12. #ToSkateAgain, December 2017

Daya wrapped herself in a hug next to the entrance to the VITAL's East Arena, while the relentless voice nagged inside her head.

"Being ghosted by Joy is what you get for smuggling the skates out of the condo and lying to Mike."

"I didn't lie," she piped in miserably, "I  just wasn't ready to admit that he was right, and I wanted to skate."

The inner voice dismissed this weak sauce defence with a derisive chuckle. "Whatever. Joy is not coming, you idiot. If you wanted to skate so badly, public skate times are--"

"Hey, Daya!"

Daya nearly jumped up, her heart racing at a dangerous thousand beats per second. "Joy!"

The gal barreled past her. "Come on, time's precious. We can chat later."

Later meant half-a-second in Joy's universe.

"So you're from Ontario? Where? And originally?" And, without waiting for an answer: "You can probably teach too. I can give you a shout when I know they are recruiting. Put in a good word for you. You still remember your spins?"

Daya smiled and nodded, nodded and smiled as she pulled on the boot and started doing up the laces. This is not real... this can't be real.

Joy jumped out of the gate and hopped on the ice, then pummeled her thighs. "This opens up the living energy channels according to Chinese medicine... try that. Oh, come out already, Daya! Ice won't bite you. Unless you fall and kiss it. Gosh, did you quit cold turkey or what? Or was it surgery?"

Daya bit her lip. "No surgery. I screwed up in a qualifier. Popped both my triples, fell on a combo, really badly. I've... lost it, I guess. Felt like the world was unfair, you know? I tried to keep the stiff upper lip, but my coach... Well, he turned away to cheer for the novice girls to beat my score. That's all. I left and didn't go back."

"Shit on the asshole and come on out." Joy cut-backed away from Daya, waving her over. Figure skating mavens were supposed to be like the wingless angels, not cursing brats, but she applauded Joy. The gal looked light on her feet, gaining speed in under three strokes.

"When I am alone like this, I imagine I am on the big ice, Worlds or GP," Joy shouted across the rink the dream that Daya wouldn't have dared to confess in a whisper in Antarctica. "Like I am fifteen again, still believe in all that dreams come true BS. Like, I've beat them all in the short, like twenty points ahead, and stuff. Now it's just a clean free, and I'm on the podium."

She spun with arms folded to the chest, a good old scratch spin. "Come out, challenge me for the first place, Dhawan. Skate off!"

Daya put a foot over the threshold, took one more breath in. "Representing Canada, Daya Dhawan."

It sounded as feeble as her knees felt. Preposterous, but sitting at the boards would be worse.

She jumped on the ice and glided on.

The gleaming surface did not crack open underneath her, the frozen abyss did not consume her.

But neither were there any thunderclaps and lightning flashes, nor the applause of the invisible audience.

Save for Joy's humming and the soft buzz of the halogen lights overhead, the world didn't give a shit about Daya Dhawan stepping on the ice she had forsworn.

The world is bipolar; it loves or it hates and in between there is silence.

Daya listened to the white noise for the first few strides, then filled the world's silence with music. The soundtrack in her head blended Yuri on Ice's opening song and the chords from the Phantom of the Opera, a complete mess, the first thing to think of, the banal songs.

Today, she deserved the stupid, cheap thrill, trivial, unrealistic stuff. Let it be trivial, the old warhorses songs, she didn't care.

Her legs knew better than her brain. They carried on and on, growing smarter with every step. Muscular memory expected each stride until she sensed a theme in the movement. No figures yet, no jumps, just gaining speed, and the freedom of movement in any direction, the glide, the depth of cutting into the ice.

And the theme was of imperfection and anticipation, like the two people unsure of their connection, fitting together words to express their feelings. A puzzle where there are so many pieces that you can't guess what the picture will be, and some of them stuck together by accident.

Mike and I... Mike and I... what's going on between us? Had we left behind a notch on each other's soul before rebirth or are we looking at something new? What could we forge between us?

Before she knew it, she entered a layback spin, something that did not just come naturally. She had to do it, because the theme demanded it.

"Hey," Joy called from the sidelines. "Sorry, D, but we're out of time..."

The voices from the locker room echoed hers, and Daya skated over to the gate.

She felt terrific and hot, perspiring and tuning into muscles that didn't get recruited with any other exercise. Only skating reached in there. They were like the harp's strings that waited for a musician's hand to make them sing.

A bit dazed, she fumbled with her laces. Was Mike right? Could she skate without competing? Teach kids like Joy? Be more like Joy?

If she squinted, she could imagine the future where she chased a flock of adorable five-year-olds, with Mike smiling at her from the upstairs gallery.

"You looked good out there, girlfriend, not like you've skipped a year. Real smooth, and the speed.. You still got it. So, I'm guessing you were into it for yourself, not mom and dad?" Joy's words came in exploding bunches, like fireworks.

Daya squinted. "Mom and dad what?"

"Well, I don't know about your folks, mine demanded achievement because school was too lax and it was not good enough for us to just get good grades, every dumb-ass white kid can do that, yada-yada-yada.

Math, music, athletics, whatever, so long as it was more than what everyone else did. So long you could work hard at it, get points or levels or something to show for it. My brother was doing swimming and piano, I was thinking taekwondo, but skating was closer to home. And I wasn't that bad, just nowhere near good enough, Asian body advantage or not."

Daya shook her head. "No, it was not like that for me. My parents were happy while I was winning in the beginning, but if I had good grades like my sister, they'd have been even happier. I wanted to skate..."

"Figured you were one of those." Joy grinned. "Parents... heh. I swear I would be different, but now I work with other people's kids, and I'm not so sure. The day I get a baby, my own little baby, how could I make myself believe they are not the chosen one? Anyway, you've looked a-okay. Come again if you want."

Daya did.

On the ice and when she day-dreamed of being on the ice, the theme was taking shape with every practice. She tried more and more complex figures to reach out to Mike in her imagination.

On the ice, she skated away the embarrassment of saying, "Hey, guess what? You were right."

On the ice, she could joke about the falling in love by Christmas thing.

But off the ice, she kept hiding her secret outings to the skating rink from Mike, which made talking about everything else difficult.

Oh, by the way... hung at the tip of her tongue every time she glanced at the stupid book he kept on the coffee table, when commercials for the upcoming Winter Olympics played, when she tossed ice into smoothies, all the time. Oh, by the way...

She didn't even know why she was reluctant. He would be happy for her... or, at least he would have been, back in October. The October Mike was goofy and happy. Now he was sullen, prone to muttering his responses and staring at his heroes' inventory. Gone was the glee with which he used to slaughter salivating monsters.

"They don't know how to make the games anymore," he complained to her and loaded a game with fuzzy graphics. "Now, that's a fantastic story, not an open world grinder..." But, again, after a few minutes, the screen froze, and he just stared at it.

She perched on the armrest of the couch trying to break the invisible barrier between them with a pained determination of a mime.

"You don't want to go to see your parents, do you?"

"No." The sharp syllable was so unlike Mike, that she sighed and closed her eyes to conjure the sight of the skating rink.

"I'll give you a ride to the airport."

Mike got a hold of her hand and rolled his thumb up and down her knuckles, something that sent goosebumps up her arm. His eyes stayed glued to a blue-skinned scaly alien, but his neck radiated the strain like a video of tectonic plates squishing together to make mountains.

Before she could decide if she wanted to massage his neck in return, he spoke up. "I'm sorry for being a grouch."

The pause stretched. Again, it invited her to confess. I'm skating again, and I'm having a blast. Again, she did not.

"I'll pick you up when you're back from Ontario. Just text me when you land."

"I will."

They sat in an uncomfortable silence, Mike's hand squeezing and relaxing around her fingers.

Her glance strayed from it to the viciously red poinsettia that replaced the defunct lemon tree. Gosh, Christmas was almost upon them.  For someone who worried about moving in with a stranger, she was now feeling peculiarly apprehensive about parting with him.

She suddenly wished with all her heart for everything to be back the way it had been before she stepped on the ice. Talking used to be easier... everything was easier.

But no, why was she lying to herself? She didn't want it to be back to how it was before she stepped on the ice. On the opposite, she wanted more ice time, more time to imagine what could be.

A flip jump. I should add a flip jump to show the moment of indecision. Add another jumping pass, keep the pressure on with a double-Euler-double combo, then transition into a step sequence, opened to the possibilities...

Daya swallowed and slipped from the armrest, leaving Mike vis-a-vis with his aliens. He made everything better. He made it all... not worse. More complicated. That's just the kind of a man he was, complicated.

And yet, and yet, and yet... she couldn't stop thinking about him and his stupid promise to fall in love with her. Or stop wondering if promises like that were infectious.

***

His SantaFe no longer scared her with its size. She stepped on the gas to merge into the turnout to the airport. "Do you want to talk about it, Mike? Your parents? BC? We're early for your flight."

"No," he grunted, cradling his messenger bag. "I'm fine."

Did he take her for a fool? "You're speaking in short simple sentences, Mike. You're not fine."

He pulled his glasses off and studied the lenses in the flickering street lights of the Airport Trail.

"There is not really anything special to tell, but if you have to know... My parents divorced, my mother remarried a successful businessman. My father tried to prove something you can't prove and burned himself out trying. I'm in for a tough week of reliving my adolescent misgivings." He shrugged. "It's water under the bridge."

It didn't sound like it. "Text me if you need to talk, Mike."

"It's an electronics-free retreat." He hunched his shoulders. "Excellent for unplugging from all the stressful influences of modern life."

The words were tinged with irony.

"Then write letters. I'll read them, I promise." If safety didn't require her to keep both hands on the wheel, she'd patted him on the knee. She was pretty sure he needed it.

So she did it the moment she pulled into the drop-off parking spot at the Calgary International. "Mike, I am serious... write. Send a pigeon. Whatever."

He smiled at her for a heart-stopping moment, then rattled the locked car door. A scarlet flush lit up his left cheek and ear, the only patch of skin she could see between the toque, the scarf and the collar.

Finally defeating the lock, he struggled out of the SUV, and rummaged through the back of the car.

"I can't wait to see you again," he mumbled to the back of her head. The hatchback banged before she could turn around. The wheels of his carry-on rattled away, the sound bouncing between the pavement and the concrete canopy of the entrance.

Daya nearly slammed the door into a cab sneaking around her idling SantaFe, poised to chase Mike into the airport. Then she tossed herself back into the driver's seat and counted to ten. To twenty...

Enough with counting.

Whatever nearly catapulted her out of the SUV and sent her heart pounding, whatever was sparkling between them, it was not going to unfold to Hey, I Just Met You, and This is Crazy...

Mike didn't deal in crazy. He didn't want her to rush after him, courting a parking violation. But he had asked her to come back in that annoying, round-about Mike way, by saying he would pick her up from her Toronto flight.

And I will come back, I promise.