But I wasn’t that kind of person. I had avoided dealing with this as long as I could. It was time though.
“The problem is that you don’t know me, Dad.”
He scoffed, and I turned my head just enough to finally look at him.
“You don’t. I love you, but you don’t know me or understand me. Not even a little bit. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a pain in the ass or if you just don’t like me.”
He blew out a breath of frustration that I was going to ignore. “Why would you think I don’t like you?”
I blinked and tried to push away the gross, disappointed feeling in the middle of my belly. “Because you don’t. How many times have we spent time together, just us two?”
My dad’s mouth hung open for a moment before he closed it. “You were always busy. You’re always busy now.”
The answer was never. We’d never spent time together alone. He spent time with each of my brothers and each of my sisters, but never with me.
I was busy. But he’d never even tried. He’d never even come to the rink to sit at the bleachers and watch me practice, like everyone else had on multiple occasions. And if he’d ever even given a little bit of a shit, he would have.
So I controlled my breath, controlled my features and mouth so I could respond to him and not go off. “I am, but neither one of us made time for it. How many of my competitions have you gone to over the last… six years?”
For some reason, I didn’t enjoy the look of discomfort that came over his face. “You stopped inviting me,” he claimed.
Sadness that dwarfed every other sadness I had ever experienced in my life filled my entire body, but mostly the upper half of it.
“I stopped inviting you after you made me feel bad for asking you for money. I remember. You stopped going to any of my competitions before I was even nineteen. I remember you told me at the last one you went to, ‘Maybe you should focus on school, no?’ Do you remember telling me that right after I’d won first place? Because I do,” I reminded him, facing forward again to watch Ivan go into a shotgun spin that was half the speed he usually went at. The sadness in me grew stronger, thicker, and maybe in some way turned into resignation. Resignation that things had turned out this way and there was nothing I could do about it.
My dad said nothing.
“Do you know why I started figure skating?”
There was a pause and then, “It was a birthday party. Your mom made you go and you were mad because you didn’t want to.”
I blinked because that was exactly what had happened. I hardly knew the girl having the party, but she’d been a daughter of my mom’s friend. It wasn’t until she’d told me it was at a rink like in The Mighty Ducks, that I had agreed to go, still bitching the entire time.
At least until I’d gotten out on that ice and my body had just known what to do. “Like a duck in water,” my mom had called from the sidelines.
“That’s part of it, but not what I was asking,” I said, my voice sounding as tired as I felt. Drained, just so damned drained. “I started because I loved it. From the first moment I got on the ice, it felt right. And once I didn’t need to hold the walls anymore, it made me feel… free. It made me feel special. Everyone else that day could barely get around, but I picked up on it like this,” I explained, snapping my fingers. “And the better I got, the more I loved it. Nothing had ever made me happier than figure skating. I felt like I belonged. Do you understand that?”
“Yes… but you could have played any sport.”
“But I didn’t want to. Mom had tried to get me into swimming, gymnastics, soccer, karate, but all I ever wanted was this. It’s the only thing I’m good at, and you don’t see that or get it. I work so hard. I bust my ass every day for this. I have to do something a thousand times to do it decently, not even well. I’m not a quitter. I’ve never been a quitter, and I’m never going to be a quitter. But you don’t see that. You don’t get it.”
The man beside me let out an exasperated sigh as he tore his hand off mine and went to palm his forehead. “I’ve only wanted the best for my children, Jasmine. You included.”
“I know that. But all I want is for you to be supportive of me. Not everyone can do what I do, Dad! It’s hard. It’s so hard—”
“I never said it wasn’t hard.”
I made my hand into a fist before shaking it out. Patience. Be better. “Yeah, but you basically say you aren’t proud of me—”
“I never said that!”
“You don’t have to say it when all you do is tell me all the different things I can do to be… better. To be more successful. I know I haven’t lived up to my potential, I don’t forget that, ever. Not for a minute. I put enough pressure on myself every day. Do you know how hard it is for me to know that you think I’m a disappointment too?”
Dad cursed and shook his head. “I don’t think you’re a disappointment!”
“Yeah, but you don’t think I’m good enough. You don’t think I’m enough. You don’t want to spend time with me. You don’t want to go to my competitions. I don’t call you, but you don’t call me either! All you ever do is tell me everything I can do different. Like if I don’t go to college, that’s it. I’m a failure. I’m not sorry, Dad. I’m not sorry I love this. But I am sorry I haven’t been more successful. Maybe you’d be more proud of me if I’d won something big. Maybe then you would understand why I love this so much and then you’d be okay with it.”
My dad cursed again, this time both of his hands going up to his face to scrub them.
But he didn’t deny that he’d be more proud of me if I’d won more. That maybe then he would be fine with it. That he would drop the college thing.
My head began to throb almost instantly, and I got up, knowing this was done and there was nothing else left to say. I didn’t look at him exactly, but stood so that my side was to where he was sitting, my attention forward on one of the walls that had LUKOV COMPLEX painted on it. “I love you, Dad, but I can’t change who I am and what I want out of my life. Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do when I can’t compete anymore, but I’ll figure it out. I’m not going to give up what I love just because I might not have it forever,” I told him, sad and disappointed but a little relieved too.
By that point, my dad had his hands on his head and was taking turns sighing and mumbling under his breath.
I wanted to touch him, to tell him it was fine, but I couldn’t. Not then.
“Have a safe trip back to California, and tell Anise and the kids I said hello,” I told him, fisting my hand at my side.
He didn’t look up, and I wasn’t completely surprised. My mom had always said I got my ego from him. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. And that’s just the way things were.
Feeling just a little sick, I made my way back toward the ice, debating whether or not to tell my mom about Dad showing up and trying to talk to me.
More than halfway around the wall, I heard the sound of blades on the ice get louder and then the sharp sound of them coming to a stop. There was only one person who sounded like that. So, I wasn’t surprised when I heard, “Boo.”
I turned around with just enough time to see something come flying at me. I caught the shiny thing instinctively and opened my palm to find a Hershey’s kiss. I didn’t look at Ivan as I undid the wrapper, stuck it in my mouth, and muttered, “Thank you.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied before going, “Want to get something to eat before ballet? I’ll treat your broke ass.”
I couldn’t help the smirk I shot him even as I thought about how much better I would have wished the conversation with my dad would have gone, but I did control the nod I gave him afterward.
“Let’s get this done, and then we can go.”
“Okay.”
He nodded, those blue eyes on me, and said, “Okay.”
I was going to be all right.
I would.
But I had no idea how wrong I would be.
&nbs
p; Getting back out on the ice, I couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling in my stomach that my dad gave me. Maybe if I won something this season, he would change his mind.
But if he couldn’t, what was I going to do? Beg him to accept me? Fuck that.
“Let’s go over that one part with the side-by-side triple-triple combo,” Coach Lee called out as I met up with Ivan in front of her.
He smacked the back of his hand against my leg, and I smacked him right back.
I didn’t need my dad to love me, I told myself. I didn’t. I never had. I was going to do what I’d always wanted to do—for me. For my mom. For Sebastian, Tali, Jojo, and Rubes. I would.
“You sure you’re good?” Ivan asked as we got into position.
I nodded at him, thinking about how I was going to do well for Ivan too.
“Positive?” he asked.
I nodded again. Everything was going to be fine… and if it wasn’t, I would make the best out of it. I would know I had given it my all and some people just weren’t meant for some things.
Ivan didn’t look like he believed me exactly, but he nodded back. I didn’t think about the combo we were going to do—two jumps with three revolutions each, back to back.
I was going to be fine. I wouldn’t let myself be any less, especially not when the season was just about to start.
The music started a few beats before we were supposed to go into the jump. I could do this. Everything would be fine.
Ivan and I were going to do great. Be fine. Be awesome.
We started off in the same place in the music, a few seconds before the two jumps, with just enough time to gain the momentum to go into them.
The first triple toe loop went as well as it could have. The balance was right, the speed was right, and out of my peripheral vision, I saw Ivan in the exact spot he needed to be. Everything was going to be fine. This was what I’d been born to do. Digging my toe pick into the ice to go into the second triple toe loop of our jump combination, I had my opposite blade firmly on the ice, and I went up for another.
But I hadn’t been focusing. Not enough. I took it for granted as I reminded myself that I could do this shit with my eyes closed.
That’s when everything went wrong. My weight was off… I was too loose on my left side…. I hadn’t put enough speed into it—thinking I was strong and it would be fine—but it wasn’t. And the second I knew something was wrong, I tried to bail.
But I’d waited too long, when I tried to catch myself and land on my foot instead of just hitting the ice.
I felt it.
I knew the instant my blade grazed the ground that I had fucked up.
I knew the landing was going to be bad.
But there was no way to know just how bad. Not until the rest of my weight came down, and then, I realized how screwed up everything was, how off-center the rest of my body was. Later on, I could look back on the footage and see that it was just a giant clusterfuck. My foot was in the wrong position, my weight went in the opposite direction, and my ankle tried its best, but couldn’t do the impossible.
I felt my foot give out under me. Felt my body try to compensate, but hit the ice because holyfuckingshit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit.
It didn’t hurt until I was already on my ass on the ice, clutching the area just above my ankle over the leather of the boot. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my body it was in shock. But I knew, I fucking knew something was wrong as the music for our set kept on playing in the background and I sat there, bad, bad pain shooting through my ankle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see where Ivan had stopped right after his landing, probably having gone into the next foot sequence before noticing I wasn’t right beside him like I should have been. Like I was always supposed to be.
In my head, I could picture his face as he realized I wasn’t next to him like we had practiced a thousand times in the past. I could picture his face as he realized I’d fucked up. I could picture his face looking back at me in confusion as to why I wasn’t getting the fuck up to go after him, like I usually did when a jump went wrong and I didn’t stick the landing.
But I’d fallen.
I wasn’t in blinding pain, but I knew there was something wrong.
I knew there was something wrong, and I knew I needed to get up because we had a lot of work to do. We were supposed to work on nailing this shit. We were supposed to perfect all of this.
I needed to get up.
Get up, Jasmine. Get up. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Suck it up and get up. Finish this.
Still grabbing my ankle, that voice drove me to try and roll onto my opposite knee to get up. I had to get up. We had kinks to work out. Finger positions to perfect.
I could do this. I could get up. I had skated through bone bruises, hairline fractures, and minor sprains.
So I rolled to my knee, trying to listen to the music and figure out where we were so I could catch up. But just as I got to my knee and started to pull up the leg I’d landed badly on, pain like I had rarely in my life felt before slashed through me.
I opened my mouth… and nothing came out.
I didn’t realize my arms had given out until the ice was on my face and there were some horrifying shouts coming from around me, and the next thing I knew, something was touching my shoulder, rolling me over so I could lay on my back. And the next thing I saw was Ivan on his knees beside me, his face pale and somehow red at the same fucking time. His eyes were huge. I think I would always remember that.
I couldn’t get up. I can’t get up.
And my ankle—
“Jesus Christ, Jasmine, lay the fuck down!” Ivan yelled into my face, sliding something around my shoulders, his chest pressed to my shoulder as I belatedly recognized that our music was still on. We had gone with Van Helsing. I’d been so excited even though I had played it cool. I had been so relieved that was the music Ivan had chosen. I had given him some shit over it, but only because it’s what I did with him.
“Stop trying to get up!” the man beside me yelled again, his voice cracking, his face… frantic.
“Let me try,” I managed to murmur. It felt like my brain had some kind of thirty-second delay behind what it wanted to say and what it actually said. I tried to roll over, I tried to move my leg, but the pain….
“Stop it, fucking stop it,” he barked at me, his left hand coming down to cup my kneecap, stroking up my thigh.
His hand was shaking. Why was his hand shaking?
I can’t get up. I can’t get up.
“Jasmine, for the love of God, quit trying to get up,” Ivan shouted at me, his hands going everywhere and nowhere, but I couldn’t be sure because it felt like something was roaring in my ears, and the pain below my knee was getting worse, worse, worse.
“It’s fine. Give me a minute,” I blabbed, attempting to lift my bad leg only for him to hold it down, squeezing my thigh painfully.
“Stop it, Jasmine, fucking stop,” he demanded, his hand above my knee. “Nancy!” my partner yelled somewhere, but I wasn’t sure because I guess I had started staring at my leg….
I’d done something to my goddamn ankle.
I had done something to my fucking ankle.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
I didn’t even realize I’d opened my mouth until Ivan whispered hoarsely into my ear, “Don’t cry. Don’t you dare fucking cry right now. Do you hear me? You are not going to cry on the ice, in public. Hold it in. Hold it in. Not one tear, Jasmine. Not a single tear. Do you hear me?”
I sucked in a breath, my eyes going glassy and everything going blurry.
Was I shaking?
Why did I feel like I was about to throw up?
“Don’t you dare do it,” he hissed again, the arm around my shoulders tightening. “You don’t want anyone to see you do this. Hold it, baby, just hold it….”
I didn’t know what the hell he was saying or why he was saying it, but for some reason, I j
ust held my breath. I held my breath as Coach Lee slid onto the ice on my other side, quickly flanked by a body shape I recognized as Galina’s and another coach. They crowded me, surrounded me.
They asked questions, I tried to answer, but heard Ivan answer for me.
Because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t cry.
All I could do was stare in the general vicinity of where my white boot was, barely able to see shit, and think, think, think, think.
I fucked up.
I had fucked up.
I had fucking fucked up.
Chapter 19
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Stopping halfway into crunch number 108, I didn’t need to look to my side to know who was standing there. I’d recognize that annoying, condescending, bossy voice in a crowd of a thousand. Only one person could aggravate me so easily by asking a question.
“Minding my own business. The one thing you don’t know how to do,” I muttered, rolling up the little bit I had left to keep my ab workout going.
“Jasmine,” came Ivan’s sharp tone again.
I ignored him. Going back up into another crunch, I watched out of the corner of my eye as he closed the door behind him.
I did another crunch just as he came walking toward me, those big feet in bright blue running shoes landing centimeters from my side.
I didn’t look up at him, and I wasn’t going to. I knew what he was looking at. It wasn’t my body that was covered in sweat that he was eyeing, and it definitely wasn’t the fact that I wore a pair of loose basketball shorts that belonged to my brother that were riding high up my thighs. The fact I only had a sports bra on had nothing to do with what he wanted to focus on either.
He was looking at the cast boot I had on my left foot. The left foot I had propped up on a pillow right beside my right one, which was planted flat on the floor, knee bent. The black boot that was a reminder, every single minute of my day, that I had fucked up and fucked up big-time.
From Lukov with Love Page 39
