“I never said that!”
“You don’t have to say it when all you do is tell me all the different things I can do to be… better. To be more successful. I know I haven’t lived up to my potential, I don’t forget that, ever. Not for a minute. I put enough pressure on myself every day. Do you know how hard it is for me to know that you think I’m a disappointment too?”
Dad cursed and shook his head. “I don’t think you’re a disappointment!”
“Yeah, but you don’t think I’m good enough. You don’t think I’m enough. You don’t want to spend time with me. You don’t want to go to my competitions. I don’t call you, but you don’t call me either! All you ever do is tell me everything I can do different. Like if I don’t go to college, that’s it. I’m a failure. I’m not sorry, Dad. I’m not sorry I love this. But I am sorry I haven’t been more successful. Maybe you’d be more proud of me if I’d won something big. Maybe then you would understand why I love this so much and then you’d be okay with it.”
My dad cursed again, this time both of his hands going up to his face to scrub them.
But he didn’t deny that he’d be more proud of me if I’d won more. That maybe then he would be fine with it. That he would drop the college thing.
My head began to throb almost instantly, and I got up, knowing this was done and there was nothing else left to say. I didn’t look at him exactly, but stood so that my side was to where he was sitting, my attention forward on one of the walls that had LUKOV COMPLEX painted on it. “I love you, Dad, but I can’t change who I am and what I want out of my life. Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do when I can’t compete anymore, but I’ll figure it out. I’m not going to give up what I love just because I might not have it forever,” I told him, sad and disappointed but a little relieved too.
By that point, my dad had his hands on his head and was taking turns sighing and mumbling under his breath.
I wanted to touch him, to tell him it was fine, but I couldn’t. Not then.
“Have a safe trip back to California, and tell Anise and the kids I said hello,” I told him, fisting my hand at my side.
He didn’t look up, and I wasn’t completely surprised. My mom had always said I got my ego from him. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. And that’s just the way things were.
Feeling just a little sick, I made my way back toward the ice, debating whether or not to tell my mom about Dad showing up and trying to talk to me.
More than halfway around the wall, I heard the sound of blades on the ice get louder and then the sharp sound of them coming to a stop. There was only one person who sounded like that. So, I wasn’t surprised when I heard, “Boo.”
I turned around with just enough time to see something come flying at me. I caught the shiny thing instinctively and opened my palm to find a Hershey’s kiss. I didn’t look at Ivan as I undid the wrapper, stuck it in my mouth, and muttered, “Thank you.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied before going, “Want to get something to eat before ballet? I’ll treat your broke ass.”
I couldn’t help the smirk I shot him even as I thought about how much better I would have wished the conversation with my dad would have gone, but I did control the nod I gave him afterward.
“Let’s get this done, and then we can go.”
“Okay.”
He nodded, those blue eyes on me, and said, “Okay.”
I was going to be all right.
I would.
But I had no idea how wrong I would be.
Getting back out on the ice, I couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling in my stomach that my dad gave me. Maybe if I won something this season, he would change his mind.
But if he couldn’t, what was I going to do? Beg him to accept me? Fuck that.
“Let’s go over that one part with the side-by-side triple-triple combo,” Coach Lee called out as I met up with Ivan in front of her.
He smacked the back of his hand against my leg, and I smacked him right back.
I didn’t need my dad to love me, I told myself. I didn’t. I never had. I was going to do what I’d always wanted to do—for me. For my mom. For Sebastian, Tali, Jojo, and Rubes. I would.
“You sure you’re good?” Ivan asked as we got into position.
I nodded at him, thinking about how I was going to do well for Ivan too.
“Positive?” he asked.
I nodded again. Everything was going to be fine… and if it wasn’t, I would make the best out of it. I would know I had given it my all and some people just weren’t meant for some things.
Ivan didn’t look like he believed me exactly, but he nodded back. I didn’t think about the combo we were going to do—two jumps with three revolutions each, back to back.
I was going to be fine. I wouldn’t let myself be any less, especially not when the season was just about to start.
The music started a few beats before we were supposed to go into the jump. I could do this. Everything would be fine.
Ivan and I were going to do great. Be fine. Be awesome.
We started off in the same place in the music, a few seconds before the two jumps, with just enough time to gain the momentum to go into them.
The first triple toe loop went as well as it could have. The balance was right, the speed was right, and out of my peripheral vision, I saw Ivan in the exact spot he needed to be. Everything was going to be fine. This was what I’d been born to do. Digging my toe pick into the ice to go into the second triple toe loop of our jump combination, I had my opposite blade firmly on the ice, and I went up for another.
But I hadn’t been focusing. Not enough. I took it for granted as I reminded myself that I could do this shit with my eyes closed.
That’s when everything went wrong. My weight was off… I was too loose on my left side…. I hadn’t put enough speed into it—thinking I was strong and it would be fine—but it wasn’t. And the second I knew something was wrong, I tried to bail.
But I’d waited too long, when I tried to catch myself and land on my foot instead of just hitting the ice.
I felt it.
I knew the instant my blade grazed the ground that I had fucked up.
I knew the landing was going to be bad.
But there was no way to know just how bad. Not until the rest of my weight came down, and then, I realized how screwed up everything was, how off-center the rest of my body was. Later on, I could look back on the footage and see that it was just a giant clusterfuck. My foot was in the wrong position, my weight went in the opposite direction, and my ankle tried its best, but couldn’t do the impossible.
I felt my foot give out under me. Felt my body try to compensate, but hit the ice because holyfuckingshit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit.
It didn’t hurt until I was already on my ass on the ice, clutching the area just above my ankle over the leather of the boot. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my body it was in shock. But I knew, I fucking knew something was wrong as the music for our set kept on playing in the background and I sat there, bad, bad pain shooting through my ankle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see where Ivan had stopped right after his landing, probably having gone into the next foot sequence before noticing I wasn’t right beside him like I should have been. Like I was always supposed to be.
In my head, I could picture his face as he realized I wasn’t next to him like we had practiced a thousand times in the past. I could picture his face as he realized I’d fucked up. I could picture his face looking back at me in confusion as to why I wasn’t getting the fuck up to go after him, like I usually did when a jump went wrong and I didn’t stick the landing.
But I’d fallen.
I wasn’t in blinding pain, but I knew there was something wrong.
I knew there was something wrong, and I knew I needed to get up because we had a lot of work to do. We were supposed to work on nailing this shit. We were supposed to perfect all of this.
I needed to get up.