Fake Dates & Ice Skates: (The North University Series Book 1)

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” I ask again in a small voice, hoping that pretending I can’t hear them means that this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening, right?

When I was told I had a meeting with the dean and Coach Darcy, I thought maybe I was getting an award. A well done for not losing your shit at your stupid ex-boyfriend / partner for fucking up your routine, handed to me with an oversized trophy and a bouquet of flowers. “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” I’d respond coyly with a dashing smile. I would love to see that on a trophy. Or something along those lines. But no. Instead, I’m getting some really sucky news.

“Wren, that’s the third time you’ve said that today. Are you okay?” Coach asks in her thick French accent. Her words almost fly right over my head. I can see sympathy taking over her expression as her deep-set brown eyes flicker with worry. She probably thinks I’m insane. Honestly, it feels like I’m slowly getting there.

“Yes, I’m fine. Just…adjusting,” I reply, looking around the office at the ugly brown furniture that I have grown to loathe. I always get chills when I come in here. It has an unwelcoming ambience, and it is always too cold. Something unnerving lingers in the air as I try not to focus on it.

“You won’t need to adjust to anything if you find a plan to work around this. It’s just a misstep. That’s all,” Coach explains with a warm smile. I return the smile, but I can feel mine wobble.

The ‘misstep’ that she’s referring to is the fact that I might not be able to skate anymore after our Winter Showcase in December. North University in Salt Lake City, comically located in the south, is famously known for its hockey team and figure skaters. Naturally, being a winter city, people gravitated towards our winter sports more than anything. We enter the championships every year like all the other colleges, but we also host seasonal events for the students and wider community. Although we have a rink each for the hockey and the skaters, people have taken much more of an interest in the hockey team than us.

We only have five skaters left on our team after most of them dropped skating to do a full major or just left all together. Last year, each competition and each event were met with enthusiasm from the students and the community but after Augustus and I got into the regional championships and lost horrifically, no one has batted an eye at us since. I was shunned and embarrassed, not ready to brave another competition or performance. The school run the events and the team purely on ticket prices and charitable donations since it’s been loved for so many generations but if no one turns up then we’re out of funds; meaning our rink can easily be handed over to the hockey team. The other skaters have lost their passion and as much as I’d hate to admit it, I am too.

I double major with Creative Writing but dropping skating would mean admitting defeat to my mom, NU alma mater and previous figure skater, which is the last thing I can do.

“How are you expecting me to fix this? It shouldn’t be my responsibility to keep the courses that you teach afloat,” I snap, not sure how my tone climbed up so fiercely. I take in a deep breath, trying to regain my cool. I want to skate again, not get kicked out.

“It’s a joint effort,” the dean says.

I turn to look at her but her dense expression makes my stomach turn. Even when she looks defeated and angry, she still looks beautiful. Irritatingly so. Her bone structures are strong; telling stories that you want to hear so badly, constantly drawing people in. “We’re doing everything we can on our end, you need to do the same. You will need to create some sort of buzz around it and people will start turning up again. It should be easy if you really care about skating.”

That’s just the thing. I don’t.

Not as much as I used to. 

My mom has loved figure skating her whole life because her mom forced her into it. After she got pregnant with Austin, she tried to get back into skating, but she was injured in a minor car accident and her knee has not been the same since. She was on the road to recovery just before I was born and threw that idea out of the window. Austin was supposed to skate too, but she never got used to dancing on the ice, so she has been training her whole life to be a professional ballet dancer. The next best thing. It has always been skating and nothing else. School was always seen as a secondary importance. “Your ability to dance on ice is the best gift you could give to the world,” she would often say. I’ve never been given any opportunity to do anything else so it’s always had to be skating.

I don’t hate the way it feels on the ice. I love the adrenaline. The rush. But it’s so easy to put up with it now instead of majoring in something I’m not sure I’m actually good at. That’s the annoying thing about me — if I know I’m not perfect at it, I’m not going to try.

“Fine. I’ll figure out some magical way to make everyone turn up to our performances,” I say, sarcasm dripping my tone. Coach claps her hands, a large grin spreading across her heart-shaped face as she beams at me. 

“I knew you’d figure it out,” Coach replies, winking at me, matching my sarcasm. She hates these meetings as much as I do.

We had a feeling this would happen, but we’d hoped the dean would pull through at the last minute and change the way our program is run. I flash a smile to the dean before waltzing out the room with a headache and no clue what I’m going to do.

My headache intensifies when I see my two best friends rushing towards me from their seats in the waiting area. I look behind them to see a guy sitting next to where they were, his head springing up at their shrill voices. Judging by his jersey I can tell he’s a hockey player. Strangely, I feel bad that he had to sit next to those two for the last twenty minutes who no doubt talked the entire time.

“Oh my God! What happened?” Kennedy exclaims the second our eyes connect. 

She brings her long arms around me as her wild brown hair bounces off her shoulders. Scarlett, on the other hand, comes next to my other side, her hands planted firmly at her sides, her silky black hair tucked neatly behind her ears. I know she’s not going to embrace me as affectionally as Kennedy, but she gives me an encouraging smile. I wait until we’re outside in the courtyard before speaking. I explain the situation to them which is naturally met with sighs of “What the fuck?” and “Shit.” 

“They can’t do that. That’s such bullshit!” Kennedy shouts, her arms still tight around my shoulder as if she’s my emotional support animal. Scarlett doesn’t say much but I can tell she’s working over plans in her head. 

This is how we work. How we’ve always worked since high school. I have the problems; Kennedy screams about it and throws out arbitrary solutions while Scarlett thinks of a plausible plan which we usually stick to. When I’m not the one with problems, I usually take a middle ground and try to centre the two different approaches they take. 

“Well apparently they can,” I mumble, kicking the crunchy leaves beneath me as we walk towards our apartment off campus. 

Living together has given us the opportunity to get to know each other the way we didn’t in school. Scarlett and I have known each other our entire lives as our parents have but Kennedy moved up from South Carolina in high school and we’ve been inseparable ever since. The second we set eyes on each other in English class, it was a cliché waiting to happen. The blonde, the raven, and the curly haired brunette. It just made sense. We just made sense. Other than our other best friend Gigi who has lived across from my childhood home my whole life, these girls have kept me sane over the past nineteen years.

Our majors are so different, but it only makes our dynamic stronger. Scarlett is a business and fashion major while Ken studies art and photography. We all knew we were going to NU as soon as Austin told us about all the hot guys that she met here while we were in high school. Still, being here over a year and we are yet to meet these hot guys.

“So, what are you going to do?” Scarlett asks, her voice calmer and more levelled than Kennedy’s frantic one. Our walk slows as we get closer home, the chilly air urging us forward. We trudge up the steps to our floor since the elevator takes way to long.

“I’ve got no fucking clue. I’ll start a petition or something,” I say lazily, waving my hands vaguely in the air when we reach the top. Kennedy nods, her face becoming red as she smiles. She unlocks the door and I slip into it moving out of the way for Scarlett to pass but she doesn’t move. 

She stands in the doorway, arms planted by her side, her neat hair still a mess from the September breeze. Her eyebrows furrowed and her jaw clenched, she pins me with a strange look.

“What have you done to her?” Kennedy asks from behind me, her tone bored and used to her daily antics. Scarlett might be rational and insanely smart, but she is so dramatic sometimes. 

“Nothing,” I say, turning back to a puffy faced Kennedy as she removes her layers. “What’s wrong, Scar?”

“You can’t do a petition. I’m refusing to let you do that. Take it from the girl who wasted her whole final project last year on a petition which landed her a B. A fucking B for getting 18,000 signatures,” Scarlett groans, finally starting to walk inside. I close the door behind her as we make walk further in, shutting out the cold. 

‘A B isn’t bad, Scar,” Kennedy says shrugging. I shoot her a look to shut it down, not having the mental capacity or emotional stability to get into the argument. Again.

Scarlett is the youngest and only daughter of three sons, so competition was always high in her household. She’s constantly trying her hardest to prove she was as good as them. You wouldn’t need to look at her twice to realise that she’s smarter than all of them combined. I just wish she could get that in her head. She’s confident around us until she’s around her family and shrinks in their presence.

“It’s bad for me,” Scarlett retorts shuddering as she walks into the open living room and kitchen. “A B is like asking for ketchup but getting homemade mayonnaise instead. Both disgusting and disappointing and most likely will land you a few hours in the bathroom.” 

“That literally makes no sense,” Kennedy concedes unconvinced. Scarlett and I take off our outside clothes and adjust to the warmth of the apartment. Autumn and winter here are hell but there is no better feeling than coming in from the cold. Once I’m free of my layers, I plunge down on the couch, defeated. 

“I need to think of something, like, yesterday. If I can’t skate, I can’t do anything else,” I sigh into the air as the girls walk around me, probably looking for food. 

“Why don’t you just do your creative writing course? Then you can actually get some feedback on the work you do outside of class. Instead of getting totally biased opinions from us and Gigi,” Kennedy suggests, flopping on the beanbag across from me. She tucks her legs beneath her, a box of Cheerio’s in her hand.

Her suggestion makes me feel sick. It does anytime anyone mentions dropping skating and actually having to do real schoolwork. The thought of being brave enough to do something I have always enjoyed but never really knowing if I was good at it makes my stomach turn. 

Growing up, on my way to competitions or practice, I would always have a paperback in my hands, or I’d make up stories of my own. Creating a completely fictional and magical world while my parents went through their divorce was the best escape I could ask for. Their divorce was messier than their marriage, but I wasn’t the only thirteen-year-old who had divorced parents. So, I spent the time that wasn’t on the ice, nose deep in my own world. I’ve uploaded embarrassing stories onto Wattpad and other sites but even growing a little fandom, it has never felt like it would stick. I could snap out of inspiration at any moment and that dream could easily die That thought terrifies me. Whether I like it or not, I can always skate.

“Doing that would mean I would need to be a good writer. And that also means admitting defeat to my mother of all people,” I say with a shiver. 

“Oh shit, I forgot. How did she take the news or was she in on it too?” Kennedy bursts out. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, not really wanting to talk about her. My mom’s ‘encouragement’ amounts to the same force of tiny rats pulling at my hair, forcing me into doing things I don’t want to do.

“Well, the dean said that if I care enough about skating, I should be able to figure it out. But my mom said nothing, as always. She’s probably on the deans’ side,” I say, knowing it’ll get a reaction out of one of them. 

“Ugh, Wren. You’re so annoying. Why do you talk about them as if they’re two separate people? It’s confusing,” Scarlett groans with a huff as she drops next to me on the couch. Bingo. I ignore her pouty face and look at Kennedy innocently. 

In some ways, my mom has always been my own personal dean. Constantly on my case, pushing me and Austin to do better, giving me strict curfews and just breathing down my neck twenty-four seven. Since joining NU, there has been no difference other than now other students have to face her wrath as well. If it wasn’t for the responsibility, I would gain by moving out, I’m sure she would have made me stay closer to home somehow. Seeing her at school almost every day is enough mom-ness for me. 

“Ken, are you confused?” I ask condescendingly. She shakes her head, her mouth stuffed with Cheerio’s. I turn back to Scarlett who has the expression of a miserable child. “See, it’s only confusing you, my darling.” 

Scarlett sticks her tongue out at me as I throw my head back onto the headrest, trying to centre all of the thoughts that are whirling around my brain and tugging on my lungs.  I focus on breathing properly as I take in deep breaths thinking about how the hell I’m going to fix this.

I must have dozed off because before I know it, Kennedy is wheeling in The Whiteboard into the living room, taking up nearly all of her short stature. The Whiteboard – always with a capital T and W – has been a saviour in times like these.

Surprisingly, whiteboards are popular gifts for business students like Scarlett who, last Christmas, was gifted two mega whiteboards. Naturally, we decided that we could make use of one of them. Since then, we’ve used it for our iconic pros and cons lists for dates, breakups, changing shampoos or trying to find out a place to eat that isn’t Nero’s Pizzeria. No one has seen the contents of what we write on here as it’s something so sacred to us. Some people think it’s sweet but others thing it’s completely insane. If we didn’t have The Whiteboard our lives would have been derailed by now. 

“Scarlett, would you take the honours of being our scribe?” Kennedy announces, holding out the oversized whiteboard pen as if it’s the holy grail. Scarlett’s face lights up, her green eyes squinting as her sharp cheekbones rise up.

“I would love nothing more,” she replies, jumping up and retrieving the pen. “Operation ‘Save Wren from dropping out of skating even though she secretly hates it’ is underway.”

I throw her a sarcastic smile, thinking twice before lobbing a cushion at her which she dodges. 

“Maybe we should just paraphrase?” Kennedy suggests, unimpressed as she returns to her seat in the beanbag. Scarlett continues writing out the name on the whiteboard regardless. 

“Or maybe we should just not assume how much I absolutely love skating all together,” I counter, earning me unconvinced glances from the two of them. 

I can tell it’s going to be a long day and it’s only four in the evening.