Ink and Ice

by Erin McRae

  From behind the wood, he heard Marie's irritated grumble. "If you think a nun's gonna be alarmed by the end of the world, you're knocking on the wrong door."

  Zack chuckled guiltily to himself.

  The door opened. Marie, in a bathrobe and holding a coffee mug, stared at him. "Oh, it's you."

  "Were you expecting someone better?" Zack asked.

  "I don't know. Depends what you've got to say."

  Zack felt impossibly grateful for her kindness, masked as it was with brusqueness. It was a language he understood. "Do you have anyone else due to take the apartment?"

  She narrowed her eyes at him and took a sip from her mug. "Why? Are you procrastinating writing your article?”

  "No! I mean, yes, a little, but... can I come in?"

  "You know nuns don't do Confession, right? And also that I'm not one anymore?"

  "Yes, but you do keep bringing it up. Also, you’re a gossip with good taste in bourbon and that will do?"

  Marie tipped her head to the side in acknowledgement and offered Zack the mug.

  He took a grateful sip and stepped into her house.

  "So what's going on?” Marie asked, leading the way to her kitchen. “I can't imagine it's a sudden uncontrollable love for the Twin Cities."

  "It’s a little bit that,” Zack admitted.

  “But not all?” she asked.

  Zack shook his head.

  Marie flipped on her coffee maker and dumped the old grounds in the trash. “I’m too old for small talk, and it's too late for the same. ’Fess."

  "I don’t want to leave.”

  "Because?" She drew out the words, leading him, but Zack had to say all these things aloud sometime.

  "Because I don’t. I went out to Katie and Brendan’s farm for dinner tonight, and I could breathe there, and I sure the hell can't in Miami. Sorry,” he added, belatedly.

  "What part of ex-nun are you not getting?" Marie asked as she refilled the coffeemaker with both water and fresh grounds.

  "All the parts. Which is kind of why I want to stay."

  "That requires an explanation,” Marie said firmly.

  Zack slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “I’ve got enough material for ten articles about this place. The people, the atmosphere, the work, the stakes, Katie’s ridiculous cows. I could write it in my sleep at this point. The article’s not the problem. It’s this place. I don’t want to let it go. Or the people. Every single person I've met up here is completely bizarre and I kind of love all of them. Brendan and his goofy all-American cliche. Katie, who’s like a wild cat who mostly remembers how to be a normal human but only by trying really hard.”

  “A not inaccurate assessment.” The coffeemaker started percolating, and Marie slid into the chair across from his.

  “There’s whatever your deal is. And Charlotte, and the juniors, and Huy who I met for the first time tonight.” He paused. “And Aaron.”

  “Oh yes,” Marie said, her gaze far too knowing. “Aaron.”

  “And then there’s me.” Zack felt unaccountably emotional. “You have all welcomed me, in your ways, and made this the best place I’ve been for a long time.”

  “You haven’t even been here two months,” Marie pointed out.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Mmmmmmmm.”

  "You don't believe me. And you haven't told me if the apartment is available,” Zack said.

  "It's available. But nothing you've told me is gossip. I was hoping you’d have gossip. Which is why I let you have some of my bourbon."

  Zack sucked in a breath. What he had to tell surely qualified as gossip. And was probably necessary for Marie to understand the rest of his choices, questionable and otherwise. “I kissed Aaron.”

  “Of course you did. I bet he kissed you too.” There was something almost pitying in Marie’s eyes.

  “I know. I know.”

  "Oh, darling,” Marie said. “I don't think you do.”

  ZACK RETURNED TO HIS own apartment full of both relief and urgency. While he had solved several of his problems—including wanting to kiss Aaron and staying on in the Twin Cities—he had also created several new ones for himself.

  There was no way around it: he was wildly compromised when it came to the article he was writing for Sammy, and there was no way to become less so. He couldn’t undo either his actions or his feelings when it came to Aaron. The only truly ethical thing to do would be to withdraw from the assignment. That, however, would leave Sammy in the lurch and make his own life even more of a disaster than it already was. If he couldn’t bring himself to extricate himself from the situation, his only other option was to uncomplicate the situation as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

  Zack was going to write this article tonight, send it to Sammy, and never confess to when, exactly, he and Aaron had first kissed. Was that sketchy? Sure. But life was full of sketchiness. If anyone was keeping an account of his sins, he rather imagined this one wouldn’t even rank.

  There were, of course, issues with this brilliant idea. It was already after midnight, and Zack was supposed to be up early to be at the rink, and Sauer, who was supposed to make up half his article, was still perpetually unavailable. Oh well. He’d write what he could and let Sammy sort out the rest.

  An hour later, Zack had written and deleted a half-dozen openings. None of them had been bad; they just hadn’t been about what he’d been sent here to write about. They hadn’t been about Aaron, who he was infatuated with, or Sauer, who he had decided was a dick and who he kind of hated. They’d been about himself: His own strange path that had brought him to Twin Cities Ice, and the experience he’d been having there since.

  Fine, he thought to himself, opening a fresh document. As a procrastination tool, he’d done far worse before. I will get this out of my system, and then I will get the rest of my work done.

  ‘This’ turned out to be four thousand words of what could only be called personal essay. For that length of time, Zack could pretend he hadn’t landed himself in a quagmire of ethical concerns and overall bad choices, and wallow in the atmosphere of this place that he had fallen in love with so quickly. If Zack had been more rational or less overcaffeinated, he would have stuck it in a drawer and pretended it never existed. Instead, he fired it off along with an email to his agent.

  After that, he was exhausted enough that he banged out a draft of his article that was at least passable and sent it to Sammy as the sky outside was starting to get light.

  He collapsed backwards into his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He fell asleep there, his laptop whirring quietly in his lap.

  ZACK WOKE UP AN INDETERMINATE amount of time later to his alarm blaring at him, an overcast sky, and an email from Sammy which merely thanked him for the draft and said he’d get to it soon. Zack wasn’t sure if that was a reprieve or a reminder of the sword hanging over his head.

  Tired as he still was, he got to the rink early for his lesson with Aaron. That was a place where he at least knew what he thought and felt. And he needed to tell Aaron what was going on—with the article and with his presence at TCI.

  When he got there an all-too familiar figure was out on the ice. Zack watched him, transfixed. He and Brendan were working together, doing footwork side-by-side. While Brendan was a more than capable skater, Zack only had eyes for Aaron. His grace. His power. The smooth flow of his movements. He was a singular creature on the ice, and Zack wanted him.

  He wanted Aaron’s body wrapped in his arms again while Aaron tipped his head back to be kissed. He wanted Aaron’s clever sharpness in conversation and to always have a seat next to him at the dinner table at Katie and Brendan’s. He wanted to watch him pursue his dreams, not just this season but next year and the year after that.

  He didn’t realize Aaron had finished and skated over to him at the boards until he spoke.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk.” Zack cringed as blurted out the words. He didn’t blame A
aron one bit for the frown that creased his forehead. That was not a sentence anyone ever wanted to hear.

  Aaron looked at the clock, then back at Zack. “We have a lesson right now.”

  Which was true, but Zack didn’t want to leave Aaron with the idea that the conversation was going to be something terrible. “I know, but—”

  Aaron cut him off with a shake of his head. “The way life works here is that skating comes first. Always. Whatever you have to say can keep.”

  The idea of focusing on skating for an hour with a conversation looming wasn’t appealing. He realized suddenly that he had no idea what Aaron would think about his staying on here. Maybe Zack had more problems than he knew. But they couldn’t be dealt with now; Aaron’s eyes watched him keenly. This was a challenge. It was not one Zack could fail to meet, especially right now.

  “All right,” he agreed. “But can we go get coffee or something afterwards?”

  Aaron nodded. “Of course. Now go get your skates on.”

  THEY WERE HALFWAY THROUGH what Aaron called stroking drills—Zack tried hard to suppress his desire to make cheesy innuendo about that—when there was a yelp and a hollow boom from the other side of the rink.

  Aaron whipped around gracefully; Zack managed to turn without tripping on a toe pick. On the other side of the rink a woman in hockey skates was woozily trying to sit up from where she’d clearly fallen, and judging by the blood trickling down from above her eyebrow, had hit her head.

  “Shit, Tasha” Aaron hissed. “You, don’t fall over,” he snapped at Zack, and zipped off across the ice.

  Zack knew he could probably manage that. But there was also an emergency at hand involving head injuries and blood. Other than the fact it had happened on the ice, he’d been in enough dicey circumstances that he definitely knew how to handle a situation like this. For one thing, someone who’d hit their head like that should not be trying to sit up.

  He looked down at his feet and decided he could get to the other side of the rink on his own, even if his form was terrible. The rush of adrenaline probably helped. There was hearing about injuries—like Luke’s career-ending one—and there was seeing them happen. The sight of blood didn’t particularly bother Zack, but the visceral reminder that skating was a high-risk endeavor jolted him.

  As Zack made his gradual way across the ice, Aaron slid to his knees next to the woman and gently helped her lay back on the ice.

  “Maddie,” Aaron called, to one of the junior girls nearby. All the skaters had stopped to watch, but were mostly staying where they were when the fall happened, not wanting to crowd.

  “Yes?” Maddie stepped forward.

  Aaron glanced sideways at her. “Go have Cal at the front desk call the EMTs and show them the way in once they get here, okay? Let’s not have a repeat of that time Deb broke her arm and they got lost.”

  Maddie was skating off before he had finished speaking, her braids whipping in the wind of her speed. “I’ll bring back ice!” she called.

  “You’re overreacting,” the woman—Tasha—said, as Aaron knelt over her.

  “And you’re bleeding all over the ice,” Aaron retorted. “Did you hit anything else on the way down?”

  “I’m fine,” she protested.

  Aaron took one of Tasha’s hands between his and rubbed it gently. “You might have a concussion.”

  “I’ve had a concussion before, that fall was not nearly hard enough for one.”

  “Are you hearing yourself right now?” Aaron was exasperated. “What day is it?”

  “Saturday,” she said promptly.

  “Who’s the president?” he asked.

  Tasha grimaced. “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, right there with you,” Aaron agreed.

  Zack snorted at that; he couldn’t help himself.

  Aaron jerked his head around, and Zack watched as he let himself be surprised by his proximity for only for a split second.

  “You see the cones in the hockey box over there?” Aaron said, pointing. “Do you think you can go grab those and get them back here?”

  Zack nodded. “I think so.”

  “Then go do that, and set them up so no one skates through the blood,” Aaron said, before turning his attention back to Tasha.

  Zack went without question. Aaron—who was playful and sweet and liked approval and for his kisses to be led—knew how to delegate in a crisis, so Zack was trusting that doing as he said was going to result in the least harm possible. Honestly, aside from being terrified by his own lack of skating skill (swizzling with cones in his hands was difficult), Aaron was impressing the hell out of him.

  It was not what he would have expected from him or from any skater. Which was, he realized, unfair. Especially after all the time he had already spent around the rink. Skating was kind of metal; there was no other way to put it.

  By the time Zack arrived back with the cones, Aaron was holding a wad of clean paper towels to Tasha’s head while Tasha wiped blood off the side of her face with tissues.

  “A-minus on the skating,” Aaron said, glancing over at Zack as he set them down. “D-minus on common sense. Next time, you put the cones down and slide them over.”

  “I didn’t fall,” Zack protested.

  “No, you did not.” Aaron’s eyes had gone back to Tasha. But he did sound impressed.

  Zack was still not used to how much he enjoyed Aaron’s approval. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “You can tell him I’m fine,” Tasha said, clearly eager to get up and go back to her day.

  “You probably are,” Zack said. Aaron clearly didn’t need any help, but he figured he should be supportive where he could. “You also probably need a few stitches, so I’m pretty sure you have to wait for the EMTs.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Can you go find Ashley?” Aaron said.

  “Who?” Zack asked.

  “The zamboni driver. We’re gonna need her to scrape up the blood and maybe cut the ice when this is all over. You’re going to have to get off the ice, put your guards on, and walk around for this assignment,” Aaron added, when Zack hesitated to move.

  “Oh, right. Okay,” Zack said, as if he’d only been confused by the directions. But the truth was he was disappointed. Despite the circumstances he was enjoying being on the ice as much as he was enjoying being by Aaron’s side.

  Chapter 9

  ON THE WAY TO THEIR Usual Café

  Near Twin Cities Ice

  ONCE TASHA HAD BEEN taken off to the hospital by the EMTs Aaron did his best to muddle through the rest of Zack’s lesson. He was used to working with nerves, but competition anxiety was a different beast than whatever adrenaline rush had hit him. He felt jangly and untethered, and, despite his best efforts, he was prickly with Zack.

  The memory of Zack’s serious face when he had said We need to talk didn’t help either. Aaron didn’t have a great feeling about that and suspected Zack was going to give him a speech about why they couldn’t do what they certainly seemed to be on the precipice of doing.

  Aaron was used to compartmentalizing and grateful when anyone outside of skating could avoid bringing their problems to the ice. That Zack had kept his mouth shut was a significant point in his favor, even if it had weakened Aaron’s own resolve and focus. Of course, then he’d gone and been helpful when Tasha got hurt. It had all added up to leave Aaron unfairly annoyed at him but also very much wanting to bury his head in Zack’s shoulder so he could soothe away all the emotions of the last hour.

  And now, he was probably about to get dumped.

  “Coffee?” Zack asked as they sat down next to each other on the bench to undo their skates.

  “I’ve got work to do for the restaurant,” Aaron said shortly. He was irritated at Zack, at the universe, and at himself, but Zack was the easiest one to take it out on at the moment. “And I have more practice time tonight.”

  “Okay,” Zack said. Aaron could see him out of the corner of his eye, looking back at Aaron o
ut of the corner of his eye as he unlaced his skates. “What did I do wrong?”

  Aaron sighed. “You didn’t. Yet. You’re probably going to though. And I’m already mad about it.”

  “If I say you’re cute when you’re pessimistic....” Zack nudged his knee against Aaron’s, and it was all Aaron could do not to throw his arms around Zack and hide from the rest of the world.

  “I will stab you with your skates,” he said in lieu of doing anything of the sort. If Zack was teasing, maybe he wasn’t about to tell Aaron all of this was a bad idea. A faint bubble of hope rose in his chest, adding itself to the already too-large pile of emotions he was dealing with.

  Aaron forced himself to take a deep breath and reminded himself that adrenaline was a nasty drug. Of course he was reeling. Fresh air and a change of scene would probably do him good. Especially if he was about to get preemptively broken up with.

  “Gotcha.” Zack gave him a half-smile, and Aaron’s stomach fluttered pleasantly. “Same place we went last time? I do need to bring you up to speed on some stuff, and I’d rather not do it here”

  THE CAFÉ WAS CLOSE enough to the rink that they walked. Zack never seemed to mind getting out in what, to Aaron, was sweltering late-summer heat, and Aaron needed to burn off his itchy energy.

  “How are your programs coming?” Zack asked as they walked.

  Aaron twitched one of his shoulders up in an approximation of a shrug. “Okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  Aaron drummed his fingers against his thigh. “My short program is great but Brendan and I couldn’t agree on a song for my free skate so I’m stuck with Katie’s pick. Which...it’s a good song, and I trust Katie’s taste, but I haven’t clicked with it yet.”

  Talking shop with Zack felt natural. Why couldn’t they rewind to last night at the farm? Not just the making out—although also that. It was the warm ease between them that he needed.

  “How’s your article coming?” he asked.