It was just another shitty sign that time and life kept going even when I didn’t want it to.
Stretching my legs out ahead of me, I ignored the handful of older teenage girls already clustered on the opposite side of the room furthest from the door, getting dressed and fiddling with their boots, talking as they did it. They didn’t look at me, and I didn’t do more than glance at them out of the corner of my eye. Undoing my laces, I thought about showering for all of a second before deciding that was going to be too much work when I could wait twenty minutes until I got home so I could change and shower there in my full-sized bathroom. I took my right white skate off, and then gingerly pulled off the nude-colored bandage that covered my ankle and a couple inches above it.
“Oh my God!” one of the teenagers pretty much shrieked from the other side of the room, making it impossible for me to zone her out. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“No!” someone else responded as I unlaced my left skate, trying hard to ignore the girls.
“Seriously?” another voice, or maybe it was the same one from the beginning, piped up. I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t like I was trying to listen to them.
“Seriously!”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously!”
I rolled my eyes and kept trying to ignore them.
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
Yeah. I couldn’t ignore shit. Had I ever been that annoying? That girly?
No way.
“Where did you hear that?”
I was in the middle of putting in the code to my combination lock on my locker when there was a chorus of noises that had me glancing over my shoulder to glare at the girls. One of them literally looked like she was on speed, she was baring her teeth, and her hands were hanging out right at chest level as she clapped her palms together. Another girl had her fingers knitted together, palms joined in front of her mouth, and she might have been shaking.
What in the hell was wrong with them two?
“Hear it? I saw him walk in with Coach Lee.”
Ugh.
Of course. Who the hell else would they be talking about?
I didn’t bother sighing or even rolling my eyes as I turned back to my locker and pulled my gym bag out, unzipping it the moment I set it on the bench beside me so I could dig out my phone, keys, flip-flops, and a tiny bar of Hershey’s I kept in there for days like today. I took off the wrapper and stuffed that thing in my mouth before grabbing my phone. The green light on the screen blinked, telling me I had unread messages. Unlocking it, I glanced over my shoulder to see the girls there still squawking and making it seem like they were on the verge of having a heart attack over The Asswipe. Ignoring them, I took my time reading through the group chat messages I had missed while practicing.
Jojo: I want to go to the movies tonight. Anyone in?
Tali: Depends. What movie?
Mom: Ben and I will go with you, baby.
Seb: No. I’ve got a date tonight.
Seb: James doesn’t want to go with you? I don’t blame him.
Jojo: The new Marvel movie.
Jojo: Seb, I hope you get an STD tonight.
Tali: Marvel? No thanks.
Tali: I hope you get an STD too, Seb.
Mom: WOULD YOU ALL BE NICE TO EACH OTHER?
Seb: All of you can eat shit except for Mom.
Rubes: I’d go with you but Aaron’s not feeling well.
Jojo: I know you would, Squirt. Love you. Next time.
Jojo: Mom, let’s go. 7:30 work?
Jojo: Seb- [emoji of a middle finger]
Jojo: Jas, you in?
I looked up as the girls in the changing room made noises I wasn’t sure I was capable of, wondering what the hell was going on with them. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t like Ivan didn’t train here five days a week for the last million years. Seeing him wasn’t that exciting. I would rather watch paint dry.
Scrunching up my bright pink-colored toenails, I took them in and purposely ignored the bruise I had right alongside my smallest toe and the start of a blister I had beside my big toe from the seam of a new brand of tights I’d worn the day before.
“What is he doing here?” the teenagers kept going, reminding me that I needed to get out of the room as quickly as possible. I’d already reached my limit for how much I could handle today.
Glancing back at my phone, I tried to decide what to do. Go home and watch a movie or suck it up and go to the movies with my brother, mom, and Ben—or as the rest of us called him in secret, number four?
I would rather go home and not hang out in a crowded movie theater on the weekend, but….
My hand fisted for a second before I typed up a response.
I’ll go, but I need food first. Going home now.
Then I smiled and added another message.
Seb, I third you getting an STD. Aim for gonorrhea this time.
Setting my phone between my legs in the meantime, I grabbed my car keys from the pocket of my bag and snagged my flip-flops, then carefully set each of my skates into a custom protective case lined with a faux-fur over thin memory foam that my brother Jonathan and his husband had bought me years ago. I zipped my bag back up, slid my feet into my sandals, and got to my feet with a sigh that made my chest feel tight.
Today hadn’t been the best, but it would get better, I told myself.
It had to.
The good thing was, I didn’t have work tomorrow, and I didn’t usually come skate on Sundays either. My mom would probably make pancakes for breakfast, and I was supposed to go to the zoo with my brother and niece since he was picking her up for the day. I’d missed enough moments in her life because of figure skating. Now that I had more time, I was trying to make up for it. It was better for me to look at it like that than get hung up on why I had more time on my hands. I was trying to be more positive. I just wasn’t that good at it yet.
“I don’t know,” one of the girls said. “But he usually doesn’t come in for a month or two after the end of the season, and it’s been what? A week since Worlds?”
“I wonder if he split up with Mindy.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Why did he split up with any of the rest of them before her?”
I’d already known from the moment one of them said Coach Lee’s name whom they were still talking about. There was only one man left at the LC—what most of us called the Lukov Ice and Sports Complex, or the Lukov Complex for short—that these girls would give a crap about. It was the same guy everyone gave a shit about. Everyone except me at least. And anyone else with a brain. Ivan Lukov.
Or as I liked to call him, to his face especially—the son of Satan.
“All I said was that I saw him. I don’t know what he’s doing here,” a voice said.
“He never comes over randomly, Stacy. Come on. Put two and two together.”
“Oh my God, are he and Mindy splitting up?”
“If they are, I wonder who he’ll skate with.”
“It could be anybody.”
“Shoot, I’d pay to partner with him,” a girl said.
“You don’t even know anything about pairs, stupid,” another girl said, snorting. I wasn’t actively listening, but my brain continued stringing together the pieces of their comments as they went in one ear and out the other.
“How hard could it be?” the other voice rattled off proudly. “He’s got the greatest butt in the country, and he wins with everyone. Sounds like a walk in the park to me.”
I rolled my eyes again, especially at the butt part. The last thing that idiot ever needed to hear was someone compliment it. But, she had missed the most relevant parts of Ivan. How he was the figure skating world’s sweetheart-slash-dreamboat. The World Skating Union’s poster boy for pairs skating. Hell, for skating in general, really. “Skating royalty” as some called him. “A prodigy” people had used when he’d been a teenager.
He was the man whose family owned the center I had trained at for over a decade.
The brother to one of my only friends.