Life on the Edge

by Jennifer Comeaux

  “There’s something you’re hiding. You’re acting too weird.”

  I focused on the striped wallpaper in front of me and prayed for a phone call, a fire alarm, a miracle from above–anything to interrupt the conversation.

  “I’m not acting weird,” I said, but my voice betrayed me with a discernible crack.

  Chris became quiet. “Has he tried to put the moves on you? Is he messing with you? That’s it, isn’t it? You can tell me if he’s doing something–”

  My stomach plummeted. I whipped around and blurted out, “He’s not doing anything I don’t want him to!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Chris picked up his jaw from the floor and sputtered, “You’re hooking up with Sergei?”

  “No, not like . . . not like that.” I forced myself to take a deep breath. “We’re not hooking up. We’re dating . . . seriously.”

  His face contorted, and he stood up, tossing the book onto the bed. “How did I not know about this?”

  “I was going to tell you next week when we got home. I know it’s a shock and it sounds a little weird, but it should tell you something that you haven’t suspected anything. It means nothing has changed.” I went over to Chris and put my hand on his arm, hoping to make him understand. He shook off my gesture and shoved past me.

  “It doesn’t sound a little weird. It sounds a lot weird.” He paced up and down the small space between the two beds. “What happens if you break up?”

  “We’re not breaking up.”

  He stopped pacing to glare at me. “What, are you marrying him?” He snorted.

  I had a hard time finding my voice. “I . . . I don’t know. I mean, not right now.”

  He ran both hands through his thick hair, causing tufts to stand up like the mountain peaks I’d admired earlier. Any other time, I would teasingly nag him for messing up his hair before a performance. This was not a moment for jokes, however.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said.

  “We know what we’re doing. Nothing has changed as far as our partnership is concerned, and that’s what’s important.”

  The melody of an incoming call on my cell phone prevented Chris from responding. The cheerful ringtone contrasted sharply with the mood in the room. Chris resumed wearing a hole in the sandy brown carpet as I dug in my bag for the phone.

  “Hey, are you on your way down?” Sergei asked.

  “Yeah, I’m with Chris. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  I hung up and Chris said, “We’re not finished talking about this.”

  “I don’t blame you for being upset, but we need to put this aside for now.”

  He didn’t move, and I feared he might refuse to leave until he’d said his piece. “Please, Chris.” I tried to reach his stony eyes with a pleading look. “We have to go.”

  After a long pause, he picked up his bag and walked to the door.

  On the bus ride to the arena, I kept a close watch on him. The only thing that could make the situation worse would be Chris confronting Sergei.

  We made it to GM Place without incident and followed the long gray corridor to the bowels of the arena. The area buzzed with skaters walking through their programs, coaches mingling, and media personnel running around with tape recorders and notepads. In the distance, the familiar tune of Swan Lake played. The competition had already begun, but with the large number of pairs in the field, the event would span over four hours.

  Chris and I split off from Sergei to stretch and warm up, and I eyed Madeline Hyatt and Damien Wakefield as they jogged past us in perfect tandem, chatting with ease. The Canadians didn’t have a monstrous cloud hanging over them like we did.

  “How long have you been dating?” Chris asked before I could begin my exercises.

  “We can’t talk about this right now.” I sat on the painted concrete floor and stretched my legs.

  “It’s a simple question.”

  I held his stare, begging him to let the issue drop. He raised his eyebrows, urging me to answer. I let out a sigh and reached out to touch the toes of my sneakers.

  “Two months,” I said quietly.

  He squatted next to me but didn’t make any motion to start warming up. “Wow. I must be really blind.”

  “You’re not blind.” I touched his knee. “No one knows except Aubrey and my parents.”

  “What did your parents say?”

  “My dad is being amazingly cool. My mom, on the other hand . . .”

  “Is that why she showed up out of the blue at practice last week?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, I promise.” I stood up and extended my arms over my head. “Please let it go for now.”

  “Em, are you sure this is what you want?” He straightened up and peered down at me. “You’re sure Sergei hasn’t been putting pressure on you–”

  “No! I’m with him because I want to be with him.”

  He gazed down the hallway, and I thought we were done with the discussion until he said, “This whole thing is weirding me out.”

  I set my hands on his shoulders. “Then stop talking about it. I can explain everything later. Can we please focus on getting ready?”

  He complied with my request and remained quiet as we stretched and walked through our program. We left each other to dress in the locker room, and I rushed to put on my costume. If Chris met Sergei outside first, I wasn’t sure he could hold his tongue.

  Amidst the mob of girls dressing and primping, I hastily tugged my costume’s stretchy fabric over my body. With a quick check in the mirror, I determined all of the sparkly red and black beads were still in place.

  Chris and I reached Sergei at the same time. He handed us our jackets, and I zipped mine up to my chin to stay warm. We had a few minutes until we needed to lace up our skates, so we did some light stretching to keep our muscles loose.

  After we put on our skates and advanced to the tunnel, Sergei reminded us of the changes we’d made to our footwork. I nodded and kept silent as usual, staying in my own little world. Chris did the same, not chatting in his normal manner, and Sergei observed him with concern.

  Our group took the ice for the six-minute warm-up, and the raucous cheers for Hyatt and Wakefield reminded me we were on Canadian soil. Chris and I received the second loudest ovation as numerous American flags showed in the stands. With a perfect triple twist and clean side-by-side jumps completed, we set up to practice the throw triple Lutz.

  Gliding backwards with Chris’s hands on my hips, I glanced over my shoulder at the last second and saw Madeline skating toward us at full speed, her back to us. Before I could yell a warning, she crashed into Chris’s side, the impact knocking her to the ice. Chris held onto my waist and stumbled but didn’t go down. The audience gasped, and my heart rate burst upward. Both Chris and Damien helped Madeline to her feet as she massaged her lower back.

  “I’m so sorry,” Chris said.

  Madeline glared at Chris but didn’t reply. She and Damien skated away and did slow circular strokes around the ice, while Chris and I went over to Sergei at the boards. He offered us our bottles of water and made a motion with his hands indicating, “Settle down.”

  My hand trembled as I raised the bottle to my mouth. Chris always checked behind him when we practiced the throw on a crowded rink. He was known as one of the most observant skaters, constantly alerting our training mates at home and preventing crashes. His mind was clearly not on the task at hand.

  We were first in the group to skate, so hand-in-hand we skated leisurely around the perimeter of the ice during the warm-up’s final minute. Without looking at me, Chris said tersely, “Promise me you’re not gonna quit.”

  I swiveled my head to face him. “What?”

  He kept his focus straight ahead. “If things go bad with you and Sergei, promise me you’re not going to quit.”

  “Are you seriously bringing this up now?” I asked in hushed tone.

  “I need to know.”

  I gave his hand a firm sque
eze. “You know I would never cut and run on you.”

  Still staring into the audience, he said, “I thought I knew you, but I’m not so sure now.”

  A sharp pang of sadness cut through my anxiety. I wanted to stop and assure him he could still trust me, but the announcer alerted us the warm-up was over. We circled back to Sergei, who studied our grim expressions intently.

  He smiled and spoke calmly, “Just like any other day in practice.”

  Pushing off from the boards, we glided across the ice and took a few moments before we prepared to start. I set my jaw and locked my eyes on Chris’s.

  “Let’s do this.”

  To the rousing notes of “Capriccio Espagnol,” we sailed through the elements on autopilot, executing the technique we’d practiced for countless hours. But between the elements, Chris barely looked at me. He didn’t give me the positive energy I was accustomed to receiving from him. I might as well have been skating with a stranger.

  The audience applauded the technical precision, but they didn’t leap to their feet. The program lacked spark. Sergei waited until we’d received our scores and retreated backstage to question Chris.

  “What’s going on with you?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?” Chris muttered and stomped toward the waiting journalists.

  Sergei stared at me, unable to speak. Under my breath, I said, “He saw the note you wrote in the book. I had to tell him.”

  He passed his hand over his mouth. “The media’s waiting. We’ll talk later.”

  After answering every reporter’s questions, we checked the standings for the short program and saw our names in third place, once again behind the Canadians and the Russians, Oksana and Denis. Those two teams were the glass ceiling we couldn’t break through.

  Chris avoided me on the bus to the hotel and made a beeline for his parents in the lobby. He’d gone from asking me a million questions to snubbing me. My own parents greeted me with hugs and their thoughts on the event.

  “Is Chris feeling okay?” Mom asked. “He seemed out of it.”

  I paused, deciding not to get into the whole story. “We just have something we need to work through.”

  My hesitation was all Mom needed to figure it out. “He knows, doesn’t he?” When I didn’t immediately answer, she huffed, “Well, you had to know he wouldn’t be happy. It must’ve been a shock, as I know all too well.”

  “Mom, please don’t start.”

  My plea went on deaf ears. “You’d better talk to him and get this squared away before tomorrow night.”

  I looked over at Chris and moaned, “I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”

  Dad slipped his arm around my shoulders. “Why don’t we let Em get some rest? It’s been a long day.”

  Aubrey was already asleep in our room, not surprising since she needed to be at practice early the next morning. After I showered and put on my pajamas, I crawled under the blankets, switched on my bedside lamp, and picked up Sergei’s book. Beside the lyrics to the first song, “Next To You,” was a long note. Scratching my head, I thought, How did Chris not see this? He must’ve started flipping from the back.

  Sergei’s note read–I had to laugh when I started reading the book and this was the first song because all I’d been thinking about for months was how I wanted to be next to you. And here it was reminding me again.

  I smiled and ran my fingers across Sergei’s words. The little notes were a treasure since I couldn’t spend time alone with him in Vancouver. I read a few more songs, but before long, my eyelids became heavy. With the book in my lap, I drifted off to sleep.

  Startled awake by loud knocking, I peeked at the clock. I’d been asleep less than an hour.

  Aubrey groaned and mumbled into her pillow, “Who is that?”

  Since she didn’t make a move to answer the door, I had to get up. Through the peephole, a frowning Chris stared back at me. I rubbed my eyes and opened the door.

  Chris didn’t wait for an invitation as he marched past me. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Judging from Chris’s disheveled hair and wrinkled T-shirt, he’d attempted to sleep. Aubrey raised her tousled blond head from her pillow to address him.

  “Some of us have to wake up at five in the morning.”

  “Sorry, I just need Em for a few minutes,” he said.

  “Can we talk tomorrow before practice?” I asked.

  “No, I really want to do this now.”

  Aubrey grumbled and pulled the blanket over her head.

  “Let’s go in the hallway,” Chris suggested.

  “I’m not going to talk about this in the hallway where anyone can hear.”

  He quickly surveyed the room. “Then let’s go in the bathroom.”

  “The bathroom?” I gave him a you-can’t-be-serious look.

  “Come on.” He tugged on my hand.

  Chris sat in the middle of the floor, so I slumped against the door, the hard tile meeting my bottom. The fruity scent of my shower gel lingered in the air.

  Chris drummed his fingers on the edge of the bathtub. “I feel like I should’ve known something was going on. That whole scene at Four Continents, when Sergei got so mad at you, was that all for show? To throw me off?”

  I let out a dry laugh. “No, it was very real.”

  “It must’ve been pretty awkward, having your boyfriend talk to you like that.”

  My hair draped around my face as I bent my head. “It wasn’t fun, but we got through it.”

  “You should’ve told me about this from the beginning. If we don’t have trust, we don’t have anything.”

  I bent forward and connected with his eyes. “You can still trust me. I thought I was doing what was best for us by waiting to tell you.”

  “When we teamed up, you said you had the same goal as me–to be the first American pair to win Olympic gold.” He shifted and stretched out one of his long legs. “But you don’t seem too serious about that if you’re willing to do something this risky.”

  I blinked and jerked backward. “How can you say that? You see me busting my butt every day. My goals haven’t changed.”

  “Don’t you realize the problems this could cause for us? If the federation finds out you’re dating Sergei, they could come down hard on him. Isn’t he violating some ethical code?”

  “There’s nothing in the rulebook that says coaches and students of legal age can’t date.”

  “Well, even if it’s not in the rulebook, they wouldn’t like it. They’re always preaching to us about having the right image. You think they’re going to want one of their top skaters involved with her coach? This isn’t Russia, where anything goes.”

  I was starting to wish we were in Russia or any European country, for that matter. Skaters there didn’t seem to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny we were. It wasn’t fair that they could have publicized affairs with no consequences, while I couldn’t openly have a perfectly innocent relationship with Sergei.

  “We’re being very discreet,” I said.

  A long pause followed while Chris studied me. “You must really have it bad for him.”

  My face warmed, and I picked at a loose thread on my pajama pants. “We’re serious about each other. We wouldn’t be together if we weren’t.”

  “You know I lost my last partner when she quit skating to follow her boyfriend to college. I don’t wanna lose another one because of a guy.”

  “I already told you I’m not going anywhere. No matter what happens.”

  He continued to stare as if I were an abstract piece of art he didn’t understand. “How do you deal with Sergei ordering you around at the rink? No way could I coach Marley.”

  I shrugged. “I guess since he was my coach first, it seems natural.”

  “I have to tell Marley about this. I can’t keep something this big from her.”

  I was hesitant to let someone else in on my secret, but I didn’t want to start another ar
gument. “Make sure she knows it can’t go any further.”

  He shook his head. “Em, I still think this is such a bad idea. When you mix work with a relationship, there are so many things that can go wrong.”

  “I’m going to need you to trust me when I say we have it all under control.”

  “Your judgment isn’t something I can trust right now.” He braced himself against the bathtub and rose to his feet.

  I stood up next to him. “I hate this tension between us. We’re the pair that never fights, remember?” I tapped his chest and gave him a hopeful smile.

  He didn’t react to my attempt at levity. “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.” He opened the bathroom door. “I’m sorry I wasn’t on top of my game tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be ready . . . as long as you don’t hit me with any more surprises.”

  He left before I could make another plea for his understanding. I climbed into bed and let exhaustion take me away to pleasant dreams, where I didn’t have to feel guilty for being in love.

  ****

  The moment we’d worked toward all year had arrived. Chris and I stood before Sergei, our hands clasped together. The building rumbled with applause for Hyatt and Wakefield’s high scores, and Sergei spoke above the noise.

  “Take this energy and use it. This is your time.”

  The crowd became silent as Chris and I knelt on the ice. In the stillness, my pounding heart echoed in my ears. The music began, and Chris gave me one of his customary little nods. Relief spread through me. A sense of normalcy was exactly what I needed. I envisioned us on our home ice, where we’d performed clean programs time and again.

  With that mindset, I executed my jumps with precision, matching Chris step for step, and he maintained eye contact with me throughout the lyrical choreography as opposed to the prior night. I fed off the confidence in his gaze, ticking off each element in my mind.

  Heading into the final thirty seconds, every muscle in my legs began to burn, and I had to suck in longer breaths. My skates skimmed across the ice instead of carving deep edges. As we skated past Sergei, he leaned over the boards and clapped his hands. “Push! Push!”