Walk on Water (13 page)

Unison was exhausting.

They finished their footwork sequence out of step, but there was no question they’d made huge strides in the weeks they’d been together. Candace was actually smiling as she sent them off to the locker rooms, Lexa’s extra hour of practice no longer required.

“Good skating today,” Boyd said, clapping Lexa on the shoulder. “You rocked it out there.”

Her mood lifted at the unexpected praise. “You think so?”

“Definitely. I’m finally rubbing off on you.”

She could never tell if he was kidding when he wore that self-satisfied grin. “Yes, your awesomeness is contagious.”

He laughed, taking the compliment at face value. Running a hand over his gelled hair, he strutted to the men’s locker room. “See you tomorrow, partner.”

There were a few other girls in her locker room, but none Lexa knew well enough to talk to. Homesickness knifed through her, the fact that she was on the outs with Jenni making her miss her friend twice as much. The girl she’d dropped off drunk wasn’t the girl she missed, though. There was no point even texting the stranger her friend had become.

Exiting into the steaming parking lot, Lexa looked forward to the long drive home. Commuting alone, nothing to do but sit and drive, might not be the best use of time, but that was why she liked it. The hours she spent in her car were the only hours she truly relaxed. No one wanted anything from her on the road. There was no one else to satisfy, no one to disappoint . . . she wasn’t even supposed to answer her phone.

Paradise,
she thought, although the hundred-plus-degrees blast of air that greeted her when she opened the Explorer’s door suggested a different place. Sidesaddle in the driver’s seat, she lowered all her windows and waited for a breeze. She was still sitting like that when Boyd walked out of the arena and was pounced on by both Temp and Ashley.

“Have fun with that, partner,” Lexa muttered, swinging into the car and driving out of the lot before anyone noticed her. Boyd’s insane entourage was the last thing she wanted to deal with. 

Tempeste might actually qualify as a stalker,
she thought.
Although it’s probably not technically stalking if your victim encourages it.

For all of Boyd’s joking behind Temp’s back, he seemed happy enough to soak up her worship, and summer had afforded her much more time to hang out at his altar. She spent almost as many hours loitering at the rink as he did training, managing to talk her way in to watch even during private sessions.

“How does she get in here?” Lexa had asked once, when the heat of Tempeste’s stare had burned a hole in her back all morning.

“Have you seen her?” he’d replied incredulously. “She’s hot! Hot girls do what they want.”

“She’s annoying.”

“Seriously annoying. In the hottest possible way. Besides,” he’d added, preening, “you have to admit she has good taste.”

At least Temp had stayed out of her way since that first showdown—not counting the constant evil eye. Ashley was a different story. Lexa had had another run-in with her only the day before, when she’d accidentally gotten in line behind the girl at the snack bar.

“You’re all wrong for him!” she’d blurted, wheeling around with a tragic expression. “You’re too tall, too heavy, and your timing is terrible. You don’t even know how good Boyd is because you mess him up all the time!”

“Do
you
have an invitation to senior nationals?” Lexa had retorted, provoked.

“Your bye is in singles. So what? You hesitate. You’re tentative in the lifts, and your weight flops all over the place. You cause every problem the two of you have.”

Lexa had stared down into Ashley’s waif-like face, then stalked off on her blade guards, swallowing rude comebacks along with her hunger. Ashley had some right to be upset, even if she’d picked the wrong target.

“Your timing is crap!” she’d thrown at Lexa’s retreating back. “Ask Candace if you don’t believe me!”

Lexa hadn’t asked, putting the incident down to jealousy. Now, nothing else to do but drive, she wondered if Ashley might have a point.

She did hesitate sometimes. She had to, to let Boyd catch up. But since he was the one setting the pace, she couldn’t see how those adjustments affected him. And as far as being tentative, she had never bailed out of a single lift. They had to abort an approach now and then when things didn’t line up, but not because Lexa was afraid to give the element her all. That was more of a timing issue.

My timing?
she wondered, Ashley’s accusations ringing anew in her ears.

She did know she needed to hold herself more rigid when Boyd lifted her. Stiffer posture made his job easier. But until they could hit those overhead poses without a dozen balance adjustments, she wasn’t sure how to do that. Right now she was shifting her weight just to keep from falling down.

My too-heavy weight?

“Screw Ashley,” she concluded, cranking up the stereo. She had enough problems already without listening to haters.

“Kitten?” Beth called. “What are you doing up there?”

Lexa closed her laptop. “Nothing!”

“Come on down, then. Watch a movie with your old grandmom.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Lexa promised, waiting to hear Beth walk away before reopening the computer.

Ian Wilde was skating his nationals performance of the year before as captured in a YouTube fan video. The camera work was shaky, the audio filled with inane comments by a girl who knew nothing about skating and was swooning anyway. With the sound turned off, though, this particular video had become Lexa’s favorite viewing.

If only he skated pairs!
She imagined tucking herself into his flawless camel spin, her free leg fitting perfectly beneath his.
If Ian were my partner, pairs would be totally different.

She knew that fantasy was futile, but ever since she’d bonded with Ian at the bonfire, the obsession she thought she’d put behind her had returned stronger than ever. That afternoon, practicing star lifts with Boyd, she had even pretended that the hands supporting her were Ian’s.

That’s got to be the pairs equivalent of cheating,
she thought, clicking Replay anyway. She’d felt guilty about it at the time, but now, watching Ian, she forgave herself. There was nothing easy, let alone magical, about skating pairs with Boyd. Even this far into their partnership, every day was still a struggle. She hadn’t expected the two of them to be great together right away, but she’d expected . . . something. She had counted on some sort of connection that so far neither of them felt. It was hard to believe they ever would. But if they didn’t . . .

Lexa pushed her doubts away.
No, we’ll get there,
she vowed, closing the laptop.

We have to.

“Lower, Lexa!” Candace called. “Trust your partner!”

Balanced precariously on a back outside edge, whipping around Boyd’s pivot in a death spiral that already felt perilously low, Lexa eased her head closer to the ice. She could feel the chill on her cheek as she made another circuit, her whole body tensed for disaster. Then, leveraging her hand-to-wrist grip on Boyd’s arm, she pulled herself back up to standing still riding the same edge.

Candace sighed heavily. “It’s better, but it’s not good. You need to lean back and
drop
, Lexa, not lower yourself bit by bit. And your final position is still too far off the ice. Have you been working on your flexibility?”

“Every day.” Flexibility wasn’t her problem. Her problem was executing a move called the death spiral with someone as self-absorbed as Boyd serving as her only anchor. “I just need to relax more.”

“Then relax. Do it now.”

Yeah, that helps,
Lexa thought, skating around for another attempt. She caught Beth’s eye in the stands as she did. At Candace’s urging, Beth hadn’t visited for the past two weeks, her presence deemed too distracting.

What’s distracting
is trying to impress her on the only day she’s here.
Lexa didn’t know if she was more anxious for her grandmother to see her skate well or for her not to see any cracks in the veneer of the team she’d assembled. It wouldn’t help either of them for Beth to know that things with Candace and Boyd were sometimes less than perfect.

Lexa tried to focus on Boyd as they took their grip again. Forcing her weight against his wrist to make a rigid bridge of their hands, she began leaning back slowly on the knife’s edge of a single blade.

“I’ve got you,” he urged.

“Drop it!” Candace yelled impatiently.

Lexa dropped, her clasped arm extended over her head and both hips turned up toward the ceiling. Boyd’s grip held. Her edge held. She was so low her hair dragged the ice. The rink’s rafters whirled overhead as she counted revolutions, bracing to rise again, wondering how she’d ever do it from so far down . . .

Then she felt Boyd lifting and she was up, popping into position with her free leg never having touched the ice.

“Better!” Candace exclaimed. “Much, much better.”

“It felt better,” Lexa said, excited.

“Night and day,” her coach assured her. “Now if I could get you to listen the
first
time . . .”

Lexa forced herself not to glance at Beth. Candace probably wouldn’t be happy to learn that the only reason she had pushed herself so far so fast was to look good for her grandmother.

“Let’s break on this success,” Candace said. “Let your body remember how doing it right feels. It’s time for lunch, anyway.”

Lexa hurried to the locker room to ditch her skates. With a track suit over her skating dress and her feet stuffed into Uggs, she joined Beth in the rink restaurant and took a big sip of the iced tea waiting at her place.

“I figured you’d be thirsty.” Beth’s silver bob was impeccably styled and diamond earrings framed her smile. “You looked amazing out there, kitten, your mother’s girl for sure.”

“You really think so?” There was nothing Lexa wanted to hear more. “I mean, I’m obviously nowhere near that good yet. But if I keep at it, do you—”

“You’ll be great, never doubt it. It’s happening already.”

The waiter arrived at their table and set down two chicken Caesar salads, dressing on the side.

“I ordered while you were changing,” Beth said.

“Salad. What a surprise.”

“Can I bring you anything else?” the man asked, his gaze already shifting toward the chaos of rapidly filling tables.

“No, thank you,” said Beth.

“A side of fries,” Lexa replied at the same moment. “We’re celebrating!” she defended herself as he walked off to get them. “My best-ever death spiral and my best-ever grandmom both here on the same day.”

Beth waved off the compliment, coloring with pleasure anyway. “You’d say anything to get grease.”

Lexa laughed as she dug into her lettuce. “What would I have to say to get cheesecake?”

“This is heaven!” Lexa declared, reclining in her river tube. Back at Maplehurst, the mid-July sun was scorching the earth, but in the shade of a tree overhanging Lake Erie, she and Bry floated comfortably. “I’m a genius to have thought of it.”

Bry’s board shorts made wet balloons around his thighs where they dipped through his tube into the water. “
I
thought of it. You can thank me for bringing the bug spray, too.”

“Thank you,” she said happily. “Thank you for telepathically receiving my genius idea.”

He snorted and skipped a hand through the water, splashing her up to her neck.

“Hey! Don’t splash the shades.”

They were both wearing movie-star sunglasses. Lexa peered through hers at a brand-new bikini. All that salad wasn’t just good for making her easier to lift—between the diet and her intense new training regimen, her abs had never been tighter.

Or paler.

“We should get spray tans after this,” she said. “Go home and tell everyone they’re real.”

“I will if you will.” Sculling closer, he fished up a cord attached to his tube and tied it through the handle of hers. “There. Now your tube won’t float away while you swim in to get us some drinks from the cooler.”

“Yours won’t, you mean,” she corrected.

“Rock-paper-scissors?”

“You’re the one who’s thirsty.”

They bobbed there a while, neither one inclined to move.

“Your feet are funny-looking,” he said at last, trying to goad her into the water to hide them.

“Ha! And you’re a foot model!”

The four feet propped up by their two tubes wriggled, on display. Countless hours of jumping in constricting boots had left their mark on both skaters, molding growing bones in ways nature never intended. With outsiders, Lexa felt self-conscious whenever her shoes were off. With Bry, every lump and bulge was a hard-earned badge of honor.

He let his head loll back. “If we wait long enough, maybe someone will swim out here and take our drink order.”

“Yeah. That’s likely.”

She didn’t say what they were both thinking, that if Jenni had come with them she’d be tanning on the beach, ready to be talked into cooling off by swimming out with some sodas. Bry had wanted to invite her; Lexa had not. She could forgive and forget everything else, but every time she remembered Jenni hanging all over Ian, telling him Lexa didn’t like him, she still wanted to slug someone. When Jenni apologized for that, they could start speaking again.

“Jenni’s back to training hard,” Bry said.

“Every day?” Lexa asked skeptically.

“Most days.”

Then she’d come to her senses about that, at least. “How about you? How are your programs coming?”

“Pretty good.” Bry made a face. “I’d say great if not for Saint Ian.”

Lexa smiled. “You hate him that much?”

“I don’t hate him. I just . . .” Bry cracked his knuckles and sighed. “. . . hate him. It’s not
him
, it’s his skating. How am I ever going to beat that?”

Lexa remembered what Blake had once said about Bry and second place, but he’d never hear that from her. “Ian’s amazing, but so are you. Nobody’s unbeatable.”

Bry sat up higher in his tube. “That’s true. Better skaters than Ian have come up short at the Olympics.”