“It was, I saw it. Brendan sent me video and all your feedback. But I want you to tell me why. You were like a different creature out there. What changed?”
Aaron braced himself. “Before I say anything to incriminate myself, I just want to be sure. You’re not mad at me?”
“No, not mad. You freaked Brendan out, though, so if I have to go to camp next year with you all, I am going to blame you.”
Aaron laughed. “That’s fair.” Not that he really thought he’d put Brendan off that much.
“Now spill,” Katie told him.
“Well, Brendan told me I should stop hiding the fact that I’m from somewhere really strange.”
“Brendan was right,” Katie agreed.
“So I had to figure out how to do that. Or not do that, really,” Aaron said. “And the first thing I tried was the thing with my eyes closed.” If she wanted him to, he would talk about Zack and how he’d come to that decision. But in the past few days he’d spent so many hours workshopping his program that that particular impetus had, if not faded, at least evolved.
“If you ever do that again in a non-training situation I’m putting you on zamboni duty for the rest of the season,” Katie said firmly.
“I’m not trained on the zamboni,” Aaron protested.
“That can be remedied,” she said crisply, but it was more funny than it was an admonishment.
Aaron giggled. “Okay, yes, I know that was risky. But it worked! And if I can do it in practice, I should be able to do it in competition.”
“Should,” Katie emphasized.
“Anyway, it worked. It shut out the noise of everyone else—not their actual noise, but the space they were taking up in my head. I felt real. And solid, you know?”
Katie nodded. “I do.”
“And then just, by a fluke, I freaked out the judges. That one in particular, the one I made eye contact with, but all of them really. I could feel it in the room. I’ve never been able to make an audience feel like that before. It was incredible.”
“It is. When it works. And it wasn't a fluke." Katie sounded a little wistful. “So the thing going on in your head, can you keep making it happen? And can you keep feeling good about it even if you don’t get quite that lucky in catching a judge’s eye?”
“I think so. I did for the rest of the week at least. In between Cayden being a jerk and contradictory instructions to tone it down and turn it up and also snark about the unreliability of my quad loop.”
“Your quad loop is unreliable.”
“I’m aware of that! Why do people think I’m not aware of that?”
“Well, you haven’t fixed it.”
“If I could, don’t you think I would have by now?”
Katie gave a vague shrug of acceptance. “No matter how good you get people aren’t going to stop being who they are. And they’re not going to stop having ideas about how you should make it better. Now, let’s get to work.”
AFTER AARON FINISHED his training for the day—and after he’d gone home to shower and change—he drove to the café to meet Zack with the windows down and his free skate song blasting on the car’s sound system. Aaron wasn’t usually one of the skaters who listened to their own music constantly. But this season was different, in so many ways—and he was different. Surrounding himself with the song he’d chosen, and Zack had inspired seemed eminently right.
Zack’s rental car was already in the lot. Aaron parked next to it and hopped out, still humming to himself. He found Zack inside at a little table in the corner, his laptop and an iced tea on the table in front of him. When he saw Aaron he quickly closed the laptop and put it away, and stood to enfold Aaron in a hug.
It was brief—entirely appropriate for a public space where people recognizing Aaron wasn’t a possibility so much as an inevitability—but Aaron sat down across from Zack with the scent of his aftershave and the memory of his warmth wrapped around him.
“How was camp?” Zack asked as he slid back into his seat.
“It was good. Did you watch the video?”
“Many, many times.”
“Did you like it?” Aaron jiggled his leg under the table, too full of energy to be able to sit still.
Zack tapped his fingertips against his lips thoughtfully. “Yes. Of course I did. It was you. But it also didn’t seem to matter whether I did or not. The thing you did, that frightened the judges...I could feel that even on a screen.”
Aaron smiled. “Good.”
“I also think,” Zack said slowly, glancing at Aaron as he spoke, “that maybe you weren’t so much skating the way you have sex with me, but - skating as if you weren’t trying to hide anything about yourself.”
Something on the back of Aaron’s neck prickled. “Brendan said something really similar, with less information, of course. Katie did too. But I think it’s both—where I’m from and who I’m learning to be when I’m with you. And that’s good. It means I’ll have a lot to draw from. Camp is just the beginning, you know. Not even the beginning. But now people are actually talking about me, not just because I’m one of a handful of contenders but because I was interesting. All because of you.” Aaron had to stop talking to draw a breath, which was when he realized he’d been babbling. Kind of intensely. He felt his cheeks grow warm.
Zack, thankfully, seemed amused. "I am not what makes you interesting, and my dick did not make you a better skater,” he said with a gentle laugh.
"You're absolutely right. But you have given me a new way to think about how I use my body."
Zack’s face smoothed out into a mask of calm consideration, and something in his eyes shuttered.
Aaron’s stomach clenched instantly and
