by Erin McRae
He let himself in, the squeak and slam of the screen door announcing his arrival. It sounded like summer even if it was December and seven degrees out. He kicked his shoes off, tossed his coat on top of the others already piled on the stair railing, and joined the group gathered in the living room.
There was a small crowd of people already gathered. Sam, Morgan and Charlotte were deep in conversation with Shane, who coached jumps, and Haruka, who taught dance and artistry. A flurry of French drifted from a corner where Fitz, Gabe, and Huy were together talking about something too quickly for Aaron to be able to decipher it.
And there was Zack, sitting on the couch next to Angel, chatting with him and looking as if he’d always belonged in the group. Aaron took a moment to imagine a life where that was really the case, as if they could always be part of the same universe together. The idea took his breath away.
Zack, as if feeling Aaron’s eyes on him, looked up. He wore a fleece jacket, zipped all the way up despite the wood-burning stove next to him throwing out its cheery warmth. Aaron wanted to throw himself into his arms.
Before he could tell himself to think better of it, he did just that, bouncing across the room and hugged Zack—or tried to, at least. Zack was still sitting down, which meant that Aaron landed on his lap with his arms around his neck and his face, for a brief moment, in the fleece-covered warmth of his shoulder.
Zack chuckled, and Aaron could feel it reverberated between their bodies. His arms tightened around Aaron’s back; Aaron had, somehow, forgotten how strong he was—and how secure he felt in his embrace.
“Hello, Aaron.”
“Hi.”
From behind him came a cough, he wasn’t sure from who. Zack dropped his arms, Aaron peeled himself away and stood up again, feeling sheepish.
“Er. Hi everybody.” Gossipy as skaters were, not everyone here was from TCI or knew his history with Zack. He’d just given everyone a lot to talk about. Which he didn’t mind for his own sake, but was a lot to put on Zack, who he’d barely spoken to in months.
“Excellent boundaries, Sheftall,” Katie said, walking into the room.
“Sorry,” Aaron muttered. I really should have thought this through.
Zack touched his fingertips to Aaron’s wrist. “It’s fine,” he said softly, in a manner that was far more for Aaron’s ears than theirs.
Aaron wished he had worn long sleeves; they would have hidden the goosebumps that broke out up and down his arms.
At that moment, Brendan appeared in the doorway to announce that dinner was ready.
BE CHILL, Aaron told himself as he made his way to the dining room. Be chill. Be way more chill than that. He hadn’t talked to Zack face-to-face in months. He’d invited him to dinner at Katie and Brendan’s because he’d been having feelings about Zack, seals, and winning, not necessarily in that order. At some point he really wanted to have a conversation with him, about all of that, but really about anything at all. And for that to happen he should probably not break his streak of, somehow, managing to not freak Zack out.
He could totally manage a meal sitting next to Zack. He could chat with Katie about the cows, practice his Japanese with Haruka, and wish his French were better so he could eavesdrop more effectively on Fitz and Huy. Ugh. Canadians. He just didn’t know what to do about Zack. He’d gotten himself into this situation by winging it, but he probably shouldn’t try to get himself out the same way. So he relied, perhaps too much, on gracious small talk and other people occupying Zack’s attention.
As Aaron was helping to clear the table, his phone barked in his back pocket. Yet again. Loudly, and repeatedly. He set the dishes he was carrying on the counter next to where Brendan was rinsing things at the sink and frowned as he dug out his phone.
Ari was calling him. Again.
“Not now,” he complained aloud.
Katie set down another stack of plates next to him. “What is it?” she asked.
“My sister,” Aaron said. He went back to the table for more dishes. Katie went with him.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Aaron sighed as he gathered up dirty silverware. Everything else going on in his head tonight, he didn’t have the bandwidth for Ari. “She thinks there is.”
Katie grabbed a dishcloth and began wiping crumbs off the table. “With reason?”
If there was, I’d know how to talk to her about it. “Maybe. I don’t know. She’s been wanting to chat about some stuff since I was in St. Petersburg, and I haven’t wanted to deal.”
“You’ve also been busy,” Katie pointed out.
“Yeah.”
“But right now,” Katie continued, a glint that some might call mischievous in her eye. “You have the evening off and nothing on your schedule before noon tomorrow. Go call your sister back, okay?”
“Ugh.” It was possibly the last thing Aaron wanted to do. Among other things, he actually wanted to spend time with Zack tonight. Though since he hadn’t figured out how to do that like a chill human being, perhaps he should take the out for now.
His gaze fell on Zack, who was helping Angel set up a board game on the freshly-cleared table.
“Don’t worry,” Katie said softly. “I won’t let him leave before you’re done.” She nodded at ‘s Aaron’s phone. “I don’t think that’s going to get any easier the longer you wait.”
AARON WENT OUT ONTO the screened-in porch to call Ari. It was the same place—and the same time of day—he and Zack had hung out the first time Zack had come to the farm, back in June, but it was hard to believe that. Instead of a marvelous sunset sky and warm summer breezes, there were dark fields and a wind that nipped in through the screen. The night was clear, and stars shone brightly in the sky. Not as brightly as they did at home, where there really was no human habitation around for miles, but still much more brightly than in the city. The landscape was even quieter than the island was, though. On the island there was the constant sound of wind and water. Here, the profound silence was punctuated only by the occasional sound of a car on the far-off highway or a burst of laughter from inside. The quiet felt lonely, and Aaron was hit by a sudden burst of homesickness.
He opened his text messages, didn’t bother to read Ari’s most recent volley, and hit call instead.
“Finally.” His twin answered immediately. “I was starting to get worried.”
“If you’d been really worried, you would have called Brendan.”
“Maybe I did.”
“Ari!” Fuck, was that why Katie had told him to call? But no. She and Brendan didn’t do triangulation like that. For that matter, neither did Ari.
“What? I know something happened. And you’re not telling me what it was,” Ari said.
“How’s home?” he asked. Aaron tried to picture her there. Was she outside by the water, looking up at the same stars he could see? Or was she inside, warming up in front of the cobblestone fireplace in the living room?
“Very, very cold. Now. What happened?”
Aaron sighed, resigning himself. “Has it ever occurred to you that my life is plenty eventful simply because I have a life that involves a lot of events?”
“We both know that’s not what I mean,” Ari said.
Aaron wondered if she had told their parents about any of this. “Fine. I was in St. Petersburg, this was the last day, after the gala—”
“Yes, whatever, skip to the thing.”
So Aaron did, and, in as few words as possible, told her about the seals in the Neva. When he was done—including the exchange he’d had with the man on the street—Ari made an irritated sound in her throat.
“When things happen like this, you have to tell me.”
“Why? It was just one of those weird things that happens sometimes when wildlife and humans share a habitat. I wouldn’t call you if I found a raccoon by my apartment, which, by the way, happens all the time.”
Aaron was still annoyed, but more than that, he felt unnerved. Being out here, in the dark, on Kat
ie’s farm—it wasn’t as wild as the island, but there was still a strange sort of energy here. The same energy, in fact, that he’d felt that night in Saint Petersburg. The kind that made him feel like anything could happen.
In the distance, a dog—an actual dog, the farm that adjoined Katie and Brendan’s had two of them, Aaron had met them—barked. Which didn’t really help.
“There are so few of us,” Ari finally said.
“There’s just two of us. We’re twins.”
“You know that’s not what I meant, and you don’t act like it sometimes,” Ari said sharply.
The blow, Aaron knew, was calculated to hurt, and it did; he hunched in on himself and tried to take deep breaths of the cold winter air to dispel the hot wash of guilt and shame he still felt for leaving the island in the summer. But he’d given up so much already. He couldn’t make up the time he’d decided to give to skating instead. That had been true for years and years now, so long it was nearly his whole life. If he lost his focus now, none of it would have been worth it anyway.
“I don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “I’m trying to go to the Olympics. The seals are just seals, and I’m just a man. But I have to focus.” No matter how weird my life is.
“I’m not trying to get you to not go to the Olympics.” Ari’s voice rose in frustration. “I’m trying to make sure you come home again.”
“I am coming home! Next week,” Aaron said.
“For a few days.” Ari sounded sullen.
“That’s all I have time for,” Aaron said, all but pleading. “Can’t it be enough?”
“I think that,” Ari said, “is up to you.”
THE CALL WAS NOT AS unsettling as what had happened in St. Petersburg, but Aaron still felt the need to gather himself once it was over.
He was so tired. He’d spent so many months working to bring his true self—his island self—onto the ice. He had two Grand Prix silvers and a Grand Prix Final bronze to show for it now. He was a force the federation wouldn’t be able to ignore when it came time to pick the U.S. team. Nationals would be the final determining factor there, but he’d done the work he needed to so far this season and done it well.
And now Ari wanted him to swear he would one day return to their island for good. Which he should have been able to give an immediate and unqualified yes to, but even the idea of it made him tremble. His life was global, expansive, and public. The island was essential to him... and such a small, private place. Could he exist on that island without the rest of the world—and how it, too, had formed him?
He glanced through the window into Katie and Brendan’s living room. Zack was there, in the center of everyone, playing board games. He laughed at something someone else said, his eyes sparkling. Zack, somehow, had been folded into his extended skating family. Zack, who Aaron had fallen so hard for in so many ways, who’d seen Aaron skate his heart out but still knew almost nothing about Ari, about his family, about the life he had come from.
And now Aaron, wrung out with guilt and uncertainty, had to go back inside and pretend everything in his head was fine to everyone he was closest to—or, in the case of Zack, the person he wanted to be closest to. It felt like too much, but what else could he do?
Zack and Katie both glanced up at him when he slipped back inside. Katie gave him the look she’d given him across the boards a hundred times at practices that had gotten too hard, too weird, too emotional. It meant: Are you okay?
He nodded. He wasn’t really, but it was nothing she could do anything about.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Zack asked, looking him over with a concern that made warmth bloom in Aaron’s chest.
“I never get cold. You know that,” he said.
“I know you never get cold at the rink,” Zack corrected with a hint of a smile. Aaron blushed; he knew he had hogged the blankets every time he had shared a bed with Zack, how he had complained that he was freezing, and insisted that Zack hold him closer.
“Dude, you’re making me cold just looking at you,” Huy piped up from his corner of the couch.
“Do you want to play?” Zack asked, resetting the board for whatever they’d been playing. That teasing look was still in his eyes.
“Yeah, sure, all right.”
Zack shifted in his own seat, making room for Aaron if he wanted it. Aaron very much did. Their shoulders pressed against each other as he sat down, and he let himself bask in the warmth. He still wanted to get Zack alone for a conversation—he owed him that, after inviting him here in the first place—but Aaron still didn’t know what he’d say when he did. In the meantime, proximity was nice.
The idea to invite Zack to the island occurred to him as he hopped his piece around the board. It was so patently absurd that he shook his head at himself and told himself to forget it immediately. But apparently he’d left all his mental discipline at the rink, because he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He’d spent the season bringing more of his island self to the world. Maybe, just maybe, the path actually needed to go both ways. If he could show Ari more of who he was on the mainland then he could be that person and her twin. And he could show Zack the island in person—he had asked how to make that happen from almost the moment Aaron had told him about it.
In the end, impulse control lost to feeling.
“Question,” Aaron said during a break in the game while the others chatted together. He jiggled his foot as Zack glanced over at him.
“Yeah?” Zack said.
“What are you doing for your winter holiday of choice?” Well, here we go.
A faint crease appeared on Zack’s forehead. “Um. I’m not sure,” he said. “Avoiding my family and their opinions about my life choices, probably.”
Aaron couldn’t imagine being estranged from his family like that. The idea of Zack being alone over the holidays was wretched; which seemed to make inviting him to the island make slightly more sense.
“Do you want to come home with me?” he asked.
Zack stammered for a moment. Aaron tried not to giggle even as he realized he should have phrased his question more precisely.
“I mean to the island,” he clarified. “For the holidays. You can’t stay here by yourself!”
“Oh I absolutely can.” Zack looked somewhere between horrified and amused, which was not precisely the reaction Aaron had been hoping for. Though was the reaction he knew he deserved.
Zack went on. “I also probably shouldn’t impose for several days, including a major holiday, on people I’ve never met.”
“Oh! Don’t worry about that.” Aaron shook his head, glad to be able to put that uneasiness to rest. “We don’t actually do Christmas. Except for the Chanukah bush.”
Zack frowned. “What the fuck is a Hannukah bush?”
“It’s what you call a Christmas tree when you’re the only Jewish family in an ice-bound island community.” It’s a way of seeming normal, Aaron thought somewhat glumly, when you’re different from the people you live around.
Zack looked baffled. But the frown was gone, replaced by a look of cautious delight and curiosity. The look was one Aaron had seen on his face before, usually right before Zack suggested they do something involving rope and very little clothing. Aaron loved that look. Even now when they definitely weren’t together at all, and he was probably starting a giant mess when he absolutely did not have the time to deal with anything of the sort.
“You should come,” he urged. “I mean, except, of course, if you don’t want to,” he added. I have weird boundaries, not bad boundaries, he told himself. “We hardly ever get visitors in the winter, you’d be a hit.”
“This feels strange and ill-advised,” Zack said, looking around nervously.
Aaron followed his gaze. Katie, seated in the armchair diagonally from them, was clearly following every word while pretending—badly—to ignore them.
“Everything about me is strange and ill-advised,” he said, dropping his voice and leaning into Zack’s sh
oulder so Katie—or anyone else—couldn’t hear. “And no pressure or assumptions or expectations. I get where we’re at, which is basically nowhere, but I don’t know. Your job when you showed up here was to find out who I am. Well, come find out who I am.”
“Yeah.” Zack took a breath. “Yeah, okay.”
AT THE END OF THE NIGHT they were among the last to leave. After shouting their goodbyes and see-you-tomorrows to everyone, they lingered next to Aaron’s car, their breath rising toward the distant stars. Aaron wondered if anyone still in the house was watching them; he hoped not, but knew better than to assume.
As the hubbub of departing guests subsided and the quiet of the country night rose around them, Zack leaned sideways against Aaron’s car, his arms folded across his chest, presumably for warmth. Aaron resisted the urge to step forward and be wrapped up in those arms.
“I feel like there are a lot of logistical questions I should be asking you,” Zack said. “If I’m going to your island with you.”
Aaron still couldn’t believe he’d actually asked Zack to go—or that he’d said yes. He leaned against his car too, mirroring Zack’s posture. “I meant what I said. no expectations, no implications, no strategy. You’re important to me, even if we’re not together.” Aaron felt his cheeks burn as he admitted it. “I just... feel like I’ll be happier if you know who I am. And the island—not the ice, or your bed—is the only way. And really, you can’t spend the holidays by yourself,” he finished.
“Everything you’ve told me about it sounds so remote,” Zack said, a note of cautiousness in his voice.
“Are you nervous?” Aaron asked.
“Maybe.”
“It’s fine,” Aaron said firmly, in a burst of the same confidence he’d led Zack through so many skating lessons with. As if Zack’s nerves were just about how they were going to get to the island and not the foolishness of the plan to begin with. “You’ll be with me. We’ll fly to Cleveland. And then get a plane to Put-In-Bay. I’ve already got my flight scheduled. We can just add you to it. Someone will meet us there to get us back to our island...boat or snowmobile, depending on how frozen the lake is. Though if the cold keeps up like this, definitely snowmobile.”
