Coach Liudmila brought me toward the entrance and helped me to remove the covers from my skates. It felt like an out-of-body experience as I skated on the ice, feeling the cold seeping through my bones.
The familiar feeling of belonging was nowhere right now as my body fought to stay upright. I knew this routine by heart, and I bit my tongue just as the song started.
Please, please, please, I pleaded with whatever force would listen.Let this go okay. Please.
My body knew what it had to do, thanks to muscle memory. As I went around the rink, closing and opening my eyes, fighting to stay upright, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do what I came here to do. I could feel that my moves went okay, each and every step choreographed to the point where it felt like breathing, but my mind was far away from here.
I couldn’t hear the cheering from the crowd. I could only hear the whooshing sound my skates made on the ice.
The staccato tones from the song ran over me, bouncing back off my skin, and my hips locked as I did one final circle around, getting myself ready for my signature move—the triple axel.
Doctors warned me to take it easy, that my body wasn’t in the state to take this much, but I ignored their warnings. If I was going to go through hell and back, I was going to do this even if it cost me.
But I should’ve listened to them.
Just before the last turn, the black dots started appearing in the periphery of my vision, and the ads strategically placed around the rink became blurry. I blinked and blinked and blinked, but with each passing second, my vision was failing me.
No, no, no.
I kept going, bracing my body for the turn, but it was at that moment that the pain, like no other, sliced through my head. I closed my eyes instead of keeping them open. I went up in the air, but as I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything.
The crowd, the arena, everything was blurry, and I knew I should’ve stopped.
I should’ve slowed down.
I should’ve done a thousand things differently, but I chose this, and I would have to live with the consequences.
I landed on my foot, but instead of continuing, my body crumbled, unable to take any more. The last thing I saw was the blurry ice as I fell.
14
NOAH
Raindrops fellonto the windshield of my car as I drove down the street, not even five minutes away from home. Dark clouds littered the sky, casting a shadow over the town. I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with a thunderstorm today.
It almost made me laugh, the fact that the weather behaved how I felt. Turmoil and torment kept me awake the entire night. After I left Sophie in the woods, I drove all the way to Boston, deciding to lick my wounds in private, in one of the apartments my dad kept for those rare times when he actually decided to show up.
Last night kept on replaying in my mind—her lips on mine, her soft body so pliant underneath my hands. Those forest-green eyes looking at me with love, need and lust, until she decided to hide herself from me again, tearing us apart.
I dreaded seeing her house. I dreaded seeing her, because I couldn’t trust myself that I wouldn’t drag her far away from here, just to make her talk, just to have her with me one last time. I couldn’t understand why she would act the way she did last night.
I wanted her to talk to me, to tell me what was going on inside her head just how she used to. But somewhere between that dreadful night when I let my tongue run fast and bitter, and now, something had changed. That little spark she always had in her eyes wasn’t there anymore, and I needed to find out why.
I couldn’t believe that it was all because of me. Maybe I was just another idiotic teenager who didn’t understand how much words could actually hurt.
Her panties lay hidden in the glove compartment of my car. I knew that I would never return them. She gave me a piece of herself last night, and she couldn’t be the one deciding that it would only be one time. I refused to believe that she didn’t want this with me.
Hell, I would take her in any way that she wanted to give herself to me, even if it was in tiny pieces. Even if she decided that all we could ever have was sex, I wouldn’t mind. At least not for a little while, because having her like that was better than not having her at all.
I parked my car right in front of my house, staring straight ahead, willing myself to get out, to look at her house. But loving her hurt. Needing her was an ache that only she could soothe, and she didn’t want me.
My father once told me that if you wanted something, you needed to fight for it. But what if this wasn’t just some silly game she was playing to punish me? What if she truly didn’t feel everything I did?
How could I believe that when her eyes told me the story of a thousand promises she wanted to make? How could I sit here and believe that her body arched in lies last night, when I could feel her pleasure as if it was my own?
I was meant to move here with my parents, and she was meant to be mine. It was as simple as that. I believed in destiny probably more than most other things, and my gut kept telling me that she belonged to me and nobody else.
Some people spend their lifetime searching for that special someone, and I’d found her in the middle of the darkest period of my life. She was my beacon of light, my beginning and my ending. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life thinking what would’ve been if I’d tried only a little bit harder.
