Page 23 of Gravity
I don’t want to look at him because I know what I’ll find. Hesitation. Fear of me and what I’ll do. Pity, because he thinks I’m a fool.Non, because heknowsI’m a fool. Anger, too, now that he’s had time to think about what happened, and how I stole a kiss from him that wasn’t mine to have. And—
Merde, he was ripped from his life in Carolina and senthere. From his beaches and his teammates and his friends to this frozen north, where the snow is thigh-deep and the temperature struggles to climb out of the negatives. Why? Because I am failing and someone believes that bringing Hunter here will cure me of that? What about him? What did he want?
I have no hope of escaping him, though. I never have. My gaze drags across the floor, from where I am burning holes in the toes of my skates to his feet, and then to his legs, and then to the duffel he’s holding. His knuckles are white against the straps.
My eyes flick up and meet his.
He’s full of questions, so many bubbling inside of his gaze. And he, like everyone, wants answers from me that I cannot give.
I don’t know how to stop this fall. I don’t know how to stop dreaming of who I can never have. I don’t know how to stop this pain, or stop it from spreading to everyone and everything that I touch.
I rip myself from his gravity and escape back to the ice. Walking away feels like I've torn something of myself out and left it to die in the cold.Go back, go back, my mind screams.
Non. There is nothing for you there.
* * *
We havefifteen minutes until the national anthems are sung. Two tonight, since we’re playing a team from the US. The team is all on the ice, circling inside of our half of the rink.
MacKenzie comes alongside me, and over the roar of the crowd, he says, “Calisse, you can fucking do this, Bunny. You and him, that was fucking magic. It's going to be good, yeah?” He spins and skates backward. “Nous sommes là pour toi.” He bumps my shoulder and looks me hard in the eyes before skating away.
Valery comes up next, circling me as I linger by the goal, unwilling to join the warmup. Hunter is out there, testing his edges. His brand new Étoiles sweater is clinging to his insanely broad shoulders. He and I should be warming up together, like we did in Vegas. Two weeks ago, we skated like there was a magnetic pull between us. But now, I am hiding behind the goal and trying to shake off fears that are coiling around my bones.
Valery skates around me, tapping my shin pads and my skates with his giant goalie stick. “Zhelayu udachi,” he says.
Tabernak, if even the goalie is wishing me good luck, then I’m truly fucked beyond belief. I nod back and try to smile. Valery is giving me a gift, bestowing his own good luck ritual onto me. Before the start of each game, everyone passes by Valery and taps his giant leg pads with their stick blades.
Esti de calisse, I can't hide anymore.I skate out to join the rest of the team, and without a word, they flock to one side, leaving me and Hunter alone on the left wing. It happens so fast, and I’m not ready for it. I’m not ready to be with him, here, now, in front of twenty thousand spectators and both teams. Every eye in the arena is bearing down on us.
Hunter is unreadable. He’s stone, as solid as the ice beneath us. It twists me in a new way, because I hadn’t imagined indifference from him. Oh, this will be a new way to torture myself at night.He doesn’t give a shit about you.
“Shall we pass?” I mumble toward his shoulder.
“Sure.” His voice is careful. Neutral. Flat. Nothing like his voice in my memories.
I skate away and snake a lonely puck left behind at the hash. My movements feel alien to me, like my arms are too short, my legs too long. It's as if I don’t know how to puck handle or move my stick as I glide backward to open up the ice between Hunter and myself.
This is like Vegas. Just like Vegas.When we skated out together for the first time, beneath all those screaming fans, and the puck passed from me to him like water running down a river. I want to see his eyes like they were that day, open and waiting and happy. Happy, I’d thought, to be skating with me.
He looks at me, and I flinch. My pass goes wide behind him and bangs off the boards. As he chases it, I stare up into the arena lights until black holes open and swallow everything I see.
* * *
I’m at center ice,ready for the puck drop. The game is seconds away, and the noise is deafening. The arena is roaring, the ice is trembling, and it’s so loud I can’t hear myself think.
Minutes ago, during the last commercial break, the crowd started a raucous chant of my nickname.“Bun-ny, Bun-ny, Bun-ny!”MacKenzie, Janne, and Slava were urging the crowd on. Valery slapped his stick on the ice in time with the chants.
Hunter is behind me. We are starting this game together.
I look to him. He’s ready—bent down low, stick on the ice. Waiting for me to win the draw and shoot the puck his way. We did this a half-dozen times in Vegas. I don’t think there was a single face-off I didn’t win, or one where I didn’t sling the puck right to Hunter.
He’s here now. Send the puck to him.
“Bun-ny, Bun-ny, Bun-ny!”
“Ready?” The referee asks my opponent, the center forward and captain of San Jose. He nods. The referee turns to me.
I imagine the seconds between Hunter and me in my hotel room: the feel of his thighs beneath mine, how our hips slotted together. How I fit perfectly on his lap. His hair sliding between my fingers. The taste of his kiss, his lips cool from the beer. I freeze the memory the moment before I ruined everything and hold the look in his eyes in my mind.
