Page 53 of Thrown for a Loop
“No, listen.” She puts a hand on his sweaty arm. “You could have been a great figure skater if you had studied it, and you are more competent now than seems fair. But it is hard work trying a brand-new thing and baring your soul at the same time. You don’t really know what you’re doing, and still I see you leaving it all on the ice. Yousellit, Mr. Merritt. You will make Zoe look good or die trying, and I admire you.”
Chase is rarely at a loss for words, except for right now. “Uh, thank you. It’s been an adventure.”
“I see that it has. You two should call it a night now.” She looks from him to Zoe and back again. “Be careful, you two. Don’t get hurt.”
“I’m being careful,” Zoe promises. “My mother will kill me if I injure myself.”
“That is not what I meant,” Martina says softly. Then she turns and skates toward the exit.
Chapter 19
Present Day
Guess who’s suddenly popular among the players, and also really confused about it?
This girl.
It starts as soon as I arrive at LaGuardia for a flight on the team jet. The Legends are playing in Toronto tomorrow, and I’m taking my first scouting trip with two veterans of the sport.
But nobody is talking about hockey as I follow Darcy and the team into the private gate area. “Sit here, ladies,” says the young O’Connell. He points at a couple of seats, then sits across from us. “Me and the boys have some questions about that video. But first I gotta rewatch that part where Merritt does that twirly thing.”
Darcy and I exchange a look. Then I glance around the waiting area and see all the hockey players hunched in twos and threes over various phones and tablets. They’re all watching our ten-year-old “Wicked Game” video, and I hear the song in surround sound.
Thanks to a journalist who’s way too good at her job, video evidence of my teenage heartbreak is making the rounds on the internet. And every player is laughing.
Chase must be burning mad. The whole world is chuckling over a video of his nineteen-year-old self doing toe loops and camel spins to a pop song.
Well, some of them are chuckling. Rookie Lukas Weber is actually rolling on the carpet, clutching his sides.
I don’t think I really understood whatviralmeant until this morning. Everyone I’ve ever known from skating camp has forwarded the link to me in the last twenty-four hours.Hey Zoe! Did you know this guy became a professional hockey player? He’s still hot!And so on.
“Yeah, this’ll never get old,” Eric Tremaine snickers. He leans over to peer at O’Connell’s phone. “Is Merry wearingsparkles?”
“No,” I say quickly. “The fabric is just a little… shiny.”
“It’ssparkly,” O’Connell says. “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Zoe.”
Fine. The costume I borrowed for Chase was totally sparkly. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
“He looks like that dude inDirty Dancing,” O’Connell says gleefully. “Did you know Merritt could move like that? I’m a little turned on, I won’t lie.”
They both howl, and I bury my face in my hand. The only saving grace is that Chase isn’t here with us at the airport. He got special permission to join the team on a later flight, after his chiropractic appointment.
But surely his phone is blowing up, too. I can only imagine how many people forwarded him the link.OMG is this really you???
The greediest part of me wonders if he watched it, and what he thought when he saw it. Did he smile, even a little? Or did he use his phone for slap shot practice instead?
Probably that second thing.
As for me, I couldn’t even make it through the first thirty seconds of the video. It’s too hard to confront my young, desperately in love self.
“Where was this taken?” Tremaine asks, leaning over to see Weber’s phone. “Tell me everything. Was Merritt really your skating partner? Like, for competitions?”
“No!” I yelp. “We were both coaching at this summer programin Massachusetts. For, like, just a few weeks. And the, uh, coaches were supposed to perform for parents’ weekend.”
“Uh-huh,” O’Connell says with a grin. “So you and Merry had a summer fling?”
“Nobody said that,” I argue, my face flushing. “We’re just skating together. It’s called aperformance.”
