I didn’t turn to look at her from my spot in front of Ivan and beside her. I was looking around at the crowd in the stands, keeping my breathing steady, my nerves in check. I felt calm. Calmer than I could ever remember. “I’m okay.”
Because everything would be fine one way or the other. Like Ivan had said. It wasn’t going to be the end of the world if things went to shit.
But I still hoped they didn’t.
“Are you sure?” Coach Lee asked.
I didn’t glance at her, knowing she was watching the pair performing too, as I shook my head and said, “Positive. Pep talks just psych me out.” I did glance at her that time. “But thanks for offering.”
The two hands that had been on my shoulders from the moment we’d come to wait for our turn, kneaded my traps loosely. Ivan’s body was so close behind me, I could feel the heat radiating off him. We’d killed the last three hours, stretching and stretching more, then running through the program in the hall with headphones on, only doing a handful of lifts to gain confidence even though we’d done them a thousand times over the last eight months.
We were as good as we could be with everything that had happened before this.
We were going to try our best, and there was nothing more we could ask for.
“Your mom just waved at me,” Ivan whispered into my ear before lifting a hand off my shoulder and more than likely waving it.
I had never looked for my family before I skated. It had always made me feel more pressure knowing they were there. I didn’t even check my phone for hours before a competition. I wanted to be focused.
But the mention of my mom, who I hadn’t seen since she’d arrived to Lake Placid the night before, had me looking up and around.
Ivan’s hand went up beside my head, and he pointed to the right. Sure enough, I recognized the redhead standing, waving her arms over her head like a crazy person. I also recognized the dark-skinned man on one side of her, the other redhead on her other side, Sebastian’s auburn hair, and—
There was a man his exact height standing beside him. Darker-haired, not as light-skinned. On the other side of that man was Jojo’s unmistakable fat head and big ears, James’s medium-brown hair, and a black-haired couple that had to be the Lukovs.
It was my dad.
It was my fucking dad sitting there.
“Your mom and Jonathan tried to talk him out of coming, but he insisted he wouldn’t bother you,” Ivan whispered into my ear.
I swallowed. I swallowed because I had no idea how I felt about seeing him there. It wasn’t excitement like it would have been a decade ago. But it was something. And I didn’t think it was totally dread.
“You good?” he asked in his low voice.
Without realizing it, my hand went to the spot on my forearm where my bracelet was tied. My new bracelet. I touched it and the lacy-stretch material over it.
“I’m good,” I said, as I went back to looking at my mom who had stopped waving her arms around in the middle of another team’s program, finally. She was watching me and Ivan, and I could tell even from the distance that she was grinning.
I lifted my hand, the one with the bracelet, and waved it at her. Just a little, just for a second.
And she opened her mouth like she was screaming. She might have been, knowing her. But she looked so fucking excited—
I had to let my guilt go and try to focus on being better from now on. I had to.
The hand on my shoulder slid down to rest at the tops of my arms, and Ivan began moving his hands up and down my biceps and triceps.
The music ended a minute afterward, and we watched from our spot as the two figure skaters got off the ice, waving all over the arena before getting the hell out of the way while they waited for their scores to be called.
Coach Lee turned to us and raised her eyebrows at both Ivan and me, and said, “You’re ready.”
Not a question, but a statement.
Because we were.
“You’ve both exceeded my expectations for the season already. Ivan, remember to pace yourself after you come out of the triple-triple, and Jasmine…” She gave me a little smile then that I felt down to my bones. “Just be this you, okay?”
This me.
I didn’t know what the hell she meant by that, but I nodded anyway.
This me.
“Let’s get ’em, baby,” Ivan whispered into my ear, with a squeeze to my upper arms.
I gave him a short nod. I zoned out the crowd cheering as the scores were called. Then we made our way toward the opening into the ice. The only person I was competing against that night was… myself. The person I had been with Paul. As long as I could do better than that version of me had… I couldn’t ask for anything more.
It felt like a distant memory I could look back on later, me taking my skate guards off and handing them to Coach Lee before I got on the ice and waited alongside the wall as Ivan came on after me, doing the same. Coach Lee was right though, she wasn’t much for pep talks or last-minute suggestions other than the ones she had just told us and the ones she had beat into us in past practices.
It honestly felt surreal standing out on the ice that night, listening to people cheering at Ivan and chanting his name like we were at a damn basketball game or something.
Ivan! Ivan! Ivan!
Lukov! Lukov! Lukov!
I’d heard it and witnessed it before from a distance—from the sidelines or the audience—but never while I was on the ice beside the man that these people were going fucking nuts for.
But as I stood there and listened, I could hear a small, tiny, itsy-bitsy hum in the crowd.
Jasmine! Jasmine! Jasmine!
And if it sounded exactly like a mash of all of my family members’ voices… it was more than enough for me.
It was so much more than I deserved, but that familiar feeling I’d gotten earlier when Ivan had given me my bracelet and just minutes ago when Coach Lee had told me to be myself, it felt like home. It felt right. It felt an awful fucking lot like love.
Fingers squeezed the back of my neck, and I glanced up to see Ivan grinning down at me.
And I smiled back at him.
We turned around at the same time to face the center of the ice, and just like we had done without a single prompt or word every time before during practice, Ivan held out his hand to the side, between us, watching me. And I looked at him and put my hand in his. And we skated out toward the middle together, holding each other’s hands as the crowd’s chants turned into screams.
“Whatever happens, right?” I asked him as we skated to our starting point and stopped there.
Ivan didn’t let go of my hand as he nodded and took a step back to get into place. Whatever happens, he mouthed to me. But then his lips kept forming words. Three words exactly. I love you.
If I’d had anything other than skates on, I would have tripped or fallen over or some shit like that.
I would have busted my goddamn ass and probably split my chin open.
But luckily, I was in the one thing I had more confidence in than tennis shoes or flip-flops. But that didn’t stop me from having my entire body go tense as I stood there, knowing I needed to get into position but being too fucking dumbstruck to do anything other than hiss, What? Thinking I hadn’t read his lips right.
Ivan stopped in front of me, a small smile on his face as he placed all of his arms and legs and fingers where they needed to be. I love you, he repeated like it was something he’d said a thousand times in the past. Like we weren’t on the ice about to start our first short program in front of an audience that included more people than the other amateur figure skaters at the LC.
I blinked at him, trying to get my hands into position but not able to think about anything else besides the fucking I love you that had just come out of his lips. “Ivan,” I started to say, forgetting that he couldn’t hear me, swallowing hard and looking into his eyes as my hands and knees got into the place we had practiced so many times, get
ting into position because my mouth had stopped working but my brain hadn’t.
The smile that came over his face was slow… and sweet.
And alarming.
“You suck, Meatball,” he called out a second before I knew the music was about to start. But I love you, his lips formed.
My heart thumped. Thumped. Then thumped some more.
My world didn’t tilt, my legs didn’t give out from under me, but that feeling that had only intensified throughout the day, grew and grew and grew until it seemed to cover every inch of me, inside and out.
Ivan loved me.
Ivan fucking loved me.
And he didn’t care if we won or lost.
And all I could do was get mad that he’d cut me off when I’d been about to tell him the same thing, and now he’d won.
“You couldn’t have chosen a better time to say something?” I asked loudly, trying so hard not to move my lips.
I swore to God, this idiot puckered his lips and blew me a kiss so small there was no way that any of the cameras around the building could have caught it. Nope, he slipped out.
And then the music started.
He was so fucking lucky I could do our short program without thinking, because if we hadn’t done it a thousand and a half times together, and I hadn’t done it another five hundred times by myself, I would have screwed it up big-time.
And luckily for him, he was all business once the music started, and only sent me a wink and a smile once each during the entire two-minutes and forty seconds.
By some miracle, I managed to focus on what we had to do instead of the words that had come out of nowhere… at least until the second we hit our final poses and the music ended.
And then I remembered.
I remembered his I love you, and it pissed me off all over again.
Because. What. The. Fuck?
“You had to tell me right before we started?” I hissed, panting and out of breath.
His chest was puffing in and out as he gasped, “Uh-huh.”
Uh-huh.
Just uh-huh.
“You—”
Before I could stop him, before I could realize what the hell he was doing, as we stood there, both panting, our faces inches apart, both high off adrenaline and power and something that I was 99 percent certain was love, he smiled that soft, slow smile.
He leaned forward, quick as lightning, and pecked me on the nose.
Ivan Lukov kissed me on the tip of my nose at the end of our short program.
And the fact that some of the audience made a soft coo, an “aww” that would have made me cringe under most circumstances, didn’t even register to me.
It didn’t register to me because I was too focused on the fact that he’d even done it to begin with. Let alone on television. Let alone three minutes after he told me he loved me.
“What is wrong with you?” I hissed a second before stepping out of our finishing poses to go into a bow.
He didn’t let my tone stop him from flashing me that slow, slick grin as he got into place at my side. “You.”
“Bitch,” I whispered just as I bowed. I’d never liked curtsies. They felt too fake.
“Loser,” he said while we rolled up.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, barely able to get the sentence out as we turned to the other side of the arena to do the same.
His hand slipped into mine, linking our fingers together as we bowed in that direction next. “Because I wanted to, Meatball.” He squeezed my hand as we stood straight up and waved to the people throwing stuffed animals and flowers out onto the ice. I’d never seen so many for me before. Never. “Smile. We did it,” he said, still breathing hard.
I smiled, but because I wanted to.
“Stop looking at me like you want to kill me. We can talk about this later. Don’t be awkward,” he murmured, pulling my hand once we were standing straight up again. “We both know you love me.”
I wanted to deny it. I really did. Mostly because I hated the fact that he sounded so smug.
But we both knew I’d be lying.
Maybe I’d never said the words, but he knew. Like he’d known about my learning disability but never said anything. Like he knew chocolate was my weakness and fed it to me when I needed it most.
It was my turn to pull at his hand as I tried to lead him off the ice, whispering, angrily, “Don’t sound so smug about it.”
“Too bad,” he whispered.
Squirt: JASMINE, YOU WERE AMAZING
Squirt: Omg! Omg! Omg!
Squirt: You looked like a queen out there.
Squirt: You flew!
Squirt: You were a totally different skater.
Squirt: OMG.
Squirt: I cried.
Squirt: I wish I could have been there.
Squirt: I’m going to nationals. Aaron can stay with the kids. I’m not missing it.
Freshly showered and still on a high even four hours later, I sat there on my bed and looked over the messages my sister had sent. I couldn’t help but smile. Hitting the icon to call her, I leaned back and lay on the bed as I listened to the dial tone.
On the third ring, my sister answered. “JASMINE! YOU WERE THE BEST I’VE EVER SEEN!”
“Thanks, Rubes,” I replied, feeling awkward saying “thank you,” but what else could I say?
“Aaron and I were losing our minds! Even Benny was watching it and asked if that was Aunt Jazzy on the TV,” she went on. “I’m so proud of you, Jas. I’m so freaking proud of you. I don’t know what you did, but I’ve never seen you skate like that. I’m tearing up right now thinking about it.”
Now that had me holding back a groan. “Don’t cry.”
“I’m so happy though,” she squeaked, genuinely sounding like she was on the verge of tears.
“Me too,” I told her, staring up at the ceiling with a smile on my face. “I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to be in second place after the short program.”
Because Ivan and I had gotten second place. And it was only second by less than a point. That was… nothing.
Nothing because our long program was our strongest. At least I thought it was. Going with dark movies as our theme had been the best thing we could have done while most of the other pairs skaters performed to love songs and shit like that. Paul and I had done that back in the day, but I guess it wasn’t believable because I was a shit liar and there had definitely been no love—and in the long run, no respect—in our relationship.
So Ivan and I were more than likely going to surprise the shit out of everyone when we did our exhibition skate to “A Whole New World” from the Aladdin soundtrack because… why not?
It was weird how things like that worked out.
“Well, you looked beautiful, and so did Ivan, and I couldn’t be any happier,” she choked.
“Stop crying,” I told her with a laugh.
“I can’t. I already watched your program five times in a row. We recorded it. Even Aaron’s dad called to tell me you were the best one out there.”
How the hell did Aaron’s dad know to watch? I didn’t ask, but I did wonder.
“Did you get to see the family after?” she asked, going right on into another subject.
And then, I did wince. To myself. “Yeah. We ate at the resort we’re staying at.” All of us had. All of us.
Ruby hesitated and asked the question I knew she had to be wondering about. She had to have known our dad had come. “How did it go with dad?” she asked, and I could hear the tension in her tone.
I closed my eyes and blew out a breath. “Fine.”
“Fine you didn’t fight with him but you wanted to? Or fine as in you hugged and everything was okay?”
Shit. “Fine as in… we gave each other a hug and he sat all the way on the other end of the table and didn’t say anything to me.” And I’d been fine with it. I really had. Relieved, honestly. I’d been so excited about the scores, I hadn’t wanted him to ruin it.
An
d didn’t that suck fucking ass that I expected my dad to ruin something I’d worked so hard for?
“Oh, Jas,” Ruby sighed softly.
“It was fine.”
“I don’t want to argue with you, okay?”
Oh God. Here we went.
“Dad loves you. He wants the best for you.”
I said nothing.
“He’s… old-fashioned.”
Is that what we were going to call it?
“You should forgive him. He’s trying. He knows he’s messed up, but none of us are perfect,” Ruby kept going, only slightly making me feel guilty.
And I meant slightly. Because how many times had I done something to even Ruby to make her hesitate around me?
But…
“I know that, Rubes. I get it, but do you know how hard it is to listen to him talk about figure skating like it’s some rec sport I do just for fun on the weekends? Do you know what it’s like for him to…. what’s that word?... belittle my dreams? To hear him say I’m better off doing something I hate?” I asked her, not getting at all riled up. Not feeling anything, honestly.
I could hear her breathing on the other line. Then she said, “Yeah, Jas. I do know. I know exactly what that’s like, and I understand. I know it’s not fun.”
My body went instantly on high alert. “Who did that to you?”
“Mom. Dad. Both of them.”
I tried to think but couldn’t come up with any memory of that. “When?”
“After I graduated high school. You were too young to care or remember, but it happened.”
What the hell?
“I wanted to go to school for costume design, and both of them—mom included—pretty much said how pointless that would be. For three months, they were on my case about going to school for something I could have as a backup. As a real job,” she kept going, not sounding insulted or anything, but more resigned.
And that made me sad, because as far as I could remember, Ruby had loved designing and making costumes. Always. It was her passion in life. Her version of me figure skating.
I couldn’t see her doing anything else.
And I’d always wondered why she’d studied accounting, gotten a degree, and then never did anything with it.
From Lukov with Love Page 43
