Revolve (Off the Ice #3)

by Bal Khabra

For anyone who’s had to put themselves back together, even when the pieces no longer fit.

Kian Ishida and I have been friends since second grade. Back when I still thought he was the quiet new kid, fresh off a move from Japan to Connecticut to live with his aunt. Since then, we’ve gotten detention more times than I can count, and barely made it into Dalton.

KIAN

Yesterday, we promised this was our last party and we wouldn’t fuck around this semester. Our last semester was brutal because Coach Kilner tortured us all season when Yale trashed our campus after we invited them to a party.

So, even though Kian was belting out karaoke classics on the countertops of a party last night, he still dragged his hungover ass out of bed this morning to catch...

“What are you doing?” I ask. “I’m having floor time.” His words are muffled into the Persian rug.

Same Kian

It’s the first semester back where the house feels empty since Aiden Crawford, our previous captain, and Eli Westbrook, our defender, went off to the big show.

AIDEN & ELI MENTION

I’d be an idiot to give Kian an inkling that I might have just blown up my entire life and the team. The guy gets a little obsessive over fixing things for people, and that’s the last thing I need right now.

My jaw tightens as I think of the video call last week with both my parents smiling wide—my mom’s weak one and my dad’s plastic one—pressed together so tight on the screen like they were trying to fool themselves.

They’d gone on about starting over, about making the family what it used to be, like nothing had happened. I hung up before they could finish.

How could my mom just sit there and forget all the sleepless nights, the days she wouldn’t eat, how I had to feed her and my little sister, Ada, o...

I strip off my gear, my frustration bubbling over as I stare at my jersey. Once upon a time, I could see a C stitched on it. But that dream faded the moment I was labeled as reckless and impulsively physical by every commentator and referee.

My head hits the ice, and I hear the crack of my skull before my vision darkens.

My mom’s panicked scream pierces through the chaos, her voice blending with a cacophony of noise surrounding me. My skates feel like they’re made of lead as I lie motionless on the ice, my entire body numb. The world blips in and out. I hear the relentless high-pitched wail of an ambulance.

“You’re okay, it’s over now. You’re safe.” You’re safe. Those words echo, muffled by the ringing in my ears that’s louder than the sirens that were just there.

“Sorry,” I whisper, trying to focus on my breathing. Breathing. It’s something so automatic, yet I need a reminder to do it. It’s pathetic. I’ve woken up like this every night since we moved to campus three days ago. I usually snap out of it alone, but tonight Scarlett probably heard me through the crappy dorm walls.

Hartford, Connecticut, is home to Dalton University, and I’ve lived in this town my whole life. My first skate was in the university’s arena. And when Dalton’s figure skating program became eligible with the International Skating Union, I knew I’d attend.

Today is my first official day back on the ice since the accident. After six weeks at Hartford General last year, it feels like a lifetime ago, and it is in the skating world.

Crash mats, the gym, Pilates, ballet, swimming—you name it, I’ve been doing it. A part of me knows that all the preparation for returning to the ice is a distraction, but I can’t run anymore. Before the rink became cruel an...

“Seriously, I feel great. I just want to go back to how things were.” When I could do what I wanted without my brain stopping me. When I wasn’t scared.

My best friend is the last person you’d expect to join the Dalton Panhellenic community with her tattoos and bright-colored hair, but she made a damn good sister. I know that because when she withdrew, her sisters sent me messages begging me to get her to rejoin.

Scarlett took some online classes that semester, sitting with me while I mindlessly watched The Weather Channel in the hospital room. Some days, I’d beg her to leave, to stop letting me drag her down, but she never listened. Not even when I said things to her out of anger that I regret to this day. Scarlett never left me.

She was there, parked outside each therapy session. It was on those drives home that we talked about returning to campus and living in a dorm together for our senior year. So far, that means water-stained ceiling...

“This rink is your bitch,” I tell myself, staring into my car’s rearview mirror. My breathing exercise doesn’t loosen my white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. I’ve been in my car for thirty minutes, watching the hockey team exit the arena like a creep. The music playing in my car fuels my momentum, and before I can change my mind, I sling my gym bag over my shoulder and hop out.

In and out, Sierra. Dark nostalgia coats me like tar at the sight of the arena. I swallow around the thick lump in my throat, taking a hesitant step forward, then retreating two steps back. If someone were watching, they’d think I’ve lost my mind. Sometimes it feels like I have.

My feet stay rooted as I try to fight the flood of memories pulling me back to last year. But the effort is useless;...

Then the doors screech open. The guy who steps out is so large he crowds the whole entrance. He seems like he’s lost in his own world, but wh...

He’s big, broad-shouldered, probably a hockey player, judging from his massive gear bag. His brown wavy hair is disheveled like he’s run his hands through it a hundred times. He’s the type of NCAA hockey player you’d see all over social media, wi...

Nerves aside, I waited in my car to avoid this exact interaction, but it’s a blessing because now I have to go inside. After a few whispered affirmations, I realize he’s still watching me, brown eyes t...

“I don’t bite, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His lips slant into a lazy smirk. “Promise.” He says it like he wants me to find out whether that’s true. The old Sierra would’ve had a snarky retort for the cocky hockey player, but I haven’t been her for a long time. I slide past him and step inside the rink.

“If this is too much for today, we can try again next week,” Lidia says. Her pity is a sharp knife to my gut. It’s that same damn look everyone’s been giving me since the accident. Like I’ve become some fragile thing. Too weak to be what I once was. Apparently, you can’t crack your head open on the ice and fall on your partner’s skate to suffer a collapsed lung without people treating you differently.

“How’s this?” Lidia taps her forehead, still scrutinizing me. My brain? Oh, just a complete fucking mess. “Sharper than a computer,” I say instead. If that computer was dropped and smashed into tiny bits. Then scattered across Connecticut waiting for me to find them and piece it back together.

The ice should fear you. My aggressive outlook on today’s skating session is thanks to propranolol. That pink pill I swallowed this morning is the only reason my legs haven’t buckled. My chest is barely in a vise, and I haven’t spiraled. I won’t. Not today.

Yeah, so, the thing about nearly career-ending freak accidents is that nobody wants to pair with you. After my ex-partner, Justin Petrov, dropped me like a hot potato—literally and figuratively—I’ve become damaged goods to the skating community.

My therapist, Dr. Toor, said the best way to overcome this hurdle is to jump over it. I’m determined to do that.

“This won’t be like your past training. Are you sure you’re ready for this?” “I have to be,” I say, my voice cracking. “I need to prove that I can still do this. Please, Lidia.” I sound desperate, but it gets her to nod. A ribbon of victory unfurls in my chest. I’ll do it this time; I’ll finally be enough.

The tiny victory must have put a pep in my step, because this time the ice feels a smidge less daunting. My moves are still shit, and my heart still hammers like it’s going to give out, but the possibility of getting to that final and showing everyone I’m not a curse dangles in front of me like a carrot on a string.

So the same people who I was sure were finally getting divorced a few months ago are getting married. Again. Fucking unbelievable.

Never in my life have I feared consequences. Why would I? When you’re the guy everyone on campus wants to either be with or be like, the rules don’t apply. People look the other way, make excuses, smooth things over for you. But I have a feeling this won’t go away easily. Not without taking everything it can from me. I need some fucking air.

Before I can give him a half-assed excuse, the front door opens, and it feels like everything stops. The music—Pink Floyd’s “In the Flesh?”—muffles in my ears, and my eagerness to leave dissipates momentarily.

Every head in my vicinity turns when she crosses the threshold into the party and the light above the door illuminates her. The guys from the basketball team who were playing Ping-Pong let the ball fall aimlessly to where it rolls across the hardwood to land by her white shoes.

Silky black hair, fair skin, and red lips make everything about her face stand out. Her white skirt hugs her curves, drawing my gaze to trail the smooth skin of her toned legs. When I look u...

That’s when I recognize her as the girl from outside the rink earlier today, the one whispering to herself as I held open the door. She seemed s...

“Hey! I’m talking to you.” The voice is slightly raspy, and much too confident for the weak attempt at stopping me. I turn to see dark hair, green eyes, and red lips. Trouble. “Me?” The girl glares at me with her hands planted on her hips, like she could take me. Like she’s the one who’s six foot four.

She nails me with a skeptical gaze, running from head to toe, lingering on my paint-covered abs and the waistband of my boxers that peeks out of my jeans. For some reason, the space between us feels impossible to resist, so I step closer until my shoes are touching the tips of hers. She smells sweet, like cherries.

“Shouldn’t I know your name? You’re in possession of a very powerful IOU after all,” I call after her when she’s already halfway across the lawn to the porch. She doesn’t turn around, but she says, “If you’re lucky.” “Don’t you want to know mine?” She looks over her shoulder this time. “I think asshole fits.”

For some deluded reason, I tried to fit in. Tiny skirt, equally small top, a red lip. It felt like a chance to rediscover myself after the sport I’ve loved my whole life chewed me up and spit me out. Sometimes I think I’m still lying unconscious and bloodied on that ice rink.

What I didn’t expect tonight was for that side of me to come out. The confrontational, opinionated, bitchy side that I buried long ago. But the hockey player pulled it out of me like a loose thread.

It wasn’t just the sight of his jeans slung low, white Calvin Klein waistband bold against his golden skin, or how the dim moonlight caught the sheen of sweat on his chest. It was the handprints—colorful, smudged, pressed like memories on his skin, as if...

But all those thoughts puffed away the second he opened his mouth. Or when he smirked and the tiniest dimple appeared. I’ve seen his type—the tall, popular kind of guy who’s too good-looking not to...

Scarlett’s dad had warned us away from enough of them. But even as I’m consciously aware that that’s the last guy I’d end up with, I couldn’t help but feel my heart racing w...