From Lukov with Love

“CAN WE TALK?” my dad’s voice came from behind me.

I froze as I leaned against the boards, waiting for Ivan and Coach Lee as they argued over whether we should change a jump or not. I hadn’t cared whether we did or didn’t; I was letting them go at it. I was too tired and too emotionally wrung out—seriously… exhausted from the night before—to bother putting up a fight. So I’d been waiting there, watching them, sipping on water from a comfortable distance away.

So I hadn’t been paying attention. I hadn’t spotted my dad inside the LC, or much less him managing to sneak up behind me.

“Jasmine, please,” he pleaded quietly as I turned to blink at him over my shoulder. He was five foot seven max, with a slim, strong build that I knew I’d inherited. That dark hair, dark eyes, and skin that was a shade of olive that could have come from at least a dozen places in the world.

I looked like my dad. We shared all the same colors. The same structure.

But I got everything else from my mom… because he hadn’t been around.

“Five minutes,” he asked quietly, watching me patiently.

It had been hours since I’d seen him at the restaurant, and I knew his time in Houston was running out. Then it would be a year until I saw him again. Possibly even longer. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come to Houston and I hadn’t seen him.

He’d never cried about it, and I had stopped long before I noticed it.

I wanted to tell him I had better things to do. I wanted to tell him to leave me alone. And maybe a few years ago, I would have done exactly that if he’d pulled some shit like he had in the restaurant, in front of Ivan and the rest of the family.

But if I’d learned anything over the last year and a half, it was the reality of how tough it was to live with your mistakes. I’d learned how hard it was to face them, and how much harder it was to own them. We all did things we regretted; we all said things we regretted, and guilt was a crushing weight on a person’s soul.

And I wanted to be better. For me. Not for anyone else.

So I nodded and said nothing.

The deep breath he let out in relief, I didn’t really eat up as much as I could have.

Making my way to the opening onto the ice, I put my skate guards on and glanced over my shoulder to try and get Ivan’s attention. But he was still too busy talking to Coach Lee. On the floor, I headed toward the bleachers around the wall. Taking a seat in the middle of a bench, I stretched my legs out in front of me and faced the rink, watching my dad take a seat beside me but a few feet down.

On the ice, Ivan had turned around and was looking at us with a frown from his spot beside our coach.

He hadn’t said a word during practice that morning, and I was grateful he decided not to bring up my dad, let alone me crying all over him. There was only so much my pride could take. Instead, Ivan acted like nothing different had happened, like everything was normal.

Worked for me.

“Jasmine,” my dad said on an exhale.

I kept looking forward.

“You know that I love you, yes?”

Love was a weird word. What the hell was love? Everyone had such a different opinion on what it meant to them; it was hard to figure out how to use it. There was family love, friend love, romantic love….

Once, when I was younger, another skating mom had seen my mom smack me on the back of the head and had gotten really bent out of shape over it. But to me, that was how we were together. My mom had smacked me because I’d been a smart-ass and deserved it; I was hers and she loved me. Mostly though, my mom knew I didn’t react to hisses and threats.

Galina had always been the same way with me. She taught me responsibility and accountability. She didn’t take my backtalk. She’d smack me on the back of the head too.

But the thing was, I had never doubted that they wanted the best for me. I wanted honesty. I had needed them to love me more than my feelings, because I wanted to be better. I had wanted to be the best.

I had never wanted someone to baby me. I didn’t need it; it made me uncomfortable. It made me feel weak.

Love to me was honesty. Being real. Knowing someone’s best and worst. Love was a push that said someone believed in you when you didn’t.

Love was effort and time. And while I’d laid in bed the night before, it had jumped out to me that maybe that was why I had taken things so badly months ago when my mom had made it seem like I loved figure skating more than her. Because I knew what it was like to not be important to someone.

I had held this fucking grudge to my heart with duct tape and superglue, all the while being a massive hypocrite.

“Oh, Jasmine,” my dad whispered, sounding pained when I didn’t reply to his question. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him reach for me, his hand covering mine.

I couldn’t help but go stiff, and it was impossible to miss that my dad noticed and did the same.

“I do love you. I love you very much,” he said softly. “You’re my baby—”

I huffed, not letting myself suck in his claims of love.

“You are my baby,” my dad insisted, his hand still resting on my own.

Technically, yes.

But I wasn’t. And everyone knew that. He was just in denial, trying to make himself feel better.

“I want the best for you, Jasmine. I’m not going to say I’m sorry for it,” he said after I didn’t respond.

I still refused to look at him as I said, “I know you want the best for me. I get it. That’s not the problem.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

On the ice, Ivan started doing really lazy laps, his gaze staying on my dad and me, no matter where he was. He was watching to make sure everything was fine. I didn’t doubt that if I needed him, he’d skate over and butt in.

But I wasn’t that kind of person. I had avoided dealing with this as long as I could. It was time though.

“The problem is that you don’t know me, Dad.”

He scoffed, and I turned my head just enough to finally look at him.

“You don’t. I love you, but you don’t know me or understand me. Not even a little bit. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a pain in the ass or if you just don’t like me.”

He blew out a breath of frustration that I was going to ignore. “Why would you think I don’t like you?”

I blinked and tried to push away the gross, disappointed feeling in the middle of my belly. “Because you don’t. How many times have we spent time together, just us two?”

My dad’s mouth hung open for a moment before he closed it. “You were always busy. You’re always busy now.”

The answer was never. We’d never spent time together alone. He spent time with each of my brothers and each of my sisters, but never with me.

I was busy. But he’d never even tried. He’d never even come to the rink to sit at the bleachers and watch me practice, like everyone else had on multiple occasions. And if he’d ever even given a little bit of a shit, he would have.

So I controlled my breath, controlled my features and mouth so I could respond to him and not go off. “I am, but neither one of us made time for it. How many of my competitions have you gone to over the last… six years?”

For some reason, I didn’t enjoy the look of discomfort that came over his face. “You stopped inviting me,” he claimed.

Sadness that dwarfed every other sadness I had ever experienced in my life filled my entire body, but mostly the upper half of it.

“I stopped inviting you after you made me feel bad for asking you for money. I remember. You stopped going to any of my competitions before I was even nineteen. I remember you told me at the last one you went to, ‘Maybe you should focus on school, no?’ Do you remember telling me that right after I’d won first place? Because I do,” I reminded him, facing forward again to watch Ivan go into a shotgun spin that was half the speed he usually went at. The sadness in me grew stronger, thicker, and maybe in some way turned into resignation. Resignation that things had turned out this way and there was nothing I could do about it.

My dad said nothing.

“Do you know why I started figure skating?”

There was a pause and then, “It was a birthday party. Your mom made you go and you were mad because you didn’t want to.”

I blinked because that was exactly what had happened. I hardly knew the girl having the party, but she’d been a daughter of my mom’s friend. It wasn’t until she’d told me it was at a rink like in The Mighty Ducks, that I had agreed to go, still bitching the entire time.

At least until I’d gotten out on that ice and my body had just known what to do. “Like a duck in water,” my mom had called from the sidelines.

“That’s part of it, but not what I was asking,” I said, my voice sounding as tired as I felt. Drained, just so damned drained. “I started because I loved it. From the first moment I got on the ice, it felt right. And once I didn’t need to hold the walls anymore, it made me feel… free. It made me feel special. Everyone else that day could barely get around, but I picked up on it like this,” I explained, snapping my fingers. “And the better I got, the more I loved it. Nothing had ever made me happier than figure skating. I felt like I belonged. Do you understand that?”

“Yes… but you could have played any sport.”

“But I didn’t want to. Mom had tried to get me into swimming, gymnastics, soccer, karate, but all I ever wanted was this. It’s the only thing I’m good at, and you don’t see that or get it. I work so hard. I bust my ass every day for this. I have to do something a thousand times to do it decently, not even well. I’m not a quitter. I’ve never been a quitter, and I’m never going to be a quitter. But you don’t see that. You don’t get it.”

The man beside me let out an exasperated sigh as he tore his hand off mine and went to palm his forehead. “I’ve only wanted the best for my children, Jasmine. You included.”

“I know that. But all I want is for you to be supportive of me. Not everyone can do what I do, Dad! It’s hard. It’s so hard—”

“I never said it wasn’t hard.”

I made my hand into a fist before shaking it out. Patience. Be better. “Yeah, but you basically say you aren’t proud of me—”

“I never said that!”

“You don’t have to say it when all you do is tell me all the different things I can do to be… better. To be more successful. I know I haven’t lived up to my potential, I don’t forget that, ever. Not for a minute. I put enough pressure on myself every day. Do you know how hard it is for me to know that you think I’m a disappointment too?”

Dad cursed and shook his head. “I don’t think you’re a disappointment!”

“Yeah, but you don’t think I’m good enough. You don’t think I’m enough. You don’t want to spend time with me. You don’t want to go to my competitions. I don’t call you, but you don’t call me either! All you ever do is tell me everything I can do different. Like if I don’t go to college, that’s it. I’m a failure. I’m not sorry, Dad. I’m not sorry I love this. But I am sorry I haven’t been more successful. Maybe you’d be more proud of me if I’d won something big. Maybe then you would understand why I love this so much and then you’d be okay with it.”

My dad cursed again, this time both of his hands going up to his face to scrub them.

But he didn’t deny that he’d be more proud of me if I’d won more. That maybe then he would be fine with it. That he would drop the college thing.

My head began to throb almost instantly, and I got up, knowing this was done and there was nothing else left to say. I didn’t look at him exactly, but stood so that my side was to where he was sitting, my attention forward on one of the walls that had LUKOV COMPLEX painted on it. “I love you, Dad, but I can’t change who I am and what I want out of my life. Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do when I can’t compete anymore, but I’ll figure it out. I’m not going to give up what I love just because I might not have it forever,” I told him, sad and disappointed but a little relieved too.

By that point, my dad had his hands on his head and was taking turns sighing and mumbling under his breath.

I wanted to touch him, to tell him it was fine, but I couldn’t. Not then.

“Have a safe trip back to California, and tell Anise and the kids I said hello,” I told him, fisting my hand at my side.

He didn’t look up, and I wasn’t completely surprised. My mom had always said I got my ego from him. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. And that’s just the way things were.

Feeling just a little sick, I made my way back toward the ice, debating whether or not to tell my mom about Dad showing up and trying to talk to me.

More than halfway around the wall, I heard the sound of blades on the ice get louder and then the sharp sound of them coming to a stop. There was only one person who sounded like that. So, I wasn’t surprised when I heard, “Boo.”

I turned around with just enough time to see something come flying at me. I caught the shiny thing instinctively and opened my palm to find a Hershey’s kiss. I didn’t look at Ivan as I undid the wrapper, stuck it in my mouth, and muttered, “Thank you.”

“Uh-huh,” he replied before going, “Want to get something to eat before ballet? I’ll treat your broke ass.”

I couldn’t help the smirk I shot him even as I thought about how much better I would have wished the conversation with my dad would have gone, but I did control the nod I gave him afterward.

“Let’s get this done, and then we can go.”

“Okay.”

He nodded, those blue eyes on me, and said, “Okay.”

I was going to be all right.

I would.

But I had no idea how wrong I would be.

Getting back out on the ice, I couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling in my stomach that my dad gave me. Maybe if I won something this season, he would change his mind.

But if he couldn’t, what was I going to do? Beg him to accept me? Fuck that.

“Let’s go over that one part with the side-by-side triple-triple combo,” Coach Lee called out as I met up with Ivan in front of her.

He smacked the back of his hand against my leg, and I smacked him right back.

I didn’t need my dad to love me, I told myself. I didn’t. I never had. I was going to do what I’d always wanted to do—for me. For my mom. For Sebastian, Tali, Jojo, and Rubes. I would.

“You sure you’re good?” Ivan asked as we got into position.

I nodded at him, thinking about how I was going to do well for Ivan too.

“Positive?” he asked.

I nodded again. Everything was going to be fine… and if it wasn’t, I would make the best out of it. I would know I had given it my all and some people just weren’t meant for some things.

Ivan didn’t look like he believed me exactly, but he nodded back. I didn’t think about the combo we were going to do—two jumps with three revolutions each, back to back.

I was going to be fine. I wouldn’t let myself be any less, especially not when the season was just about to start.

The music started a few beats before we were supposed to go into the jump. I could do this. Everything would be fine.

Ivan and I were going to do great. Be fine. Be awesome.

We started off in the same place in the music, a few seconds before the two jumps, with just enough time to gain the momentum to go into them.

The first triple toe loop went as well as it could have. The balance was right, the speed was right, and out of my peripheral vision, I saw Ivan in the exact spot he needed to be. Everything was going to be fine. This was what I’d been born to do. Digging my toe pick into the ice to go into the second triple toe loop of our jump combination, I had my opposite blade firmly on the ice, and I went up for another.

But I hadn’t been focusing. Not enough. I took it for granted as I reminded myself that I could do this shit with my eyes closed.

That’s when everything went wrong. My weight was off… I was too loose on my left side…. I hadn’t put enough speed into it—thinking I was strong and it would be fine—but it wasn’t. And the second I knew something was wrong, I tried to bail.

But I’d waited too long, when I tried to catch myself and land on my foot instead of just hitting the ice.

I felt it.

I knew the instant my blade grazed the surface that I had fucked up.

I knew the landing was going to be bad.

But there was no way to know just how bad. Not until the rest of my weight came down, and then, I realized how screwed up everything was, how off-center the rest of my body was. Later on, I could look back on the footage and see that it was just a giant clusterfuck. My foot was in the wrong position, my weight went in the opposite direction, and my ankle tried its best, but couldn’t do the impossible.

I felt my foot give out under me. Felt my body try to compensate, but hit the ice because holyfuckingshit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit.

It didn’t hurt until I was already on my ass on the ice, clutching the area just above my ankle over the leather of the boot. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my body it was in shock. But I knew, I fucking knew something was wrong as the music for our set kept on playing in the background and I sat there, bad, bad pain shooting through my ankle.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see where Ivan had stopped right after his landing, probably having gone into the next foot sequence before noticing I wasn’t right beside him like I should have been. Like I was always supposed to be.

In my head, I could picture his face as he realized I wasn’t next to him like we had practiced a thousand times in the past. I could picture his face as he realized I’d fucked up. I could picture his face looking back at me in confusion as to why I wasn’t getting the fuck up to go after him, like I usually did when a jump went wrong and I didn’t stick the landing.

But I’d fallen.

I wasn’t in blinding pain, but I knew there was something wrong.

I knew there was something wrong, and I knew I needed to get up because we had a lot of work to do. We were supposed to work on nailing this shit. We were supposed to perfect all of this.

I needed to get up.

Get up, Jasmine. Get up. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Suck it up and get up. Finish this.

Still grabbing my ankle, that voice drove me to try and roll onto my opposite knee to get up. I had to get up. We had kinks to work out. Finger positions to perfect.

I could do this. I could get up. I had skated through bone bruises, hairline fractures, and minor sprains.

So I rolled to my knee, trying to listen to the music and figure out where we were so I could catch up. But just as I got to my knee and started to pull up the leg I’d landed badly on, pain like I had rarely in my life felt before slashed through me.

I opened my mouth… and nothing came out.

I didn’t realize my arms had given out until the ice was on my face and there were some horrifying shouts coming from around me, and the next thing I knew, something was touching my shoulder, rolling me over so I could lay on my back. And the next thing I saw was Ivan on his knees beside me, his face pale and somehow red at the same fucking time. His eyes were huge. I think I would always remember that.

I couldn’t get up. I can’t get up.

And my ankle—

“Jesus Christ, Jasmine, lay the fuck down!” Ivan yelled into my face, sliding something around my shoulders, his chest pressed to my shoulder as I belatedly recognized that our music was still on. We had gone with Van Helsing. I’d been so excited even though I had played it cool. I had been so relieved that was the music Ivan had chosen. I had given him some shit over it, but only because it’s what I did with him.

“Stop trying to get up!” the man beside me yelled again, his voice cracking, his face… frantic.

“Let me try,” I managed to murmur. It felt like my brain had some kind of thirty-second delay behind what it wanted to say and what it actually said. I tried to roll over, I tried to move my leg, but the pain….

“Stop it, fucking stop it,” he barked at me, his left hand coming down to cup my kneecap, stroking up my thigh.

His hand was shaking. Why was his hand shaking?

I can’t get up. I can’t get up.

“Jasmine, for the love of God, quit trying to get up,” Ivan shouted at me, his hands going everywhere and nowhere, but I couldn’t be sure because it felt like something was roaring in my ears, and the pain below my knee was getting worse, worse, worse.

“It’s fine. Give me a minute,” I blabbed, attempting to lift my bad leg only for him to hold it down, squeezing my thigh painfully.

“Stop it, Jasmine, fucking stop,” he demanded, his hand above my knee. “Nancy!” my partner yelled somewhere, but I wasn’t sure because I guess I had started staring at my leg….

I’d done something to my goddamn ankle.

I had done something to my fucking ankle.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

I didn’t even realize I’d opened my mouth until Ivan whispered hoarsely into my ear, “Don’t cry. Don’t you dare fucking cry right now. Do you hear me? You are not going to cry on the ice, in public. Hold it in. Hold it in. Not one tear, Jasmine. Not a single tear. Do you hear me?”

I sucked in a breath, my eyes going glassy and everything going blurry.

Was I shaking?

Why did I feel like I was about to throw up?

“Don’t you dare do it,” he hissed again, the arm around my shoulders tightening. “You don’t want anyone to see you do this. Hold it, baby, just hold it….”

I didn’t know what the hell he was saying or why he was saying it, but for some reason, I just held my breath. I held my breath as Coach Lee slid onto the ice on my other side, quickly flanked by a body shape I recognized as Galina’s and another coach. They crowded me, surrounded me.

They asked questions, I tried to answer, but heard Ivan answer for me.

Because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t cry.

All I could do was stare in the general vicinity of where my white boot was, barely able to see shit, and think, think, think, think.

I fucked up.

I had fucked up.

I had fucking fucked up.