From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

  Plus, I’d never been that much of a little bitch before. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about jumping into this opportunity, even if I got nothing out of it. Now… well, burns leave scars sometimes, and I wouldn’t forget it.

  With adrenaline pumping through my veins, and still slightly out of breath, I made my way over to the part of the stands where Ivan and Coach Lee were still sitting. They weren’t even trying to be discreet with their stares. One last chance to make sure they knew what they were getting? Probably.

  My hands didn’t shake, and my knees didn’t feel weak as I approached them; it was only my breathing that was choppy and irregular, but my stomach gave this roll of nerves I wasn’t used to and sure as hell would never admit to.

  “I hope you don’t mind we came to see you,” Coach Lee started the conversation while I was still feet away from them, confirming my suspicions.

  I shook my head as my gaze briefly slipped in Ivan’s direction, taking in that cool but somehow still smug face, before just as quickly glancing back at the other woman. I couldn’t screw this up by opening my mouth and arguing with him. At least not yet.

  “Not at all,” I told her. I understood why they did it. I would have done the same. “Morning.”

  The corners of her mouth slipped up at the edges just enough to be a fraction of a smile. “Morning.”

  Ivan didn’t say shit.

  Good. Maybe he was doing the same thing I was: keeping his mouth shut so we could get through this as painlessly as possible. That reassured me more than I would have liked, because if he wasn’t arguing with me, maybe he did want to be my partner.

  Okay, want was the wrong word to use. Need might have been more like it. Whatever.

  I had no idea what the situation was, and honestly, I didn’t give a shit. All I cared about was this opportunity. I wasn’t about to screw it up for myself.

  Getting to her feet and putting her at an inch shorter than me, Coach Lee crossed her arms over her chest and said something I wasn’t expecting. “Your triple Lutz is beautiful. Your height, your speed, the amount of ice you cover, and your technique… I forgot that was your signature move until you did it. It’s perfect, Jasmine, really. You should be proud of it.” Her smile turned into a grin. “It reminds me of Ivan’s.”

  I ignored the part about Ivan and focused on the rest. I was proud of it. I didn’t say that though. I’d torn that jump apart to perfect it. I’d watched and re-watched the best figure skaters doing it to see what it was that made it so spectacular, so I could do it too. There were even hours of footage at home of me doing it over and over again, just so I could see how to improve what I was doing. My mom had wanted to kill me back then for forcing her to record the same thing over and over again for hours and days. And once I had figured it out, she’d tried to take all the credit for it.

  “When did you do that last combination? I don’t remember it from any competition,” she said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t think Paul was very good at Lutzes….”

  He hadn’t been. And I told her she was right. “It’s from an old short program from my singles days,” I explained.

  Both her eyebrows went up at the same time like “ah.” “That’s a shame,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me one day the story behind you switching from singles to pairs. I was always curious about it.”

  And it was that comment that made me shrug and say, easy and smooth, “It’s not that interesting of a story, but one day.”

  It was the “one day” that had her eyes widening. “You’re sure?”

  Was I? Was I really?

  I looked at her, and only her, and said, “I have a few questions, and a few stipulations.”

  “Stipulations?” Ivan drawled out the question from where he was on the bench, all lazy and in that snobby voice that said he didn’t think I was in any position to bargain.

  Wrong.

  I glanced at him for all of a second then moved my gaze back to his coach before I said something stupid. “Nothing crazy.” I used the same words she had used on me the day before when she had basically said I was going to have to agree to not be stubborn to making changes.

  Coach Lee slid a look toward Ivan that I didn’t absorb before agreeing. “Would you like to talk here or should I see if the office is open?”

  I didn’t need to glance around to know we had privacy. “We can do it here and save time.”

  The other woman raised her eyebrows but nodded.

  I moved my left hand to my right wrist without thinking about it, spinning my bracelet for moral support. I could do this. I could make everything work.

  I had to try.

  Ivan might be an amazing skater, but I had worked just as hard as he had. Maybe for not as long as him, because I hadn’t started skating before I was three years old, but in all the ways that mattered, I had done almost everything I could. He wasn’t doing me a favor. This was going to be an equal partnership or it wasn’t going to be anything. I wasn’t going to accept less.

  “What’s on your mind?” Coach Lee finally asked.

  I spun the bracelet on my wrist again. I can do anything, I reminded myself. Then I started. “I want to make sure that you won’t be asking me to do a makeover and start kissing babies in public if I agree to be Ivan’s partner.”

  There.

  I was pretty sure her cheek twitched, but her expression was so neutral, I might have imagined it. “No kissing babies and no makeovers. That’s not an issue. What else?”

  I could really start to like this woman and her directness. So I kept going. “You can’t get rid of me before the year is over.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ivan shifting around from his spot on the bench, but I still didn’t look at him. Instead, I watched the woman I was practically doing business with, our mediator. She didn’t flinch at my demand, but her eyebrow did do this quirk thing that she couldn’t smooth out fast enough.

  “Why would you think we would terminate the agreement before the year is up?” she asked slowly.

  That time I did glance at Ivan. On purpose. Then I pointed at him with the thumb closest to him so that there wasn’t any confusion. “Because I’m not sure how he and I are going to get along.”

  He scoffed and opened his mouth like he was about to argue, but I didn’t let him.

  “I’m just trying to cover my bases. I know how I am, and I know how he is too.” I called him a “he” because even though I was looking at him, I was really speaking to Lee. “If something is my fault, I’ll work at it until I fix it. I promise you that, but if it’s his fault….”

  He changed his posture from sitting in that relaxed position to leaning forward, spreading his knees and planting his elbows on them. His pale blue eyes were so intense it was like they were trying to bore a hole right into me. The tip of his tongue was poking at the inside of his cheek. He’d made that face at me enough times in the past for me to recognize it.

  He was giving me a death glare.

  Good.

  It would have been weird if he’d pretended like everything was fine and dandy.

  “If it’s Ivan’s fault…” I glanced at him that time. “Yours,” I emphasized because he needed to get that he wasn’t perfect and that he and his coach couldn’t blame me for everything. “I trust that you’ll bust your ass not to make the same mistake again either. If something is wrong, we’ll both work at it. We both agree to do whatever we have to do to make this work.”

  Because I was still looking in his direction, I could see his jaw move from one side to the other the entire time I talked, and I could feel the argument hanging in the air.

  “All I want is to make sure the responsibility is split evenly between us. We’re a team or we aren’t. I won’t be treated like the redheaded step-kid. This can’t be just The Ivan Show.”

  “The Ivan Show?” he echoed, still giving me his death glare.

  I shrugged a shoulder, feeling my nose beginning to wrinkle in a sneer t
hat I only barely wrangled in before it turned into a full one. I dragged my gaze back to Coach Lee just barely. “And when the year is over, I want your word that you’ll both find me another partner. Not just help me find one, but actually find me one.” I swallowed and said, “That’s all I want. I’ll do just about anything you ask, but I want those two things, and I want to be sure it isn’t debatable.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  I didn’t need to look to know they were both looking at me and not at each other.

  Andddd. Why the hell were they taking so long to say yes? I wasn’t asking for that much.

  Was I?

  Standing there, looking at both of them, I asked what felt like the most important question of my life because I just wanted to get it over with. Either we were doing this or we weren’t. I wasn’t good with anticipation. I wasn’t patient. “Do we have a deal?”

  There was another pause, and Coach Lee finally glanced in Ivan’s direction for what must have been half a minute at least before she made an amused noise. Her mouth twisted to the side and then back. She took her time moving her attention back to me, and then blinked.

  And I thought, we don’t have a deal.

  And my stomach sank.

  And for the first time in forever, I thought I was going to throw up and I wanted to kick my own ass.

  “Fine,” came the unexpected reply straight out of Ivan’s mouth, not looking at all like he was excited to do it… and still watching me carefully. Still not making a face. Not looking at all like this was a major decision when it was the total opposite for me.

  But I didn’t let his little bitch face distract me from what the hell had just happened.

  He’d agreed.

  He had agreed.

  Holy fuck.

  I was going to compete again.

  Once, when I was younger on vacation, I’d gone with my brother to the beach and we’d decided to go cliff diving. I remember jumping in from a spot so high, my mom would have killed me if she’d seen it. Even my brother had chickened out at the last minute. But I hadn’t.

  I hadn’t been expecting how far under the water I would go when I dove in. I’d had to hold my breath for so long as I kicked and kicked and kicked to reach the surface, it had felt like I’d never make it. For maybe half a second, I had thought I was going to drown. But when I reached the surface, I would probably always remember what it was like to take that first breath of air. To take that first breath of air and think I had done it.

  Sometimes it’s easy to take something so essential to your existence for granted.

  More than ever, I understood it then as I stood there, taking turns looking between Coach Lee and Ivan and feeling… feeling like I was supposed to be feeling. Like I was alive again. Like I was right.

  But…

  There was one more thing that I hadn’t taken into consideration while I’d been worried about everything else. Something that was just as important as the other two things. Maybe even more.

  It was a deal breaker. A deal breaker that my pride didn’t want to even factor but had to. I was trying to be an adult. “There’s one more thing.” I swallowed and fought back the temptation to keep my mouth shut. “How much are coaching and choreography fees going to be?”

  I wasn’t going to ask my mom to contribute as much as she used to. But I also had a vague idea how much Ivan paid his choreographers. I had called one once and gotten pissed off when he told me his rates.

  I was already cringing on the inside, expecting the worst. There was no way Coach Lee was cheap either. My past two coaches hadn’t been the most expensive, but they hadn’t been the cheapest either, because they coached other figure skaters at the same time at different levels in their careers.

  So when Ivan blinked at me and Coach Lee said nothing, my thoughts went straight to shit.

  I was going to have to ask them to let me defer my payment until the season was over so I could sell a kidney. Fuck it, I could wear a wig and strip. I didn’t have any birthmarks to give me away.

  “Ivan will cover coaching and choreography fees, but you’ll be responsible for travel and your wardrobe,” the other woman said after a moment too long.

  The muscles at my shoulders went tight, my gaze went to Ivan, and I asked him, when I knew better, “You will?”

  Those gray-blue eyes lazily blinked before he said, “You can pay for half if you want.”

  I wasn’t that prideful.

  So I blinked right back at him. “Nope.”

  He straightened in his seat, that face, which had been on a lip balm commercial once, stayed perfectly even. “You’re sure?” he asked, that annoying tone prickling at his words.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Positive?”

  This bitch. I narrowed my eyes. “Positive.”

  “I don’t mind splitting it,” he kept going, the corner of his mouth coming up into a baby smirk I was way too familiar with.

  I ground down on my molars. “Nope,” I repeated myself.

  “Because we—”

  “Okay,” Coach Lee butted in, shaking her head. “I think I’m going to need a raise to deal with both of you.”

  That had both of us turning our heads toward her.

  “I’m fine. It’s him,” I said at the same time Ivan said, “It’s her fault.”

  The older woman shook her head some more, giving us both expressions that said she was already fed up with our shit. “You’re both professionals and mostly adults—”

  Mostly an adult?

  It was just because I didn’t know Coach Lee well enough yet that I kept the scoff in my mouth.

  “This is going to be a lot of work, and both of you are aware of that. This bickering thing you have going on, save it for the evenings when we’re done if you can’t get past it. We don’t have time to waste,” she said, using that tone my mom used when she was fed up with our shit.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  Ivan didn’t.

  “I’m professional,” he muttered.

  The other woman just stared at him. “We talked about this.”

  He gave her a look, and she gave him one right back.

  I almost smiled… until I took in what they were saying… and what they weren’t. What the hell had they talked about? How we always argued and needed to get past it if we were going to partner up? Because that would actually make a lot of sense. It was one of my biggest worries, but I knew I could keep it to myself.

  At least most of the time.

  The woman turned her head to look at me. “Jasmine, will that be a problem?”

  I didn’t trust myself to look at Ivan, so I kept my gaze on my new coach. God, that felt weird to even think that. “Save it for afterward. I can do that.” It would probably be harder than actually practicing so much, but I could do it.

  “Ivan?”

  If he glanced at me or didn’t, I had no idea, all I heard was what was basically a grumbled, “Yes.”

  “Constructive criticisms won’t be a problem either,” the other woman kept going, telling us, not asking.

  No shit, we could handle constructive criticism—

  “From each other,” she finished.

  That time I did glance at Ivan, but he was already looking at me, his eyelids slit like he was thinking the same thing I was. We could already barely talk to each other. We hardly were, because we both knew what happened when we opened our mouths and aimed them at each other.

  But…

  I was trying to be better, and I would be. I wasn’t going to let my mouth ruin anything for me. Much less my pride. I told them I’d do anything for this, and I would.

  Even if it meant dealing with this jackass.

  So I nodded, because what else was I going to do? Ruin something that in the future might give me everything I wanted? Possibly lead to other great things? I wasn’t that dumb.

  “Fine,” came the bit off response from the only male nearby.

  “Good, I’m glad that�
�s settled now before we go any further.”

  I glanced at Ivan again, but he’d beat me to it. He was already looking at me….

  And I didn’t like it.

  Stop looking at me, I mouthed.

  No, he mouthed back.

  Coach Lee sighed. “Excellent. Lip whatever you want to each other as long as I don’t have to hear it.”

  I swear on my life he smacked his lips together.

  I wanted to smack him.

  Then he opened his mouth to talk. “You’re going to need to get a physical before we start.”

  What? Was he for real? I was in prime fucking health—

  Shut up, Jasmine. It isn’t a big deal. And maybe I wasn’t exactly in my prime, but none of my injuries would pop up in a physical.

  I shut up and dipped my chin down like okay, uh-huh. What was a little checkup when I’d have this opportunity again? Nothing, that’s what.

  “We need to make sure you don’t have any pre-existing conditions that you aren’t telling us about that might come up later on,” he continued on, slowly, still making a face like this entire conversation—and situation—was costing him.

  The smart-ass crept up my throat, not going anywhere, especially not after his hand went up to his check and his middle finger scratched at the tip of his nose. Ass. “That’s what I figured you wanted when you said you wanted a physical, not to get my weight or cholesterol levels,” I muttered, stopping myself before I said anything more aggressive.

  It was his turn to be a smart-ass apparently. “Speaking of your weight—”

  No he didn’t.

  Coach Lee cleared her throat just as I’d started to raise my hand to point at him. With my middle finger. “All right,” she said tightly. “Let’s focus. We just talked about this. We’ll have an agreement drawn up that you’ll need to sign, Jasmine. Other than that, practice will be six days a week, twice a day. Will that be a problem?”

  It took every ounce of self-control in me to tear my gaze away from the idiot who had been just about to say something about my weight. I could feel my nostrils flare as I swallowed and focused back on the woman. “It’s not a problem.” She didn’t need to tell me we needed all the training we could get in with less than six months before the start of the next season. “What times?” I asked, my hand twirling my bracelet.