Page 133 of Thrown for a Loop
Everybody laughs.
I take my seat and quickly lace up my figure skates. Then I stand up and bounce my knees, trying to stay warm.
“Where’s Chase?” I ask. “Aren’t we on soon?”
“He just went to change his— Oh, there he is!”
I see a flash of sparkly blue, and then a smiling Chase maneuversthrough the tunnel in our direction. Or he tries to. His teammates keep stopping him.
“Holy shit, you sexy beast!” O’Connell says with a laugh. “Selfie?”
“Can I borrow that shirt when you’re done with it?” someone else asks. “I’ll only need it for two minutes. That’s how long it would take me to score in a nightclub if I’m wearing that.”
“Nah, four minutes at least,” someone else chirps. “Unless you borrow his face, too.”
Luckily there’s a howl of laughter in the tunnel, because it covers the groan Chase lets out when he arrives at my side. “God, you look amazing,” he says under his breath. “Fuck, that dress.”
“You can do that later,” Darcy says. “First you have to earn it.”
Then time sort of speeds up, as it always does right before a big performance. Maybe there’s no gold medal on the line tonight, but I still want to do my best.
“You okay?” Chase whispers as the announcer introduces our act and the vocalist. “You’ve been quiet today.”
“Just concentrating,” I say. And I am. Except I’m also thinking the same thoughts I had ten years ago—after tonight, there won’t be any reason to figure skate with Chase again. And if the Legends don’t suddenly make him an offer, the offer he deserves, I might not see him at all.
“OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALIST ZOE CARSON AND OUR OWN CHASE MERRITT!” the announcer calls.
The rink goes dark, and the crowd hushes in that whispery way it always does, with the heady silence of anticipation. Chase puts a hand on my lower back, and together we step forward and then glide out onto a rink lit only by theEXITsigns.
At center ice, Chase offers his hand, palm up, and I take it. Then his thumb massages the back of my hand, as if we were merely standing around waiting for the walk light on Eighth Avenue.
I love him so much that it almost hurts to breathe.
The lights come up on the bandstand first, and I see our vocalist, guitar braced in her hands. She’s beaming as she puts her hands to her instrument. And when the first notes of the song emerge from her strings, I get the kind of goose bumps that come only from live music.
“Here we go,” Chase whispers as the lights come up on us, our costumes shimmering. The crowd shouts its approval. And on the next chord, it’s time to move. Before I’m even aware that I’m doing it, my legs are pushing back in our first crossovers, my stride in sync with Chase’s.
As the lyrics wash over us, our bodies remember what to do. When we hit the first arabesque together, our arms swinging with the rhythm, it feels like flying. And the crowd screams again, as if we’re all reliving the same happy dream together.
We hit the next glide, and the next, and it’s magic. Chase is on fire, hitting all his marks and finding my hand unerringly every time we link up. As our bodies intertwine for the angsty octopus spin, I catch a glimpse of his face—focused but joyful, exactly like I remember it from our first performance.
More spins. And then we’re flying again, carving gracious lines into the ice, holding nothing back. I squeeze his hand to cue my jump. But when I launch,so does he! That rascal does a single toe loop in sync with my double. But we both land cleanly, and the crowd goes wild.
“You rule breaker,” I say as we dance through the next footwork section. “What’s with the jump?”
He just winks.
Next up, the camel spins, the pair spins, and more footwork. Then somehow it’s already time for the lift. As I catch Chase’s hand for our final span of crossovers, he gives me a smug grin. And whenhe lifts me in the air, I look down at the crowd and see a thousand faces tilted up toward mine, eyes bright, mouths open.
Do you believe in fate?Martina asked us. Tonight I really do. This song is only four minutes long, but some performances feel like a whole life in four minutes.
It’s beautiful.
We’re beautiful.
And I hope my mother sees the video on Instagram. I hope she understands me a little better when she sees it.
Chase sets me down again, and suddenly it’s over. We’re slowing to a stop at center ice, our bodies curved together to form the heart shape, just as we practiced.
