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THE SAME MORNING
Twin Cities Ice
***
ONCE AARON LEFT, ZACK set about doing the cleaning they’d ignored last night in lieu of sex. The temptation to crawl back into bed and sleep for another few hours was strong, but getting the dishes done now instead of later was probably the more responsible thing to do.
Sleeping with Aaron had probably not been responsible, however. Zack had been divorced for less than six months. He was definitely still in rebound territory. Aaron was trying to get to the Olympics. And the campsite rule probably didn’t approve of introducing aspiring Olympians to bondage weeks before the most important season of their careers began.
Oh well.
Zack whistled to himself as he put clean dishes away and wiped down the counter. He couldn’t bring himself to feel remorse or regret. Aaron was adorable and hot and eager and had been more than happy with everything Zack had offered. And as unwise as it may have been, Zack was pleased with himself. He liked Aaron. A lot. And last night, and this morning, had been excellent.
With the kitchen once more clean, Zack considered his options for the rest of the day. Revisions on his article draft wouldn’t come back from Sammy for a few weeks. Unless there was yelling. Then it might happen sooner, but it still wasn’t going to happen today.
He didn’t need to burn time chasing down Sauer for a comment at the moment either. There were probably emails he could send to his lawyer about his place in Miami, but that could wait. And he could noodle around with the personal essay that he was suspecting might become a full-fledged memoir, but.... He had time and a city to settle into.
It was probably only natural that he gravitated to the rink—and for once, not because Aaron was also going to be there, although Zack did see his car in the parking lot as he walked in. The sight made him smile even as he had no intention of being a distraction or otherwise interfering with Aaron’s work day.
Cal, the front desk guy, greeted Zack warmly and waved him back as usual, but Zack stopped at the counter. “Actually, I’m here to skate today.”
“You mean unlike every other day you’re here?” Cal grinned.
“I mean, on my own. If that’s a thing I can do?” Zack realized belatedly that he didn’t know anything about the public side of skating at TCI at all. He probably should have called. Or googled. Or just asked Aaron.
Cal, though, was enthusiastic. “Oh yeah, of course! The schedule’s there,” he said, pointing to a bulletin board across the lobby. “There’s public skate, that’s for anybody, any level, and you can rent skates if you need, though you’ve got your own, right?”
Zack nodded.
“Then there’s practice sessions for the people taking the intro-level group lessons. The kids are great but you probably don’t want to deal with those. A bunch of six-year-olds with hockey gear and no fear is chaos. We’ve also got stick and puck and pickup hockey sessions if you’re interested in that. It’s a good group and they’re always looking for new people.”
“That’s more choices than I was anticipating.” Zack said. He paid for the afternoon’s public session, and held out his arm for Cal to put a wristband on.
He couldn’t help smiling as he followed Cal’s directions down a different route than he usually took. TCI had four sheets of ice, and while Zack had been coming here for weeks he had never spent time in any of the rinks other than the one Aaron and the other high-level skaters principally used. But the smell of the rubber mats and industrial disinfectant was the same throughout the complex, as was the bite of cold, the fluorescent lighting, and the constant hum of compressors. It felt pleasantly familiar and just a little bit like home.
Public sessions in the middle of the day, as it turned out, were more or less empty. Getting his own skates on and getting onto the ice felt like a much less daunting task when the only other people there were a woman who might have been in her seventies practicing footwork and a father with his young daughter clinging to his hands.
The woman who had fallen and hit her head—Tasha, if Zack remembered correctly—came out on the ice as he was skating laps to warm up. She caught his eye and waved, looking none the worse for wear. Zack smiled and waved back.
Since her accident Zack had felt more confident on the ice. He could stay upright, go fast, and if Tasha had survived her fall, he’d probably be fine. Although he was starting to get the sense that skaters were as easily as tough as anyone he’d known when he’d been in the field. He wasn’t sure he, himself, was that tough, but he’d probably survive.
The real problem—if he allowed himself to view anything about his skating as a problem—was grace. He did not have it. Not like this. He also wasn’t sure if he wanted it. Sometimes, Zack knew, it was best to play to your strengths.
As he practiced stroking and worked on his stops, he thought about his options. Until Cal’s little spiel he hadn’t given hockey much thought. Much like public skating at TCI in general, he knew it existed, but the figure skating community was so self-contained, that it and hockey might have been in two separate universes.
But there was an instant appeal in the idea. He could keep skating—which he enjoyed—without undue overlap with Aaron’s sphere. Which maybe was giving himself too much credit, but given the whole introducing-aspiring-Olympian-to-bondage thing, he wanted to score karma points where he could. Besides, if he was going to be in the Twin Cities for the next little while, he could stand to have something to do and to meet more people.
At the end of the session, he went back to the front desk to ask Cal for more information. As they were chatting—and Cal was happily inundating him with various schedules and flyers—Katie walked by. Zack nodded at her and was surprised when she stopped to say hello.
“You’re thinking about starting hockey?” she asked, with a glance at the calendar Cal had laid on the counter for him.
“Yeah,” he said, curious what her reaction would be. Katie had never been an obstacle to his work covering Aaron and the TCI skating program, but she had never seemed overly thrilled at his presence either. Zack could both understand and respect that. They each had their own professional priorities to attend to: him, his writing; her, her skaters. He wondered what it was like to be responsible for so many people’s high-stake careers. Perhaps someday she’d even let him write about her.
“You can’t play hockey in those,” she said with a glance at the skates he was holding, the ones Aaron had liberated from somewhere for his first day on the ice.
“Do you think I can play hockey at all?” he asked. He realized, with no small amount of surprise at himself, that he wanted Katie’s approval for this endeavor.
Katie looked him up and down. Zack found himself standing up straighter under her gaze.
“You’re big enough and you’re stubborn,” she finally said. “Any rec league could do worse, that’s for sure,” she added, with what might have been a smile.
It was the kindest thing she’d ever said to him, and Zack gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Now. Niceties over. We need to talk.” Katie grabbed his arm and started walking.
She was easily as strong as Aaron. Zack could only follow.
***
KATIE PULLED ZACK INTO the break room where he’d first met the TCI skaters and shut the door behind them. Zack braced himself; he could think of only one reason Katie would want to talk to him like this: Aaron. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten the shovel talk, but he didn’t think this time was going to be any more fun than any of the others.
“I told him this, and I’ll tell you,” Katie said briskly. “What Aaron does on his own time is his business, even if I have opinions.”
“Does Brendan have opinions?” Zack asked. If this was going to happen, he might as well know where every potentially involved party stood.
“You mean, what does the more rational, easygoing man think?” Katie said sharply.
“Oh. Fuck. I didn’t mean—I’m sorry,” Zack said, chagrined at his own inadvertent sexism.
“Thank you.” Katie gave him a stare he could feel himself wilting under. “Brendan is too nice to have opinions. And look, everyone needs a life off the ice. I understand and support that. But Aaron is a competitive figure skater and he needs to get through this season without getting injured.”
“Did I hurt him?” Zack felt a lurch of horror. That wasn’t the kind of kink he was into, and pain had never been any part of his intent with Aaron.
Katie shook her head sharply, but Zack’s relief was short lived. “You did not, and there are any number of details I don’t need. What you need to know is that he was so distracted during our session today that he kept falling over. On stuff he never falls on. Camp is coming up soon and he’s going to have to show off his programs for the federation for their approval. I don’t want him tempting fate, and I don’t think you understand the problem your photographs present.”
Zack could feel his brain catching up with her words and screeching to an abrupt halt before it slammed into the inside of his skull. “Oh,” he said foolishly.
“Yes. Oh.” Katie’s tone was mocking.
“I’m...sorry?” Zack knew this was a thing he needed to bring up with Aaron eventually. He just hadn’t thought he needed to, and admittedly hadn’t wanted to, last night.
“You’re not; he’s not; and neither of you have a responsibility to me regarding this in any case,” Katie said. “Believe me, I want to be having this conversation less than you do, so I’ll keep it to the point. I’m not telling you to not date him, or....” She trailed off with a wave of a hand and a pained look. “But I am telling you not to distract him. Whatever that means to you two. Which probably includes him not getting any more surprises via google.”
“Oh yeah. It’s not a thing you casually mention, you know?”
“You’re the one who put the pics with your name on the internet. It’s definitely the sort of thing you casually mention.”
Ashamed, Zack stared at his feet. All the time he’d been focusing on whether introducing Aaron to bondage was too much of a distraction, he never considered how his own projects—and his failure to talk about them—might be even more of an issue. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
“You owe him a conversation,” Katie said. “About three weeks ago, but I guess late will be better than never. And now, if you’re serious about hockey, go talk to Tasha, she’s the coordinator for the adult league. She can get you sorted. And really, don’t do hockey with those skates.”
***
THAT EVENING, BACK home—or rather, back at Marie’s in-law apartment—Zack sat on his coach and stared at his phone. Katie was right; he did owe Aaron a conversation. But he didn’t feel ready for it.
He did not, in fact, feel prepared for anything. Everything he’d done from the moment Sammy had called with the figure skating assignment up ’til now, he’d done at the spur of the moment. Moving to the Twin Cities. Getting folded into the TCI crew. Falling in—something, with Aaron. Deciding to stay, without a plan for who knew how long. Deciding to sleep with Aaron without considering what the long-term consequences might be for either of them.
And if he was honest with himself, that pattern went back much farther than his move to Minnesota. It had been there for the entire miserable process of the divorce when he could only cope by taking one day at a time. And when he got back from his last assignment in a conflict zone and hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks. The short term had been all he’d been able to manage, and that barely. With, he knew, good reason. He hadn’t been handed a PTSD diagnosis out of nowhere.
But now he was here. In a place where he felt, if not okay, then better. Where he’d been able to do work and interact with people and want to join a community again. People and a community, he realized, that specialized in long-term planning. Aaron knew what his life was going to look like from now until February—at least, what he wanted it to look like. Even if he didn't get there, he had a day-by-day plan to try.
I want my life to be more like that, Zack realized with a jolt. He’d never been one for thinking too much about the future. He often hadn’t had the luxury. But being here and seeing the stability that Aaron—and Katie and Brendan and the rest of their skaters—had, he wanted that stability too. Maybe, just maybe, he was finally in a place where that could be possible. At the very least, he could try.
So instead of texting Aaron with an awkward and belated apology, he made a list of the things he needed to deal with and that he wanted to achieve. Any lingering divorce paperwork. Sell the condo. Figure out what my next book project is. Make friends who aren’t skaters. Join hockey?
He didn’t write figure out what to do with Aaron. That went without saying.
It turned out Tasha’s contact info was in one of the flyers Cal had given him, so he emailed her about joining the adult rec league. She replied within minutes, and quicker than Zack would have thought it possible, he was signed up for one of the teams and had, at Tasha’s urging, scheduled an appointment at the TCI pro shop to get fitted for hockey skates of his own.
That business concluded for the present, Zack opened another email message to deal with another issue much less fun, but more important. His ex was the last person he wanted to contact right now, but the divorce being finalized hadn’t meant they were done with each other logistically. The apartment still needed to be dealt with.
I’m still in Minnesota for work and am going to be here for the foreseeable future. Since I’m not going to be in the condo, please take advantage of my absence and get the rest of your stuff out of it. It’s all in boxes already.
- Z
Zack was pretty sure he deserved a medal for getting through that email without any profanity.
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