Walk on Water

by Laura Peyton Roberts

  “It came up.” Blake stopped without turning around. Every line of his body warned her to drop the subject right there.

  “It just. . . . Yeah.”

  He turned to face her slowly, his eyes colder than the ice. The conversation was clearly headed somewhere bad, but she couldn’t back down. Not now.

  Not again.

  “Pairs is an obvious thing to consider,” she said, holding her ground somehow. “I’m doing all right in singles, but—”

  “I’m not having this discussion,” he said angrily. “You and Beth can float whatever stupid fantasies you like, but I’m your coach, and you’re a singles skater.”

  “Because you say so.”

  “Damn right I say so!” he shouted. “That’s exactly what I say! And unless you’ve got a whole pile of money I don’t know about, that’s how it’s going to stay. My skater. My rink. My rules.”

  “My life!” she shot back, barely caring that the early-morning regulars were hearing every word. “You know I can’t pay a pairs coach, and why should I when—”

  He was already walking away.

  “It’s not fair!” she flung at his back. “Why can’t I skate both?”

  Blake reached the office and slammed the door, its bang his final word.

  —10—

  “I’ve got a date to the prom!” Jenni announced, walking in late for afternoon session.

  Lexa and Bry stopped lacing their skates.

  “Who?” Lexa demanded.

  “It turns out Jacob Larimore was free.”

  Some of the pink drained from Bry’s rosy cheeks. “Everly’s Jacob? Do you want the cheerleaders to kill you?”

  Jenni laughed gleefully. “What can they do? I mean, really? That breakup was Everly’s fault and everybody knows it.”

  “But you said he was boring!” Lexa protested.

  “I said they made a boring couple, and they do. Totally predictable. Nobody’s going to say they predicted me with Jacob.”

  “I’m not,” Bry agreed, returning to his laces.

  “You guys should congratulate me! I’ve got a date—a popular date—and the dance is still two weeks away.”

  “I just . . . How did he ask you?”

  “I have my methods.” Jenni tried to look mysterious before excitement won out. “It was so easy! Jake’s been moping ever since the split. I ended up next to him in the cafeteria line and told him what a great tight end he is and how much Everly must regret being such an idiot. I told him the best revenge is to get back out there, maybe by showing up at prom with someone totally unexpected, and oh, by the way, I’m available.”

  Lexa gasped. “You didn’t! Why were you even in the cafeteria?”

  “No guts, no glory.” Jenni laughed. “I saw him headed in there alone and felt a sudden irresistible urge to be late for practice today.”

  “Do you even know what a tight end is?” Bry asked.

  “I know Jacob has one,” she said, holding up a hand to slap Lexa five.

  Lexa obliged, still reeling. Jacob Larimore. Not that Jenni wasn’t too good for him, but people didn’t get in with Jacob’s clique just because they wanted to. Everybody wanted to.

  “You guys have to get dates too now. It won’t be fun if we don’t all go.”

  Bry finished his last double knot and stood up. “I’m guessing you’ll be fine.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jenni said. “I want us all to be there.”

  “I might go,” Bry relented, smiling, “if only to see Everly’s face.”

  “Exactly!”

  Lexa stood and shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to settle more comfortably into her skates. Despite what Blake said, boots didn’t have to hurt this much and she’d worn enough of them to know. At seven hundred dollars a pair, though, she was stuck with these until August, at least. “I’ve got to get out there,” she said, heading for the ice.

  Skating warm-up laps, she tried to imagine walking up to someone like Jacob Larimore and basically asking him out. Not in this lifetime, she thought, envying her best friend’s confidence again. On the other side of the boards, Jenni was still gossiping with Bry. She’d talk him into going, most likely with Lexa, if only because there was no one else either of them wanted to ask.

  No one askable, anyway.

  Lexa shifted her gaze to the front door and wondered where Ian was. His session with Blake didn’t start for ninety minutes, but it was rare for him to miss even a second of practice. He finally dashed in, looking sweaty and stressed. Blake emerged from the office, talked with his star a moment, then walked out to coach Lexa, sliding his tread-bare Sorels over the ice.

  “What’s up with Ian?” Lexa asked.

  Blake’s brows rose. “Why do you care?”

  “Just curious. Geez. He’s never late, that’s all.”

  “He got a job. At the gym. You know his dad moved out to take that promotion down south, but now they’re paying two rents, so it’s not as good as it could be. Ian’s eighteen and out of school. His folks can use some help covering his expenses.”

  “He can’t be earning enough to make a dent in skating expenses!” Lexa protested. “Besides, you don’t even charge him full rate!”

  Blake shrugged uneasily. “In this world, you have money or you have hard choices. If he skates next nationals the way he’s capable of, he’ll land a summer tour, his mom can go join his dad, and this will all be old news.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Worry about yourself,” Blake advised. “Ian will be just fine. I want to work your loop, then the footwork in the free. If you can’t control your arms through that sequence, we’ll have to re-choreograph it.”

  “They aren’t that bad.”

  “Should I get the video camera?”

  “No,” she said sullenly.

  “Let’s go, then: double, double, single.”

  Lexa reluctantly began her father’s jumping drill. Skaters at her level didn’t have single loops in their programs, not unless they messed up and popped out of one with more revolutions. Throwing a single loop on purpose was almost insultingly easy, but preceding it with two doubles off of one continuous edge was difficult enough to make her forget about Ian. She got off the whole combination on her first try, bobbled her second attempt, and succeeded again on her third.

  “Triple,” Blake called out.

  Lexa skated crossovers around the end of the rink, then executed a three turn onto a back right outside edge. She landed a clean triple loop, only to have him call for a triple-double combo, followed by triple-double-single. There was nothing easy about single loops when he finally let her rest.

  “Let’s tackle that footwork now. If we’re going to change your arms, I’d rather know sooner than later.”

  “Wait,” she gasped, still trying to catch her breath.

  By the time Blake decided that her arms had improved enough—for now—her shoulders ached worse than her lungs. He shuffled off to coach Ian while she slumped against the boards rubbing knots out of her muscles.

  Jenni slid up in a double-bladed hockey stop, spraying snow to Lexa’s knees. “You could ask Ian,” she said as if there had never been a break in the prom conversation.

  Lexa rolled her eyes, hoping to suggest the idea never would have occurred to her. “Like he’d go. He’s not even in school anymore.”

  “Seniors who graduate in December are still allowed to walk in June. I’ll bet he could buy prom tickets.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’d want to go with me.”

  “You don’t know. Would you have guessed that Jacob would go with me?”

  Lexa worked to find a safe answer. “I’m not you,” she said at last. “And Ian isn’t Jacob.”

  “Which is why he has nothing to lose!”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just think about it.”

  Lexa shrugged. She probably wouldn’t be able to think about anything else now.

  She watched Ian’s le
sson through the glass as she rolled spare change in the office. Quarters collected in the vending machines stocked the bill changer and snack bar cash drawers, but Blake had emptied the coin bins in the pay lockers that morning, which always resulted in an excess-quarter-rolling marathon. She handled the task automatically, wondering how her duties compared to Ian’s at the gym. She imagined their jobs must be similar—menial positions to help finance skating—with one obvious difference: Blake owned Ashtabula Ice. He expected Lexa’s help, but he didn’t need it. Ian’s family, on the other hand, had to be really hurting to risk a national championship for the sake of a few extra dollars.

  If the two of us paired up, we’d be like Mom and Blake, she realized. For a moment, her next-generation fantasy made her forget to roll coins. The press would have a field day with that angle, if the pair of them was any good. But how could they not be? Lexa had wanted to skate pairs her entire conscious life, Blake had forgotten more about pairs than most coaches ever learned, and Ian. . . .

  She sighed as she watched him on the ice, imagining her body tight to his in the camel spin he was working. Never going to happen, she told herself.

  That didn’t stop her from making an excuse to talk to him later, though, as he wiped down his blades after his lesson. “Not staying to practice today?” she asked, trying to give the impression that she’d just happened to notice him while filling the change machine. He stopped to study her, making her intensely aware of how rarely they’d actually spoken. Something about his gaze made her feel exposed. Had he guessed her presence there wasn’t an accident?

  “I got a job. Maybe Blake mentioned that.”

  “Um, yeah. He might have. I just thought . . . maybe you’d already worked today?” She sounded like an idiot. Returning to her task, she promptly dropped ten bucks in loose quarters onto the rubber floor mats. Her back turned squarely to Ian, she squatted to gather them up.

  “I did,” he said behind her.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve got a two-hour break to train. Then I have to go back.”

  She dared to glance his way again. “Oh.”

  His expression continued to measure her as he dropped his skate rag into his bag. “Yeah.”

  Lexa walked back to the office, not sure what had just happened. Ian hadn’t been rude, but he definitely hadn’t been chatty. He had continued the conversation when he could have dropped it, though.

  I guess I didn’t humiliate myself, she decided, closing the door behind her. I won’t have to hide the next time I see him.

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t be asking him to any dances, either.

  —11—

  Ian was scarce at the rink for the next two weeks, arriving barely in time to warm up for his sessions with Blake and practicing only an hour afterward. Blake’s mood went downhill in direct proportion to the amount of time his favorite missed training.

  “That kid’s going to screw himself out of a national title,” he griped from beneath his ancient Zamboni after closing Friday night. “If he doesn’t pull his head out very, very soon, it’s all going to pass him by.”

  Lexa stood by like a surgical assistant, holding Blake’s tools. “He can’t help having to work. You remember how it was before Grandmom—”

  Blake tried to sit up and bumped his head on the machine’s undercarriage. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is completely different. And I never missed practice.”

  “Maybe because you didn’t have to. Do you even realize how stressed out Ian must be? Do you know what skating means to him?”

  Blake rolled enough of his body out from under the Zamboni to make eye contact. He hadn’t shaved in a week and one cheek was streaked with grease. “Do you know what skating means to him? You’ve never trained as hard as either of us, and you have no excuse.”

  “I train a hell of a lot harder than both of you lately,” she retorted, letting the wrench she held drop to the wet concrete. “Ian’s barely here anymore, and I’ve never even seen you wear skates. Not once in my whole life.”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “You have. You just don’t remember.”

  “Because I was a baby! When’s the last time you had skates on?”

  With a grunt, Blake pushed clear of the Zamboni and sat up. “What the hell does that have to do with anything? You think because I don’t skate anymore I don’t know what I’m doing? I’ve already been champion, Lexa. I don’t have to skate.”

  “Right there!” she accused. “No one has to skate—you’re supposed to want to. You expect me to be so excited about ice time, but you won’t even wear skates when you coach. It’s demoralizing.”

  “Demoralizing?” Blake’s face had turned angry red. “That’s the lamest excuse I ever heard! What I do and don’t do is completely irrelevant.”

  “It’s not irrelevant, because you don’t do anything! You don’t look forward to anything. You depress the hell out of me!”

  They stared at each other in disbelief. Lexa had never said anything like that before, hadn’t even known she thought it. It’s all true, though, she realized. She wouldn’t take it back. She held her father’s glare defiantly as the wire strippers from her other hand clanked down next to the wrench.

  Blake looked like he was about to blow. Instead, he snatched up the tools she’d dropped and shoved hard with his legs, disappearing deep beneath the Zamboni. Lexa stood there alone, trembling. He didn’t even think she was worth fighting with.

  “I’m going to Grandmom’s,” she said, walking off. “I might be gone a couple of days.”

  —12—

  “We’ll have cocoa, and bake cookies, and turn it into a regular girls’ night!” Beth said, delighted to see Lexa show up unannounced carrying an overnight bag. “We have all those old movies in the library. We could watch The Cutting Edge again!”

  “Toe pick!” they chirped in unison, bringing smiles to both their faces.

  “You get settled in,” Beth said, opening the door to Lexa’s old room, “then come down to the kitchen and join me.” She bustled off without asking a single question about her granddaughter’s unexplained appearance.

  What’s to ask? Lexa thought, sighing as she opened her bag on the bed. It’s Blake, not rocket science.

  Walking into the attached bathroom, she changed into plaid flannel pajama pants and a thermal henley, then stood and stared at herself in the mirror. Nothing about that bathroom had changed since she was five years old—not the ornate fixtures, not the pink-and-gold-curlicues theme, not even the pink towels—but she was unrecognizable. She could barely remember the little girl who had stood on a stool to reach this sink. She didn’t see her reflected at all.

  The door at the other end of the bathroom was closed, as usual. A thick robe hung from a hook on its back. Lexa added the robe to her outfit, then haltingly opened the door.

  Kaitlin Lennox’s girlhood room was still the way she had left it the day she’d run off to elope. Beth had cleaned up the chaos of that departure and removed the photos of Blake, but everything else was the same. Kaitlin’s medals and trophies gleamed in carefully dusted cases. The open closet doors displayed her most beautiful skating costumes, preserved behind plastic now. The room had become a shrine.

  Lexa made a slow circuit through the familiar displays, not touching anything, reluctant even to make a sound. There wasn’t a shred of evidence for her existence in that room. Time had stopped in this speck of the universe, yet Lexa could never breathe the stale air there without wondering if the place held her future as well as her past. Would she ever be as successful as her mother? As happy? As loved?

  Would she die as young?

  With each passing day the face in Kaitlin’s final photos looked more like Lexa’s own. Lexa was no longer a child visiting a grown-up’s room, but old enough to envision inhabiting it herself. In less than three years, she’d be older than her own mother. The thought filled her with urgency and a creeping sense of despair. Backing out silently, she went d
own to the kitchen.

  “There you are, kitten!” Beth lifted a pot off the stove and poured out a mug of hot chocolate. “Marshmallows or whipped cream?”

  Lexa pulled up a barstool. “Both.”

  Beth had clearly been busy while Lexa dawdled upstairs. In addition to the cocoa, she had mixed up a batch of peanut butter cookie dough and had cookie sheets standing by. She paused with the dough scooper in her hand. “Should we nuke popcorn too?”

  “G-mom, I’m surprised you even have all this stuff in the house. You do know it’s junk food, right?”

  “How often do you spend the night? We’ll eat extra vegetables tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you’ll still be here then?” Beth asked hopefully.

  “If you still want me. Do you have any chocolate chips to add to those cookies?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  They had a hard time choosing a movie. Beth’s huge collection extended back through DVDs into videotapes, but she kept suggesting movies about ice skating, and Lexa was finally forced to admit that not only didn’t she want to think about skating, she was more in the mood for explosions.

  “Star Wars?” Beth proposed. “They blow up a whole planet in that one.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Lexa sank into the recliner and pulled an afghan up to her chin.

  Two mugs of hot chocolate and way too many cookies later, the tape was on Rewind and Beth finally asked the obvious question.

  “What did Blake do this time?”

  “He didn’t do anything. He’s just being Blake.”

  Beth’s smile indicated the insult had found an appreciative audience. Shifting lengthwise onto the sofa, she leaned back into the cushions and crossed her slippered feet. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I have a proposal for you.”

  “A proposal?” Lexa repeated uneasily.

  “You’re sixteen now—such an important age! A teenage girl living alone with a middle-aged man wouldn’t be ideal under the best circumstances. But Blake’s so lost in himself that he doesn’t see who you’ve grown into, let alone the woman you’ll become. All he sees is what he wants and what he thinks he needs.”