Page 18 of Thrown for a Loop
I glance around the empty room again, picturing the face she’d make if she saw this place. She’d complain about how cold it is, and she’d be apoplectic about my lack of furniture.
Nope. She definitely can’t visit. “I’m really busy with the new job, but we’ll see how things shape up in a few weeks.”
“Weeks?”
I put her off by promising twice that I’ll call her tomorrow. Then I hang up and head outside.
Even if my apartment is terrible, my commute is not. It’s a ten-minute walk. As I turn toward the river, the Legends complex, with its glass and sharp angles, gleams like a modernist jewel in the wintry morning light.
Foot traffic thins as I approach the building on the corner whereEleventh Avenue becomes the West Side Highway. After pushing through the revolving doors, I scan my shiny new Legends ID at the turnstile.
Beep!The light turns green, and I feel a little thrum of victory. From there, I get on the escalator and ride toward the smaller rinks upstairs. I’ve booked sixty minutes of ice time for this morning, because the only guys who scheduled sessions with me are Eric Tremaine and one other player.
I hope Tremaine is bringing some of his buddies, as we discussed. Either way, I’m going to have to make another round of calls and emails and nag these guys to book their sessions.
Upstairs, I pause in the staff locker corridor to pull out my skates and stash my gym bag. The lockers are made of oak, and they give off the vibe of a high-end spa. There’s a palatial women’s bathroom available as well. “And nobody ever goes in there,” Darcy told me. “So it’s basically all yours.” It’s the one perk of being the only woman on the coaching staff.
I head into the smaller practice rink, where I change into a pair of Bauer Vapor hockey skates that set me back almost eight hundred bucks. But a girl has to look the part.
On the adjacent rink, the goalies are practicing with their skills coach. Pucks thwack steadily off the players’ sticks and the goalpost pipes. This is the soundtrack of my life—the crisp, clean scrape of steel against the ice and the rumble of the Zamboni. I love it.
After I retired from figure skating, I thought I’d never go back to a rink. I thought about college. I looked for a program that would fill me with a new kind of passion—one where I could use my brain and not my body.
But it didn’t take. Instead, I kept peering at coaching programs and ultimately found a new way to love skating—one without thesoul-crushing anxiety of trying to be a perfect ice princess. Now I’m a different kind of skating nerd, one who isn’t the main character.
That’s the idea, anyway. I check the time and pray that Tremaine hasn’t forgotten our meeting.
At nine on the dot, though, he appears. “Morning, Coach!” he calls out, giving me a wave as he sits down to lace up his skates.
“Morning!” I paste on a smile and stride out onto the ice for a warm-up lap. I need to be sharp. If this session goes well, Tremaine can help me convince the rest of the roster that a session with me is both useful and interesting.
But hey, no pressure.
Tremaine steps onto the glistening oval a couple of minutes later. He pushes off on powerful legs and takes a warm-up lap, and I snap into coach mode.Long stride. Smooth transitions. His upper body is relaxed, while his legs do most of the work. A textbook stance that stabilizes his center of gravity.
As I catalog his technique, I relax by a fraction of a degree. Because I know how to do this job. I have a lot to offer—I just need a chance to make my point. And this is it. I have thirty minutes to impress the captain with my deep knowledge and sparkling personality.
He finishes his lap and skates toward me. “Hey, Coach Carson. I asked a few guys to join us. But we got back pretty late last night, so I didn’t make it mandatory.”
My heart drops. “No problem.” I grab a stack of cones and drop a couple of them on the ice. “I thought we’d start with a simple dexterity drill to get the blood flowing.”
“Sure,” he says. “Anything you want.”
I hastily set up a row of cones down one side, and then another one for the journey back. “I’d like you to take this in a U shape—downand around, then up again.” And I give him a brief explanation of the pattern I want him to skate around the cones.
“Got it,” he says easily. He’s been doing drills like this since before he put away his teddy bears.
“Awesome. Ready… set… go.”
And as soon as Tremaine moves, I push off, too, heading around the course from the other corner.
At first he doesn’t realize that I’m skating in parallel. But even as I power down the course, I clock the moment he notices. That slight twist of his head, and the sideways glance.
After a beat, his gaze snaps back to the task at hand. He tucks his chin down and focuses all his energy on the job of maneuvering his large body back and forth around the cones, like a slalom skier.
He’s got a long stride and smooth edgework, powered by two of the strongest legs in the Eastern Conference. But this drill doesn’t favor speed—it favors precision. That’s why I’m able to keep pace with him as we hit the first turnaround and start back down the ice.
I make the second turn with him, too. And the third. I’m a foot shorter than he is, and I’d bet cash money that he didn’t miss that. No professional hockey player wants to be bested by a girl half his size.
