Built for Speed: Winter Sports, Book 1

by Declan Rhodes

  I didn’t know the color of his team’s uniform. I thought about looking it up on the computer, but I decided to create my own instead. I didn’t begin painting, but in my head, I knew that it would be a portrait bathed in icy blue. It was the color of winter sports, and it was the color of skating. I spoke out loud, “James!”

  Working gently, I removed the sketch from the easel and packed it away in a folio with the other sketches I worked on in the morning. I was tempted to send a text to James and share the activities of my afternoon, but I stopped myself. If I turned it into a painting, I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to see the initial gaze of disbelief taken over by a gentle, warm smile when he first laid eyes on himself in a painted portrait.

  I was lost in my mental reverie when a knock on the door of my studio disrupted my thoughts. A second, more insistent knock followed before I got up and checked to see who wanted my attention.

  “Lucas, you work too hard! We’re leaving for the pub, and we request your presence. We won’t take no for an answer!”

  It was my best friend, Anna. We first met at school when we were only seven years old. We didn’t like each other at first. In fact, we were rivals for our teacher’s attention. I remembered pouting when Anna scored higher on tests than me. Fortunately, by the next year in school, the rivalry turned into a friendship. She was a stalwart supporter through my speed skating disaster.

  I asked, “Can I join you in a few minutes.”

  Anna shook her head. “No. If I don’t take you with me now, then you won’t come at all. At least there’s a chance of that. You’ve done that before.” She continued explaining that three of our other friends were each leaving work and planning to converge on the pub.

  With a gentle laugh, I said, “Okay.” Anna knew me well. If she left me alone in the studio, I was likely to begin painting and forget about the pub. “Let me grab my coat.”

  I pulled on the heavy coat, gloves, and my orange stocking cap. As we walked down the street shoulder to shoulder, light snow began to fall. I held my gloved hand out to catch a few of the snowflakes. I wondered if James was experiencing similar weather six thousand kilometers away.

  Anna had to stop me and turn me toward the entrance to the pub. She asked, “Where is your brain? If I weren’t here, you would be wandering the streets of the city.”

  The cafe was warm inside with the sounds of people telling stories and relaxing from a long day of work. We found our way to a table with our other friends, and I finally pulled my thoughts away from James.

  I relaxed and offered to buy the first round of drinks. Thomas said, “I won’t turn down such generosity. Did you lure a new client today?”

  As I sat, I said, “I nearly completed a project, and I worked on sketches for new paintings. It was a productive day.”

  Anna polled the small group for their drink preferences. I opted for a beer, and she disappeared into the crowd to make her way to the bar.

  Thomas turned to me and said, “I heard that you met a special American on your trip.”

  My eyes opened wide. I did tell Anna about James, but I didn’t share the stories with anyone else. “You heard from Anna.”

  “Yes, and it sounds like it was a fantastic trip. I wish that I had such luck when traveling. Are you keeping in touch?”

  I didn’t know how much detail I wanted to share about James, and I didn’t know what questions Thomas might ask, but I nodded and said, “Yes.”

  Thomas smiled and said, “Make sure you introduce us if he travels across the ocean. That American man’s gain is the loss of all of the men who want a man like you in Amsterdam.”

  I blushed. Thomas was straight, but he was a staunch supporter of gay men. His comments were backed up by genuine sentiment. I said, “Thank you,” just before Anna returned.

  She placed five beers in the center of the table, and I retrieved mine. It was the darkest of the collection. As she sat down, Thomas said, “Lucas has promised to introduce us to his American boyfriend.”

  Anna’s eyes opened wide. “James is here?”

  I waved my hand. “No, no, James isn’t, but if he were, I would bring him along.”

  9

  James

  My return to college was mostly uneventful. I settled in with my usual group of friends. We spent weekends together hanging out. We drank, but we didn’t get drunk. I couldn’t afford either the physical issues or the threat of stumbling into legal jeopardy. As a hockey player, I had to stay clean. We spent time in the gym every day, and it was apparent if you had a few too many drinks the night before.

  Unfortunately, my hockey game was struggling. My goal production was down, and I was distracted during practice. The day after I stumbled through a game we ultimately won, I stayed out on the ice after our practice session was over, and the rest of the team retired to the locker room.

  I set my stick aside and skated laps around the rink. Soon, I was imitating Lucas’ speed skating stride and seeing how fast I could push myself. It was exhilarating to skate fast. It was exhausting, too.

  I was startled by a loud voice from the side of the rink asking, “Are you sure you’re a hockey player, James?”

  Looking up, I saw Coach Collins standing on the edge of the ice. He was assistant to the head coach, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he would move up to a head coaching assignment somewhere. Coach Collins spent two years as a player in the NHL before exiting due to an injury.

  I glided across the ice to him. “What else would I be? Why do you ask that?”

  I knew the answer to my question, but I wanted to play innocent. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to talk about my fixation on speed skating, and I was curious about whether or not Coach Collins had any wise words to share.

  He shrugged. “I thought I saw someone out there who looked like a speed skater.”

  “Was my form that good?”

  “I’m no expert, but I don’t think it was bad. I had a buddy in college who abandoned hockey to skate on the oval. He nearly made the Olympic squad.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Wow, that really happened, coach?”

  “It happened, but don’t you start thinking that way. We need you to be a reliable hockey forward. Don’t bail on us now, James. Can I count on you?”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah, you can. I just met a guy over Christmas break who is a speed skater. He shared a little bit of his style, and I was curious. It’s exciting to skate fast. It’s kind of like going down a long hill on a bicycle. You know?”

  “You like that speed, James? It can be addicting. Be careful where it takes you.”

  Later that evening, I stumbled upon a detail from Lucas’ skating career that he didn’t share with me. He made a major mistake on the ice in an important race. Someone posted a video clip of it on YouTube. I watched it five times in a row. I wasn’t as interested in the mistake as I was in watching Lucas skate.

  I learned my lesson about Googling boyfriends my freshman year in college. I looked up a guy that I was starting to date, and I found a lot of negative information including YouTube videos showing his arrest. After reading everything, I decided that I needed to confront him about it.

  He asked, “So you’ve decided that you’re going to break up with me because of what you found? Are you worried about who I really am based on what you’ve read? Does it matter if I say you don’t know what you’re talking about?”

  I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I didn’t know what I could have misunderstood. Everything I read was clearcut. He was a criminal with felonies on his record. I said, “I’m confused.”

  He explained that he had a cousin by the same name who was two years older. They looked like brothers, and it was impossible to be confident about who was who while watching the YouTube videos. At first, I thought he was trying to weasel out of the situation, but then he showed me Facebook accounts, newspaper articles, and even more information to clear his name. Then he lowered the ax saying, “And I’m br
eaking up with you because you didn’t trust me enough to ask about what you found before jumping to conclusions.”

  I searched for Lucas online, because I was missing him. I knew the risk that I was taking. I missed him anytime we weren’t talking on video chat. I wanted to see if I could find any clips of him skating. The mistake was a small one to someone who didn’t know much about speed skating, but I understood how it could be huge. I had hockey mistakes in my past that cost our team the game.

  He missed changing lanes in the middle of a long race. Then he almost collided with the other skater when they ended up in the same lane. For me, there was a comic side to the mix-up. I thought about the classic clip of Roy Riegels running the wrong way for a touchdown in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Coach Collins said that he always remembered it when he made mistakes. “It can happen to anyone.”

  I wondered if the mistake had anything to do with Lucas’ decision to stop racing, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I knew that I needed to ask him about it first.

  Unfortunately, I had the rest of the evening and a night’s sleep to go before I would get to talk to him again. I had homework that would take at least three hours. I needed to get started, but turning Lucas off in my mind was getting harder and harder. I looked at the clip of him skating one more time. It brought me back to our first meeting when he let me win the race. It was a shrewd decision. My thoughts about him would have been very different if he demolished me in the first race the way that he did on our second visit to the skating ribbon.

  “It really happened that way?” I stared into Lucas’ eyes while I asked questions about the skating mistake. I was doing my best to avoid distraction from his abs or his thick biceps. I wanted to kiss the smooth skin of his chest and see how his nipple felt under my tongue.

  He said, “It did, but I don’t like to talk about it. Can we talk about something different? How is your hockey? Have you designed any new buildings lately?”

  I wasn’t sure why I was so fixated on Lucas’ unintentional moment in the spotlight, but I found it difficult to change gears. The mistake made him appear to be very human. Before I located the video clips, everything about Lucas was perfect, and that was sometimes intimidating. With the mistake, he was more like me.

  I ran his questions back in my head. I said, “Oh, I should tell you what happened yesterday after practice.”

  Lucas leaned back toward the camera. “I would like to hear about that.”

  “I stayed out on the ice after everyone went to the locker room. I thought I was completely alone, and I started to skate like a speed skater. I did laps around the rink. At least I thought it was like a speed skater. I tried to imitate what I remembered seeing you do.”

  Lucas said, “You’re a hockey player, James.”

  “I know, but after the third lap or so, I really started to skate fast. I loved it. It made my heart pound.”

  “That speed is exhilarating.”

  “It was like I was gliding. We never get to build up that kind of speed in a hockey game. Then I found out I wasn’t alone.”

  I watched Lucas raise an eyebrow. “Someone else was skating?”

  I said, “It was Coach Collins. He told me not to get addicted to the speed. He told me how valuable I was as a hockey player.”

  “He has a point,” said Lucas.

  “You know, sometimes I make mistakes in hockey games as you did in that race.”

  Lucas frowned. I could hear the exasperation in his voice when he asked, “You’re back to that again? Do you have a one-track mind?”

  I tried to back up. “No, I don’t, but it’s kind of funny, too, if you look at it that way. I try to find the humor in the hockey mistakes I make. Then I can laugh, and it doesn’t seem so bad.”

  Lucas looked down, and I missed his blue eyes immediately. He mumbled, “It was bad.”

  I was like a dog with a favorite bone. Something inside me said it was wrong to pick at an emotional scab, but I kept going anyway. I said, “It couldn’t have been that bad. It was just a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.”

  Lucas looked up, and I was startled. I saw the pain in his eyes. It was unmistakable. Then his hand reached forward as he said, “I can’t.” Suddenly, the camera was blank, and Lucas was gone.

  I shouted, “Lucas, wait!” but I knew that he was gone. I had upset him, and four thousand miles away, he did what was necessary to ease his pain. He shut down the conversation.

  I waited to see if he would come back. I didn’t know how long I waited until my housemate Cal knocked on the door to my room and asked, “Are you gonna eat breakfast today, James? We leave for class in ten minutes.” That meant I’d spent almost half an hour staring at the computer and hoping that Lucas would return.

  My stomach twisted into a knot. I called back, “I’m coming.”

  My usual morning pattern involved talking to Lucas for thirty minutes, and then I rushed through taking a quick shower and inhaling a protein bar for breakfast. It wasn’t the best way to kick off a day, but Lucas was my priority in the morning. Talking to him set everything on a positive track for the day. Until I upset him, and he disappeared.

  I stared at my phone lying on the desk and thought about sending a text message. I stopped myself as my fingers were hovering over the letters. I didn’t want to risk upsetting Lucas any further.

  I got up and rummaged through my closet looking for a shirt. With about three minutes to spare, I emerged from my room. All of my friends were already on their way to class. I had to jog part of the way, but I made it on time, just barely.

  By the time dinner rolled around, I still hadn’t heard from Lucas, and I knew he was in bed for the night. I was worried. The skating mistake was more significant for him than I imagined. I wondered if my cavalier attitude touched off other worries about me.

  After dinner with my friends, I decided to go for a walk. It was cold outside, but there was no wind, and the cold wasn’t bitter and cutting. I walked for more than half an hour before returning to the shared house where I lived at the edge of campus.

  Cal met me at the door. He said, “We were just discussing whether we should send out a search party.”

  “I needed to go for a walk.”

  Cal sighed. “You could have called or sent a text message.”

  I said, “You could have done that, too, if you were that worried.”

  “I did, and so did Erin.”

  I opened my eyes wide and fumbled to pull my phone from my pocket. If I missed messages from Cal and Erin, it was possible that I missed a message from Lucas, too. I stared at the screen hoping to find one. After scrolling through multiple messages of concern from my friends, I sighed heavily.

  Cal put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s not that bad. We decided to not really worry unless we saw you featured on the news before bed.”

  10

  Lucas

  It felt like he was trying to shove a dagger into my heart. I decided that I didn’t have to take it. The humiliation I endured immediately after my tragic skating mistake was unavoidable. It was in the press and whispered in the pubs, but it was eventually over. Somehow, James found out about it and brought it up again. I gave him the chance to end the conversation, and then I had to end it myself by turning the computer off.

  That’s all it took this time. It was as easy as flipping the switch. I wished that ending all of my troubles in life was so easy. At the moment it was a simple solution.

  I returned to my work in the studio. Before the call, I was on a roll churning out the work for my latest client. I had the logo and general graphic design approved. Now it was just a matter of putting together the detailed specifics and collecting payment.

  As I worked, something felt lighter. I knew that it was the absence of concern about James. I didn’t think about what he might be doing. I didn’t think about where our relationship was going. I only thought about the fact that I wasn’t thinking about him.

  Late in the afternoon, I complete
d the work for my client, and I returned home early to my apartment. After a quick dinner of cheese, salad, and leftover pork from the night before, I climbed into bed. Soon I was asleep, and I slept until morning, nearly twelve hours.

  When I finally hauled myself out of bed, I was sure that lead weights were attached to my ankles. I couldn’t understand how I spent half a day in bed and was more exhausted than when I first crawled between the sheets. I had a 9:00 a.m. client meeting, and I rushed through the morning to get to my studio.

  “You look a little pale, Lucas. Is it just winter, or are you feeling bad?” Juliet was one of my first customers when I set out on my own in graphic design, and she was one of the most consistent, too.

  I asked, “Do I look that bad? I don’t feel sick, but I’m tired. Maybe it is the winter. I’ve not been outside in the sunshine much. I go to the pool for exercise, and that won’t help the color of my skin.”

  Juliet held her hand up to my forehead. “If you do get sick, stay home. The winter is a bad time of year to push yourself hard. Drink a lot of fluids and avoid the sneezers in the pubs.”

  I laughed softly at her comment about the sneezers. I said, “That’s enough about my health. Do you have new projects for me?”

  Juliet provided office assistance for eight different proprietors. They ranged from an Amsterdam-based band to an interior designer who was expert at coming up with the right decorating for homes but, by her own words, was helpless when it came to advertising her talents.

  “Not just one, Lucas. I have three. The deadlines are a little tight, so let me know if you can’t take them on. I don’t want to push you too hard.”

  “My schedule is light right now. Show me the details. I can probably handle all three.”

  I had a lunch date with Anna, and she was just as concerned as Juliet. She pushed a little harder for a diagnosis, but I delivered a negative response to every question she asked me. I didn’t have a fever. I wasn’t dehydrated. I was regularly eating fruits and vegetables.