Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  “Are you?” Layla asked with a little laugh. “Because I’d be surprised if she can even walk after the beating she took the last time she came in here. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that article is the last we hear from her.”

  Callie shook her head. Maybe that would be best for all of them, but she’d seen the fire in Max’s eyes every time she picked herself up after a fall. Women like her didn’t abandon ship just because the water got rough. Also, Max had issued a challenge in that hit piece of hers. She’d said the wide world of curling had four months to change her mind. Callie still didn’t know what to make of that open ending, other than the fact that Max seemed to intend to stick around for a while.

  “Guys, it’s just a humor piece.”

  “She’s a shitty reporter if she thought any of that would be funny to the people she has to work with for the rest of the season.” Brooke kicked the magazine aside and settled into a lunge of her own.

  Callie couldn’t disagree, but she suspected curlers weren’t the primary audience for Max’s article, and from the comments she’d read online, a great number of people had found the potshots hilarious. Her stomach tightened again, but she didn’t want to lose a whole practice to this topic, so she decided to move along. “We’ve got better things to focus on than the bad jokes of someone who can’t even stay upright on the ice.”

  Several people around her chuckled.

  “Yeah,” Ella’s fiancé, Finn, called from the next sheet over. “Who the hell is Max Laurens to be telling people what’s legitimate and what’s not, anyway?”

  She frowned and straightened herself to her full height, intending to ask what he meant, but a hush fell over the room. She turned to see what could make a relatively full club fall unnaturally quiet, and locked eyes with the cold gaze of Max Laurens.

  “She’s got a lot of nerve.” Finn started forward, but Callie shot out an arm and shook her head.

  “Leave her be.”

  He scowled, but even though he wasn’t on her team, he had sense enough to respect her position. Thankfully, the others in the club, either out of their own good nature or in a nod to her, followed along. One by one, each person turned their back on Max and returned to the games her mere presence had interrupted.

  Max clenched her jaw against the chilly reception. She couldn’t have honestly been surprised, but Callie still felt a little sorry for her. It didn’t have to be this way. She blamed herself, at least partially, for letting things get so out of hand at their first meeting. She’d only meant to throw her a lifeline, something to hang onto in unfamiliar waters. Instead, she’d given Max enough rope to hang herself. Still, she couldn’t be held totally responsible for what Max had done with it. Max was an adult, and Callie wasn’t a babysitter.

  She turned back to face her teammates, all of whom were now warming up with a diligence and focus she couldn’t remember seeing during a regular, midweek practice. Gone were the jokes and the empty chatter as they each trained their gaze toward the same spot at the other end of the ice.

  Max wandered closer and nodded an acknowledgment. Callie returned the gesture and picked up her broom. She had too much going on inside her head to decide how she wanted to play their next interaction, and like everything else in her life, Max would just have to take a backseat to curling practice.

  They went through the motions. She called shots, and her teammates made them. She called a sweep, and her teammates bore down. She asked questions about prospective shots, and her teammates offered emphatic answers. No one complained. No one wandered off. Most importantly, no one missed.

  The cloud surrounding Callie began to dissipate. Nothing had gone the way she’d wanted over the last week, and yet her team looked better than ever. She had hoped Max would help her cause by offering good press that would in turn lead to better funding. Max had gone in the opposite direction, but maybe that didn’t mean all her hopes were dashed. What if Max’s betrayal had actually helped more than it had hurt? What if she could use it as a rallying point to focus her team and give them something to push against? Nothing ever helped increase funding like winning, and if they played like they were practicing today, they had a good chance of winning.

  She glanced down at the other end of the ice where Max extended her hand to Ella, who ignored her and picked up another stone. Something in Callie’s stomach twisted into another new knot. Not long ago, Ella had seen Max as a thrilling new opportunity for camera time. Now she looked right past her toward the ice. Even Callie’s most playful team member had her pride. Part of her was happy to see everyone taking themselves seriously, but part of her didn’t want to burn other bridges completely.

  As she traded places with Brooke to take her own turn in the hack, Callie made the mistake of meeting Max’s eyes again. She saw nothing but steely resolve. Maybe the ice in Max’s gaze should’ve fortified her, but she couldn’t help wondering what had made such a beautiful face so stone cold. The expression predated her current chilly receptions. She’d seen it from the moment they’d first met. She probably should’ve taken the hint then. Still, her mother’s reminder to kill with kindness floated back into her mind as she assumed her delivery position. She couldn’t ignore Max and use her as a rallying point at the same time. She’d have to choose one or the other eventually.

  “Callie,” Max tried, after she’d released her first rock. “We need to—”

  “Practice.” Ella cut in. “We need to practice. You need to stay out of the way.”

  Max’s jaw twitched.

  Ella wasn’t wrong. They had a limited amount of time together each week, and they rarely got practices this focused so far out from a major matchup. Callie’s priorities would not waver in this area, no matter what she saw in Max’s eyes.

  Wordlessly she turned away from the woman who’d already captured too much of her emotional energy and set up to release another rock. She cued her process of clearing everything, first from her mind, and then from the periphery of her vision, until the only world that existed fit on a one-fifty-by-fifteen-foot sheet of ice. She focused on the sound of her own breathing as her fingers curled around a handle that had come to feel like an extension of her own body. Allowing her eyes to flutter briefly closed, she never lost sight of the spot she wanted, and then opening them once more, she pushed off fluidly. Weightless for those few seconds of suspended glide, she released the rock and the tension she’d felt only seconds earlier.

  She didn’t even have to wait to see the line before she called, “Never, never, nope.”

  “Draw weight,” Brooke confirmed from the other end of the ice, and indicated the rock would draw right up next to the one she’d left sitting in the center of the rings.

  “Perfect, Skip,” Layla called back to her, “as usual.”

  She shook off the compliment attached to the end of the assessment. She was generally far from perfect, as a player, as a leader, as an emissary for the sport, but that wouldn’t stop her from continuing to try.

  With that heavy thought, she rose and turned to face Max. Only she wasn’t there anymore. Sometime during the minute it had taken Callie to make the shot, Max had disappeared.

  She noticed the door to the curling area closing and leaned to the side to look through the large plate-glass windows to the lounge. Sure enough, Max had her back to them all, moving swiftly away.

  “Callie,” Layla said, suddenly beside her, voice low, “do not run after that woman.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, her gut clenching again.

  “Stay the course, Skip.”

  “Yeah,” she repeated, her voice weaker.

  Layla sighed. “You’re going after her, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She kicked off her curling shoes as she sprang off the ice, and didn’t even bother to slip into her street shoes as she watched Max use her stiff shoulder to push open the outer door to the club. Every head turned to watch Callie go, and she felt the early burn of shame, but it did little to slow her momentum as she weaved he
r way quickly toward the door. She caught it just before it slammed shut behind Max, and throwing it open shouted, “Hey!”

  Max turned and raised an eyebrow.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Seriously.” She stepped outside, the gravel of the alleyway pressing uncomfortably on her sock-covered feet. “What’s your problem? Are you this petulant and pouty all the time, or is it a new thing you’re trying on for shits and giggles?”

  Max’s mouth crooked up in a smile. “Wow.”

  “No, I want a serious answer, because you seem dead set on being as offensive as possible while still acting like the offended party. Did I do something to torque you off, or had you made up your mind to disdain me before we ever met?”

  Max frowned, opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She turned her head to the side as if pondering the question for a moment.

  “Are you kidding me?” Callie fired back. “You have to think about your answer that hard?”

  Max shrugged.

  “We’re busting our asses in here because we have a job to do.”

  Max rolled her eyes. “That is not a job.”

  “You’re a pretentious asshole, you know that?”

  Max laughed. “I’ve been told a time or two.”

  Callie sighed. “Has anyone told you that you suck at your job?”

  Max winced and offered no reply.

  “Has anyone told you that you don’t belong? That you don’t deserve what little you have? That all the work you’ve done to get where you are doesn’t mean a damn thing? Have you had people make jokes at your expense and publish them for the world to see, only to then turn around and treat you like you should be the one begging them for more attention?”

  Something wounded flickered through Max’s expression, but she still lifted her chin. “Actually, I have.”

  Callie stared at her, waiting, practically pleading with her to make the connection, but the mask of defiance fell back across her features as quickly as it had faded.

  “Look, you may not like curling, and you may not like me, but this is my job, and even if that doesn’t matter to you, writing about it’s supposed to be your job, too. Don’t you at least care about that?”

  Max’s shoulders slumped slightly, and she nodded. “I do.”

  “Then, maybe we could start from there. Your job matters to you. My job matters to me, and for the time being those jobs intersect. So, I’m all in on your little challenge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That temper tantrum you put into writing, you ended it with a challenge to change your mind about curling. I fully understand that you probably didn’t mean it, or maybe you thought you’d made a safe bet, but I’ve been bet against before, and I don’t like to lose any more than you like to surrender.”

  Max snorted softly.

  “Go ahead and laugh.” Callie gave her a dismissive wave. “But if you’re half as good at your job as I am at mine, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  With that, she turned and left Max standing in the alley. She didn’t even stop when she heard the door slam behind her, and she didn’t mind that everyone inside was staring at her.

  Swiping a copy of Max’s magazine off a table as she strode through the lounge and through the door to the ice, she didn’t stop until she reached the massive whiteboard where they posted announcements and planned strategy. A small crowd gathered as she neatly tore the article from the rest of the publication and used a magnet to fasten it to the metal frame of the board. Then, snatching up a black marker from the tray below, she scrawled two words, bold and big enough to be read from anywhere in the room: “Challenge Accepted.”

  The Buffalo Curling Club wasn’t nearly as crowded as it had been the day before. Perhaps four o’clock on a Tuesday wasn’t prime curling time. She had no idea when prime curling time might be. The last few times she’d stopped by after five, people had been here, so she hadn’t had to stop and think that perhaps that wasn’t always true. She glanced up at the rusted-out warehouse and wondered why she’d had to remind herself this wasn’t like an Olympic training center.

  Still, as she walked up to the glass and stared out across the ice, a handful of people were curling. On one sheet, there seemed to be a group of high schoolers playing around, and at the other side stood the solitary figure of Callie Mulligan.

  She allowed herself the luxury of watching Callie unnoticed. Despite all of the things Max had said about curling not being a sport, Callie still managed to look very much the part of an athlete. Of course, her body type was lean, and her thigh and calf muscles were clearly toned and firm even under her long, yoga-style pants. But there was something else about her, too, some intangible quality that set her apart from the others, who bore the body language of hobby players. Callie moved with confidence, grace, and purpose all melded together. She wasted no energy and suffered no distraction as she arranged several stones a few feet apart on the ice, then crouched low as if visually measuring their exact distance from each other. She did that little foot-push slide down the ice that everyone in the place seemed to have mastered, and Max winced at the unbidden memory of her own feet going out from under her.

  Thankfully, Callie’s singular focus kept Max unnoticed, affording her a few more minutes to watch her settle into the hack, stone in hand. She straightened her legs, showing off impressive glutes that Max admired with a slightly less-than-professional appraisal. Callie pushed off, making the long, low lunge seem easy, and released the stone, then hopped up and trotted after her own throw.

  Max knew enough now to marvel at the core strength and balance those moves required, but she barely had time to process how her understanding had evolved before the stone Callie had thrown connected with the first one she’d positioned at the other end, sending the stationary one out of play. The shot would have been pretty enough if it had stopped there, but it didn’t. Callie’s rock spun off in the opposite direction, sending it careening into the other stationary rock with considerably less force. The bump was enough to knock it back at least a foot, while Callie’s stayed put this time, right in the middle of the rings.

  Admiration got the better of Max, and before she could remember how much she resented having to be here she pushed through to the ice area.

  Callie glanced up, her quick smile fading into a frown. Max wondered whether the opposite had become true for her, as she generally frowned first and made someone work for the smile.

  “You’re back,” Callie said by way of greeting.

  “It’s my job.”

  “It was your job yesterday, too.” Callie nudged her throwing rock with her foot until it slid away, its blue handle spinning merrily.

  “And it will be my job tomorrow, and the next day, and the next week, so I suppose we should start getting ready for the first big match of the season.”

  “Season started last month. I think you mean the Masters tournament next weekend, which is our fourth event of the year.”

  Max ground her teeth. She didn’t like not being in the know. Reporters dealt in information like currency. Having none was bad, but she’d just admitted to having worse than none. She had counterfeit information. Bile rose in her throat, but she forced it down. She hadn’t made a real mistake. She hadn’t done the research. That was her fault, but admitting blame did little to improve her mood. “I thought curling was a winter sport. It’s only October.”

  Callie grinned and finished resetting her red rocks right back to the same spots she’d had them before her last throw. “The season starts when it starts. Sorry we didn’t ask your permission.”

  She didn’t respond as Callie slid back down the ice. What could she say? She couldn’t change the curling schedule any more than she could change the fact that she had to cover it. Actually, she could probably change her current writing assignment much more easily than she could change the curling schedule. She could always quit. She’d never done so in the past, but
other people did. They took time off. More than one of her colleagues and editors had suggested a leave of absence. She could call Flip right now and tell him she intended to walk off the job. She could go sulk or hide or spend a month drinking margaritas on a beach in Miami. She’d be warmer, and she’d probably have more fun, but she’d also have more downtime, and right now that prospect appealed to her even less than hours of watching curling.

  Turning back to Callie as she played the exact same shot as she had moments earlier, Max wondered if this woman would haunt her daydreams the way others did. She shouldn’t. She hadn’t earned that spot in Max’s psyche, but she’d taken up residence there nonetheless over the last twenty-four hours. Ever since Callie had blown up on her in the alleyway yesterday, Max had been able to think of little else.

  She didn’t feel guilty, not a bit, but intrigue certainly fell among her prevalent emotions, and unfortunately, so did interest. The woman was such a strange mix of fiery and mousy. Yesterday, as she’d shouted Max down, she’d seemed to war between sad and pissed off. Max knew that blend well. She also had an unfortunate familiarity with desperation, and she’d heard plenty of that lacing Callie’s tirade, too.

  Maybe that’s why the hook had landed in her chest and stuck there. She saw so many of her own emotions warring in Callie that, for a moment, it really seemed like they were in the same boat. She looked away, unable to process the connection through the haze of confusion and resentment still pushing at her from the inside. She scanned her surroundings, trying to tether herself to the physical. The ice, the steel, the concrete—she took solace in their solidity, until her eyes fell on a dry-erase board against the wall. There, splayed out in full black and white, was her article with the words “Challenge Accepted” underneath.

  She turned her head just as Callie’s rock cracked against first one and then another with pinpoint precision, and she immediately started resetting them to go again.

  Something inside her cracked. Callie felt the same way she did. She knew it. She saw all the swirling emotions, the anger, the sadness, the desperate pleading, the frantic clinging to any shred of hope, and yet she managed to display all of those things without an ounce of bitterness.