Page 16

Grayson

In college, I had a crush on a redhead in my economics class named Jessie. She was a business major, had a loud laugh, and was always asking me for notes after class, complimenting my handwriting and calling me a “lifesaver.”

I had this bright idea to take Jessie to the campus ice rink for our first date, after it took me weeks of waffling to finally drum up the courage and ask her out. It turned out to be an idea that actually worked for me—teaching her how to skate involved a lot of her hanging off of me, grabbing at my sweatshirt, laughing, and my hands on her waist.

Jessie and I dated for the better part of a year. Then, she got a scholarship to go abroad and study in France. That night, at our celebratory dinner, she said it was probably best if we shifted our relationship into friendship territory, since she really wanted to focus on her experience over there, and was worried managing me might take away from that.

Obviously, it had stung, but I was happy for her. And I understood—there had always been something about Jessie and me that didn’t feel permanent. Like we were both just doing the best with what we had, while we had it.

Now, I watch, mesmerized, as Astrid curls her way around the rink, skating fast and gracefully, her body coordinated with every turn—every shift of weight.

The “teach her to skate” method would not work with her.

Though she’s just in black leggings and a long-sleeved black top, I can picture her in a sparkling outfit as she skates backward, jumps and twirls, arms up in the air as though for balance, but also as a sort of art. Graceful, intentional.

She spins again, lifting one leg off the ground, chest moving toward the ice, posture impeccable. Beautiful. And when she comes to a tight stop, her arms in the air, for her final pose, her eyes connect with mine. Her chest is hardly moving, like the whole thing took little effort from her at all.

“Well, this is a treat,” I say, once we’ve skated close enough to each other. “When you said to meet you at the rink…”

“You’re early,” she breathes, and I wonder if the blush on her cheeks is from the cold, the exertion, or from realizing I watched her entire routine.

“It’s called being punctual, Astrid,” I toss back, still mesmerized by the way she moves on the ice. Really, I should have guessed figure skating from her posture, the way she moves. The grace with which she conducts herself always. I just can’t believe it’s never come up—that we’re both equally committed to the ice. Both are in love with it, just in different ways.

“Alright, Mr. Punctual,” she says, and I notice there is already a line of pucks along the goal crease. “I want you to practice with this—Sloane said you’d know what to do,” she raises her hand, gestures at the circles. “Skate around these, then shoot.”

Laughing, I come to a stop in front of her, staring her down. Normally, I don’t notice the height difference between us, but it feels exaggerated on the ice. Like I actually feel as tall as I am.

“Astrid,” I laugh. “I’m a goalie, you know that, right? I don’t really do these kinds of drills.”

She lets out an impatient huff, glancing at the pucks angrily like it’s their fault. “So, what kind of drills do you do, then?”

I blink at her, desperately trying to keep the corners of my lips from turning up. “You know. Blocking goals?”

“Well, there’s nobody here to shoot them, so—”

Astrid cuts off, already shaking her head, clearly recognizing the look on my face and wanting nothing to do with it. “Absolutely not, O’Connor, I am not a hockey player.”

“Really? After all this time being friends with Sloane, you don’t even know how to hit a puck?”

“No—and Sloane doesn’t know how to do a triple Axel, either,” she scoffs. “I made it perfectly clear to her that I had no interest in hockey when we met.”

“And yet.” I throw my arms out, gesturing to the rink, to the practice arena around us. “Here you are. Come on, Astrid, are you saying you can’t hit a few pucks in my direction?”

She chews on her lip, her eyes darting toward the goal, and for the first time, I realize I might know what she’s thinking. That I’m starting to know her well enough to figure out what’s going on inside her head. “I don’t even have a stick,” she argues, and I’m to the boards and back in less than ten seconds, holding out a stick that is—admittedly—far too big for her.

“Fine.” She takes the stick gingerly, like it might be covered in some sort of hockey cooties. Then, she pivots, turns toward the pucks, her gaze cast down. “But don’t expect it to be any good.”

“Now, come on.” A laugh ripples under my words, joy exploding in my chest. This is better than I could have ever asked for, and I can’t deny the hot, liquid sense of want sloshing around in my chest. I want to see Astrid hit a puck. In fact, right now it’s a sudden, compulsive need. “I’ll teach you how to do it.”

Knowing Astrid, I think, at first, that she’s going to refuse. Then she sighs, glances at me, jerks her head like, Get on with it, then .

“Okay.” I skate up next to her, point at the goal. “Imagine you’ve got a goalie standing there, right in front of the net.”

“Should I imagine you?”

Why is my neck hot? “If you want.”

“Okay…” She gives me a sly grin that says she knows exactly what that statement has done to me.

“Alright,” I point at the net, trying to ignore the way my body has heated ten degrees. “There are five—well, actually six or seven—zones, but for you, we’re just going to focus on the five. Zone one is above the goalie’s right shoulder, two just below that. Three is above his left shoulder, and four just under that, to the left of his leg.”

“And zone five?”

“Right between his legs.” I am not a child, so why does this conversation feel so juvenile?

Astrid laughs, “I’m guessing that’s not an easy one to score?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Shouldn’t be. Not if the goalie is doing his job. Butterflying.”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“Good, because you’re not learning how to play goalie, you’re leaning to hit these pucks at me.”

“When you put it that way…”

“So.” I skate away from her a bit and scoop the puck with my stick, the movement coming as naturally to me as brushing my teeth, combing my hair. “There are two shots you can go for. The wrist shot is like this—scoop it, transfer the energy from your core to the puck, and—” My goalie gear shifts, rustles as I hit, but the puck sinks right into the net.

“What’s the other one?” Astrid asks, eyes bouncing from the puck and back to me.

“Slap shot,” I say, raising my eyebrows. “Which I’m assuming you already know?”

“Ha. No.”

“That’s your best friend’s company!” I laugh, skating around her when she tries to bump her hip into mine. “You should know what a slap shot is!”

“Are you going to tell me or not?”

“It’s like a wrist shot,” I say, “but you don’t start out touching the puck, you’re not scooping it. It’s more like hitting a golf ball.”

“Except the golf ball is moving.”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“And you’re moving.”

“Yeah, usually.”

She blows a puff of air out, and I watch it flutter her bangs. “Okay, yeah, great.” Seeming impatient, she says, “Go on, get over there.”

I move into position, feeling oddly light, almost like I used to when I was a kid at practice, filled with the energy of playing around, learning, having a good time.

At first, Astrid doesn’t even come close to the goal. I bite my tongue to hold in my laughter, and when we collect the pucks, line them back up, she has a strangely determined glint in her eye.

When I return to the goal, she takes a little more time between each one, but easily gets them at least within the box of the net. They’re easy to block, and I do, but I would never tell her that.

“So,” she says, pausing before hitting a puck. “You’ve been playing hockey since you were a kid?”

“Yeah. Played like, every sport. Hockey is the one that stuck.”

The rhythm is consistent. Hit, block, scoop, return to her. Hit, block, return. Hit, block, return.

“Why do you think that is?” she asks.

I know the answer to this—I’ve thought about it a lot. “I think each sport has its own special flavor, and there’s this sort of…rowdy element to hockey that I like. Fast-paced like basketball, but a little rougher around the edges, like football. And I like that it involves everything, the complicated footwork from learning to skate, handling the puck, all that hand-eye coordination and physicality coming together. Plus, the fights can be fun.”

Astrid lets out a surprised, but happy noise. “That’s such an…eloquent answer.”

“Figured someone might ask it for my biography someday.”

“Oh?” She stands up straighter, stick in her hand, eyeing me. My eyes are trained on the puck she was about to hit, body squared to it. Shit, if my goalie coach could see me now, maybe he’d be a little less pissed off.

Or, maybe, he would point out the fact that I’m blocking shots from someone who learned to hit just five minutes ago, and it’s actually not that impressive at all.

“So, you want to be big-time famous, then?” Astrid asks, then immediately rockets the puck at me.

It’s faster, harder, with more precision. Still easy to block, but I’m impressed with how quickly she’s picked up aim and power.

“Well, yeah,” I laugh, feeling that familiar cold sweat from being on the ice and being bundled up in all this gear. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“No,” she says, doing a little spin before she hits the next puck. “I just did skating to get me through college. I was there on a scholarship.”

“So, you don’t skate in your free time anymore?”

“I’ll go every few weeks.” She flicks another puck in my direction, almost like she’s trying to catch me off guard. “But mostly to move my body. It’s good for flexibility, balance, that sort of thing. It’s never really been this… passion for me, though.”

“That’s the psychological stuff.” It’s hard for me to imagine someone not having a passion. Hockey has been mine since I announced to my family that I was dropping the other sports in my junior year of high school. They didn’t care that much, but my dad couldn’t hide his disappointment he wouldn’t see me as middle linebacker for the high school football team. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was probably for the best—I’d already had my fair share of exposure to CTE in the time that I’d been playing. My sophomore year, our quarterback was airlifted with a brain bleed and told that he shouldn’t be on the field again after that.

Not that hockey is much better when it comes to that stuff, but as goalie, I’m just not smashing my head against other guys as much.

“Yeah,” Astrid says, skating backward, her knees bent. When she hits the last puck, it nearly catches me off guard, and she notices, our eyes locking. “Keep your eye on the prize, O’Connor.”

I feel a flicker of restraint, and it vanishes, so I say it anyway. “I am.”

“Oh.” She looks away, and I watch color move into her cheeks as she lets out a little laugh, skating backwards, away from me.

“Astrid—”

I skate after her, feeling like a bumbling fool next to the way she so smoothly moves across the ice. I reach the door just before her, and she stops, tipping her head up to meet my eyes.

“Great session,” she says, eyes sparking. “But I have to—”

“Please.” It comes out a whisper. “Please, Astrid. Just tell me what went wrong between us. What I did that night to make you run off like that. I swear I have no idea and I just want—”

She lifts her hands, like she might run them through her hair, but is stopped when she realizes she has it in a ponytail. Dropping them, she worries them along the hem of her shirt, then says, “It’s not that simple, Grayson…”

“Please. Tell me now, and I will never bring it up again. I promise.”

Astrid looks to the ceiling, as if the answer might be written up there, and I resist the urge to look up, too. Finally, after what feels like forever—and after I’ve convinced myself that she’s going to run off to the other exit to get away from me—she meets my eye.

“I’ll tell you,” she says, voice sounding slightly choked, “but I think it’s going to hurt your feelings.”

I bite my tongue, chest tight. My first thought is that I was too small—but I know that’s not true. Statistically, I’m much bigger than average.

My mind runs through the possibilities—she got food poisoning? Fell in love with someone else? Hated the smell of my cologne? Is a lesbian?

When she finally says it, it takes my brain a moment to digest the words fully.

“The sex just…wasn’t for me.” She does the skating equivalent of shifting her weight from foot-to-foot, putting a little distance between the two of us.

“The sex wasn’t for you?” I repeat, dumbly.

“It was…it was bad, Grayson.” Astrid puts a bit more distance between us, and I wait for something to follow that, Not because of you, or We’re just not compatible , but nothing does. The sex was bad.

“Sorry,” I choke, shaking my head and skating back until I hit the edge of the rink and have to step off, onto the mat. “Sorry—I’m trying to—”

“No, yeah,” She shakes her head. “I knew it was a bad idea to tell you. I’m sorry—”

“I asked,” I say, holding my hands up. Right now, I simply cannot meet her eyes. “I asked, and you told me the truth. I just…yeah.”

Without looking at her, I hear her skate to the other exit, hear the sound of her skates on the mat, then her taking them off, then the gentle sound of the door closing behind her.

I stand there in my skates, blinking against the white of the ice, reeling in the aftermath of what she’s just said. Maybe I haven’t been with a ton of women, but the ones I have been with…they’ve been satisfied.

Right?