Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  She’d made the statement evenly enough, but Callie’s chest constricted at the image of Max all alone with a box of reheated lo mein for Thanksgiving.

  “Anyway, what shot are you working on today?” Max asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “Nothing fancy. Just a button shot. I play a fun little game where I try to shoot ten for ten, then twenty-five for twenty-five. Sometimes I just shoot the same stone from end to end over and over, but tonight I’m leaving the first stone on the button and trying to use my next one to knock it out of place and to sit exactly where it was.”

  “Boy, you sure know how to have a good time,” Max said wryly, but her voice had lost all the bitterness it held early on.

  “Yeah well, who’s more pathetic, the woman who spends her holiday doing practice drills or the woman who spends the holiday watching her?”

  “I think everyone would agree I am the more pathetic of us.” Max pulled a folding chair right up next to the ice and made herself comfortable. “However, at least I get to kick up my feet and enjoy the view.”

  Callie’s cheeks warmed a little at the comment. It was the first flirty thing Max had said since their kiss. She tried not to overthink it as she headed back to the hack. Mostly she’d been glad neither of them had made a big deal about the kiss, but part of her had begun to wonder if Max had even enjoyed the encounter. She’d seemed to at the time. She hadn’t pulled away, and she’d had the most wonderfully dreamy look in her eyes when they’d parted.

  But, ever since then, she’d been nothing but politely professional. Then again, so had Callie. Was Max waiting for her to make a move or set the tone? That was a good thing. She liked to be in control, and yet that wasn’t completely how she felt around Max.

  Her slide was as effortless as usual, but as soon as the stone left her hand, she could tell it was light. The line was perfect, but her heart began to hammer as she realized it didn’t have the distance without sweeping.

  “Sweep!” she called, moving toward the rock that was moving away from her. “Hard.”

  “Who?” Max asked.

  “Me,” Callie said, then laughed. “Or you. Earn your keep, Laurens.”

  “More like bust my ass,” Max shot back. “I don’t even have a broom.”

  The rock tapped the other one sitting on the button, but didn’t have enough force left to move it, much less replace it.

  Callie shook her head. “Streak broken.”

  “How many did you get?”

  “Seventeen.” Callie play-pouted. “Would’ve been more if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “Wait a second, how do you figure? If I hadn’t been here, you still wouldn’t have had a sweeper.”

  “You distracted me.”

  “Me?” Max laughed. “You, of the infinite focus and fierce eyes, who can tune out entire arenas full of people? I don’t buy it.”

  Callie opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had been distracted by Max, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that to herself, much less anyone else. She sighed. “Fine. I missed.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Normally I’d reset and start again, but . . .”

  “But?”

  She shrugged, not trusting herself to get back into the hack yet. “It’s Thanksgiving. I think I’m going to knock off and have some more turkey.”

  “Oh.” Max frowned quickly, then forced her face back to neutral. “Right. Gotta get back to your family.”

  Callie shook her head, hearing the sadness behind Max’s casual façade. “I meant I’d have some turkey here. My mother sent enough leftovers to feed an army, and I brought it all to the club in the hopes I could pawn some off on anyone else crazy enough to be here at dinnertime on a holiday.”

  Max’s grin spread slowly, and she made a show of glancing over each shoulder before saying, “Does that mean I’m the winner of the crazy contest?”

  “Clearly. Winner, winner, turkey dinner.”

  Within ten minutes, they sat at the low bar facing the plate glass windows to the empty ice, a plate full of leftovers in front of each of them.

  Max groaned as she shoved a fork full of turkey and mashed potatoes into her mouth. “Your mom is my hero.”

  Callie would’ve laughed, but her mouth was also full.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal,” Max continued, while reloading her fork for another bite.

  “You don’t cook?”

  “I’m passable if I have a full kitchen, but I’ve been living in hotel rooms and efficiency apartments for so long I’ve almost forgotten what that’s like.”

  “Did you give up your apartment in the city when you came out here?”

  “I actually gave up my apartment months before that. I was never home enough to warrant the astronomical payment. I’d probably slept in my own bed less than fifteen times in the previous six months.”

  “Because of work?”

  “Work and other stuff.”

  “Vague.”

  Max stiffened a little bit, and Callie worried she might have stumbled onto something inadvertently. Why would Max be sensitive about things that kept her out of her bed at night . . . ? Then pieces fell into place with a sickening twist. “Are you seeing someone?”

  Max choked on her food and coughed several times before she recovered enough to croak out a few words. “What? No. Why?”

  Callie shook her head. “Work and other stuff keep you from sleeping at your own place? Oh my God, did I kiss you when you have a girlfriend?”

  “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Oh shit, a boyfriend?”

  Max grimaced. “Double no!”

  “Did you even welcome that kind of attention from me? Is that why we haven’t talked about it? Because I thought we were just being professional and adults and busy, but what if I sexually harassed you?”

  Max’s eyes turned a stormier shade of gray. “No.”

  “Seriously?”

  Max took her hand and intertwined their fingers, then looked her in the eye. “Callie, I promise. I was not offended by the kiss. It was not inappropriate. I welcomed the moment. Hell, I reveled in it, then and many times since then.”

  Callie sat back, some of the tension easing from her shoulders, but she didn’t break the contact between their fingers. “I didn’t mean to freak out. I just, I guess I’m sort of used to calling shots and relying on my gut, but you saw my last throw in there. Sometimes I come up short, or even miss completely.”

  “Can I just say how much I love the fact that you’re dissecting a kiss with me in curling terms?”

  Callie rolled her eyes. “I don’t get out much, okay? I’m not good at the whole ‘deep conversation’ business. I just sort of assume everything is on the up and up unless I hear otherwise.”

  “And you didn’t hear any such thing from me,” Max concluded. “So, let’s stick with that plan. We’re both strong, competent, driven women who really get each other. I mean, isn’t that what led to the kiss in the first place?”

  “I think so.” She smiled at the memory. “I was really worked up after the tournament. So much hope and adrenaline courses through me for those few hours, and when I win, it turns to euphoria, but when I lose, there’s just no outlet. The stress stays bottled up, and sometimes I worry it breaks down my ability to reason logically.”

  Max’s complexion paled and she pushed her plate away. She nodded. “I know what you mean. You want something so bad you visualize it into being, like a dream brought to life, and then when you wake up and have to face reality, it’s disorienting. You want to cling to anything or anyone who ties you back to the last place you felt good.”

  The sadness of both the comment and Max’s eyes caused an ache to build in Callie’s chest. “That sounds kind of pathetic. Am I pathetic for getting my personal life all tangled up with my curling life?”

  “Not at all. I think it’s very common for elite athletes to find solace in other athletes, or at least
people who feed that energy, who affirm the obsession that makes them successful. It’s fundamentally human to want to be understood.”

  “You made me feel understood that night.” Callie closed her eyes and pictured Max standing on that balcony, that single wisp of hair falling out of place, the sparks in her eyes, the warmth of her proximity. Fluttering open her lids again, she added, “And you’re doing the same thing right now.”

  Max sighed. “Which is why, even though I don’t think we did anything wrong, I do still worry about how easily these things can spin out of control. The last thing I want to do is pull your mind off your most pressing task in the middle of a season.”

  “See.” She gave Max’s hand a little squeeze. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You get it. You can acknowledge that we’re attracted to each other.”

  “Considerably attracted.”

  “And that we’re building a sort of unexpected connection.”

  “Pleasantly surprising, but true.”

  “And yet you’re not pushing, or rushing, or asking for explanations or labels I can’t offer.”

  “Because, once again, we’re in the same boat,” Max said. “I’m in no position to demand things of you that I can’t offer in return. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be inclined to tie anyone else, especially someone I respect, to my life right now.”

  “Again, we are on the same page,” Callie said, feeling lighter and breathing easier. “We’re both on the brink of big things. We each understand what the other is facing, and we wouldn’t want to screw anything up for either of us.”

  “Which, to answer the original question, or at least I think it was one of the original questions, is one of two major reasons why I didn’t freak out about the kiss. There’s no need to discuss something we’re already on the same page about.”

  “Good.” Callie nodded. “But just out of curiosity, what’s the other reason?”

  Max got quiet, her lips pressed together in a thin line for only a second before she broke the contact between them to reach for her fork once more. Stabbing a piece of turkey and forcing a smile, she said, “Because, if I screw this up, I won’t get any more of your mom’s cooking, and that would be a travesty.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Where the hell am I?” Max asked herself for about the hundredth time. She knew the technical answer was Eveleth, Minnesota, but in her head, she’d started referring to the tiny town as “Way The Fuck Up There, Minnesota.”

  She’d initially been pleased to see a tournament in the USA on the schedule, but honestly they were close enough to the Canadian border she might as well have crossed it. She’d had to fly into Duluth, rent a car, and drive an hour outside of a city that wasn’t at all a city, but rather a town smaller than most subdivisions she’d visited around New York.

  Even the Mesabi Curling Club was more of a modified civic venue that, in addition to the tournament, seemed to host weddings and holiday get-togethers in the all-purpose room overlooking the ice. That wasn’t to say the place wasn’t well kept. Every surface gleamed, but there were only four curling sheets with a single red carpet running between the middle two, leaving little space on the sides for spectators or commentators. There were two small sets of three-row bleachers stuck along one side, but they filled quickly with coaches and family members. She’d actually had to stand behind the glass wall separating the ice from the bar to watch Callie and her team play two games back to back and win them both easily.

  Then they disappeared into a room off to the side, leaving Max sitting in the hallway while a toddler in a paper crown ran up and down, suggesting he might be celebrating a birthday. The whole thing felt like sort of a joke. She’d spent over a month with everyone trying to convince her, and had even started to believe, curling was a legitimate professional sport, only to find that an apparently important event took place in the middle of nowhere in a multiuse facility where fans weren’t even allowed to watch from the same room.

  She leaned her head back against the cold concrete as frustration built in her again, and she began to contemplate retiring to her hotel room, but why? Thanks to her distance from the players all morning, she had nothing new to write and no new footage to edit. Still, she was about to give up when the door to her side swung open, nearly colliding with the hyper toddler. Max grimaced and looked away, not wanting to see the moment of impact, but as the kid came careening around her, she assumed he must possess some mad running-back skills, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You okay, Pencil Pusher?” Layla’s voice asked, with its usual mix of humor and sarcasm.

  “Uh, yeah.” She hopped out of her folding chair and ran her hands over her shirt as if she might have wrinkled it in her cowering. “Good games.”

  “Thanks.” Layla grinned. “We’ve got a good draw.”

  “But we’re not taking anything for granted,” Callie called from behind her.

  “Of course not, Skip,” Layla said, “which is why we spent the last two hours dissecting video of a morning where we barely made a questionable call.”

  “You rewatched your entire matches already?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” Layla said, at the same time Callie said, “No.”

  “Not the whole games,” Callie said, her voice tight.

  “We fast-forwarded through some of the other team’s throws,” Layla explained.

  “And the times when we were discussing strategy.” Callie stepped forward around her lead to address Max directly. “But yes, we played our eight o’clock match and immediately reviewed it so we could make adjustments for our 11 a.m. match, and then we reviewed that one so we can make adjustments for tomorrow. It’s what we do. It’s a vital part of our planning and strategy.”

  “Makes sense,” Max said, a little impressed they had the focus and fortitude to not only play two matches in a single morning, but also dissect them both immediately. Lots of athletes used video in practice and preparation sessions, but few teams held them immediately before or after games.

  “Makes me hungry,” Layla said, then called back into the room. “Anyone want to go to that pizza place down the road?”

  “Nope,” Ella called. “I’m eating healthy. I’ve got a dress fitting this week.”

  “Can’t,” Brooke added. “Gotta study.”

  Layla rolled her eyes. “I’m about to starve to death.”

  Max’s stomach gave a low rumble, and she looked up hopefully. “I’d be up for some pizza. I mean, if I’m invited.”

  Layla turned to Callie, her eyebrows raised, either in invitation or in a request for permission, or possibly both.

  Callie glanced at Max, and the worry lines along her forehead smoothed slightly. “I guess since we’re done playing and reviewing for the day, I could consider this my postgame interview with the press?”

  Max grinned, recognizing that Callie probably didn’t want to shirk her responsibilities, and gave her an easy excuse to consider the outing part of her duties rather than an escape from them. “Exactly. I’d love to ask you both some questions about this event. Totally a working dinner on my end.”

  “Whatever you two gotta tell yourselves, as long as I get fed,” Layla said, then threw an arm around each of them and steered the conversation toward the door. “I’ll answer whatever you want as soon as there’s food.”

  And, true to her word, no sooner had the waitress taken their order for two wood-fired pizzas than Layla turned to Max and said, “What do you want to know? Ask me anything.”

  She blinked at the abruptness of the statement and the complete reversal of course, for while Layla had been Callie’s friendliest teammate as far as social graces went, she’d been no more forthcoming than the others until this very minute.

  Max glanced at Callie as if silently asking whether this was some sort of a practical joke, but the skip just shrugged, a bit of humor sparking in her tired eyes. “Don’t look at me. You’re the reporter.”

  “Right.” Max straightened her should
ers. “I sort of forgot that for a while, seeing as how we’re in the middle of freaking nowhere for what seems like a bush league event compared to the others I’ve been to, and yet you all are as tense and focused as ever, if not more so.”

  “Totally more so,” Layla agreed.

  “But why?”

  “Two words,” Layla said. “Merit points.”

  “Could I have a few more words?”

  Layla laughed, and even Callie’s lips quirked up.

  “This tournament may not look like much without the Japanese and the Swedes and all the others you see at the World Cup events. Fewer teams, smaller venue, a lot less fanfare, but don’t be fooled about what’s at stake.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Our national ranking,” Callie said flatly. “Those merit points she mentioned factor directly into our national ranking.”

  “I thought all the events had ranking points to them.”

  “They do,” Layla said, “but there’s a multiple ranking in curling. The World Cup has their own rankings, and only the top fifteen get to play top-tier events. The second fifteen play tier two, but those are out of the whole world. Our national rankings include only teams from the USA.”

  “Of which you’re trying to become number one,” Max concluded.

  “Bingo,” Layla said, “and without the rest of the world in this tournament, we also get to go head-to-head with our competition for that top spot. I mean, with the smaller field and so many teams here we already outrank, we also have a chance of scoring some coin to help with the cost of all the travel we’re doing.”

  Max nodded, making mental notes.

  “But it’s more than just this paycheck. Our national funding and support are also very much in play depending on how we play.”

  “Plus, expectations are higher,” Callie added, her voice still emotionless.

  “National expectations, or your own?”

  “Yes.”

  Max waited for her to elaborate, but when it didn’t happen, she couldn’t quite bring herself to push for more. She got the sense Callie was conserving her energy and her emotions, so she turned back to Layla.