Hartley slid onto the ice beside me. “Come on, Callahan. Let’s move.”
I turned to look at him, but his smile did not reach all the way to his eyes. He waited, watching me while I wrestled with invisible demons. “Alright,” I said, finally. With one stick in each hand, I reached down, digging the ice picks into the surface. My sled shot forward about three feet. The blades under my backside must have been decently sharp.
“There you go,” he said. Hartley dug in too, and went shooting off toward the blue line. I watched him pick up speed. The ice looked enormous from where I sat. I dug in my sticks and pushed. He was right — it was possible to pick up velocity. But when I leaned my body to turn the sled, I quickly lost speed. A real skater tilts on a single blade edge to turn. The sled was less negotiable.
But still, it worked.
I took a few deep, steadying breaths of ice rink air. And then I turned around and skated towards Hartley.
“Getting a feel for it?” he asked, reaching inside his jacket. He pulled out a puck and tossed it onto the ice.
“It’s not very maneuverable,” I said. “How am I going to get past your fat ass if I can’t turn?” I shot forward and smacked the puck with the business end of one stick.
He grinned. “Actually, the blades can be set closer together. But you tip over a lot. It’s kind of like kayaking.”
I skidded to a stop. “Hartley, are you telling me you have this thing on the baby setting?”
He raised both his sticks defensively. “Simmer down. It was an oversight.” He hitched himself closer to me. “Bail out for a second.” I tipped myself onto my side, and he reached over to adjust the sled. “Try it now.”
I righted myself, and immediately fell onto my other side. “Wait…” I pressed up again and then began sticking like mad. I shot across the ice, leaned, and turned quickly in an arc. When I looked back at Hartley, he was kneeling on the ice, tweaking the blade under his own sled. I fetched the puck while he strapped himself back in. “Face off?”
“Bring it,” he said, steering himself toward the dot.
I tossed the puck up into the air, and it came down to his advantage. Hartley hooked it with his stick, keeping it out of my reach. But then he fumbled, trying to use the wrong end of the stick for propulsion. I shot ahead and took possession, stickhandling toward the net. The next thing I saw was Hartley’s sled skating past. He spun around, taking a defensive position. With a stick in each hand, his long arms covered quite a bit of the crease. I lined up a wide shot, watching Hartley stretch in preparation for meeting it. At the last second, I flipped my stick around and shot the puck backhand, into the narrow space between his sled and his stick. The puck sailed through into the net.
The look of surprise on his face was priceless. “You deked me?”
I began to giggle, and my sled tipped onto its side. Poised with my forearms on the ice, I shook with laughter. But the joy unhooked something else in my chest, and my eyes got suddenly hot. There were too many ghosts on the ice with me — sweaty little versions of my former self, darting around on sharpened skates, shooting to kill. My chest tightened, and my breath came in heaving sobs. And then tears began running down my face, falling onto the ice beneath me.
Seconds later, Hartley swept into place beside me. With gentle hands he pulled me up off the ice, leaning me against his body. There were sweet words spoken into my ear, but I couldn’t hear them. I was too busy shaking, and crying into the collar of his jacket. “Shh,” he said. “Shh.”
“It’s…” I tried. “I was…”
He only held me tighter. “This was a mistake,” he whispered.
I shook my head. “No, it’s good,” I bit out. “It is. But before…” I shuddered. “It’s so hard…to accept.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hartley said, his own voice breaking. “I’m so damned sorry.”
“I was perfect,” I said. “And I didn’t even know.”
“No,” he whispered into my ear. “No, no. Perfect isn’t real.” I took a deep, shaky breath, and the feel of his strong arms around me began to feel steadying. “There’s no more perfect, Callahan. Now there’s only really damned good.”
Chapter Twenty: Cry Like a Little Girl
— Corey
Eventually I stopped crying. When Hartley looked at his watch, he said, “there’s twenty minutes until the van comes back for us.”
My face was a dribbling mess, and I wiped my eyes on my jacket. “You’d better fish that puck out of the net, then,” I said. “I can probably score on you a few more times. In between crying jags.”
“We’ll just see about that, Callahan.”
I managed to put the puck away one more time, to Hartley’s three. When we got back on the bus, I was sweating everywhere. “We wore the wrong gear,” I said. “Next time I’ll lose the jacket. But gloves and elbow pads would be nice.”