“Salad. What a surprise.”
“Can I bring you anything else?” the man asked, his gaze already shifting toward the chaos of rapidly filling tables.
“No, thank you,” said Beth.
“A side of fries,” Lexa replied at the same moment. “We’re celebrating!” she defended herself as he walked off to get them. “My best-ever death spiral and my best-ever grandmom both here on the same day.”
Beth waved off the compliment, coloring with pleasure anyway. “You’d say anything to get grease.”
Lexa laughed as she dug into her lettuce. “What would I have to say to get cheesecake?”
—29—
“This is heaven!” Lexa declared, reclining in her river tube. Back at Maplehurst, the mid-July sun was scorching the earth, but in the shade of a tree overhanging Lake Erie, she and Bry floated comfortably. “I’m a genius to have thought of it.”
Bry’s board shorts made wet balloons around his thighs where they dipped through his tube into the water. “I thought of it. You can thank me for bringing the bug spray, too.”
“Thank you,” she said happily. “Thank you for telepathically receiving my genius idea.”
He snorted and skipped a hand through the water, splashing her up to her neck.
“Hey! Don’t splash the shades.”
They were both wearing movie-star sunglasses. Lexa peered through hers at a brand-new bikini. All that salad wasn’t just good for making her easier to lift—between the diet and her intense new training regimen, her abs had never been tighter.
Or paler.
“We should get spray tans after this,” she said. “Go home and tell everyone they’re real.”
“I will if you will.” Sculling closer, he fished up a cord attached to his tube and tied it through the handle of hers. “There. Now your tube won’t float away while you swim in to get us some drinks from the cooler.”
“Yours won’t, you mean,” she corrected.
“Rock-paper-scissors?”
“You’re the one who’s thirsty.”
They bobbed there a while, neither one inclined to move.
“Your feet are funny-looking,” he said at last, trying to goad her into the water to hide them.
“Ha! And you’re a foot model!”
The four feet propped up by their two tubes wriggled, on display. Countless hours of jumping in constricting boots had left their mark on both skaters, molding growing bones in ways nature never intended. With outsiders, Lexa felt self-conscious whenever her shoes were off. With Bry, every lump and bulge was a hard-earned badge of honor.
He let his head loll back. “If we wait long enough, maybe someone will swim out here and take our drink order.”
“Yeah. That’s likely.”
She didn’t say what they were both thinking, that if Jenni had come with them she’d be tanning on the beach, ready to be talked into cooling off by swimming out with some sodas. Bry had wanted to invite her; Lexa had not. She could forgive and forget everything else, but every time she remembered Jenni hanging all over Ian, telling him Lexa didn’t like him, she still wanted to slug someone. When Jenni apologized for that, they could start speaking again.
“Jenni’s back to training hard,” Bry said.
“Every day?” Lexa asked skeptically.
“Most days.”
Then she’d come to her senses about that, at least. “How about you? How are your programs coming?”
“Pretty good.” Bry made a face. “I’d say great if not for Saint Ian.”
Lexa smiled. “You hate him that much?”
“I don’t hate him. I just . . .” Bry cracked his knuckles and sighed. “. . . hate him. It’s not him, it’s his skating. How am I ever going to beat that?”
Lexa remembered what Blake had once said about Bry and second place, but he’d never hear that from her. “Ian’s amazing, but so are you. Nobody’s unbeatable.”
Bry sat up higher in his tube. “That’s true. Better skaters than Ian have come up short at the Olympics.”
“Exactly. Anything can happen in competition.”
“I don’t want to beat him just because he falls or something, though.”
“Why not? Not falling is part of the deal.”
“I guess, but—”
“You’re good, Bry. When you skate your best, it could go either way.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “Ian’s at his best more often than I am.”
“Seven and a half minutes,” she said, needing to hear it as badly as he did. “Seven and a half minutes, and none of the rest of it matters. All the work and pain and drama leading up to those two programs . . . it’s just backstory. History. Over.”
Holding her sunglasses to her face, Lexa rolled out of her tube and splashed into the lake. Cool water closed over her head, shocking her sun-warmed skin. She kicked through the green and popped up beside Bry. Gripping a rubber handle, she leveraged her ribcage up onto his tube and balanced there.
“You and me,” she said, locking eyes with him. “We’re going to march with the U.S. team, and wave to the crowd, and wear whatever corny red-white-and-blue crap the Olympic Committee comes up with, and we are going to love it.”
He smiled. “I do look good in a beret.”
“Promise me,” she said, holding out a pinkie. “You and me—Olympics. We’ll never give up trying.”
Bry linked his pinkie through hers. “You should promise me. If you’re planning to be there in pairs, I’ve got a big head start.”
Lexa dropped her hand to rebalance. “I’m on it. All over it, in fact. We’re skating our pairs tests the week after next. Boyd only needs senior, but I need them all, so we’re skating them all back to back.”
“In one day?” he asked, surprised.
“I won’t be the first girl to do it. We know I can pass the singles elements, so . . . yeah. Wish me luck.”
“I do! That’s great.”
She forced a broad smile, knowing it wasn’t as great as it sounded. She and Boyd might have the individual elements down, but they had just started skating full programs. Even if they passed the senior test, they were far from ready to win competitions. Nearly every double they did now would need to be a triple to contend, and so many touches and skills still needed to be added that Lexa tried not to dwell on them all.
“We ought to celebrate,” Bry said. “You swim in to get the drinks.”
“What? You swim in for the drinks!”
“I’m not the one already in the water.”
“I can fix that.” Hooking a heel over his tube, she raised her weight and rocked wildly, trying to spill him out.
Bry clamped on with both arms. “Hey! Watch the glasses!”
“I’d hold on to those if I were you.”
With a splash, the tube flipped over, dumping them both, laughing, into the lake.
—30—
For the next week Lexa and Boyd practiced with single-minded determination. Skaters capable of passing the senior test sometimes postponed taking it, wanting to compete and win at the junior level first, but that wasn’t Walker and Patrick’s plan. Senior skaters were the ones who competed on the big stages, the ones the world remembered. If they passed their tests, Lexa and Boyd could compete at senior sectionals in November. And if they placed at sectionals, they’d be eligible to skate at January’s nationals.
One step at a time, Lexa cautioned herself, burning through straight-line footwork during her last skating session of the day. She’d stayed late on her own initiative that day, wanting to be perfect for her tests, and by the time she finally came off the ice, the arena was beginning to fill for evening public session. Pulling on her blade guards, she headed for the members’ locker room and a well-earned shower.
The beautifully tiled individual shower stalls were a luxury she still hadn’t grown used to, one she had never dreamed of at Ashtabula Ice. Standing under the pounding water, she wondered if Blake had skated in equally luxuriou
s arenas in his day. He never talked about it, but then, he wouldn’t.
Lexa toweled off and dressed in the attached dry portion of the stall. She was opening the door to go home when a noise outside made her freeze.
Somebody was crying.
Lexa had seen—and shed—her share of tears at ice rinks. Painful injuries, life-changing wins, heart-breaking losses . . . Rinks were drama factories. Spotting a crying skater surrounded by consoling friends was an everyday occurrence. But no comforting voices reached her ears now, only the muffled sobs of a lone girl trying hard to stop.
Lexa stepped out of her stall.
The locker room looked deserted. She stood listening to silence until a sloppy hiccup turned her attention to the only closed stall door. Moving quietly, she positioned herself outside it, feeling genuine sympathy for whoever was inside. She was about to ask if she could help when the door opened abruptly. Ashley Mitchell stood on its other side with a backpack over one shoulder and makeup ruined by crying. For a moment, she and Lexa faced off, equally surprised. Then Ashley slammed the door closed between them.
Walk away, Lexa’s inner voice urged. You don’t want any part of this. But Ashley had started crying again and she couldn’t leave anyone alone in that state.
“Ashley?” she said tentatively, tapping a finger against the door. “Are you okay?”
Her only reply was a long shuddering sniff. Lexa hesitated, wondering whether to try again. Ashley gulped back another sob.
“Can I do anything?” Lexa asked at last.
“You can go away.”
She reluctantly started to walk. The next instant the door flew open.
“Do you love him?” Ashley demanded.
“Do I . . . what? Who?” Lexa took in Ashley’s distraught appearance in a state of confusion. The girl was still skating without a partner, but she’d lost even more weight, the pounds off her already waif-like frame making her face look skeletal. Her large wet eyes were the biggest thing about her now. “Not Boyd?”
“Do you?” Ashley challenged.
“Of course not.” The obvious finally clicked. “Do you?”
Ashley sat on the stall bench and started crying again, covering her face with her hands. Lexa hesitated, then leaned against the open door.
“You know I’m not Boyd’s girlfriend. I thought you were friends with Tempeste.”
“He’s not going to stay with her. He calls her Temp!”
Lexa sighed. “Yes, he does.”
“He and I were together two years before he even met her!”
“Together how?” Lexa couldn’t resist asking. “How old are you?”
Ashley looked up suspiciously. “What difference does that make?”
“Don’t get mad. I just . . . You know he’s saving for a car, right? Tempeste must have told you.”
Ashley shrugged. “What about it?”
“Nothing, just . . . If he sold you out for a car, why do you want him back?”
“That’s what you think?”
“That’s what Temp told me.”
“It wasn’t even Boyd’s idea! Candace told him you were better than me, that you’d come with built-in publicity, that he ought to grab the shot because he could get there faster and I—I’d—” Ashley dissolved into tears again.
Lexa moved onto the bench and put an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. “Find someone who deserves you,” she said gently. “You could do so much better than Boyd.”
“That’s easy for you to say!”
She shook her head, nearly as depressed as Ashley. “No. It’s really not.”
—31—
Lexa hesitated under the security light outside Ashtabula Ice’s back door. The sun wouldn’t be up for another two hours, but the blacktop in the rink’s parking lot still held warmth from the day before, suggesting another scorching day to come.
If you’re going to do it, do it now, she told herself. Unless he’s installed cameras, he’s never going to know.
She couldn’t imagine Blake would have installed cameras, but she still didn’t feel right about using her old key. She wasn’t going to skate, didn’t even want to. She just wanted to stand in the place she used to call home and be that girl again, if only for a few seconds.
She missed Jenni now with a dull constant ache, and her separation from Blake had gone on even longer. She badly wanted to see him, but she didn’t want to fight, and it was impossible to imagine one of those things without the other. If only he could give her a little more freedom, if he could be happy about her progress, for once, maybe even a little proud. . . .
A tear slid down her face. When it came to the way she had run out on Blake, she hadn’t given him much to be proud of.
I won’t stay long, she told herself, slipping her key into the lock. Just in and out. Just to see. Just to breathe.
She turned her key. It didn’t budge.
She twisted harder and jiggled the knob. The door rattled in its frame, but the tumblers didn’t tumble.
Blake had changed the lock.
—32—
“Are you ready for this?” Candace asked.
Lexa’s heart was thumping and her hands were slick with sweat. She nodded anyway. This was far from her first test in front of USFSA judges, but with any luck it would be her last. She and Boyd had been at the rink all afternoon, successfully skating every pairs test from pre-juvenile through junior. All that remained was senior and they’d be good to go.
“I hate testing,” Boyd said, even though up until then none of the tests had counted for him. “At least in competition, the public is there to admire you.” He smoothed his sculpted hair and flashed a cocksure smile, but it wobbled in a way he couldn’t quite hide. His nerves were getting the best of him.
“Tell me you’re not going to choke,” Lexa begged. “Because if you can’t perform under pressure—”
“Hey, worry about yourself! Once I hit that ice, I’m a beast.”
She was worried about herself. Pressure wasn’t her problem—she’d proven that over and over—but there was still a thirty-percent chance she’d mess up the double twist lift. Unison would be an issue throughout the entire program, opening the door to potentially crash-and-burnable missteps. And despite Boyd’s bravado, his lutz was far from a sure thing. Any fall by either of them, a missed lift, an insufficient number of spin revolutions—those were all failures, and they would only get to reskate a maximum of two elements.
“Nobody’s going to choke,” Candace said. “After everything I went through to set this up, I’ll kill you both if you do. Take a breath. Get your bearings. Then just go out there and do what we’ve been practicing.”
Lexa pushed off toward center ice the way she’d been doing for years, so intent on killing every move that she almost left Boyd behind.
“Go, Lexa!” Beth shouted from the risers.
Lexa waved, the beads on her sleeve catching the lights. She had planned to test in an old singles dress, but Beth had secretly sent a photo of Boyd’s most recent long program costume to the seamstress, surprising her granddaughter with a new outfit just two nights before. Boyd’s simply tailored pants and shirt were a rich midnight blue. Lexa’s matching chiffon dress was thickly adorned with silver beads and rhinestones that sparkled like stars in an evening sky.
“G-mom! It’s gorgeous,” she’d said, touched.
“I’m giving it to you now so you can practice in it tomorrow and make sure it fits. You don’t need competition costumes to test, but . . .” Beth had shrugged, then smiled. “It never hurts to look the part.”
Lexa pushed that conversation, the dress, and everything else from her mind as she and Boyd took their starting pose. Their eyes met and held. This was the moment when they were supposed to look completely connected, two halves of a single being. Before Lexa could decide whether they were successfully selling that illusion, the music started and they were off.
The first minute of their program was loaded with difficult j
umps and lifts, elements it was easier to do on fresh legs. The double lutz, double toe combination Boyd landed wasn’t flawless but it was good enough. Lexa’s sigh of relief had to be short, though, because the double twist lift was next. She hit the entry hard, leaping as Boyd lifted. Almost before she knew it, she had pulled off the airborne twists and Boyd’s hands were back on her waist, guiding her to her landing.
Clean! she thought, trying not to celebrate prematurely as she mirrored Boyd through their footwork. Their throw double Salchow was unexpectedly awkward, but when the lasso lift passed without incident and she dropped into the death spiral like a pro, she quit stressing and just skated. She could do this. It was almost done.
As the music ended, Lexa first saw the goofy grin on Boyd’s face and then became aware of her own. A couple of elements hadn’t been pretty, but they had passed the test. There was no way the judges could rule otherwise. She waved to Beth again as she skated to the boards, giddy with relief.
She was a pairs skater now, a real one. She wondered what Blake would say. Would he be proud? Her smile flickered, then disappeared. He wouldn’t congratulate her, that was for sure.
“Good job,” Candace said, slapping hands with Boyd as he and Lexa came off the ice. “There were some issues. We’ve got plenty of work ahead. But we’re one giant step closer.”
In the locker room, Lexa showered quickly. Beth had made reservations at a fancy restaurant in anticipation of celebrating a successful day.
We didn’t even have to reskate anything! Lexa rejoiced as she checked her hair in a mirror. It had grown past her shoulders over the summer but still curled in the steam. She brushed it somewhat flatter then pushed through the swinging door on her way to meet Beth.
A voice from down the hall made her pause. Candace was talking to someone in the dance studio, its open door allowing disconnected words to drift out.
I’ll just go thank her before I leave, Lexa decided, changing direction. If she hadn’t been so tough on me, I wouldn’t be so far right now. She and Boyd were pairs equals now in the eyes of the USFSA, and Lexa couldn’t wait to enter the next phase of their training, in which they would finally be equals in Candace’s eyes as well.
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