He couldn’t help smiling as he followed Cal’s directions down a different route than he usually took. TCI had four sheets of ice, and while Zack had been coming here for weeks he had never spent time in any of the rinks other than the one Aaron and the other high-level skaters principally used. But the smell of the rubber mats and industrial disinfectant was the same throughout the complex, as was the bite of cold, the fluorescent lighting, and the constant hum of compressors. It felt pleasantly familiar and just a little bit like home.
Public sessions in the middle of the day, as it turned out, were more or less empty. Getting his own skates on and getting onto the ice felt like a much less daunting task when the only other people there were a woman who might have been in her seventies practicing footwork and a father with his young daughter clinging to his hands.
The woman who had fallen and hit her head—Tasha, if Zack remembered correctly—came out on the ice as he was skating laps to warm up. She caught his eye and waved, looking none the worse for wear. Zack smiled and waved back.
Since her accident Zack had felt more confident on the ice. He could stay upright, go fast, and if Tasha had survived her fall, he’d probably be fine. Although he was starting to get the sense that skaters were as easily as tough as anyone he’d known when he’d been in the field. He wasn’t sure he, himself, was that tough, but he’d probably survive.
The real problem—if he allowed himself to view anything about his skating as a problem—was grace. He did not have it. Not like this. He also wasn’t sure if he wanted it. Sometimes, Zack knew, it was best to play to your strengths.
As he practiced stroking and worked on his stops, he thought about his options. Until Cal’s little spiel he hadn’t given hockey much thought. Much like public skating at TCI in general, he knew it existed, but the figure skating community was so self-contained, that it and hockey might have been in two separate universes.
But there was an instant appeal in the idea. He could keep skating—which he enjoyed—without undue overlap with Aaron’s sphere. Which maybe was giving himself too much credit, but given the whole introducing-aspiring-Olympian-to-bondage thing, he wanted to score karma points where he could. Besides, if he was going to be in the Twin Cities for the next little while, he could stand to have something to do and to meet more people.
At the end of the session, he went back to the front desk to ask Cal for more information. As they were chatting—and Cal was happily inundating him with various schedules and flyers—Katie walked by. Zack nodded at her and was surprised when she stopped to say hello.
“You’re thinking about starting hockey?” she asked, with a glance at the calendar Cal had laid on the counter for him.
“Yeah,” he said, curious what her reaction would be. Katie had never been an obstacle to his work covering Aaron and the TCI skating program, but she had never seemed overly thrilled at his presence either. Zack could both understand and respect that. They each had their own professional priorities to attend to: him, his writing; her, her skaters. He wondered what it was like to be responsible for so many people’s high-stake careers. Perhaps someday she’d even let him write about her.
“You can’t play hockey in those,” she said with a glance at the skates he was holding, the ones Aaron had liberated from somewhere for his first day on the ice.
“Do you think I can play hockey at all?” he asked. He realized, with no small amount of surprise at himself, that he wanted Katie’s approval for this endeavor.
Katie looked him up and down. Zack found himself standing up straighter under her gaze.
“You’re big enough and you’re stubborn,” she finally said. “Any rec league could do worse, that’s for sure,” she added, with what might have been a smile.
It was the kindest thing she’d ever said to him, and Zack gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Now. Niceties over. We need to talk.” Katie grabbed his arm and started walking.
She was easily as strong as Aaron. Zack could only follow.
KATIE PULLED ZACK INTO the break room where he’d first met the TCI skaters and shut the door behind them. Zack braced himself; he could think of only one reason Katie would want to talk to him like this: Aaron. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten the shovel talk, but he didn’t think this time was going to be any more fun than any of the others.
“I told him this, and I’ll tell you,” Katie said briskly. “What Aaron does on his own time is his business, even if I have opinions.”
“Does Brendan have opinions?” Zack asked. If this was going to happen, he might as well know where every potentially involved party stood.
“You mean, what does the more rational, easygoing man think?” Katie said sharply.
“Oh. Fuck. I didn’t mean—I’m sorry,” Zack said, chagrined at his own inadvertent sexism.
“Thank you.” Katie gave him a stare he could feel himself wilting under. “Brendan is too nice to have opinions. And look, everyone needs a life off the ice. I understand and support that. But Aaron is a competitive figure skater and he needs to get through this season without getting injured.”
“Did I hurt him?” Zack felt a lurch of horror. That wasn’t the kind of kink he was into, and pain had never been any part of his intent with Aaron.
Katie shook her head sharply, but Zack’s relief was short lived. “You did not, and there are any number of details I don’t need. What you need to know is that he was so distracted during our session today that he kept falling
