Revolve (Off the Ice #3)

by Bal Khabra

The thing about falling at a world-renowned event? Your accident is on video, plastered on every social media and news outlet for anyone to see. US Figure Skater’s Near-Fatal Fall on Olympic Stage Fucks Up Everything. Okay, that wasn’t the headline, but it was the one running its own print shop in my mind.

Tonight though, the stares are more perusing, but that’s expected at these parties. You hook up and avoid attachments. I’ve never done that, but sometimes I wish I could.

An unexpected wave of envy surfaces. Even though I’ve performed for most of my life, I could never be confident enough off the ice that someone would look at me like that.

And maybe that’s what’s always made me feel different, like I didn’t live up to the experiences everyone else seemed to treasure. Like I wasn’t something desirable or wanted. To this day when someone’s gaze drifts down my body, I become almost desperate to know what they’re thinking.

The thing about a near-fatal injury? It leaves you with scars. I expected the one on my head from the depressed skull fracture, but I didn’t expect the one on my abdomen. The collapsed lung, courtesy of the broken rib after I fell onto the exposed skate of my partner, Justin, left marks.

When I took my first shower alone in the hospital, I caught my reflection in the mirror. A jagged red line carved into my abdomen from his skate, and the hole from the chest tube insertion. It hit me all at once what I had just been through. It was the first time I’d seen something so permanent, so far from my faded bruises, so undesirable.

In the kitchen, Scarlett starts mixing drinks. “You gonna be okay?” The look she gives me makes me feel fragile, and I hate that she sees me that way. Even more, I hate that I feel it too. It’s been over a year; I was prepared for this.

I was sixteen when Justin and I partnered. It was right after I won gold as a singles skater. Everyone around me—my parents, my coaches, Team USA—was ecstatic with that win, but the medal felt like a noose. I’d hit the pinnacle of my solo career, and it didn’t make me enough. Instead, it felt like I’d come up against a concrete ceiling.

my closet doors. My memories of last night are scattered, but one hits me hard. Maybe it was her piercing green eyes, the red lips, or the tiny skirt that showed off the kind of thighs I’d happily let her suffocate me with, but the girl wasn’t what I expected.

You spill a drink on someone at a party and you get a fuck you and a middle finger. Not an irritated figure skater who takes your IOU without even giving you her name.

“My drug test came back positive for THC,” I tell him. Kian jumps off the counter, his mouth agape. With one sentence, I’ve made two deeply regrettable mistakes. One, letting my personal shit out in the open, and two, telling Kian about a problem he can’t fix for me. His savior complex is probably kicking in right now.

“But you would never do that.” His voice wavers, shaky with emotion, and his words almost shatter my facade. But what could I even tell him? That I’ve been dealing with my parents’ shit for so long that this was the phone call that sent me over the edge? That I was so desperate for an escape, I didn’t think twice before letting a few puffs cost me my career?

“You have to clean up your act. Join a debate club or a knitting club for all I care. Just something to show them that this isn’t all you are.” What if it is.

Drugs are great. Well, prescription drugs are.

It’s Wednesday afternoon, which means the rink is blissfully free of the peewees and hockey practice. Lidia’s out trying to find me a partner, so I’m practicing on my own. After all the dreams I shattered last year—Coach’s, mine, everyone’s—I need to be ready.

“You’re doing it wrong.” A voice echoes somewhere behind me. I freeze. I hate that I recognize that voice—deep, rumbly, and cocky as hell. I glance over my shoulder, and yup, it’s the jock from the party. He’s leaning on the boards, forearms braced, his amber brown gaze locked on me.

I turn back. No distractions. Especially not him.

I glide to where he leans forward, coming face-to-face, the rink gate the only thing between us. He’s still so much taller than me even when I’m in skates, but I refuse to let his height diminish my confidence.

“Why? Am I too much to handle? Never had a girl that could put a skate to your throat?” His dimple appears. A fucking dimple. “Never, but I think I’d enjoy anything you’d do to me.”

When his gaze crawls over me, the desperation to know what he’s thinking almost kicks in. He’s like a roller coaster you know you shouldn’t get on, but you do it anyway.

“Thought so.” I smirk. “Maybe if I toss a puck on the ice, you can chase after it like a good boy.” A glint returns to his eyes. “Is that what you want? For me to be a good boy?”

“Oh please, people can’t care that much.” “They do when it’s Dylan Donovan, Dalton’s beloved left-winger. Or I should say the captain. Well, for like a day, before his failed drug test thing.”

Failed drug test? Who the hell is this guy? “That would explain all the free time he has to irritate me. He’s the cockiest man on the planet.” Scarlett snorts. “Match made in heaven.”

“It’s just that you’re the cockiest woman I know. I mean, not as of late, but you know you’re good and you aren’t afraid to show it. It’s a commendable characteristic.” “I am not cocky.” Only Scarlett would see it as a positive. I submerged all those parts of me with Justin, but that didn’t stop his ice queen comments. Smile for once. You’ll make it hard for the judges to like us. Just don’t be you, Sierra. Those words had lodged themselves deep, buried under every forced expression, every effort to be palatable.

“It’s not a bad thing to know you’re good at something.” I purse my lips. “Okay, fine, a little cocky. But he exudes it.” “That I believe,” she says. “But at least you won’t bump into him on the ice anymore. I’m pretty sure he’s getting suspended.” She might be right, but I have a feeling Dylan Donovan doesn’t follow the rules.

I’m officially kicked off the hockey team. I knew it was coming, but this morning, I received an email from the board of discipline detailing my new restrictions: no practices, no ice time unless it’s approved by Director Alan Reed, no attending games. The reality of that is even more clear when I walk into the DU Sports Clinic to see the headline staring right at me.

After welcome week, parties are just loud reminders of my failed drug test. And with Kilner’s insistence that I find something worthwhile to prove I’m not just some stoner, I plan on being on my best behavior. Because I’ve given everything to hockey, convinced it would lead somewhere real, only to watch it all disappear as quickly as the smoke blew past my lips.

Skating always came easy to me, and I don’t think I ever really left it behind. I get enough glares from Kilner when I mess around on the ice and do a little show for the home crowd.

Just as Ada hangs up, an arm brushes mine when someone stands beside me. “Pickup for Sierra,” she says, and the pharmacy technician in the back smiles and waves. But I wouldn’t have noticed any of that if not for the dark-haired figure skater scribbling her name onto the sign-in sheet.

The beginnings of a smirk form on my lips. “Sierra, huh?” She freezes, and her eyes widen. But then that tiny fire sparks when she looks at me. “Dylan, huh?”

“Been doing your homework, I see. Did you go home and look me up?” I ask, leaning against the reception desk. “Find any good pictures?” “Yeah, I have the perfect one taped to a dartboard.” Is it bad that that turns me on? Ever since her skate blade comment, I think I’ve dreamed of it more times than I care to admit. But that might be because of my current dry spell.

“Are you speaking from personal experience? Slept with a lot of your best friends’ dads, have you?” She smiles like she finds herself funny. I stare at her mouth for an indecent amount of time. Too indecent even for me. “You’re smiling, Sierra. Are you enjoying my company?” “It’s either this or I sit next to the guy spreading the plague all over the waiting room.”

“I’m flattered.” “Don’t be,” she says. “I’ll bruise your fragile ego.” “You’d do a lot more damage than just a bruise, baby.” She raises a brow. “Are you flirting with me?” “Yes.” I grin. “Is it working?”

“See you around, Romanova.” “Walk into traffic, Donovan,” she says in a singsong voice, tossing a razor-edged grin over her shoulder.

I’m still laughing when the door closes behind her. Summer strides back in, her arms loaded with textbooks, which she unceremoniously dumps into mine. She watches me curiously. “What’s got you smiling so much?”

In the winter, I would skate on the frozen pond in our backyard, but after my accident, they never froze it again. It was their way of dealing with my accident, but sometimes I miss it. The quiet, the late-night skates, the feeling of stepping out of my house and onto something that felt like home.

I slept like a caged bird in my old room last night, and I couldn’t help but wonder why I even bother coming home. But it’s because I’m forced to.

A few months ago, when I broached the subject of returning to campus with Scarlett, my parents were hesitant. It took lots of convincing and a promise to visit them ...

I’ve had to become used to this new violation of my personal space since the accident. I don’t resist them anymore, not since they told me...

My mom said she’d take walks to the opposite wing of the hospital while I was in surgery, not realizing it was labor and delivery. Every time a baby was born, music played; she counted sixteen chimes. Sixteen live...

You’d think having skaters for parents would make this whole comeback easier, but they’ve gone soft.

My parents coach young skaters, so they’re off on random days of the school week. I’ve been to only a few of their performances, one being in Aspen when I was four. That’s the trip where I became obsessed with skating. It wasn’t the performers who caused that reaction, it was seeing my parents skate together on the empty post-competition ice. The passion between them was palpable and nearly suffocating.

“As much as we want to put you in Bubble Wrap, I know you. You’re my daughter, and just like me, you want to prove everyone wrong.” I feel a stab of guilt. “But you have to be safe. Don’t put this pressure on yourself.” “I’m not.” I only wake up screaming some days. No pressure at all.

My stomach churns. Expectations rising, and my body not being able to perform, or my brain not letting me, makes me worry. I have to trust my body when I can’t even look at it. PTSD and anxiety trail after me—label after label. I can’t just be myself without these words following, as if it’ll help the next person understand whether I’m too much or palatable enough.

I was still recovering from surgery when he was already training with Julia’s coach. That’s how Lidia found out, and then she told me she knew people who could make him disappear. I told her I’d rather stick to reading about the Bratva than get into business with them.

Lidia should have done it tbh

“She needs a partner. Poor Lidia’s been searching day and night,” she says to my dad. “He knows her better than anyone. It would be so easy.” “Mila. Enough. She doesn’t need a reminder of that night through him. Leave the past in the past.” I want to agree, but it’s embarrassing that I can’t even hear Justin’s name without my brain thinking it’s a bullet.

Even as I drive back to campus, I can’t shake the feeling that no matter how many steps I take away from Justin, he will always be somewhere I can’t quite reach but just close enough to haunt me.

What do you do when you see the person you despise gliding effortlessly on the ice, when they should be buried beneath it?

It’s the first time I’ve seen them skate, and it rips at something in my chest. I hate that I notice the little things. Like the fact that he’s very particular about his ice, but now he’s skating on the uneven scarred rink with her. Or how he’s removed the initials we penned on the ankles of our skates. I painted over mine with nail polish.

“Who do we hate?” My skin prickles with awareness. “No one,” I mutter. Dylan’s low rumble sounds too close to me “Good. I don’t like someone else stealing your attention.”