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U.S. NATIONAL FIGURE Skating Championships
Boston, MA
***
WALKING INTO THE DRAW was always a little bit like walking into a high school cafeteria—at least as far as Aaron could tell. His schooling hadn’t exactly been typical. But it seemed like the sort of tension and drama high school cafeterias had on TV. Who sat where and what that meant was a big deal.
“Hey Sheftall, welcome to the big kids table!” Cayden shouted.
At least Aaron’s read on the situation wasn’t wrong. He narrowed his eyes at him. “This is my sixth senior nationals.”
“But you’re having a year!”
“I am, aren’t I?” he said with a smile he didn’t feel. He was either going to have to sit with Cayden and his hangers-on or he was going to have to pointedly reject his not remotely sincere friendliness, which would create a whole new drama.
He scanned the seats looking for a better, more plausible option, but Katie and Brendan didn’t have any other U.S. senior men and were currently with their pairs skaters who had practice ice.
To his relief, Rasmus Tamm caught his eye and who waved at him. “Aaron!” he said warmly, patting the empty chair next to him. “I haven’t seen you all season. How are you?”
The rescue was obvious. And immensely welcome. That it probably annoyed Cayden on both those counts was only a bonus.
Aaron stepped across the aisle and into the seat Rasmus had indicated. He’d skated for Estonia years ago before moving to the States, and now was one of the oldest skaters in the U.S. field. Everyone called him ‘Uncle Ras’—fondly and not to his face. If someone needed a ride at a competition, or a rescue from unwanted advances or social awkwardness...Uncle Ras was there.
What the fuck Rasmus was doing with his life, Aaron did not understand. He’d never won nationals—in the U.S. or Estonia—had almost no international competition experience, and had certainly never been to an Olympics. At thirty-two that wasn’t going to change. And yet he kept showing up. Aaron didn’t know how he had it in him. Surely it was a sign he was a better person than all of them. Because Rasmus just loved to skate, results more or less be damned.
He twisted his hands together in his lap as Rasmus asked him how his family was doing. He replied on autopilot, probably inanely, and was grateful again when Rasmus didn’t take offense at his distraction.
This was the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships. How he placed here would determine whether he secured a spot on the Olympic team. Jack and Cayden were here and their careers were on the line too. This was it. If he didn’t perform at his absolute peak, if he didn’t make the cut, in seventy-two hours the season and Aaron’s Olympic dreams would be over.
An official stepped out, holding the bag of numbers for the draw. Aaron took an involuntary breath.
Rasmus reached over and patted his knee. “You’ll be all right.”
Aaron wasn’t so sure he would.
***
DESPITE THE FACT THAT he’d invited Zack to Nationals, they didn’t see much of each other. Separate hotel rooms and no plans for socializing until after the competition were essential; he needed to keep his head in the game. So while Zack occupied himself, Aaron went to his practice sessions and kept his focus where it needed to be: skating.
By the morning of the men’s short program, Aaron could feel the uncertainty trying to push its way through the well-managed nerves he’d been able to keep in check for the rest of the season. Competitions were always nerve wracking, but this was different. There was so much on the line, and in a season filled with surprising success, there were now expectations on him. Aaron was unfamiliar with the sensation, which was the emotional equivalent of not being able to settle over his blade on the ice. He wanted to find somewhere safe and dark and hide.
I’ve trained for this, he reminded himself as he laced up his skates for the warmup. I trust my training. I trust my coaches. I trust myself.
Aaron hated skating early in the draw. The crowd was never filled in yet, there wasn’t much energy in the arena, and judges, he believed, needed to warm up as well. Not to mention, with so many people coming after him it was easy to get forgotten in the commentary of the day.
But no matter when he skated, he still had to turn in the performance of his career.
At the end of his short program, he wasn’t sure he had. He’d skated cleanly, that was for sure, but there had been no magic, no energy, pulling the crowd along with him.
Still. Clean was nothing to be ashamed of. The judges agreed—it was still too early in the day for it to really mean anything, but when his scores were announced, he was in first.
Which should have been a relief, but as Aaron left the kiss and cry with Katie’s arm around his shoulders all he could think was that there were three more groups of skaters to go and every chance his name would fall too far down in the standings. And with his own skating done for now, there was nothing to do but watch everyone else skate.
Katie and Brendan always did their best to keep their people from calculating their own ranking or keeping track of other people’s scores, but Aaron was the restaurant’s bookkeeper. He was good at mental math and had an excellent working memory. It was far easier for him to do the math than it was to stop himself from doing the math.
Finally, in one of the rooms backstage, with the final group about to go on, Katie looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with her laptop.
“Aaron,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Stop pacing,” she ordered. “Go get a snack. Watch cat videos on your phone. Something. You can’t change anything now.”
“I know, but—” Aaron protested
“Go,” she said. There was understanding in her face. “Twenty minutes. You can do it.”
Aaron reluctantly nodded. He reached into his bag for his phone. Zack was watching from the stands, maybe they could meet up somewhere afterward.
Once outside the room he took a moment to first swipe away various congratulatory texts from family friends. He could deal with those later, when he actually knew how he felt about his scores.
But as he did, he realized that it wasn’t just texts he was dealing with. There were notifications
from every social media platform he used—and from some he had signed up for only at Brendan’s insistence.
Odd.
They all seemed to include links or talk about an article...Aaron clicked one of the links at random. It led him to Athletics Monthly, and the article Zack had written.
This was obviously not the time to look at that, but here it was. His own name leapt up at him from the page, and he settled himself down on a bench in the hallway to read.
Curiosity turned to dismay, and then to horror as he got further into the piece. The writing was incredible, no doubt about that—but it was about him. Aaron. And only Aaron. No mention of Cayden or even of Jack, other than that they existed and were also vying for a U.S. Olympic spot. Aaron knew Cayden was being difficult, but he hadn’t realized that this would be the result. Especially after he’d put himself out on a limb way back at camp to try to help Zack.
And then, towards the end, was a paragraph, not about skating at all. But about the island. The most private part of his life, that he had trusted Zack enough to see. There was even a picture—Aaron recognized it. Zack had taken it their first day there, when they’d taken a walk along the shore.
How dare he.
Somehow he got to the doorway of the room Katie was in. He grabbed the frame and said her name as softly as possible; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, and he didn’t want her to yell, but mostly, he didn’t want to let go of the door frame in case he fell down.
Katie looked up from her laptop, and Aaron watched as the thing where they were alike kicked in. He didn’t have to say anything, but her forehead creased in concern.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, just as quietly
With one hand still on the doorframe, he texted her the link to the article, and nodded at her phone when it dinged.
Aaron watched her face carefully while she scrolled through the piece. She was too studied in the need for neutrality, though, to betray any reaction.
“I see,” she finally said when she finished.
Aaron, finally reasonably sure his knees would hold him, let go of the doorframe, crossed the room, and dropped down on the floor next to her.
“I forgot that was coming out,” he admitted.
“I hadn’t. It’s good timing,” Katie said, her face and voice still neutral. Aaron felt his anger extend to her, too.
“What do you mean it’s good timing?” he protested. “I’m in the middle of Nationals! And he doesn’t even talk about anyone else in the field!”
“That’s wildly to your advantage.”
“He wrote about the island!!” The sense of betrayal nearly choked him.
“He’s allowed,” Katie said. Her tone was quiet, but the words were relentless. “You invited him there.”
“Not for that.” Aaron stared at her. “I can’t believe you’re taking his side”
“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” Katie said firmly, even sternly. “He came here to do a job. He did it. I asked you to make sure it got done a certain way, and it did. And yes there were bonus complications, but you’ve seemed to mostly enjoy those. He’s a good enough guy. Everyone’s done quite well, as far as I’m concerned.”
Aaron couldn’t be that dispassionate. “He broke up with me because he was worried about journalistic ethics!” he exclaimed. “Doesn’t that make this sketchy?” He waved his phone around. “I’m not just having emotions because I’m me and I’m cagey about the shit I’m cagey about!”
“I get that, Aaron. I really do. But this article only does you well. And your personal feelings about it can wait until you’re on the side of a cereal box. Okay?”
“Everyone’s going to be talking about it!” Aaron protested
“That’s the goal.” Katie wrapped an arm around his shoulders and gave him a sideways hug. He slumped his head down on her shoulder. “Also, Cayden just finished.”
Aaron sat bolt upright again. Cayden had drawn the last slot for the day. “How’d he do?”
“You’re in third.”
Aaron took a deep breath. That meant Cayden was ahead of him for now. Which wasn’t great, but also wasn’t fatal. “Okay. I can work with that. After I yell at Zack, of course. And go to the press conference, I guess.”
He was trying to be funny and trying to remind himself that he was absolutely within striking distance of what he wanted. But he was too angry. He felt exposed, in the worst sort of way. He’d trusted Zack, and Zack had laid out all his deepest secrets for everyone to see. He was also in the middle of Nationals and had exactly no time to deal with this.
Right now he had to get through the press conference. Aaron had never loved these things and now he was furious and trapped, a selkie without its skin and under someone else’s control. But he knew how to do these things, and was safe from questions about Zack’s article. No journalist was going to ask about someone else’s journalism.
As the day went on he was sure he could track the spread of the article, as people’s eyes and not-so-subtle whispers followed him. He tried to keep to himself as best he could, but that wasn’t much. After the press conference and the testing, he had a team meeting with Brendan and Katie and the rest of the TCI crew, and then they all went out to dinner. At least these were the people who knew him and could insulate him from the whispers and stares of others. In other circumstances, Aaron would have had Zack come along. But he was sure he couldn’t see Zack without screaming right now, and that didn’t need to happen in front of everyone else.
At least at dinner the other skaters were more focused on some drama that had happened that afternoon in the free dance than anything involving himself. He wasn’t interested in it, but he was grateful for it.
After that, he had every intention of crashing early. Instead he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling for hours, trapped in the narrative of his life—from everything the article shouldn’t have covered but did to everything no one could understand but he desperately wished they would.
***
THE NEXT MORNING AT breakfast, while Aaron picked at scrambled eggs from the hotel buffet, Katie and Brendan finally came to intervene. They slid into seats at the table where he was sitting by himself, each carrying their own breakfast.
“How are you doing?” Katie asked, while Brendan gave Aaron his best concerned-coach look.
“Trying to be chill. But really, really pissed. And I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted.
Aaron didn’t miss the look of concern that Katie and Brendan gave each other. Knowing his coaches were worried about him didn’t exactly help his equanimity. He was on-edge enough as it was.
“This is a thing you need to deal with,” Katie said simply.
Aaron wanted to snap at her that he knew that, but before he could, she kept talking.
“And it’s a thing you will deal with, with Zack, after this competition is over,” she said. “You two will sort it out, one way or another, but for now, you need to put all your feelings about him and that article in a box. There will be time when this is over. There isn’t time now. Okay?”
“I’ve been trying,” Aaron said, petulant.
“Try harder,” Katie said, the same way she would tell him to fix his footwork or a jump he should have been able to execute but couldn’t. Her words were crisp, but her face was sympathetic. “Because right now, you don’t have another choice.”
***
SEVERAL HOURS LATER Aaron was jogging up and down a hallway deep in the maze that was the venue’s backstage, keeping his muscles warm. He wasn’t even sure he was supposed to be back here. He’d certainly seen no one else. But the solitude had been necessary.
He was surprised, therefore, to see Brendan coming down the hall toward him. He wondered how he’d found him. He slowed his pace as Brendan approached, then stopped when they met.
“I thought I had Katie today?” he said, which wasn’t very kind, but it was usually Katie with him backstage during competitions whenever possible. Also, Brendan was better at ice dancer drama; it just made Katie yell.
“And you will, we’re just trading off for a minute.” Brendan seemed unperturbed by Aaron’s rudeness.
“What’s up?” Aaron asked warily.
Brendan looked him square in the eye. “I just wanted to tell you that I know you can do this, and more importantly you know you can do this and who you are is worth showing the world.” Brendan’s voice was low, his words intent. He absolutely meant them.
Aaron stammered, suddenly overwhelmed.
“Sometimes it helps to hear it from the people you don’t have as natural a connection with,” Brendan added.
“Maybe?” Aaron said, his voice strangled. He knew why Brendan’s observation was important, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it.
Brendan shook his head. “Look. I know how it is to be a man in this sport and navigate what other people think and what judges want and what people think judges want. It’s weird. Maybe not as awful as the women get, but odd. You’re a fantastic skater. You’re also a very specific skater... and a very specific person. Be that person today. Put the rest of it down. Fuck what anyone else thinks. And just get it done. Even if you’ll probably find a way to give me a heart attack. Again. Okay?”
Aaron nodded automatically. It wasn’t the pep talk he’d expected—and certainly not from Brendan, whose fierceness and troubles didn’t usually show through as strongly as Katie’s did.
“Yeah,” he said, still nodding, while Brendan’s eyes peered keenly at him. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Brendan clapped him on the back, then pulled him into a hug. “Kill it out there.”
Aaron closed his eyes and exhaled into Brendan’s shoulder. “Yeah.”
***
BRENDAN LED AARON BACK to the main backstage area, bustling with competitors and coaches and federation staff, and left him with Katie with a last parting hug.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
Aaron wasn’t sure. “Yes,” he said, because he had to be.
He paced the hallways while the first groups skated, trying not to pay attention to how anyone else did. Keep your eyes on your own paper, Katie always told him. But the buzz of the competition followed him while he paced, coming from TV screens and people’s personal devices. He wished he’d stayed in his hidden hallway.
Because Aaron had finished third in the short program, he was in the final group for the free skate. Which meant he and the other five in that group had to wait the longest to skate—and had to spend the most time trying to block out how everyone else was doing. By the time the ice had been resurfaced, and the final group—Aaron, along with Cayden, Jack, Rasmus, Eric, and Misha—were lined up for the six-minute warmup, Aaron knew there was room. Not to win—Jack would do that—but to come in ahead of Cayden. That was all he needed.
You finished third at the Grand Prix Final, he reminded himself, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. You can do this.
At his side, Katie folded her arms. “No jumps,” she warned him. “Not for the warmup. You’re too wound.”
“I’m fine.”
Katie looked unconvinced. “Show me your footwork,” she instructed. “And don’t forget your edges.”
Stepping on to the rink was a relief. With the rush of the ice under his blades, everything else in the world fell away, if only for a moment. This was where he belonged. This was what he was meant to do.
Aaron was just finishing his step sequence, aware of Katie’s gaze following him coolly around the ice from her spot at the boards, when someone nearly collided with him.
“Sorry, Seal Boy!” Cayden called, sounding absolutely not sorry at all.
He’d spoken loudly enough to be heard by the nearest audience members, and there was some rustling in the stands. Aaron wondered if they were upset about Cayden’s near-collision with him, or talking about him. And the island. And his seals he’d never meant for anyone else to know about.
The calm he had felt for a few brief moments was shattered. He was shaking as he stepped off the ice at the end of the warmup.
“I hate everyone,” he told Katie.
“Believe me,” Katie said, handing him his skate guards and then his water bottle. “I know the feeling.”
She had her face schooled into a mask of neutrality, but her fury flickered through. Aaron could see it in her eyes.
“As soon as this is over, by the way, we’ll be filing an official complaint against him for that,” she said.
Aaron didn’t even have the energy to protest. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Thankfully Misha Khovanski was being announced, and Aaron could turn his attention to watching him skate. This was Misha’s first year in seniors, and he’d had a strong showing all season. Aaron knew he hoped to finish well. Which it looked like he would...until he fell on a triple axel that had never given him trouble before and then fell again on a quad lutz that should have been part of a combo.
Nerves, maybe. Nationals was, after all, A Big Deal, even if you weren’t counting on it to make or break your Olympic dreams.
But the ice had moods. And if the ice was having a bad day so would everyone who skated on it. That wasn’t one of Aaron’s personal superstitions; skaters talked about the moods of the ice the way people who played outdoor sports would talk about the weather. And there were competitions that were notorious because everyone had performed below expectations due to strange slips and excessive falls. U.S. Nationals a few years ago was still referred to as ‘Failtionals.’
Aaron really, really needed the ice not to be in a bad mood right now.
But then Jack fell on his first jump and never fully recovered. That was two skaters in a row. Aaron tried not to panic, willing him through every takeoff. But none of it really worked. Jack would get great program component marks, he always did, and manage to walk away with gold, but yikes.
Aaron forced himself to breathe, to do what Brendan had said and let everything else go, as he warmed up and Jack waited in the kiss and cry for his scores.
Be good for me, he pleaded with the surface under his blades as he stroked around the perimeter. He had to get through the next four minutes. Even if passing out on the ice right here felt like a more comfortable option right now.
What is everything thinking about the seal boy now? Was his last thought as he took his starting position in the center of the ice.
It didn’t help.
Aaron got through his program without any falls, but that was the best he could say about it. He popped his triple axel, the one he’d frightened the judges with at camp that seemed so very long ago, and he two-footed the landing on his quad sal. His energy was wrong, his timing was off, and altogether it was a chaotic mess.
Aaron pried himself back to his feet for his bows. The audience was cheering, but the energy felt...flat. Polite, but uncapitulated. Frantically, his mind tried to reassure him that everyone was a mess today, and he’d be fine and pull it out. But as he skated to the door of the ice, where Katie waited for him so they could sit together in the kiss and cry, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his career might have somehow peaked on that strange night in St. Petersburg and that Ari, when she saw the article, would blame him for giving their secrets away.
Aaron twisted his fingers in his lap while they waited for his scores. When they appeared, he let his head fall into his hands, tense with nerves. He was currently in second, behind Jack. Good. For now. With Eric and Cayden still to skate, anything else would have put a medal completely beyond him. Either of them could beat Aaron on his best day, and Aaron had definitely not just had his best day.
Just let me finish ahead of Cayden.
At least it was Uncle Ras skating at the very end. Aaron was very fond of him—and deeply grateful—but he had barely squeaked into this last group; the long program wasn’t going to be easier for him. There was no medal risk there.
Backstage, Katie gave up on trying to get him to pay attention to anything other than the other skaters for the remainder of the event. They sat together in the seats set aside for competitors and staff, and soon were joined by Brendan and the rest of the skaters from TCI.
Aaron didn’t actually like to root for other skaters to fail. That kind of mentality went against everything he strived to do and be in this sport. For him, figure skating may have been a solo event, but all the skaters were on this strange journey together.
So he felt torn when Eric struggled with the ice the same way the rest of them had. Still, even with more than one fall, he might have been able to hold it together...until he fell out of his final spin.
“Oh no,” Aaron muttered.
Katie hissed in sympathy. “Injury? He went down hard on that one fall.”
Injury or not, it didn’t make a difference to the scores. Eric was in sixth, and Aaron was still in second, when Cayden took the ice.
...And fell on his first jump. Aaron clenched his hands into fists and huffed out a breath. Okay, maybe he did want Cayden to fail. Just a little.
But he didn’t. His performance wasn’t any cleaner than Aaron’s, but the base value of his program was higher, and this was a sport where fractions of a point could matter. And when the scores came, Cayden had squeaked ahead of Aaron by just a few points.
Third. I can live with third. The Olympics can still happen with third. My international record is better than his. They can still choose me. Aaron told himself this over and over. He knew it wasn’t guaranteed, but he’d had a strong season. Stronger than Cayden’s, and maybe that nightmare article Zack had written—and that Aaron still needed to address with him—really would work in his favor.
Nothing he could do about it now though, that much was sure.
Rasmus took the ice.
Aaron turned to Katie. “I hope he does well. If anyone doesn’t deserve a bad run, it’s him.” He said it with an intensity that surprised even himself; in all this whirlwind of a season, Rasmus had been the one skater outside of TCI who had been reliably kind and welcoming to him. Aaron had no outlet for his gratitude in this moment than that fervent wish.
Aaron hadn’t been following Rasmus’s programs much this season and regretted that as the music started. This was a good choice, well suited to his energy and the presence he had on the ice. It would have been so fun to watch it develop.
In fact, Aaron was so captivated by the performance that it was almost a minute into it before he noticed that Rasmus hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t struggled. Wasn’t bobbling anything. And did, in fact, have the rapt attention of the entire arena.
He squeezed Katie’s hand tighter, his own concerns momentarily forgotten, while he got swept up in Rasmus’s skating along with everyone else. Figure skating had these moments, sometimes, where someone would break out of the pack and blow everyone’s expectations away. They were magic to watch.
When he finished Aaron was on his feet with the rest of the audience. He cheered wildly while Rasmus took his bows, tears streaming down his cheeks and his grin stretching from ear to ear.
Rasmus staggered off the ice and into the waiting arms of his coach. He said something that Aaron couldn’t make out from this distance but that made everyone around him laugh. Aaron was sure that, whatever it was, by tomorrow it would be a meme on figure skating social media.
The reality of the situation only crashed into him when the scores were announced.
He, Aaron, was in fourth. Rasmus had beat him out to come in third.
Aaron felt like the walls of the venue were closing around him, the cavernous space shrinking and the excited noise of the crowd fading into the distance. He shrank down into his seat, not even aware of Brendan’s worried face or Katie’s calculatedly calm one.
He’d come in fourth. The federation wasn't going to send the fourth-place finisher at Nationals to the Olympics. Jack and Cayden would go. Aaron would get named an alternate and left at home. He felt like the ground was sliding out from under him, and he did not want to do this in public.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of public left to get through. Katie managed to urge him to his feet and shepherd him through the backstage hallways. At least fourth place didn’t have to go to the press conference, which was the very smallest of silver linings.
He did, however, have to talk to journalists in the mixed zone and pretend he wasn’t crushed and that his dreams hadn’t just been shattered. He would also have to put on a smile and congratulate Cayden because that was what good sportsmanship demanded.
At least there was Rasmus. The man was tucked into a quiet corner, looking overwhelmed but ecstatic; the tracks of happy tears marked his face.
“Aaron!” Rasmus’s face lit up even brighter when he saw him, and he pulled him into a hug. “You did well.”
“You did better,” Aaron said, without any bitterness, hugging him back. “You just made history. That skate was incredible. I’m so glad I got to see it.” He meant that, too; as upset as he was, he couldn’t be anything but happy about Rasmus’s placement and that he’d gotten to see such an iconic performance live. That was a thing to cherish.
But it was perhaps the only thing today he could say that about. Soon Katie was herding him through the crowd again, and Aaron realized with relief that they were heading for the doors.
Brendan joined them outside and together they made it all the way out of the arena, down half a block to the hotel and into the lobby.
When suddenly, Aaron pulled up short.
Katie bumped into him from behind. “What is it?” she asked. Then, “Oh,” as she saw why Aaron had stopped.
Zack was striding toward them across the lobby, concern etched into his face.
“Aaron!” he called, his hands already spread, as if ready to pull Aaron into a hug.
And Aaron wanted to be hugged, wanted to collapse against Zack’s warm, muscled chest and let himself be comforted. But that was a fantasy that belonged to a world where Zack hadn’t written about the island.
So he glared at Zack, and felt a small flare of satisfaction when Zack stopped in his tracks.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Do you want me to punch him for you?” Brendan muttered, quietly enough for just Aaron and Katie to hear—Aaron hoped.
“You’d miss,” Katie said flatly.
Aaron looked at Zack and realized the other man had almost no idea what was going on. He surely knew the article had come out yesterday, but he didn’t know Aaron had read it. He’d seen Aaron underperform today, but then, everyone in that final group had underperformed. He didn’t know how Aaron had struggled to pull off even the sub-par performance he had. If he was worried about Aaron’s placement regarding the Olympic team decision, he likely didn’t understand quite how dire a situation it was. And certainly, he had no idea how to comfort an athlete whose one dream was about to slip away.
Aaron was furious with him for all of it, but most of all the part where he’d have to explain it, in very small words, when he was dizzy with grief and somehow even more terrified than he’d been by the Neva in St. Petersburg.
“I am so angry at you.” It was easier than explaining why.
“Okay,” Zack said, his tone neutral, his eyes darting between Aaron, Katie, and Brendan. “If there’s something we need to talk about, we could—”
“We already talked! You and me! Lots and lots of times!” It was so much simpler to yell, to be upset at Zack about this. If he was angry at Zack, he didn’t have to think about his inadequate skate and the fact that he wasn’t going to the Olympics and that everything, this whole year, had been for nothing.
“Okay,” Zack said again, still that studied neutral, which just infuriated Aaron more. Why couldn’t he react?
“Your article came out! The one you wrote about me!”
“All right,” Katie said, cutting in verbally and partially stepping in front of Aaron. He was mad at her too now. He wanted a fight. His season was over, but she wasn’t letting him have it.
“We’re not doing this here.”
“I’m still not one hundred percent sure what we’re doing,” Zack said, slowly putting his hands up in front of his chest.
Aaron ducked around Katie. He kept his voice low; after all, they were in a public space. But if it was possible to whisper shout, whisper shouting was absolutely what he was doing.
“I didn’t invite you because of your job! You said you were done. And then you added things about the island to the article! You said the article was about the race for the other slot, which means me and Cayden. But somehow, that’s not what happened! Cayden wasn’t even in the article!”
“He wouldn’t take my calls,” Zack said. “You knew that. You talked to the guy!”
“I didn’t know you’d given up on him and changed the focus to me! Did you see Cayden almost crash into me in warmup?”
Zack looked eager to grasp at the subject change. “Yeah, that was fucked up right?”
“It sure was!” Aaron exclaimed. Fuck whispering. “He called me ‘seal boy,’ and that’s all your fault.”
“Boys!” Katie said sharply. “Elevator.”
Aaron let her shepherd them, but that didn’t mean he was going to let up. His true disappointment, the text with the names of who would be going to the Olympics, hadn’t come yet. He wasn’t going to be on that list now, but when it came—and it would at any moment—he’d probably cry. So if he was going to yell, he needed to get his yelling done now.
He tried to lay into Zack again in the elevator, but Brendan just made a soft noise and pointed to the obvious security camera and the large mirrored walls. No one cared about figure skaters, until they did.
Aaron keyed into his room, and everyone followed. Housekeeping had made his bed, at least, but his short program costume was draped over the vent to air out, his laptop and chargers were in a tangle on the nightstand, and his snack stash was an unorganized pile on the desk. His other clothes were scattered messily around the room. If he’d known his coaches were going to be in here, he might have tried to tidy up, but then, maybe not. Which was probably one of those figure-skaters-have-weird-boundaries things that had perturbed Zack at first, but Aaron didn’t care right now.
“Do we all need to be here for this?” Aaron asked at full volume once the door was shut behind them.
“Well, you’re yelling at me,” Zack pointed out. “So I probably need to be here for it, yes.”
“We’re here until the team announcement,” Katie said quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
Aaron stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not going to be on the team! We’re not going to have to go back there to deal with it. You two can go break up whatever fight the ice dancers are having or whatever it is you do when you’re not watching your athletes fail.” He started pacing up and down the room, mostly so he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye as his started to fill with tears.
“You didn’t—” Brendan started.
“I did!” Aaron was shouting now. “And it’s a hundred times more embarrassing than it could be because someone—” he pointed at Zack—“completely misrepresented everything about the article he was writing, the article that you –" he whirled to face Katie. “Insisted I find a way to make myself the star of.”
“Insist is a strong word,” Katie said. Her calm was infuriating. But before he could lash out again, at her or anyone, Zack touched Aaron’s wrist gently.
“Hey. Aaron. Hey,” Zack said quietly.
If he’d tried to grab his arm Aaron would have pulled away and might have tried to hit him, which Zack probably knew. Aaron gulped a breath and stopped pacing.
“Aaron, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“That doesn’t change anything, now does it?” Aaron snapped. But his anger was burning itself out, although maybe that was just the effect of Zack’s fingers, now intertwined with his.
Zack pulled him closer. “I know it doesn’t. But it’s still true.”
Aaron closed his eyes and let his head fall into Zack’s shoulder. Zack’s arms went around him. And it was so, so tempting; he could just stay here and cry and let Zack make him feel better.
But then Aaron’s phone barked in his jacket pocket. He jumped, jolting the top of his head into Zack’s chin.
“Ow,” they said at the same time, though Aaron had barely felt the pain.
His body was suddenly awash with adrenaline. “I know what it says, but I don’t want to look.”
Katie and Brendan’s phones also chimed, but they made no move to look at them. Everyone was frozen in place. Zack had dropped his arms from around Aaron, but they stood so close Aaron could feel the rise and fall of his chest.
Zack finally broke the silence. “Someone should look.”
“I can’t,” Aaron whispered.
Katie, still perched on the edge of the bed, moved slowly for her pocket, and just as slowly drew out her phone and unlocked it. As if her movement had unfrozen his, Brendan did the same.
Katie’s eyes darted across the screen. “Aaron,” she said, her voice somewhat strangled.
“What?” he demanded. Everything else in the room was absolutely silent except for the pounding of blood in his ears.
“You should look at the text,” Katie said.
“Am...am I on the team?” Aaron couldn’t hope. He couldn’t. But he had to ask.
“There will be no U.S. Olympic Team announcement at this time,” Brendan read out. “The U.S. will be represented at Four Continents by...” He hesitated, glancing up at Aaron. “Cayden Sauer and Aaron Sheftall.”
“Four Continents?” Aaron squeaked. In a normal year it was the biggest competition before Worlds, but this was an Olympic year. Nobody really cared about Worlds or anything after the Grand Prix and Nationals. He hadn’t even given Four Continents a thought.
“Jack Palumbo isn’t going to Four Continents,” Katie said.
“And he doesn’t need to,” Brendan put in. “He’s a given for the Olympics.”
Realization hit Aaron like the ice rushing up to meet him in a fall. His heart drummed wildly. “They’re letting Cayden and me battle it out. For the last team slot.”
Katie nodded. “Looks like.”
“That’s—Aaron, that’s fantastic!” Zack exclaimed. He reached for Aaron, as if to take his hands again, but stopped himself. “You still have a shot!”
And maybe it was, or should have been, but all Aaron felt was panic and dismay. His mind was a whirl, adrenaline was coursing through him, and his heart was a wreck of so many emotions—fear, excitement, elation, dread—that he couldn’t begin to sort them out. He felt, suddenly, so very, very tired.
“It’s not fantastic,” he snapped, stepping back from Zack. “It’s horrible! It means I have to do all this again with your article floating around and all that rest of it. If today had to go badly, at least it was going to be the end. And now it’s not!”
“Okay, but—”
“Auuuughhhhhhhhh!!!” Aaron yelled in frustration. He was intensely satisfied when Zack jumped back.
“Does anyone need me for anything?” Aaron asked, looking from Katie to Brendan.
“Not ’til the gala,” Brendan said.
“Good. I’m going for a walk. You all can do... whatever.”
And with that Aaron stormed out of his own room to wander around this city with his only true wish being not to run into any goddamn seals.
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