Ink and Ice

by Erin McRae

  At his side, Katie folded her arms. “No jumps,” she warned him. “Not for the warmup. You’re too wound.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Katie looked unconvinced. “Show me your footwork,” she instructed. “And don’t forget your edges.”

  Stepping on to the rink was a relief. With the rush of the ice under his blades, everything else in the world fell away, if only for a moment. This was where he belonged. This was what he was meant to do.

  Aaron was just finishing his step sequence, aware of Katie’s gaze following him coolly around the ice from her spot at the boards, when someone nearly collided with him.

  “Sorry, Seal Boy!” Cayden called, sounding absolutely not sorry at all.

  He’d spoken loudly enough to be heard by the nearest audience members, and there was some rustling in the stands. Aaron wondered if they were upset about Cayden’s near-collision with him, or talking about him. And the island. And his seals he’d never meant for anyone else to know about.

  The calm he had felt for a few brief moments was shattered. He was shaking as he stepped off the ice at the end of the warmup.

  “I hate everyone,” he told Katie.

  “Believe me,” Katie said, handing him his skate guards and then his water bottle. “I know the feeling.”

  She had her face schooled into a mask of neutrality, but her fury flickered through. Aaron could see it in her eyes.

  “As soon as this is over, by the way, we’ll be filing an official complaint against him for that,” she said.

  Aaron didn’t even have the energy to protest. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Thankfully Misha Khovanski was being announced, and Aaron could turn his attention to watching him skate. This was Misha’s first year in seniors, and he’d had a strong showing all season. Aaron knew he hoped to finish well. Which it looked like he would...until he fell on a triple axel that had never given him trouble before and then fell again on a quad lutz that should have been part of a combo.

  Nerves, maybe. Nationals was, after all, A Big Deal, even if you weren’t counting on it to make or break your Olympic dreams.

  But the ice had moods. And if the ice was having a bad day so would everyone who skated on it. That wasn’t one of Aaron’s personal superstitions; skaters talked about the moods of the ice the way people who played outdoor sports would talk about the weather. And there were competitions that were notorious because everyone had performed below expectations due to strange slips and excessive falls. U.S. Nationals a few years ago was still referred to as ‘Failtionals.’

  Aaron really, really needed the ice not to be in a bad mood right now.

  But then Jack fell on his first jump and never fully recovered. That was two skaters in a row. Aaron tried not to panic, willing him through every takeoff. But none of it really worked. Jack would get great program component marks, he always did, and manage to walk away with gold, but yikes.

  Aaron forced himself to breathe, to do what Brendan had said and let everything else go, as he warmed up and Jack waited in the kiss and cry for his scores.

  Be good for me, he pleaded with the surface under his blades as he stroked around the perimeter. He had to get through the next four minutes. Even if passing out on the ice right here felt like a more comfortable option right now.

  What is everything thinking about the seal boy now? Was his last thought as he took his starting position in the center of the ice.

  It didn’t help.

  Aaron got through his program without any falls, but that was the best he could say about it. He popped his triple axel, the one he’d frightened the judges with at camp that seemed so very long ago, and he two-footed the landing on his quad sal. His energy was wrong, his timing was off, and altogether it was a chaotic mess.

  Aaron pried himself back to his feet for his bows. The audience was cheering, but the energy felt...flat. Polite, but uncapitulated. Frantically, his mind tried to reassure him that everyone was a mess today, and he’d be fine and pull it out. But as he skated to the door of the ice, where Katie waited for him so they could sit together in the kiss and cry, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his career might have somehow peaked on that strange night in St. Petersburg and that Ari, when she saw the article, would blame him for giving their secrets away.

  Aaron twisted his fingers in his lap while they waited for his scores. When they appeared, he let his head fall into his hands, tense with nerves. He was currently in second, behind Jack. Good. For now. With Eric and Cayden still to skate, anything else would have put a medal completely beyond him. Either of them could beat Aaron on his best day, and Aaron had definitely not just had his best day.

  Just let me finish ahead of Cayden.

  At least it was Uncle Ras skating at the very end. Aaron was very fond of him—and deeply grateful—but he had barely squeaked into this last group; the long program wasn’t going to be easier for him. There was no medal risk there.

  Backstage, Katie gave up on trying to get him to pay attention to anything other than the other skaters for the remainder of the event. They sat together in the seats set aside for competitors and staff, and soon were joined by Brendan and the rest of the skaters from TCI.

  Aaron didn’t actually like to root for other skaters to fail. That kind of mentality went against everything he strived to do and be in this sport. For him, figure skating may have been a solo event, but all the skaters were on this strange journey together.

  So he felt torn when Eric struggled with the ice the same way the rest of them had. Still, even with more than one fall, he might have been able to hold it together...until he fell out of his final spin.

  “Oh no,” Aaron muttered.

  Katie hissed in sympathy. “Injury? He went down hard on that one fall.”

  Injury or not, it didn’t make a difference to the scores. Eric was in sixth, and Aaron was still in second, when Cayden took the ice.

  ...And fell on his first jump. Aaron clenched his hands into fists and huffed out a breath. Okay, maybe he did want Cayden to fail. Just a little.

  But he didn’t. His performance wasn’t any cleaner than Aaron’s, but the base value of his program was higher, and this was a sport where fractions of a point could matter. And when the scores came, Cayden had squeaked ahead of Aaron by just a few points.

  Third. I can live with third. The Olympics can still happen with third. My international record is better than his. They can still choose me. Aaron told himself this over and over. He knew it wasn’t guaranteed, but he’d had a strong season. Stronger than Cayden’s, and maybe that nightmare article Zack had written—and that Aaron still needed to address with him—really would work in his favor.

  Nothing he could do about it now though, that much was sure.

  Rasmus took the ice.

  Aaron turned to Katie. “I hope he does well. If anyone doesn’t deserve a bad run, it’s him.” He said it with an intensity that surprised even himself; in all this whirlwind of a season, Rasmus had been the one skater outside of TCI who had been reliably kind and welcoming to him. Aaron had no outlet for his gratitude in this moment than that fervent wish.

  Aaron hadn’t been following Rasmus’s programs much this season and regretted that as the music started. This was a good choice, well suited to his energy and the presence he had on the ice. It would have been so fun to watch it develop.

  In fact, Aaron was so captivated by the performance that it was almost a minute into it before he noticed that Rasmus hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t struggled. Wasn’t bobbling anything. And did, in fact, have the rapt attention of the entire arena.

  He squeezed Katie’s hand tighter, his own concerns momentarily forgotten, while he got swept up in Rasmus’s skating along with everyone else. Figure skating had these moments, sometimes, where someone would break out of the pack and blow everyone’s expectations away. They were magic to watch.

  When he finished Aaron was on his feet with the rest of the audience. He cheered wildly while Rasmus took his bows, te
ars streaming down his cheeks and his grin stretching from ear to ear.

  Rasmus staggered off the ice and into the waiting arms of his coach. He said something that Aaron couldn’t make out from this distance but that made everyone around him laugh. Aaron was sure that, whatever it was, by tomorrow it would be a meme on figure skating social media.

  The reality of the situation only crashed into him when the scores were announced.

  He, Aaron, was in fourth. Rasmus had beat him out to come in third.

  Aaron felt like the walls of the venue were closing around him, the cavernous space shrinking and the excited noise of the crowd fading into the distance. He shrank down into his seat, not even aware of Brendan’s worried face or Katie’s calculatedly calm one.

  He’d come in fourth. The federation wasn't going to send the fourth-place finisher at Nationals to the Olympics. Jack and Cayden would go. Aaron would get named an alternate and left at home. He felt like the ground was sliding out from under him, and he did not want to do this in public.

  Unfortunately, there was a lot of public left to get through. Katie managed to urge him to his feet and shepherd him through the backstage hallways. At least fourth place didn’t have to go to the press conference, which was the very smallest of silver linings.

  He did, however, have to talk to journalists in the mixed zone and pretend he wasn’t crushed and that his dreams hadn’t just been shattered. He would also have to put on a smile and congratulate Cayden because that was what good sportsmanship demanded.

  At least there was Rasmus. The man was tucked into a quiet corner, looking overwhelmed but ecstatic; the tracks of happy tears marked his face.

  “Aaron!” Rasmus’s face lit up even brighter when he saw him, and he pulled him into a hug. “You did well.”

  “You did better,” Aaron said, without any bitterness, hugging him back. “You just made history. That skate was incredible. I’m so glad I got to see it.” He meant that, too; as upset as he was, he couldn’t be anything but happy about Rasmus’s placement and that he’d gotten to see such an iconic performance live. That was a thing to cherish.

  But it was perhaps the only thing today he could say that about. Soon Katie was herding him through the crowd again, and Aaron realized with relief that they were heading for the doors.

  Brendan joined them outside and together they made it all the way out of the arena, down half a block to the hotel and into the lobby.

  When suddenly, Aaron pulled up short.

  Katie bumped into him from behind. “What is it?” she asked. Then, “Oh,” as she saw why Aaron had stopped.

  Zack was striding toward them across the lobby, concern etched into his face.

  “Aaron!” he called, his hands already spread, as if ready to pull Aaron into a hug.

  And Aaron wanted to be hugged, wanted to collapse against Zack’s warm, muscled chest and let himself be comforted. But that was a fantasy that belonged to a world where Zack hadn’t written about the island.

  So he glared at Zack, and felt a small flare of satisfaction when Zack stopped in his tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Do you want me to punch him for you?” Brendan muttered, quietly enough for just Aaron and Katie to hear—Aaron hoped.

  “You’d miss,” Katie said flatly.

  Aaron looked at Zack and realized the other man had almost no idea what was going on. He surely knew the article had come out yesterday, but he didn’t know Aaron had read it. He’d seen Aaron underperform today, but then, everyone in that final group had underperformed. He didn’t know how Aaron had struggled to pull off even the sub-par performance he had. If he was worried about Aaron’s placement regarding the Olympic team decision, he likely didn’t understand quite how dire a situation it was. And certainly, he had no idea how to comfort an athlete whose one dream was about to slip away.

  Aaron was furious with him for all of it, but most of all the part where he’d have to explain it, in very small words, when he was dizzy with grief and somehow even more terrified than he’d been by the Neva in St. Petersburg.

  “I am so angry at you.” It was easier than explaining why.

  “Okay,” Zack said, his tone neutral, his eyes darting between Aaron, Katie, and Brendan. “If there’s something we need to talk about, we could—”

  “We already talked! You and me! Lots and lots of times!” It was so much simpler to yell, to be upset at Zack about this. If he was angry at Zack, he didn’t have to think about his inadequate skate and the fact that he wasn’t going to the Olympics and that everything, this whole year, had been for nothing.

  “Okay,” Zack said again, still that studied neutral, which just infuriated Aaron more. Why couldn’t he react?

  “Your article came out! The one you wrote about me!”

  “All right,” Katie said, cutting in verbally and partially stepping in front of Aaron. He was mad at her too now. He wanted a fight. His season was over, but she wasn’t letting him have it.

  “We’re not doing this here.”

  “I’m still not one hundred percent sure what we’re doing,” Zack said, slowly putting his hands up in front of his chest.

  Aaron ducked around Katie. He kept his voice low; after all, they were in a public space. But if it was possible to whisper shout, whisper shouting was absolutely what he was doing.

  “I didn’t invite you because of your job! You said you were done. And then you added things about the island to the article! You said the article was about the race for the other slot, which means me and Cayden. But somehow, that’s not what happened! Cayden wasn’t even in the article!”

  “He wouldn’t take my calls,” Zack said. “You knew that. You talked to the guy!”

  “I didn’t know you’d given up on him and changed the focus to me! Did you see Cayden almost crash into me in warmup?”

  Zack looked eager to grasp at the subject change. “Yeah, that was fucked up right?”

  “It sure was!” Aaron exclaimed. Fuck whispering. “He called me ‘seal boy,’ and that’s all your fault.”

  “Boys!” Katie said sharply. “Elevator.”

  Aaron let her shepherd them, but that didn’t mean he was going to let up. His true disappointment, the text with the names of who would be going to the Olympics, hadn’t come yet. He wasn’t going to be on that list now, but when it came—and it would at any moment—he’d probably cry. So if he was going to yell, he needed to get his yelling done now.

  He tried to lay into Zack again in the elevator, but Brendan just made a soft noise and pointed to the obvious security camera and the large mirrored walls. No one cared about figure skaters, until they did.

  Aaron keyed into his room, and everyone followed. Housekeeping had made his bed, at least, but his short program costume was draped over the vent to air out, his laptop and chargers were in a tangle on the nightstand, and his snack stash was an unorganized pile on the desk. His other clothes were scattered messily around the room. If he’d known his coaches were going to be in here, he might have tried to tidy up, but then, maybe not. Which was probably one of those figure-skaters-have-weird-boundaries things that had perturbed Zack at first, but Aaron didn’t care right now.

  “Do we all need to be here for this?” Aaron asked at full volume once the door was shut behind them.

  “Well, you’re yelling at me,” Zack pointed out. “So I probably need to be here for it, yes.”

  “We’re here until the team announcement,” Katie said quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  Aaron stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not going to be on the team! We’re not going to have to go back there to deal with it. You two can go break up whatever fight the ice dancers are having or whatever it is you do when you’re not watching your athletes fail.” He started pacing up and down the room, mostly so he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye as his started to fill with tears.

  “You didn’t—” Brendan started.

  “I did!”
Aaron was shouting now. “And it’s a hundred times more embarrassing than it could be because someone—” he pointed at Zack—“completely misrepresented everything about the article he was writing, the article that you –" he whirled to face Katie. “Insisted I find a way to make myself the star of.”

  “Insist is a strong word,” Katie said. Her calm was infuriating. But before he could lash out again, at her or anyone, Zack touched Aaron’s wrist gently.

  “Hey. Aaron. Hey,” Zack said quietly.

  If he’d tried to grab his arm Aaron would have pulled away and might have tried to hit him, which Zack probably knew. Aaron gulped a breath and stopped pacing.

  “Aaron, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “That doesn’t change anything, now does it?” Aaron snapped. But his anger was burning itself out, although maybe that was just the effect of Zack’s fingers, now intertwined with his.

  Zack pulled him closer. “I know it doesn’t. But it’s still true.”

  Aaron closed his eyes and let his head fall into Zack’s shoulder. Zack’s arms went around him. And it was so, so tempting; he could just stay here and cry and let Zack make him feel better.

  But then Aaron’s phone barked in his jacket pocket. He jumped, jolting the top of his head into Zack’s chin.

  “Ow,” they said at the same time, though Aaron had barely felt the pain.

  His body was suddenly awash with adrenaline. “I know what it says, but I don’t want to look.”

  Katie and Brendan’s phones also chimed, but they made no move to look at them. Everyone was frozen in place. Zack had dropped his arms from around Aaron, but they stood so close Aaron could feel the rise and fall of his chest.

  Zack finally broke the silence. “Someone should look.”

  “I can’t,” Aaron whispered.

  Katie, still perched on the edge of the bed, moved slowly for her pocket, and just as slowly drew out her phone and unlocked it. As if her movement had unfrozen his, Brendan did the same.

  Katie’s eyes darted across the screen. “Aaron,” she said, her voice somewhat strangled.