Walk on Water (11 page)

In the fourth week of summer, her hard work paid off.

“We’re going to try the platter lift this morning,” Candace announced, meeting Lexa and Boyd at center ice. “We’ve gone as far as we can on the floor—got to pop this cherry sometime.”

Lexa’s heart thudded crazily. They had practiced a variety of lifts in the studio, but the only ones Candace had let them do on the ice were armpit lifts, beginner moves that kept Lexa vertical and no higher than she could have jumped herself. Three different entries all ended the same way: Boyd’s hand in her armpit, hers on his shoulder, and her torso rising to the level of his head before he set her down again. Mastering those had taught her to take off and land a lift, but they were only the first stepping stone to the more difficult, and dangerous, overhead lifts done at the senior level. The platter lift, the one they were about to attempt, was on the easier end of the spectrum but still a fully overhead lift, one they might actually perform someday.

“Platter lift!” Lexa repeated, looking to see if Boyd shared her excitement.

“Try not to kill us both,” he said. But his smile told her he was eager to pass this milestone too.

“Step through the approach first, just to be sure,” Candace told them.

They split up, then skated slowly toward each other. As soon as they were near enough, his hands went to her hip bones. Hers closed over his wrists. She lifted a foot as if to jump, then froze as well as she could, holding the takeoff position.

Candace clapped once. “Let’s do this.”

Lexa tried to find the perfect speed as she looped around again. This approach had to be right if they were both to avoid getting hurt. Her pulse rushed in her ears as she skated directly at Boyd, a head-on collision that could only be avoided now by turning it into something else.

His hands met her hips squarely. Her hands found his wrists as she launched herself. She felt her body rising, forward momentum translating into lift, and the next instant she was aloft, riding in a horizontal swan dive high above the ice. She had never seen the rink from this vantage point before. She could read every rut in their path as Boyd carried her in slow loops down the ice, but far from being frightened, she felt exhilarated.

I did it! I’m flying!
she exulted. Lifting her face into the wind their movement created, she savored her first success.

Boyd shifted his grip. “Going down.”

For a second Lexa panicked as the ice flew up to meet her. Then her blades made contact, stuttered, and bit in. She was supposed to land on a single skate, but, back on the ice and unharmed, she wasn’t bothered by that minor error. Lifting her left foot quickly, she glided on her right.

“We did it!” she cried triumphantly.

“I’ve done it before,” Boyd reminded her, but he still raised one hand to slap hers. They T-stopped in front of Candace, Lexa still beaming.

“All right. Not horrible for a first attempt. Boyd, good control. Lexa, leg position—it looked like you forgot your body existed from the waist down.” Candace lifted one skate from the ice, striking a vertical facsimile of the pose Lexa was supposed to have hit overhead. “Remember?”

“Right. Of course.” Her smile dimmed before she cranked it up again. “I’ll do better this time,” she promised, pulling Boyd along for another try.

“Don’t two-foot this landing!” Candace called.

They did the lift three more times, and with each repetition Lexa’s confidence grew. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to vault up into Boyd’s hands and pose on her belly, her ankles crossed behind her and her skates higher than her head. Dismounting from the final lift, she descended perfectly. She understood where her body was relative to the ice now; she knew where her feet had to be. Boyd was out of position, though, and the sole of her landing boot hung up on the edge of his. Her blade couldn’t reach the ice, and for an instant it seemed they would both go down hard. Boyd held on tightly, though, and together they muscled it out, Lexa wrenching her skate off his and dropping into a wobbly glide.

“Whew!” she said, laughing as they came to a stop. “That was a close one.”

“Yeah. Watch where you put your feet. I won’t always be able to bail us out of your mistakes.”

“
My
mistakes! I came down right where—”

“Boyd’s right,” Candace cut in. “If that had happened in competition you’d have been marked down
and
missed the next element.”

“Yes, but—”

“You need to trust your partner, Lexa. Boyd knows where he’s supposed to be. He knows where you’re supposed to be too.”

Lexa bit back her arguments. Candace always sided with Boyd. Even on side-by-side elements where Lexa’s skills were clearly superior, Candace praised Boyd and criticized her. It didn’t seem fair to preach teamwork and then constantly single her out, but she believed she understood Candace’s motive.
It’s not about who’s right or who’s better,
she thought, fighting to hang on to her smile.
It’s about working together as partners.
Boyd was an experienced pairs skater, and she still had everything to learn. Of course Candace took his side.

“That was some pretty fancy wrangling all the way around,” Candace told Boyd. “Hanging on while she found her balance up there, saving that bad landing. . . . All that weightlifting is paying off.”

“I
am
kind of a stud,” he quipped, preening.

Don’t take it personally,
Lexa ordered herself, her smile fading another notch.
You’re not as good as he is yet, that’s all.

She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

You will be,
she vowed.
And better.

“A party on the lake? What fun!” Beth’s nostalgic smile suggested she recalled summer bonfires of her own.

“Yeah. We’ll see.” Bry had had to twist Lexa’s arm—and promise that Ian and Blake wouldn’t be there—to get her to say she’d come. She missed the old crowd at Ashtabula Ice, but not enough to risk a run-in with those two.

“Off you go, then. I can handle these dishes.”

It had taken six weeks, but Lexa had finally convinced her grandmother to abandon the formal dining room in favor of the kitchen. Rising from their new bistro table, she carried dinner plates to the sink. The first day of July had been oppressively hot and humid, making grilling outside an easy sell. Not to be outsmarted, though, Beth had filled her impromptu chicken skewers with zucchini, mushrooms, and peppers.

“I’ve got this, kitten,” she insisted, following Lexa to the sink. “Go have some fun.”

Fun,
Lexa thought uneasily on her long, solitary drive to the shore. Just a few months before, she would have been thrilled by the prospect of a summer bonfire. Now her anxiety was as relentless as the heat blowing in through her open car windows. Would everyone question her about Candace and Boyd? How much should she say? The last thing she wanted was for details of her new life to leak back to Blake, who could still take it all away.

The sun had just eased below the horizon when Lexa parked on a strip of packed dirt already crowded with cars. The still-warm breeze off Lake Erie lifted the damp hair from her neck and aired her clammy dress as she walked past Jenni’s Lexus and on down the brushy path to the beach. Wooden pallets were stacked high at the end of a sandy spit. Not yet lit, they created a jagged silhouette against the orange sky. Lexa altered course and headed toward the people surrounding them.

Bry ran out of the crowd to intercept her. “You’re here!”

“I said I would be.”

Grabbing her bare arm, he pulled her back the way she’d just come, away from the party.

“Is it my imagination, or are you not glad to see me?”

“No! I’m totally glad to see you. It’s just . . .” He glanced behind them, then lowered his voice. “Ian may show up.”

“Bry! You promised!”

“
I
didn’t invite him! I get more than enough of his act at the rink.”

“So how? He invited himself?”

Bry shifted uncomfortably. “Jenni might have said something.”

“Jenni! What the—”

“She thought you liked him!” Dropping his gaze, he drew a sneaker through the sand. “I kind of thought you did too, once. That last morning you came to the rink . . . did he piss you off somehow?”

Lexa hadn’t told anyone what was said that morning, and she didn’t intend to start now. “It’s just that things are awkward between me and Blake, and he’s Blake’s favorite so—”

“Got it,” Bry cut her off.

Great. Now I’ve hurt his feelings
. Before she could repair the damage Jenni ran up to join them.

“Lexa!” she said, latching onto an arm. “Keg’s this way.”

Bry walked off in the opposite direction, toward some guys at the water’s edge. Irritated and at a loss, Lexa let Jenni pull her along. “Why did you invite Ian to this thing?”

“Me?” Jenni feigned amazement. “Ian who?”

“Yeah, funny. I was just trying to explain why I don’t want Ian here, and now I’ve hurt Bry’s feelings.”

“Bry’s the one who doesn’t want Ian. I thought you
did
want him. Biblically, even.”

“Will you shut up? I don’t even like the guy!”

Jenni shrugged her bare shoulders. “So much drama,” she said happily. “I think you can relax, though. Everyone else has been here an hour. Looks like Ian’s a no-show.”

The keg was strategically hidden behind the pallet stockpile. There was nothing else to drink. Lexa filled a cup, sipped, and grimaced as beer burned a trail down the back of her throat.
Still revolting,
she thought. Holding the cup at a distance, she let Jenni drag her to the fire pit.

Aiden and Paul, junior-level skaters coached by Stella Peters, were firing up the first pallet. Orange sparks spewed skyward as Aiden blew into the kindling.

“Hey, Lexa,” said Paul. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” she replied self-consciously. “You?”

“Can’t complain.”

Flames began licking wood. Aiden stood up and brushed sand off his knees. “I heard you’re skating pairs now?”

“Working on it. I still have a long way to go.” Lexa’s hand squeezed her beer as she braced for a negative comment.

Aiden nodded. “That’s cool. I skated pairs for, like, a year, when I was a kid. It’s harder than it looks.”

“It is,” she agreed.

“When we moved to Ohio, I settled on singles, and the rest is history.”

“Yeah, regional history,” Paul gibed. “So what’s the deal, Lexa? You’re not going to nationals?”

“I didn’t say that.” But she couldn’t say she’d be there, either, not this time anyway. “If not, then definitely next season,” she said, hoping that wasn’t still too optimistic.

“You’ll get there again. You’re too good not to make it.”

“Thanks,” she said, gratified by the unexpected support.

Stacy Lott and her best friend, Kayla, walked up to the fire with a couple of girls Lexa didn’t know. All four were wearing bikini tops under open Hawaiian shirts, as if they’d held a vote on that night’s outfit. “Hi, Lexa!” Stacy said. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“I’ve been skating over in Cleveland.”

“We heard!” Kayla said. “Pairs! What a shocker!”

“What about nationals?” Stacy asked. “What about your invitation?”

“I may still get there. Next season for sure,” Lexa said, wishing people would quit asking her about nationals.

“It won’t be the same without you.” Stacy tried to look disappointed, and Lexa had to fight a sudden smile. How could she have believed these casual friends and acquaintances would care about her leaving singles? At worst, it didn’t affect them; at best, a serious competitor had just been cleared out of their way.

“I’ll be there rooting for you guys. For everyone from the rink.”

“Go, Ashtabula!” Kayla shouted, holding up her beer.

Lexa downed a gulp with the rest of them. Jenni drained her cup. “Back in a minute,” she said, taking off for a refill.

The pallet had become engulfed in flames, pushing out heat faster than the night was cooling down. Backing through the crowd, Lexa scanned for Bry. Nearly everyone was standing around the fire now, but there were still a few dark figures at the water’s edge. Lexa was headed toward the stragglers when she spotted a tall shadow walking down from the road.

Ian,
she thought, freezing in place.

She glanced back toward the fire, then down to the shore. If she hurried to join Bry, Ian might walk past without seeing her and she could run to her car. She had already put in an appearance—she didn’t need to stay. She started walking then realized that Ian had probably seen her Explorer.

With a groan, she stopped again. If he already knew she was there, was it better just to face him? Slipping out might make him believe she had a guilty conscience. Which she didn’t.

Not very guilty, anyway.

I’ll just say hello,
she decided.
Show him I’m not ashamed. And
then
I’ll get out of here.

They met up midway between the fire and the road, far from the rest of the crowd. Lexa was glad for the darkness that shielded their faces. “Hi, Ian.”

“Hey, Lexa. Are you leaving already?”

“I’ve got to. I only stopped by because Bry begged me.”

“I only came because Jenni told me you’d be here. Can we talk a minute?”

“I guess,” she said uneasily.

“You can’t drive with that beer anyway,” he said, prompting the realization that she was still gripping her half-full cup, warm and even nastier now.

“This?” she said, silently cursing her own stupidity. “I wasn’t even drinking this! I mean, I had a few sips, but only because there’s nothing else. I hate beer.”

“Relax. I’m not a cop.”

No, but you might be a narc.
Holding the cup at arm’s length, she dumped its contents into the sand.

“So, how’s it going? Over at Cleveland, I mean.”

“Fine.” Part of her wanted to brag about Candace and the facilities and make Ian regret what he’d missed. The part that wanted to keep Blake in the dark won out. “Why?”

“I just thought . . . Let’s go down by the water.” He took off without waiting for her reply. Lexa followed reluctantly, catching up at the shoreline.