Ink and Ice by Erin McRae (novel books to read txt) 📕

I just want a chance to win,” Aaron clarified. He knew where he stood, and he knew how fragile and tenuous that position was.

“There’s your first problem. You need to believe you can do what no one else thinks you can. Just trying to scrape into your dream by a hair’s breadth is not how you make that happen.”

“Okay. But realism.”

“Sure. But I’m telling you to aim higher. You’re going to have to podium at a lot of things just to be at the Olympics. Grand Prix events. And US Nationals.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“Now you sound like Katie.”

“I’m not saying you’re not focused. Or driven. Or anything like that,” Huy said. “Because you are. I just don’t know if I’d keep hammering at stuff as long as you have from where you are.”

Aaron grimaced. Huy was saying that if his own skills were only at Aaron’s level he would have quit by now. It was not a flattering assessment. It also wasn’t necessarily wrong. He felt his mood sink further.

“You’re certainly persistent,” Huy went on. “But you don’t give yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come just to be here.”

That, admittedly, made Aaron feel a little better.

Huy nodded around at the ice sheet, almost empty now except for them. “But I see the way you want so much to be somebody’s one-and-only and yet don’t direct that energy at people where that’s likely to happen. So it makes me wonder if you know how to win anything—on or off the ice. Most importantly, it makes me question your choices. About everything. A lot.”

“Is this the polyamory-as-resource-management lecture again?” Aaron asked. Suddenly, more than anything, he felt tired. He wanted to go home and sleep for about a week.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Huy said. “That analogy never seems to work for you. But the sooner you figure out how to stop wasting time keeping various parts of your life as separate drains on your emotional and creative resources, the better. I know we all have to compartmentalize in this sport all the time, but you need to figure out how to use everything you have to get everything you want.”

“My free skate is about my now-ex and I fucking. I don’t think I’m compartmentalizing here.”

Huy, who was rarely phased by anything, and certainly not the romantic and sexual adventures of his fellow skaters, was clearly phased now. But he took a deep breath and continued on as if Aaron hadn’t been appalling.

“No. But I know you. You’re going to want to either put your head down and focus on the work, or go out and find somebody else to fall for, for the rest of the season. When what you need to do is lean into the thing where you feel heartbroken and pissed off and lonely and put it all in the performance. And then when you make the team and get to the Olympics, you and me and my boyfriend will have a threesome, yeah?”

“Why am I friends with you?” Aaron asked. Because good advice aside, Huy never ceased to be Huy—always generous, and never quite in the way Aaron wanted or needed.

Part 2

Chapter 20

AUTUMN

Minnesota and Florida

BREAKUPS WERE MISERABLE, and Zack second-guessed himself about Aaron more than once. But Aaron did not need more inconsistency from him, and Zack really did need to focus on having a life that wasn’t about constantly running to and from distractions that ranged from inappropriate to dangerous. So he stayed in Saint Paul and kept playing hockey because it didn’t make sense to do or go anywhere else. He finally managed to play in an actual game for the rec league, and he was happy to be perfectly adequate. Maybe one day, he’d even manage to score a goal, but that seemed far away.

He told Sammy about Aaron’s failed attempt to get Sauer to call him, and about the breakup which had been partially precipitated by Zack’s inability to handle that mess. Sammy had no sympathy to offer and no interest in absolving Zack of his journalistic sins, which was fair. After all, it didn’t matter that he had broken up with Aaron; it didn’t erase their past or the way it had compromised Zack’s objectivity. The only solace he was given was that Sauer would be yanked out of the article completely, allowing Zack to rework his initial swiss cheese draft into a truly compelling profile of Aaron and life at TCI.

Zack knew as he worked on it that it was a love letter, but he was grateful that it was as much a love letter to a place and a sport, as it was to his first post-divorce ex.

Who he did, of course, still see around the rink. They’d nod to each other—tight and miserable—when they passed at the front desk or by the vending machines. Matt, at least, remained a steadfast friend amongst that chaos, offering sympathy, conversation, and ongoing instruction in the art of hockey trash talk. All further bar fights were avoided, and Tasha drilled him ruthlessly in edge control.

But while skating and friends and the legacy of his own mistakes continued to exist, so too did Florida. Unfortunately. As the calendar ticked towards Thanksgiving, Zack didn’t know what he wanted to deal with less—his ex and the condo that was now in contract to sell or his parents who now expected to see him for the occasion since he wasn’t in another country.

Either way, he had to get on a plane. This time, when the adrenaline and the panic started, he felt entirely justified.

THE CONDO, WHEN HE visited it for the last time, felt remarkably alien. His ex had finally taken his things, as well as all manner of things that Zack hadn’t necessarily expected to go missing. Gone was all of their cookware, the chaise lounge that they had only bought for the living room because the realtor had thought it would make the place sell faster,