“What?” Aaron asked. “You said you could feel your toes.”
“Yes, but now I’m two inches taller than usual and I can’t feel the ground.”
“Ugh.” Aaron skated back over to Zack and stuck out his hands. “Still not bad boundaries, although hopefully I’m cute enough for you to want to hold my hands.”
Aaron winked. Zack wondered if this were hell and if so, what he’d done to deserve it.
“We’re going to teach you how to walk,” Aaron explained, “which is a thing you already know how to do.”
It wasn’t. Zack felt more absurd than he had in at least a decade as Aaron skated backwards so he could hold Zack’s hands as he marched around the ice.
Then Aaron let go.
Zack took three steps before his feet slipped out from under him. He had a moment’s sensation of being airborne before his ass hit the ice. Hard.
He gritted his teeth. “Damn, that hurts.”
“Did you break anything?” Aaron didn’t look particularly worried.
“I don’t think so,” Zack said as he tried to figure out how to get up. He felt like a crab skidding across the ice on its back.
“Hands and knees,” Aaron said.
Once more Zack had few options other than doing as he was told. And really, this whole nightmare exercise might have been a little less hard if he wasn’t fighting his brain’s reluctance to take orders. At least until Aaron corrected him again.
“Ugh, not like that,” Aaron said as Zack pressed his palms to the ice.
“Why not?”
“’Cause someone can skate over your fingers and cut them off.”
“Tell me you’re joking.” Zack peered up at him. Which wasn’t a bad angle from which to view Aaron.
Focus, he scolded himself.
“Nope. Everyone has a fingers story,” Aaron said mildly.
“Is that like how everyone has a kidney thieves story involving a friend of their second cousin?”
Aaron shook his head. “Finger. Zamboni ice. Baggie. Ambulance.”
“Great. Why am I doing this again?” Because journalism, his brain unhelpfully supplied. And worse, because you’re now a fool who wants to impress a guy.
Aaron had his own answer, though. “So when you write your article you understand how hard this is and don’t write a crappy opening about glitter, homosexuality, or tween girls.”
“There’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” Zack said as he finally stumbled up to his feet, mostly by clutching onto Aaron, who might have been small but was also completely, freakishly immoveable.
“No,” Aaron agreed sternly, “there’s not.” If he had more to say about the subject—and Zack was sure he did—he kept it to himself with pursed lips and a sharp gaze.
“Are people assholes to you because you’re a skater?” he ventured.
“For that to be true, I’d have to know people who aren’t skaters.” Aaron took Zack’s hands and slowly pried his fingers loose from his jacket. Zack hadn’t realized he’d been gripping him quite so hard. “Now that we’re done with your bad boundaries... try to glide, like push with one foot and then go. And please don’t look at your feet, it throws your balance off.”
Zack did his best to follow what felt like too many directions at once. Rather than look at the ice he locked eyes with Aaron, who smiled encouragingly at him.
The look was so appealing, sweet and come-hither at the same time, a smile just for him, as if they were the only two people in the world and Zack was doing right, exactly right, just as he was.
That was not a thing that usually turned Zack’s crank—usually he was the one giving both orders and approval—but oh this was working for him right now. Surely—surely—that look was calculated. Aaron was, after all, a trained performer. But it still made Zack’s knees go weak. Which was a problem, as his muscles were way too tense to be able to incorporate any shift in balance. He went down again, this time forward onto his hands. It didn’t hurt as much as that first fall. But it was still unpleasant. At least he sort of knew how to get up this time.
Zack looked up at Aaron, annoyed both at the sudden attraction that could only cause problems and at this entire venture that was going to turn him into one giant bruise.
“I hate this,” he said. “And also possibly you.”
AN HOUR LATER ZACK was cold, sore, and, he assumed, wildly bruised everywhere he had fallen. When their lesson was finally finished, Aaron coaxed him off the ice and, before Zack managed to hobble over to a bench and sink down on it, was back in the center of the rink spinning at a rate that felt like it shouldn’t be humanly possible. His head was back, his eyes were closed, and one hand reached upwards, the other pressed to his heart.
Definitely a different kind of creature, Zack thought. What Aaron had been teaching him had been a galaxy apart from what he was doing on the ice alone. Zack had known this, but seeing it in person was a different, almost sublime, experience.
I have been here less than twenty-four hours and am already in so much trouble.
Zack managed to get his skate guards on by himself and felt rather proud of that. He grimaced as he drained the rest of his coffee, gone frigid in the cold rink, and was about to lever himself to his feet again to find a drinking fountain when he heard voices.
Katie and Brendan were standing next to each other on the mats a quarter of the way around the rink, watching Aaron practice. Ordinarily they would have been too far away to make out what they were saying but sound travelled oddly in this space and Zack could hear them far too clearly.
“He’s hungry
