“Yep.”
“The only things your readers care about are basketball, football, and the swimsuit issue!”
“Baseball sometimes,” Sammy reminded him. “And hockey’s a thing.”
Zack ran his free hand over his face. He should probably shave at some point, but he thought the facial hair thing was starting to work for him.
“Okay. Tell me why you want me to get on a plane right now for figure skating.” He couldn’t be sure, but he had a sinking suspicion his life was about to get more absurd than it already was.
“The number one men’s figure skater in the U.S. just shattered his leg,” Sammy said. “Super gory. Which our readers will love.”
“I’m not in a mental place to do medical stories right now,” Zack said immediately. No matter what the source of the injury, he suspected he would never be in a mental place to do medical stories again.
“Whatever, it’s just a paragraph,” Sammy said, breezing by Zack’s concern. “I’ll shove it in if you can’t deal. The point is, the Winter Olympics are in February in Almaty. The U.S. has two men’s figure skating spots. Which everyone in the sport knew were going to go to Luke Koval and Jack Palumbo. But Koval fucked his leg up and now everything about every competition this season is in turmoil and his spot is up for grabs. There’re two main contenders—Cayden Sauer in Phoenix and some kid in Minnesota. Aaron Sheffield... Sheftall? I don’t know, something like that; you’ll figure it out.”
“You’re making me chase ambulances to try to make America care about figure skating and you don’t even want me to chase the actual ambulance? And can’t remember the names of the people I’m supposed to write about?” Zack was pretty sure he was offended; he just wasn’t sure on whose part.
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Which is why you want me to get there before anyone else does?” Zack said, as if multiple reporters were going to be banging down the doors of skating rinks across the country. Which, for all he knew, maybe they were.
“Basically. Also figure skating is an absolute trash fire of drama, and it has hot ladies’ skaters to appeal to our core demographics.”
“I hate you.” Zack sighed heavily. The reasonable thing would be to ask for time to think about it before uprooting his entire life for an unforeseen amount of time. But his life here in Miami wasn’t at all appealing at the moment, and work would give him something to focus on. “I don’t get what you’re thinking, but hey, it’s your career’s funeral. You still pay a dollar a word?”
“You bet.”
“And this is why I love you,” Zack said. “So, uh... do any of these people know I’m coming?”
“Yeah, I set up a whole thing. It’ll be like an embed. Well with the Minnesota people. The other major training center hasn’t gotten back to me yet, so that’s on you.”
“Okay, I’ll go. On one condition.”
“What?”
“Never compare covering figure skating to war reporting again.”
TWO DAYS LATER, AFTER an endless series of mechanical delays, Zack was on what had become a late-night flight to the Minneapolis−Saint Paul airport. Once upon a time, boarding a plane would have felt not just exciting, but like a relief. Being in the field as a reporter, ready to talk himself in and out of chaos and danger, was where he had felt most himself. Had, of course, being the operative word. Now, whenever he got on a plane, his mind, body, and adrenaline levels were convinced he was flying into danger again, and reacted accordingly. The entire experience was extremely unpleasant, and as his heart pounded in his ears during the taxi for takeoff, he wondered if he should have driven.
As soon as he was allowed, he pulled out his laptop and started trying to learn everything he possibly could about skating. He watched a video about how to identify each of the main jumps at least six times before he had to accept that he still had no idea how to tell the difference between them despite slow motion and arrows.
Watching the previous year’s U.S. Nationals just as unhelpful. Zack may have intellectually understood why some programs with falls got better scores than those that seemed, to his inexperienced eye, to go off without a hitch, but he was emotionally baffled by it. At best, he was able to classify skaters into essentially meaningless boxes: lyrical, cocky, confident, and chaotic.
By the time he got off the plane at Minneapolis−Saint Paul he was overtired and motion sick and hadn’t yet gotten around to watching any post-competition interviews with the skaters he was being paid to write about.
For bonus points, Brendan Reid, one of Aaron Sheftall’s coaches, had arrived to pick him up at the airport. Which struck Zack as excessively courteous, but then, this was Minnesota.
“Hey, you must be Zack,” Brendan said brightly once they’d found each other at arrivals. “Glad you made it,” he added as warmly as if they’d been friends for years. He was exceptionally attractive, too, with neatly-cropped sandy brown hair, keen green eyes, and the faintest dusting of freckles across his fair skin.
Too bad he’s married to his skating partner, Zack thought glumly as he shook Brendan’s offered hand. “Sammy sent you a picture?”
“No, we googled you. Congrats on the book, by the way. Though I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”
“Ahhh, that’s fine,” Zack said awkwardly; Brendan was a wall of charisma. And his own charming war reporter schtick felt grim and boring in the face of all this middle-American sparkle. “It would probably only make you more confused about why I got this assignment.”
“I’m not confused at all. You and your editor have your expertise, and I’ve got mine.” Brendan shrugged. “Anyway, you got everything? I don’t want to keep Marie up later than we have to.”
Zack shouldered his backpack and his camera bag and trotted to catch up with Brendan who was already
