“I know.” I’m not worried he’s going to drop me; I’m worried that I’ll freak out being that high off the ground.
Remembering our previous failed attempt, Heath chooses one of the denser patches of grass for us to practice on. It’ll still hurt if I fall, but hopefully we can avoid bloodshed this time.
He squeezes both my hands before squatting, and then I’m up, dizzyingly up. He doesn’t pause at the halfway mark, lifting me above his head. High. Too high. My arms start to wobble as the horizon appears to toss like the waves of the ocean in my vision.
“Don’t you break,” Heath says, stepping slightly to the left to counterbalance us. “I’ll drop you right on your ass.”
My eyes snap down to meet his, my arms locking automatically at the threat.
“I’m dead serious. I’m not letting you take me out again.”
I’ve never seen it before so it takes me a second to register the teasing gleam in his eyes.
“There you go. See? Not so bad, right?”
Looking at his upturned face and the one-sided smile he’s giving me, I nod, but the second I glance forward, the vertigo charges back. Heath’s reflexes are fast enough to keep us from hitting the ground when I fall this time, but I still solidly bang his nose against my sternum on the way down. Both his hands rush to his face the second he unceremoniously sets me on my feet.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Heath, I’m so sorry,”
He turns his back to me and his words are muffled. “Get away. I’m trying to tell if it’s bleeding.”
I take a huge step back, twisting my hands in the hem of my tank at I stare at his back. “It didn’t feel like I hit you that hard this time. It’s not broken is it?”
He turns to face me again and I can see his reddened but thankfully blood-free face. “No it’s not broken.” His eyes are watering a little, but otherwise he seems intact.
I bite both my lips. “I really am sorry.”
He prods his nose. “Tell me again why we’re not doing this in the water?”
“Because I have to go straight to work from here and wet hair and ice rinks aren’t a good mix.”
“Well then did you ever think that maybe ice-skating isn’t the best sport for someone who is afraid of blood and heights?” There’s no animosity in his tone, but I must have hit him harder than I thought for him to even semi-serious ask that question.
“Why do you think I’ve always been a solo skater?”
He grumbles a response that I can’t make out. “Can we stick to lower lifts for now until we can figure out the fear-of-heights thing?”
I refrain from saying that my fear-of-heights thing isn’t something we can just “figure out,” because I’ve dealt with it my whole life, and because I’m not exactly eager to be up that high again either. A little compassion would be nice though. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
I’m looking for a basic phobia like mine—fear of enclosed spaces, fear of the dark etc.—but I can tell nothing like that is on his mind as he lets his hand fall from his face.
I feel an echo of the emotions from the first day, the trepidation and unease as he stands and walks farther under the shade of the tree. But I also feel something else, a longing that I can’t quite put my finger on.
He moves farther away from me than I expect, as if he’s remembering our first meeting under this tree too. “That’s a question,” he says.
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.” He comes closer then, and after hesitating so briefly that I wouldn’t have noticed it even a week ago, he brushes my fingers with his. There’s that jolting thrill I feel whenever he touches me, but there’s more than that awareness this time. I answer with my own fingers, and he takes my hand. That’s where he keeps his gaze—our hands and not my face—when he answers.
“Cal was on a full scholarship to U of T. Maybe you knew that.” He shrugs.
I did know that. It was one of those details that made my brother’s crime all the more abhorrent to the people reporting it. Calvin Gaines wasn’t your run-of-the-mill college kid. He was brilliant and driven and bursting with so much potential.The world will never know what it lostwas a phrase I heard repeated over and over. My heart constricts, then constricts again because I can’t think about Cal without thinking of Jason and hurting for him too. The guilt from that involuntary reaction nearly smothers me, but I can’t pull my hand from Heath’s without explaining. And I can’t explain that to Heath. I can’t even explain it to myself.
“My whole life he was always that guy.” A smile tugs at the corner of Heath’s mouth. “My first day of high school, the teachers were all giddy when they heard my last name. Calvin Gaines’s little brother. They were thinking if I were half the genius he was then they’d be set. I don’t think it took a week for them to realize the only thing we shared was a last name. I wasn’t the academic or the athlete. Worse, in their eyes—teachers, Cal, my mom—it wasn’t because I couldn’t be, it was because I didn’t care.” He squeezes my hand then lets go, backing up a step and taking a breath. “I never cared, I don’t think, about anything. I did just enough to get by. I let Cal be the golden son because for him, he didn’t have to try. He was just that good at everything.”
“Heath,” I say, drawing his gaze to mine. “You did more than skate by.” Even though I was a year behind him and we’d moved in different circles, I’d known who he was. And he wasn’t what he was making himself out to be. Maybe he felt that way compared to Cal, but Heath wasn’t a bad student that I know of.
“No, actually, skating by is exactly what I did. And it was okay. Because of Cal. He was going to be the one who did great things with his life—the one who did things period.” His jaw locks, and I can tell he’s trying to direct his anger at something other than me. “I didn’t care about college so I didn’t apply. I told my mom I’d look into community college but that I wanted to work for a while and save up. And the thing of it is—” his jaw clenches harder and I sense that he can’t bring himself to meet my eyes “—the thing of it is, is that I was fine with that. No plans, no goals. I was going to work and live and die all in the same town without ever feeling like I missed a thing.”
