The thought of the Olympics made my stomach swoop. Here I was with my biggest rival for gold, sharing a meal and wearing his PJs while his cat rubbed against our ankles. I could imagine my mother’s fury at my softness and how shocked our competitors and everyone else would be if they could see us now.
A thrill rippled through me. It felt wonderfully forbidden even though all we were doing was eating dinner and watching a Property Brothers rerun.
It wasn’t like we were fucking—which wasn’t something I should think about, so I tried to shut it down immediately. But my mind still whirled, shaking off the lingering migraine slowness.
Under the table, if I moved my left leg an inch or two, my knee would touch his. If I leaned over and kissed him, what would he do?
My heart skipped as I looked at him. A chunk of salsa had caught on the corner of his mouth. He glanced at me, going still as he swallowed, a question in his deep brown eyes.
I reached out and swiped the tomato from his lips, touching him for a fleeting moment. “Salsa,” I said.
Henry was like a statue as I turned back to the TV renovation and took another bite of dinner. I ate and pretended everything was completely normal. He started eating again too, and when I wiped my mouth with a sharply folded cloth napkin, I darted out my tongue to lick the salsa from my thumb.
Chapter Seven
Henry
Why was Theodore Sullivan so persistently nice?
Well, I supposed he wasn’t always, but neither was I. He was generous more often than not, regularly going out of his way to encourage others.
As I ate a banana and circled my ankles, sitting on a chair backstage at the Grand Prix Final with my socked feet straight out in front of me in the air, I watched him comfort his young American teammate as she cried in frustration.
He sat on the floor in the corner with June across the nondescript open space, and though I couldn’t hear, from the way she was gesturing as she spoke I was sure she was complaining about her under-rotations. She wore a tracksuit, but her hair was still twisted into an intricate knot and her glittery makeup smudged her cheeks.
I sympathized, but what could really be said about it? She needed to go higher. If she persisted in completing more than a quarter rotation of a jump on the ice as she landed, the jumps would be downgraded. It had to be corrected, and better to do it now while she was still relatively young.
But Theodore could apparently find quite a bit to say about it. He gesticulated and smiled encouragingly and talked and talked. June sniffled and nodded and eventually gave him tentative smiles. He wrapped an arm around her slim shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
A shiver rippled through me as I imagined what it would feel like.
When I finished fifty ankle circles in both directions, I stood to do some shaking, starting with my hands, then my arms, then bouncing into my knees as well, waking up my body. I was used to jet lag, but some days it was harder than others. I’d won NHK in Japan with a clean short and one major mistake in the long—a fall on my quad toe combination. The quad Lutz had been my best yet, though.
Of course it bothered me not to go clean in both, but there was the Grand Prix Final here in Torino, Nationals, and of course the Olympics, plus Worlds a few weeks after that. There was danger in peaking too early in the season.
As I sat again, listening to the muffled music playing in the rink for the pairs’ short program—some terribly dreary old song about chasing cars—Theodore plopped down on the floor at my feet and huffed with his phone in hand.
“I swear to God, if my mom annoys Mr. Webber one more time… He’s not even coaching me right now! And I’m an adult!”
It truly was inappropriate. I was fortunate that while my parents had always supported my very expensive skating career, they would have been just as happy for me to quit.
They had jobs and interests and had always deferred to my coaches. But there were many parents in the sport who were far, far too invested in their children’s skating.
“Does she contact Manon and Bill too?”
“She tried, but they blocked her. Mr. Webber still uses an old landline, so he’s just hanging up on her now. He’s got too much to deal with right now without her piling on.” He shook his head, lips pressing into a thin line. “As if it’s his fault I was second in the short? You were clean, and I popped my Axel. Of course you’re in first place.”