by Erin McRae
I went too far, was the painful and overwhelming conclusion. And it’s already hurt Aaron.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said mechanically, when he realized Aaron was probably waiting for a response from him.
I can’t do this anymore.
.
Chapter 19
RETURNING FROM CAMP
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN
AARON GOT BACK TO THE Twin Cities late, because he, Brendan, Sam, Morgan, Angel and Nikolai all agreed that getting home at midnight and getting a few hours of sleep in their own beds was infinitely preferable to flying in the morning and still having to do a full day of training. Not that Aaron was sure he’d be able to sleep in any case. He was still riding the high of his achievements at camp, still pissed at Cayden for being a jerk, and impatient to see Zack and talk it all over in person with him. He was used to there being a lot of chatter going on in his head as he managed his time and his feelings, and right now it was louder than ever.
Aaron: Just got in!
He texted Zack with one hand, rolling his bag out to the airport parking garage with the other. He’d texted Charlotte as soon as the plane landed, but he wanted space from his teammates before he reached out to his boyfriend.
Zack’s reply came while Aaron was getting in the car.
Zack: Glad you got in safe.
Aaron: What are you doing tomorrow?
Aaron waited to start the car until the reply came in.
Zack: Dealing with some work stuff, but can meet you at four for coffee. That new place on the corner near Marie’s?
Aaron: I’ll be there.
Aaron turned the key in his ignition and was glad there was no one around he had to school his ridiculous grin for.
DESPITE HIS WORRIES, Aaron fell asleep the moment his head touched his pillow and woke up even before his alarm went off. Apparently his body was as eager to get to work as the rest of him was.
The sky as he drove to the rink was noticeably darker than it had been a few weeks ago. The days were getting shorter, one more reminder for Aaron that fall—and the competition season—was coming. He had ice time with Katie, ostensibly to start implementing the reams of notes and feedback from camp. But as he walked through the front doors, he couldn’t help but worry she would be less than impressed with the risk he’d taken at camp. She’d have good reason to be displeased, as Brendan had. But she’d always felt like his closest ally when it came to that program, along with Zack, and he didn’t want to lose her support...or his comfort with her.
There was no one else on the ice yet, and the cavernous space echoed with the slightest of noises while Aaron put his skates on. The door from the lobby banged just as he was stepping out onto the ice. He glanced over his shoulder to see Katie, her skates already on, striding towards him.
Aaron braced himself, but when she joined him on the ice she was smiling broadly.
“Tell me everything,” she said as they skated laps to warm up. She didn’t need to be with him for this, but chatting was part of their ritual together.
Aaron felt some of the tension he’d been holding dissipate. She wasn’t pissed. Probably. “It was amazing. The skating, at least.”
“It was, I saw it. Brendan sent me video and all your feedback. But I want you to tell me why. You were like a different creature out there. What changed?”
Aaron braced himself. “Before I say anything to incriminate myself, I just want to be sure. You’re not mad at me?”
“No, not mad. You freaked Brendan out, though, so if I have to go to camp next year with you all, I am going to blame you.”
Aaron laughed. “That’s fair.” Not that he really thought he’d put Brendan off that much.
“Now spill,” Katie told him.
“Well, Brendan told me I should stop hiding the fact that I’m from somewhere really strange.”
“Brendan was right,” Katie agreed.
“So I had to figure out how to do that. Or not do that, really,” Aaron said. “And the first thing I tried was the thing with my eyes closed.” If she wanted him to, he would talk about Zack and how he’d come to that decision. But in the past few days he’d spent so many hours workshopping his program that that particular impetus had, if not faded, at least evolved.
“If you ever do that again in a non-training situation I’m putting you on zamboni duty for the rest of the season,” Katie said firmly.
“I’m not trained on the zamboni,” Aaron protested.
“That can be remedied,” she said crisply, but it was more funny than it was an admonishment.
Aaron giggled. “Okay, yes, I know that was risky. But it worked! And if I can do it in practice, I should be able to do it in competition.”
“Should,” Katie emphasized.
“Anyway, it worked. It shut out the noise of everyone else—not their actual noise, but the space they were taking up in my head. I felt real. And solid, you know?”
Katie nodded. “I do.”
“And then just, by a fluke, I freaked out the judges. That one in particular, the one I made eye contact with, but all of them really. I could feel it in the room. I’ve never been able to make an audience feel like that before. It was incredible.”
“It is. When it works. And it wasn't a fluke." Katie sounded a little wistful. “So the thing going on in your head, can you keep making it happen? And can you keep feeling good about it even if you don’t get quite that lucky in catching a judge’s eye?”
“I think so. I did for the rest of the week at least. In between Cayden being a jerk and contradictory instructions to tone it down and turn it up and also snark about the unreliability of my quad loop.”
“Your quad loop is unreliable.”
“I’m aware of that! Why do people think I’m not aware of that?”
“Well, you haven’t fixed it.”
“If I could, don’t you think I would have by now?”
Katie gave a vague shrug of acceptance. “No matter how good you get people aren’t going to stop being who they are. And they’re not going to stop having ideas about how you should make it better. Now, let’s get to work.”
AFTER AARON FINISHED his training for the day—and after he’d gone home to shower and change—he drove to the café to meet Zack with the windows down and his free skate song blasting on the car’s sound system. Aaron wasn’t usually one of the skaters who listened to their own music constantly. But this season was different, in so many ways—and he was different. Surrounding himself with the song he’d chosen, and Zack had inspired seemed eminently right.
Zack’s rental car was already in the lot. Aaron parked next to it and hopped out, still humming to himself. He found Zack inside at a little table in the corner, his laptop and an iced tea on the table in front of him. When he saw Aaron he quickly closed the laptop and put it away, and stood to enfold Aaron in a hug.
It was brief—entirely appropriate for a public space where people recognizing Aaron wasn’t a possibility so much as an inevitability—but Aaron sat down across from Zack with the scent of his aftershave and the memory of his warmth wrapped around him.
“How was camp?” Zack asked as he slid back into his seat.
“It was good. Did you watch the video?”
“Many, many times.”
“Did you like it?” Aaron jiggled his leg under the table, too full of energy to be able to sit still.
Zack tapped his fingertips against his lips thoughtfully. “Yes. Of course I did. It was you. But it also didn’t seem to matter whether I did or not. The thing you did, that frightened the judges...I could feel that even on a screen.”
Aaron smiled. “Good.”
“I also think,” Zack said slowly, glancing at Aaron as he spoke, “that maybe you weren’t so much skating the way you have sex with me, but - skating as if you weren’t trying to hide anything about yourself.”
Something on the back of Aaron’s neck prickled. “Brendan said something really similar, with les
s information, of course. Katie did too. But I think it’s both—where I’m from and who I’m learning to be when I’m with you. And that’s good. It means I’ll have a lot to draw from. Camp is just the beginning, you know. Not even the beginning. But now people are actually talking about me, not just because I’m one of a handful of contenders but because I was interesting. All because of you.” Aaron had to stop talking to draw a breath, which was when he realized he’d been babbling. Kind of intensely. He felt his cheeks grow warm.
Zack, thankfully, seemed amused. "I am not what makes you interesting, and my dick did not make you a better skater,” he said with a gentle laugh.
"You're absolutely right. But you have given me a new way to think about how I use my body."
Zack’s face smoothed out into a mask of calm consideration, and something in his eyes shuttered.
Aaron’s stomach clenched instantly and made himself breathe while Zack collected his thoughts, the way he had to wait for his scores to come in. He didn’t know what was coming, but every nerve in his body was suddenly on alert.
"Aaron,” Zack said quietly.
And Aaron knew in that moment that the answer—to a question he hadn’t even asked—was no.
“Yeah?” The word came out as more of a croak. He cleared his throat. Part of him wanted to run before Zack could say whatever he was about to say, but Aaron had never run from bad news or bad scores before and he wasn’t about to start now.
Zack looked at his hands on the table and then up at Aaron again. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“You mean the bondage? Did Katie freak out at you? Because it doesn’t—” Now Aaron was really babbling, but Zack cut him off.
“Not the bondage, Aaron,” Zack’s voice was soft, only for Aaron’s ears. “Any of it. All of it.”
“Okay.” Aaron blinked and found he was blinking back tears. He screwed his hands into fists under the table, suddenly desperate to keep his feelings in check. The fall had been both unexpected and painful, but he had to pick himself and keep skating. “Can I ask why?” he said when he thought he could control his voice again.
Zack sighed. “Because I’m in the middle of a divorce and you’re going to the Olympics.”
“Trying to go,” Aaron said reflexively. “And you said the divorce was final.”
“Yes, both those things are true.” Zack said firmly. “You don’t need the distraction. I need not to let you into the blast radius of my life. For both our sakes. I do not have my shit together. And I should have never asked you to speak to Sauer for me.”
“You don’t get to dump me because Cayden’s an asshole,” Aaron said. Of course, Zack could dump him for any reason he wanted, but this was such a useless terrible reason.
“It’s not Cayden. That’s just evidence of me not being ready to look after anyone’s wellbeing by my own.”
“I can handle myself.”
“You can. You also deserve every bit of consideration. Honestly, I need to spend some time with myself before I try to date anyone else. You’re lovely, and you deserve better than to be a rebound for someone who’s made some pretty questionable ethical choices.”
“So after the Olympics...” There were limits, Aaron knew, to what you could fight for, in skating and in life. There was no arguing with a judge’s scores. Or a federation’s decisions. But everything else—well, he hadn’t gotten this far in the sport by not trying. And he wasn’t going to give up now. “Whether I make the team or not. And once you have your shit together, then you and I can do this again. Right?” he asked.
Zack shook his head, and Aaron, feeling stunned, felt the last of his hope drain away. “No. I’m sorry Aaron. I really am. But me being your boyfriend while not actually dating you is even more irresponsible than what we’re doing now.”
“What if I don’t care?”
“I do, though.” Zack’s face still wore that mask of practiced coolness, but his voice was sad. “Very much.”
Aaron realized he had two choices: Stay and beg, or go. As much as he just wanted to be loved, Aaron had enough pride not to want to take the first option. Even if he had thought more entreaties might make an impression on Zack’s firmness. Which he definitely did not.
“Okay. I get it.” He put enough coldness in his voice to have the satisfaction—small as it was—of seeing Zack flinch a little. He stood, his chair scraping roughly on the floor as he did. “I’ll see you around, since you moved up here for some reason, I guess.”
Aaron had been broken up with enough times in enough places—bedrooms, living rooms, restaurants, and, on one particularly memorable occasion, halfway through the Trophée de France—that trudging out to his car alone and miserable was unpleasant, yes, but not unfamiliar. Breakups had a routine the way loss at a competition did. He’d always recovered relatively quickly from them, but, this time, something felt different.
He started his car, and his short program song blasted on the speakers as he did. He slammed the off button on the dashboard, and then sat there with only the sound of the engine for company. Well. Heartbreak had possessed a routine until he’d had the genius idea to skate to a song that was, in his mind at least, about fucking the guy who’d just broken up with him.
He let his head fall back against the headrest. “It’s gonna be a long season,” he said out loud to himself.
AARON ARRIVED HOME to find Charlotte sprawled out in the middle of the living room with one leg up on a chair, practicing her over-splits. In the background, a French soap opera blared from the television. Sometimes Aaron tried to piece together what was going on with his extremely limited French vocabulary; sometimes, he made up random plots in his head. This time, Aaron stopped directly in front of the TV, blocking her view. He was being a jerk, but right now, he was upset enough not to care.
“Eeeeeey,” Charlotte hissed. “I can’t see anything.”
“Congratulate me. I got dumped. Again.”
She fumbled behind her for her laptop and paused the stream. “Good,” she said.
“It’s not good!” Aaron said, failing to resist the urge to stamp a foot. This was not the sympathy he wanted right now.
“No. It is.” Charlotte was firm. “Now you’ll go to the Olympics, and he can feel foolish.”
“Is there any chance you can be sympathetic about this?” Aaron asked.
Charlotte pursed her lips and thought about it. “No. Not so much. Go whine to Huy.”
“Because complaining to my ex about my other ex—” Of course, Huy was Aaron’s friend more than he was an ex, but Aaron was going to be funny where he could.
“Is exactly your speed, no?”
Aaron peered down at her and her flexibility that was excessive even for a figure skater. “You know I hate you, right?”
Charlotte shook her head and smiled. For that, Aaron was glad.
“I know you lie,” she said with a laugh and hit play on her computer.
Aaron could recognize a dismissal when he saw it, and as much as he wanted to go sulk in his room, he did really want to whine to someone. He also wanted to make sure he could still skate his damn program with the same magic he’d summoned at camp and without feeling absolutely miserable about Zack.
There was nothing for it. He had to go back to the rink.
DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR, the rink at this time of night would have been busy. Hockey practice on one sheet, club ice on another, both packed with school-age kids with more kids, their parents, and coaches, filling the hallways and spectator spaces. But it was summer, and there were a hundred other things to do in places where it wasn’t cold all the time. Brendan was working with some of the pairs on the sheet the elite figure skaters usually used, but there was only a desultory scrimmage happening on the hockey rink and a few skaters on the sheet earmarked for general freestyle practice. The fourth was entirely empty.
In the midst of college-age women practicing some serious doubles and an older couple doing a very stately Viennese Waltz to the maddeningl
y repetitive accordion music being piped over the sound system (not their fault, or Vienna’s, Aaron knew, but did the ice dance test songs always have to be so....so?) was Huy. Huy was one of those skaters who had it, that ineffable quality that allowed him to command an entire arena. Right now, all he was doing was practicing compulsory figures in one of the hockey circles, occasionally moving to give way to a lefty jumper practicing her lutz. Figures weren’t required in competition anymore, in part because they were dead-ass boring to watch for ninety-nine percent of the audience. Yet the precision and flow of Huy’s skating as he traced the same patterns over and over still made Aaron stop and stare.
Aaron couldn’t resent the fact that Huy would medal ahead of him at any international competition they were ever at together. One, they were friends, even aside from the ex thing, and two, he was just so good. Technique and expression. Aaron would kill to have his lines, and all he was doing right now was paragraph loops.
Huy gave him a nod when Aaron stepped onto the ice, but otherwise left him to his own work. Aaron shoved in his earbuds, hit play on his phone, and started skating the program that existed because of Zack.
Sure, he had to steer around the other skaters and mark the jumps because it was late and he was tired—tonight was not the night to get hurt. But he could still do it. Not as bad as it might have been. Not as good as it needed to be. But it wasn’t gone, and that was something. Eventually, maybe it wouldn’t even break his heart.
When the song in his ears ended, he skated over to the boards for water. Huy was there already, fiddling with his own water bottle and watching him.
“I heard you were quite the sensation at camp,” Huy said.
“Who’d you hear that from?” Aaron felt like it was important, to know if it was from Katie or Brendan or gossip from Cayden and his cronies.