitting there by herself with her head in her hands.
18. Sav
“Well, take your skate off, see if it’s alright. I bet you just sprained it a bit,” one of the visiting coaches who was running the summer jumping clinic said. “Take some Tylenol. I’ll see you back out for your lesson at 11.” He moved quickly, swooshing back to the coach’sroom.
I tried hard to keep a stoic face, but when I moved to unlace my skate, the ache of pain around my ankle seemed to spread up my leg and made tears come to my eyes. I looked around, relieved none of the other skaters were around to gawk at me. It was just me and the zam driver, a college kid named Max, who was roving around the ice, wholly unaware that I was sitting here in crippling pain.
I blinked hard to fight back the crying but winced as I pulled the tongue of my skate back. My foot was snug in my boot like a caterpillar in a cocoon and I did not want to move it… but a nagging voice in my head yelled at me to listen to the coach… he told me to see if it looked alright… he’d also told me to throw the triple toe that injured me too… I should never have tried it. I’d never even done one using the harnessbefore.
In a quick motion, I pulled my foot from my skate and cried out because of the shock of pain that radiated around my ankle.
I heard footsteps running up the bleachers then, and I smiled through my tears which were definitely falling now. Because my boys came for me.
Nick was kneeling by me in a second, holding my face.
“Babe, what’s wrong? What happened?” He looked at me with complete devotion and concern in his brown eyes.
“My ankle. I… I tried a triple toe and my toepick seemed to get stuck, but the rest of me didn’t,” I answered. “I heard it…” I covered my mouth to hold back a sob. What I couldn’t describe out loud was the sound it caused. My breathing was becoming shallow and choppy, almost like a full breath would make my body move and cause the shooting pain to happenagain.
“No, no, no!” Nick yelled quietly, looking at my ankle. “Who told you to take your skate off? Shit, baby. You’re not supposed to take it off. That’s like 101. It’ll start swelling and you could’ve made it worse by movingit.”
I broke down at that. I cried harder and looked at Griff through tears for confirmation of what Nick seemed to justknow.
Griff nodded solemnly and scrubbed a frustrated hand over his face as he knelt by my feet.
“Toeloop, so you used your left toe pick,” he said. It always surprised me how much he knew about figure skating. It did not surprise me how level-headed he was in a jam. “Can you put your feet near each other to see if the left one is swelling?”
I did it slowly without looking down and without moving my ankle. I didn’t want tosee.
Nick uttered a curse under his breath, alerting me that it was in fact not a good sight to see.
“Alright, babe. We’re taking you in. I don’t want to scare you, but it looks like you…” he looked at Griff, almost to ask if he should say it.
“Broke it,” Griff finished with a grimace. “I’ll grab Duke from thecamp.”
I wiped my wet face on my jacket sleeve. “Thank you, Griff.”
The boys started swiftly packing up my stuff, making sure to clean off my blades with my towel and putting the soakers on for me. I’d think it was a sweet thing for them to do and would’ve thanked them if I wasn’t in so much pain.
Griff trailed away with my bright pink skate bag in his arms and made his way toward the kiddie camp in the back of the rink to retrieve Duke.
“Okay, babe,” Nick looked at me in concentration. “I feel like I should give you the option here even though I don’t want to. Have you tried to walk? Do you want to try ornot?”
I let out a laugh through my tears, because this boy really knew me. He knew I wouldn’t want to leave my dignity here on the stand’s floor if I didn’t have to.
He held out his hand for me and I attempted to step lightly on my bad foot, but the pain shot up through my leg. I would’ve fallen down if Nick hadn’t caught me.
“So that’s a no. My way then babe,” Nick winked at me and scooped me up, looping one of his strong arms under my knees and pulling me close to his chest.
“You’ll be totally fine, Sav,” he reassured me.
