Charlotte shook her head and smiled. For that, Aaron was glad.
“I know you lie,” she said with a laugh and hit play on her computer.
Aaron could recognize a dismissal when he saw it, and as much as he wanted to go sulk in his room, he did really want to whine to someone. He also wanted to make sure he could still skate his damn program with the same magic he’d summoned at camp and without feeling absolutely miserable about Zack.
There was nothing for it. He had to go back to the rink.
DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR, the rink at this time of night would have been busy. Hockey practice on one sheet, club ice on another, both packed with school-age kids with more kids, their parents, and coaches, filling the hallways and spectator spaces. But it was summer, and there were a hundred other things to do in places where it wasn’t cold all the time. Brendan was working with some of the pairs on the sheet the elite figure skaters usually used, but there was only a desultory scrimmage happening on the hockey rink and a few skaters on the sheet earmarked for general freestyle practice. The fourth was entirely empty.
In the midst of college-age women practicing some serious doubles and an older couple doing a very stately Viennese Waltz to the maddeningly repetitive accordion music being piped over the sound system (not their fault, or Vienna’s, Aaron knew, but did the ice dance test songs always have to be so....so?) was Huy. Huy was one of those skaters who had it, that ineffable quality that allowed him to command an entire arena. Right now, all he was doing was practicing compulsory figures in one of the hockey circles, occasionally moving to give way to a lefty jumper practicing her lutz. Figures weren’t required in competition anymore, in part because they were dead-ass boring to watch for ninety-nine percent of the audience. Yet the precision and flow of Huy’s skating as he traced the same patterns over and over still made Aaron stop and stare.
Aaron couldn’t resent the fact that Huy would medal ahead of him at any international competition they were ever at together. One, they were friends, even aside from the ex thing, and two, he was just so good. Technique and expression. Aaron would kill to have his lines, and all he was doing right now was paragraph loops.
Huy gave him a nod when Aaron stepped onto the ice, but otherwise left him to his own work. Aaron shoved in his earbuds, hit play on his phone, and started skating the program that existed because of Zack.
Sure, he had to steer around the other skaters and mark the jumps because it was late and he was tired—tonight was not the night to get hurt. But he could still do it. Not as bad as it might have been. Not as good as it needed to be. But it wasn’t gone, and that was something. Eventually, maybe it wouldn’t even break his heart.
When the song in his ears ended, he skated over to the boards for water. Huy was there already, fiddling with his own water bottle and watching him.
“I heard you were quite the sensation at camp,” Huy said.
“Who’d you hear that from?” Aaron felt like it was important, to know if it was from Katie or Brendan or gossip from Cayden and his cronies.
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
Huy shook his head. “Nah. It doesn’t. Good is good.”
“Says the person who is always effortlessly great.”
“No, says the person who comes here in his off hours to do misery-making exercises that people hate so much they removed them from competition decades ago. But sure. Think it’s effortless if you want.”
Aaron shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Still, he was pretty sure that even if he gave up everything in his life besides the ice he still wouldn’t skate like Huy. But since that wasn’t possible—the restaurant and his family would always need him—the point was moot.
“It’s cool.” Huy shrugged and changed the subject. “I like the new program. It suits you. In a way that I don’t think people are going to expect. Which is great.” He set down his water and reached for his box of tissues. On the cold rink, everyone’s nose ran constantly. “You needed something new.”
“Zack broke up with me,” Aaron blurted.
Huy stopped with his hands raised to his face, the tissue over his nose, his eyes wide. “Oh lord.”
“You don’t need to sound like that!” Aaron protested.
“Yes. I do.” Huy blew his nose, then balled up the tissue and chucked it into the bin on the other side of the boards. “I didn’t even know you guys were together,” he said, looking affronted. “How did I not know you guys were together?”
“Because you spend your off hours busting your ass doing figures?” Huy, of course, also had his own life and relationships which kept him plenty busy outside of skating, but Aaron tried not to dwell on that.
“Mm.” Huy leaned back against the boards. “Were you into Zack because Zack, or were you into Zack because you’re desperate to be monogamous with every pretty person who walks into a room?”
“I’m not desperate,” Aaron protested, although he wasn’t sure Huy was wrong.
“You do a pretty good imitation,” Huy said.
“Ow!”
“It’s not inherently a bad thing. None of us do what we do here because we’re quite all right.”
“Even you?” Aaron kicked his toe pick into the ice. Huy was doing his best to cheer him up, but he did not at all want to be cheered up.
“I’m doing figures in my free time. What do you think?” Huy sighed. “Look, we all want what we want. But if we make choices that definitely aren’t going to give us that... then that’s what’s messed up. I want to win, so I show up and do figures.”
“I don’t want to win,
