“Are you ready for Kennedy and Trout 2.0?” Egg says when I lap him during our warm-up. I set up and land a perfect triple salchow. “I will take that as a yes.”
“Wooooo, you go girl!” Mack hoots from the side. “No wait, don’t. I don’t have the camera turned on yet. Okay. Now let’s do this thing.”
I go to the boards and shed my Ice Dreams jacket. I smooth the wrinkles out of my phoenix costume. I hope the seams can take the strain.
“Yeah, I’m thinking these costumes are a bad idea,” Egg says as we set up for our opening pose. “Wait. Hold on a sec. This thing is riding up on me.”
Egg digs at his costume. Both of us have filled out since we last skated together. We finally look like adults even if technically only one of us is.
“Are you sure I can’t change?” Egg says.
“No,” Mack yells across the ice. “Honey, if you got it, flaunt it.”
Egg stands a little taller and hits his pose. Mack whoops. I weave myself around Egg while shaking my head.
* * *
Mack could make an hour-long special with all the footage she’s taken of us tonight. Egg sends her home at nine to start the editing process while we fine-tune. We send our costumes with her too, so Granny MacIntosh can reinforce a couple of the seams that have already started to fray. As it is, I’m about one sneeze away from a wardrobe malfunction.
“I should call in sick to school tomorrow so we can keep filming.” I pull my Ice Dreams jacket over my plain black skate top and yoga pants. I’m glad to be rid of the eyeliner and lipstick for the night, though my hair may never go back to normal, thanks to the amount of hair product Mack used on me.
Egg sits down at Table #1 and unlaces his boots with a sigh of relief. “Or we could splice something over that last throw triple lutz and call it done.” Egg places his tiger-striped soakers over his blades and throws his blade towel in his bag.
“No, we should fix it. Mom can film for us. Though we should probably buy her a tripod on our way home.” I pull at Egg’s arm. “C’mon, put your skates back on. We’ll run the throw triple lutz a couple more times, and then we’ll call it a day. I know we can get this perfect by tomorrow.”
Egg flops over on the table, groaning. “Kill me now.”
“Stop being such a baby.” I slide my guards off and step back out on the ice.
Instead of joining me, though, Egg fiddles with his phone. A moment later he suddenly takes off toward the front door.
“C’mon, Egg, fifteen more minutes,” I yell after him. “I want to fix that one part in the middle. Let’s change the butterfly-into-a-back-sit part. How about we do a butterfly into a back camel instead? It will make the whole sequence look smoother.”
Instead, Egg flips off half the lights.
“Egg! Stuart Trout!” I come into a pool of light so I can practice my sit spins. “Your work ethic sucks.”
I wind up and pull my arms in tight. The rink blurs as I rotate faster. I drop down into a sit spin. When I come back up, I spin even faster. Like I haven’t since competition. Like I’m using centrifugal force to throw off the rest of Old Olivia. Finally, I push out and dig my toe pick into the ice.
“Woo, Egg, did you see the speed on that one? Egg?” I look out into the dim light of the rink for my partner, but he’s not there.
Instead, in a shaft of light at the edge of the ice stands a cutting figure with a large bouquet of roses in one hand and my skate guards in the other. Jonah doesn’t even flinch when my sharp stop flings snow all over the top of his shiny black dress shoes. I look him up and down. In a royal-blue button-down shirt and charcoal dress pants, Jonah looks even better in real life than in my fantasy. I throw my arms around him, and the spark from Jonah’s lips reignites my weary body back to full burn.
“I’m sorry about this weekend.” Jonah holds out the flowers to me when we finally break back apart. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
I slip my skate guards on and take the fuchsia roses from him. These could possibly be the most beautiful flowers in existence, even if the tag left on them says they were $12.99 and came from Target.
“Thank you. I’m so glad you’re home. Well, back in Phoenix.” I lace my fingers through Jonah’s and lead him to Table #1.
Jonah sits first and pulls me onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me and the flowers protectively. “I am home.”
“Wait. Where’s Egg?” Jonah and I may need to take our welcome home to a more secluded area, like the supply closet.
“He’s in the parking lot running interference with my dad.”
“Nice. Speaking of nice, you clean up nice.” I put my flowers on the table next to a gift bag so I can wrap both arms around Jonah. His outfit is perfect. His hair is perfect. His smile is perfect. “Seriously, like K-pop-idol nice.”
“Thanks.” Jonah pulls me in closer to him. “Gotta have a plan B in case this whole Olympic speed skater thing doesn’t work out.”
I nuzzle Jonah’s neck, letting my lips trail down toward the collar of his shirt. My eyes pop open when I hit a piece of thick fabric unlike the softness of Jonah’s shirt. A red, white, and blue ribbon peeks out from under his collar. I loop my fingers under the ribbon and follow it down Jonah’s chest. I have to unbutton three of the buttons on his shirt to see, but there it is. A gold medal glows against his skin.
“It has a twin for the one-thousand-meter race, but I thought it would be too pretentious to wear both of them. I guess K-pop will have to wait for a while longer.”
I throw my arms around Jonah’s neck and hug him tight. “Congratulations.”
“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?”
“Yes. I get it. When you’re in the zone, everything else melts away. It has to. We can’t be distracted when we’re competing.”
“Oh, I was distracted.” Jonah digs his phone out of his back pocket. “How am I supposed to concentrate after seeing this?”
My heart hiccups. It’s the phoenix costume. Oh Lord, I’m making the face. Somebody shoot me now.
“Where did you get this?”
“The internet. Apparently this costume caused quite a stir on the skating circuit.” One eyebrow pops up as Jonah enlarges the picture. “I can see why. It does make the perfect screen saver, though.”
“Do not show that picture to anybody. Ever. I’m not kidding.”
“Why? It’s on the internet. It wasn’t hard to find.” Jonah and I wrestle over the phone. “So, do I ever get to see the costume in person?”
“We’ll see.” I pull the phone out of his hand and slap it on the table. “What’s in the bag?”
“A gift. For you.” Jonah plops the large, shiny black bag on my lap.
I dig through the tissue paper to find a heavy shoebox. I pull a black skate boot from the box.
“Um, these are men’s skates.”
“I know. They’re actually for me.” Jonah puts both skates on the table. “Dad and I made a deal. One gold in Utah and I get to add an hour of cross-training with you each week. I got two golds. He bought me ice skates as soon as the store opened this morning.”