Page 29 of Looks Real Good Now
“You ready?” he asked. I slid my hand into his.
Liam led us to the rink like someone who was used to having to walk on concrete in blades. I crossed the short distance like Bambi. Liam found it hilarious, and I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. I used to be just like him, perfectly at home making that walk like it was nothing.
Fortunately, the second my blades touched the ice my legsdidn’t give out and leave me in a heap. When he was sure I wasn’t going to fall flat on my ass, Liam let go of my hand and pushed off in the direction of flow on the rink, leaving me to try and remember how to propel myself around the ice and follow him.
As a reminder that Liam was not even a year into his retirement from professional hockey, he was back in less than a minute and came to a dead stop in front of me. A dead stop that should not have been sexy because all he was doing wasstoppingon some ice. But with the stopping came a wave of his cologne. I could feel his breath against my cheek and the sun hit his eyes just right, making them look like they were actually sparkling. So, it was all very sexy.
Then there was his smile. His smile almost took my breath away.
“You’re showing off, Muller,” I said, only sounding a little breathless.
“Just finding my sea legs,” he replied, lacing his fingers through mine and gently tugging me along as he started skating again.
“Bend your knees and lean forward, almost like you’re going to fall over,” Liam said when he realised I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Babe, if I lean forward like I’m going to fall over, I am going to fall over.”
“Alana, if you think I am going to let you fall then you really do not know me at all. So, lean forward slightly and push off on your toes. Keep your knees bent so your centre of gravity stays low.”
It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that the reasonI let this man call me Lenny was because I would never be able to function if he called me by my full name all the time. It was a weapon. It had the power to take me out completely. It made my legs wobbly, my heart feel like it was trying to escape from my chest, broke me out in goosebumps, and made me want to get down on my knees and force that word out of him like a broken, gravelly prayer.
He’d used it twice today, which was maybe a record, and it was ruining my life. We were supposed to be having a Hallmark Christmas movie day, and I was wondering how quickly we could leave this ice rink, throw all pretence about this relationship out of the window and fuck it out. Repeatedly.
I almost forgot what he said and then remembered that he was giving me quite practical advice to get me off this spot that I was starting to grow roots into. I shifted my body forward and Liam skated back slowly, dragging me along with him. I started to use my legs to move forward, helping him with his task, which he was taking very seriously.
“I’m remembering another reason why I told people I couldn’t skate. It was because I grew to hate it when I had to do it slowly like this,” I said just as one of my legs decided it didn’t want to be underneath me and instead wanted to go out at some kind of angle. Quicker than I thought possible, Liam was at my side and caught my skate before it could slip too far out and leave me in a pile on the ice. One of his hands settled on my hip and somehow, I managed to stay upright.
“Told you I wouldn’t let you fall. You wanna try again?” The heat of his fingers felt like it was searing through my leggings onto my skin. I needed to get away from him.
“No. Can we just call it a day? I’ve been on the ice. Can we be done now?”
“Do you really wanna be done?” Liam asked and I knew that I wouldn’t be getting off this ice.
The ice was Liam’s life. It was his one motivation for so long and now, suddenly, it wasn’t. He could say it was the right decision all he liked, and I did think that it was the right one, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t missing being on the ice in some capacity. Even if it was just for fun. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that Liam couldn’t do that when he was a professional. Just fuck around on the ice for fun.
I could give him that, even if it felt like my legs were going to give up on me. That probably had more to do with the man currently holding me up than the thin blades on slippery ice anyway.
“No, I don’t wanna be done. I want to fast forward through the training montage where I learn how to skate again and just be at the end where I’m skating circles around you.”
“You could out-skate me once upon a time. I am sure it’s still in there somewhere. No extensive training montage required.”
“Yeah, but then you decided to make being an ice skater your entire personality and we couldn’t just fuck around anymore. I could only be your stand-in goalkeeper or something. Although, I guess that wasn’t for nothing. When are you going to thank me for making you the ice skater that you were?”
In actual fact, I’d done nothing. During the season, it was one of the only ways we could hang out with each other, so he had extra ‘shooting’ practice once a week. Although that was what we passed it off as when we booked the ice time, all I woulddo was stand there and he would shoot the puck at me in the gentlest fashion possible. The puck never made it off the ice because he was too worried about accidentally hitting me in the face.
“You’re right, all my hard work had nothing to do with it. It was all you. Being around you was always murder for my ego.”
I couldn’t figure out his tone and I stopped. Then I realised that we had been moving forward, so maybe skatingwaslike riding a bike.
“Wait, am I actually bothering you?” Falling into an old dynamic with Liam had been easy. He used to tease me for always studying; I used to tease him for having so many eggs in the hockey basket. That was our thing. But at the end of the day, we still hadn’t seen each other for over a decade, so maybe now he thought that I was just being bitchy.
“No, Lenny, you’re not. I know you’re not being mean. I’ve always known you’re not being mean. In fact, it’s always been quite nice knowing that there was someone in my life who treated ice hockey like it was very unimportant and reminded me that I need to have a life outside of it. I’ve had a lot of people blowing smoke up my ass for a very long time and I think I missed you not giving a shit about hockey and calling me an ice skater.”
We were moving again, slowly, but my legs were starting to find their rhythm as I pushed forward and followed Liam.
“I mean, technically, you are an ice skater. Yeah, there were other things you had to do but you were a person who skated on ice.”
“And now you’re an ice skater, once again,” he said as he letgo of my hand, spun around, and took off again.
