Mom opened her mouth, but I kept going.
“No, no. He was. I swear he was. Y’all never heard him, but it happened, he just made sure not to ever get caught. Karina knows.”
“What did he do to you?” James asked, the only one who seemed to still be on my side. At least because he wasn’t denying my claim and sounded interested to actually hear the facts.
I was going to give them too, because the last thing I wanted was for Mom and Jonathan to keep assuming that crazy shit. Especially with what might happen. Maybe. Possibly.
So, I told them.
Shit hit the fan the day Ivan Lukov wore the ugliest costume I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.
I had been sixteen back then, and Ivan had just turned twenty. I remembered that because it had always amazed me that he wasn’t even four years older than me but already so much further ahead in his career. He had already won multiple championships as a junior with his longtime partner before going into the senior level at seventeen. At twenty, people had already been shitting themselves all over him for years. Little did I know, nothing would change over the next decade.
By that point, his sister and I had already been friends for a few years. I’d already spent the night at her house more than a handful of times. She had already spent the night at my house more than a handful of times. Ivan had just been that family member I saw on her birthdays and randomly at her house when he’d drop by to visit. He’d never really said anything to me directly up until then, apart from shooting me reluctant expressions that existed because his parents expected him to have good manners.
So, on that day years ago, when he’d skated out on the ice as I was stretching on the floor, I hadn’t been able to hide my horror, and I didn’t even bother trying. What he had been wearing resembled something the Chiquita Banana lady would have worn. Frills, yellow, red, green… there’d even been a flower somewhere in there, and these awful yellow pants that made his legs look like genuine bananas in his boy-man body back then.
That costume was the worst. The absolute worst. I’d worn some leotards my sister had made me that had been… experimental, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings so I’d put them on anyway.
But what I wore had nothing on what the hell he’d been wearing that day.
Ivan had then started skating with his partner, some girl that he’d skated with for years before then but hadn’t lasted much longer after that. Bethany something. Whatever she had been wearing hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as his costume though. I’d seen their program in bits and pieces when I wasn’t busy; I’d heard the music that would go along with it too, obviously. But I hadn’t seen the costumes until then. It was like watching someone break dance to Mozart. It didn’t make sense. And in my mind, the train wreck he’d been wearing had taken away from the piece he and his partner were performing, which wasn’t exactly a mambo.
I’d blame that for being the reason I opened my big mouth that day. I thought he’d be doing a disservice to his routine. So, I thought I was doing him a solid by saying something.
I know for sure I hadn’t thought about what I was doing before I went up to him as he’d been getting off the ice following the end of his practice, clipping his skate guards on to the blade below his black boots. And in that moment, I told the boy-man who had said zero to me before that, “You should really change your costume.”
He hadn’t even blinked as he’d turned his head to look at me and asked, in the one and only polite sentence that he had ever and would ever direct at me, “Excuse me?”
Maybe I could blame my mom or even my siblings for not stressing enough that I needed to shut up and keep my opinions to myself. Because of all the things I could have said to soften my words, I didn’t pick any of them. “It’s ugly,” was exactly what had come out of my mouth.
Not “It takes away from your lines and the height in your jumps.” Not “It’s a little too bright.”
I didn’t say any of those things to make my comment less asshole-ish.
Then to let him know that it wasn’t just horrific, I’d added, “It’s butt ugly.”
And everything changed after that.
The twenty-year-old had blinked at me like it was his first time seeing me, which it wasn’t, and then reared back. He spit out in a low, low voice from that boy-man body, “It’s not my costume you should be worried about.”
I remember my first thought: bitch.
But before I could say a word, those black eyebrows, which were a complete opposite of his sister’s light brown ones, had inched their way up his smooth forehead in this way that reminded me of the way that other girls looked at me sometimes… like I was less than them because I didn’t wear the same fancy clothes and brand-new skates they did. My mom couldn’t afford that stuff, and she had always avoided asking my dad for money if it was possible… but I’d always thought it had been more about her being worried he wouldn’t give her the money because it was for figure skating and not just because he was being cheap. I would have skated in my underwear back then as long as I had ice time. Not having fancy clothes hadn’t been an issue once she had explained to me that it was all she could afford.
But the thing was, no one had ever made me feel bad about not wearing designer dresses and costumes. At least to my face. Behind my back was a different story. You couldn’t hide a person’s expressions or eye movement. You couldn’t shut off your ears from hearing what people thought they were whispering, but really weren’t. Back then, other girls hadn’t liked me because I was competitive and sometimes had a bad attitude when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to.
I’d reared back just like he had, thinking about my sister who had made me my costume—this plain but pretty light blue leotard with rhinestones along the neckline and sleeves—and got pissed. And I’d said the only thing that came to mind, “I’m just telling you the truth. It looks dumb.”
His cheeks had turned a shade darker than the normal near-peach they were. It wasn’t a blush or anything close to it, but for him, I think now it was basically the same thing. Ivan Lukov had leaned toward me and hissed a warning that would follow me for the next couple years, “Watch yourself, runt,” before he’d gone off toward the changing rooms or wherever the hell he went.
Two weeks later, in his mambo outfit, he’d won his first US National Championship in pairs. People had talked a lot of shit about his costume, but even as gaudy as it was, it hadn’t been enough to shadow his talent. He’d deserved to win. Even if he’d hurt the eyes of the people who’d watched.
One week after that, on his first day back at the LC, while I’d been feeling pretty bad about what I’d said and Karina had been no help in telling me what I could do to fix it because she had thought what I’d done was hilarious, Ivan went out of his way to talk to me. And by talk, I really meant mutter in passing, “You might as well quit now. You’re too old to get anywhere.”
Me with the big mouth had been too shocked by what he’d said to have time to form a comeback before he’d skated away.
I’d thought about his words all that day because the honesty in them had hurt my feelings and made me angry at the same time. It had been hard back then to not compare myself to the girls who had been skating since they were three and were more advanced than I was, even if Galina had told me I was naturally gifted and that if I worked hard enough I could be better than them one day soon.
But I didn’t tell anyone what he’d said. No one else needed that idea in their heads.
I didn’t say anything until a month later, when this asshole had gone out of his way to ask me to my face after practice, “Is that leotard supposed to be a size too small or…?” For no damn reason.
That time, I did get out, “You bitch,” before he’d disappeared.
And the rest… was history.