The deep breath he let out in relief, I didn’t really eat up as much as I could have.
Making my way to the opening onto the ice, I put my skate guards on and glanced over my shoulder to try and get Ivan’s attention. But he was still too busy talking to Coach Lee. On the floor, I headed toward the bleachers around the wall. Taking a seat in the middle of a bench, I stretched my legs out in front of me and faced the rink, watching my dad take a seat beside me but a few feet down.
On the ice, Ivan had turned around and was looking at us with a frown from his spot besides our coach.
He hadn’t said a word during practice that morning, and I was grateful he decided not to bring up my dad, let alone me crying all over him. There was only so much my pride could take. Instead, Ivan acted like nothing different had happened, like everything was normal.
Worked for me.
“Jasmine,” my dad said on an exhale.
I kept looking forward.
“You know that I love you, yes?”
Love was a weird word. What the hell was love? Everyone had such a different opinion on what it meant to them; it was hard to figure out how to use it. There was family love, friend love, romantic love….
Once, when I was younger, another skating mom had seen my mom smack me on the back of the head and had gotten really bent out of shape over it. But to me, that was how we were together. My mom had smacked me because I’d been a smart-ass and deserved it; I was hers and she loved me. Mostly though, my mom knew I didn’t react to hisses and threats.
Galina had always been the same way with me. She taught me responsibility and accountability. She didn’t take my backtalk. She’d smack me on the back of the head too.
But the thing was, I had never doubted that they wanted the best for me. I wanted honesty. I had needed them to love me more than my feelings, because I wanted to be better. I had wanted to be the best.
I had never wanted someone to baby me. I didn’t need it; it made me uncomfortable. It made me feel weak.
Love to me was honesty. Being real. Knowing someone’s best and worst. Love was a push that said someone believed in you when you didn’t.
Love was effort and time. And while I’d laid in bed the night before, it had jumped out to me that maybe that was why I had taken things so badly months ago when my mom had made it seem like I loved figure skating more than her. Because I knew what it was like to not be important to someone.
I had held this fucking grudge to my heart with duct tape and superglue, all the while being a massive hypocrite.
“Oh, Jasmine,” my dad whispered, sounding pained when I didn’t reply to his question. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him reach for me, his hand covering mine.
I couldn’t help but go stiff, and it was impossible to miss that my dad noticed and did the same.
“I do love you. I love you very much,” he said softly. “You’re my baby—”
I huffed, not letting myself suck in his claims of love.
“You are my baby,” my dad insisted, his hand still resting on my own.
Technically, yes.
But I wasn’t. And everyone knew that. He was just in denial, trying to make himself feel better.
“I want the best for you, Jasmine. I’m not going to say I’m sorry for it,” he said after I didn’t respond.
I still refused to look at him as I said, “I know you want the best for me. I get it. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
On the ice, Ivan started doing really lazy laps, his gaze staying on my dad and me, no matter where he was. He was watching to make sure everything was fine. I didn’t doubt that if I needed him, he’d skate over and butt in.
But I wasn’t that kind of person. I had avoided dealing with this as long as I could. It was time though.
“The problem is that you don’t know me, Dad.”
He scoffed, and I turned my head just enough to finally look at him.
“You don’t. I love you, but you don’t know me or understand me. Not even a little bit. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a pain in the ass or if you just don’t like me.”
He blew out a breath of frustration that I was going to ignore. “Why would you think I don’t like you?”
I blinked and tried to push away the gross, disappointed feeling in the middle of my belly. “Because you don’t. How many times have we spent time together, just us two?”
My dad’s mouth hung open for a moment before he closed it. “You were always busy. You’re always busy now.”
The answer was never. We’d never spent time together alone. He spent time with each of my brothers and each of my sisters, but never with me.
I was busy. But he’d never even tried. He’d never even come to the rink to sit at the bleachers and watch me practice, like everyone else had on multiple occasions. And if he’d ever even given a little bit of a shit, he would have.
So I controlled my breath, controlled my features and mouth so I could respond to him and not go off. “I am, but neither one of us made time for it. How many of my competitions have you gone to over the last… six years?”
For some reason, I didn’t enjoy the look of discomfort that came over his face. “You stopped inviting me,” he claimed.
Sadness that dwarfed every other sadness I had ever experienced in my life filled my entire body, but mostly the upper half of it.
“I stopped inviting you after you made me feel bad for asking you for money. I remember. You stopped going to any of my competitions before I was even nineteen. I remember you told me at the last one you went to, ‘Maybe you should focus on school, no?’ Do you remember telling me that right after I’d won first place? Because I do,” I reminded him, facing forward again to watch Ivan go into a shotgun spin that was half the speed he usually went at. The sadness in me grew stronger, thicker, and maybe in some way turned into resignation. Resignation that things had turned out this way and there was nothing I could do about it.
My dad said nothing.
“Do you know why I started figure skating?”
There was a pause and then, “It was a birthday party. Your mom made you go and you were mad because you didn’t want to.”
I blinked because that was exactly what had happened. I hardly knew the girl having the party, but she’d been a daughter of my mom’s friend. It wasn’t until she’d told me it was at a rink like in The Mighty Ducks, that I had agreed to go, still bitching the entire time.
At least until I’d gotten out on that ice and my body had just known what to do. “Like a duck in water,” my mom had called from the sidelines.
“That’s part of it, but not what I was asking,” I said, my voice sounding as tired as I felt. Drained, just so damned drained. “I started because I loved it. From the first moment I got on the ice, it felt right. And once I didn’t need to hold the walls anymore, it made me feel… free. It made me feel special. Everyone else that day could barely get around, but I picked up on it like this,” I explained, snapping my fingers. “And the better I got, the more I loved it. Nothing had ever made me happier than figure skating. I felt like I belonged. Do you understand that?”
“Yes… but you could have played any sport.”
“But I didn’t want to. Mom had tried to get me into swimming, gymnastics, soccer, karate, but all I ever wanted was this. It’s the only thing I’m good at, and you don’t see that or get it. I work so hard. I bust my ass every day for this. I have to do something a thousand times to do it decently, not even well. I’m not a quitter. I’ve never been a quitter, and I’m never going to be a quitter. But you don’t see that. You don’t get it.”
The man beside me let out an exasperated sigh as he tore his hand off mine and went to palm his forehead. “I’ve only wanted the best for my children, Jasmine. You included.”
“I know that. But all I want is for you to be supportive of me. Not everyone can do what I do, Dad! It’s hard. It’s so hard—”
“I never said it wasn’t hard.”
I made my hand into a fist before shaking it out. Patience. Be better. “Yeah, but you basically say you aren’t proud of me—”