"Not really. I mean... that’s there, that’s where it starts. But it’s more about figuring out how not to live that life anymore."
Aaron seemed to ponder that. “That’s why Saint Paul, then?” he said thoughtfully. “We’re your new
life?”
“Something like that.”
Aaron frowned. “Are you being evasive because you don’t want to talk about it or because you don’t know how to talk about it?”
Zack sighed. He was absolutely pinned to the wall on this one. “Some of both. You know, I took this gig, the article about you, because I was broke and a mess. And it didn’t really upend my life because my life was already upended. But it did give me something to latch onto in a way that’s either me being really mentally healthy... or really mentally not. I don’t know.” A log popped in the fireplace, sending out a cloud of sparks and making him jump.
“So I’m just trying to figure it out,” he went on, adrenaline prickling unpleasantly under his skin. “What I’ve learned about telling stories is that you can tell when they are going to make sense, even if they don’t entirely hang together yet. That’s how I feel about this project. But it’s weird to talk about. And most certainly to you.”
“Oh,” Aaron said. “You mean I’m in the book.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that sketchy?”
“In a journalistic ethics way? No, because it’s not journalism.” And because this time I’m actually going to tell the truth about it, Zack thought. “But are we two people who are going to have to talk about this at some point and we might not enjoy it? Yeah. You bet.” Zack watched Aaron’s face carefully, looking for his reaction.
“Well don’t stop there.” Aaron looked, if anything, even more intrigued.
“For what it’s worth,” Zack said, “The person who comes off looking poorly in memoirs is usually just the author. So... unless you’re like ‘No don’t do that at all ever or I will cut an ice fishing hole and throw your body in it,’ you probably don’t have a lot to worry about.”
Aaron gave an awkward laugh. “Well, I didn’t until that speech.”
“Sorry. I’m not used to talking to people about my shit.”
Aaron shrugged. “It’s all good. I’m not used to letting people see my island.”
Chapter 27
AARON’S HOUSE
Whisker Island
AARON, ARI, AND ZACK spent most of the next day outside. Snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and even skating, once they’d shoveled off a big enough patch of the lake and thrown hot water on it to get a smooth surface.
“This seems counterintuitive,” Zack said, dubiously, holding a giant soup pot of water they’d just taken off the stove and eyeing the ice in front of him.
“How do you think zambonis work?” Aaron countered, plopping down beside him in the snow to put on an old pair of skates. He’d dug out another pair for Zack; there were always plenty of extras here, and no one needed anything fancy for lake skating.
“Much more efficiently,” Zack said drily.
“I checked it this morning,” Ari piped up from where she was lacing up her own skates. “It’s ten inches thick.”
“I have no frame of reference for what that means.”
“Don’t go on ice that’s less than four inches thick,” Ari said, in the exact same tone Aaron had used on Zack when he told him not to use his hands to stand up, less someone skate over his fingers. “Five and up can hold a snowmobile...probably. Eight and up can hold a car.”
“Probably?” Zack finished.
Ari nodded. “Ice is fickle. And you have to check it every day. Just because it was thick enough yesterday doesn’t mean it’s thick enough today.”
“I can’t believe you have three days off from figure skating training, and you come home and do...this,” Zack said, finally resigning himself and dumping out the water. It splashed on the ice, the faintest wisps of steam curling in the air, before it cooled and re-froze in a beautifully smooth surface.
“Then you’ve forgotten one very important thing about me,” Aaron said, testing out the feel of the ice with a few crossovers. Not as perfect as freshly-resurfaced ice in an arena—it was brittle in places, and would chip if he tried any jumps—but it had the indescribable feel of real, live ice, instead of just water frozen over some compressors in a rink.
“What’s that?” Zack asked.
“I love skating.” And I love you, he thought.
THEY RETURNED FOR THE house only briefly for lunch, and by the time the sun had set and dusk was falling, Aaron was tired, sore, and blissfully happy. These were the sorts of days he loved best. Having Zack there with him to share it all just made it even better.
Zack had offered to cook dinner tonight, and Aaron helped out, enjoying the companionableness of sharing a kitchen. Even when they’d been dating there hadn’t been a lot of time for cooking together, and he still had very fond memories of their first date when Zack had made dinner for him.
He stole sidelong glances at Zack as he chopped vegetables and dumped spices together with little regard for measuring. Spending so much time together had done absolutely nothing to lessen Aaron’s desire to grab him, kiss him, and drag him off to bed. That Zack was interested, he was in absolutely no doubt of; whenever they spoke, Zack’s gaze kept dropping to his mouth, and Aaron had looked up from enough conversational pauses to see Zack staring at him. What, if anything, Zack planned to do about that, Aaron wasn’t sure. Which was all right—after all, Aaron had told him this was a no-pressure trip, and he’d meant that.
Zack seemed to fit in here on the island as effortlessly as he did with the group at TCI. Aaron wondered if that was because those groups were particularly welcoming, or because Zack just had a way with people. He suspected it was the latter. If either the people at TCI, or his own family, had found someone
