From Lukov with Love

“DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS?”

I gave the laces on my boot an extra tight squeeze in the changing room before looping the ends into a knot tight enough to survive the next hour. I didn’t need to turn around to know there were two teenage girls down the bench from me in front of their lockers. They were there every morning, usually farting around. They could have had more time on the ice if they didn’t talk, but whatever. I wasn’t the one paying for their ice time. If they’d had my mom for their own, she would’ve gotten them out of that standing-around habit real quick.

“My mom told me last night,” the taller of the two said as she got to her feet.

I stood up and kept my attention forward, rolling back my shoulders even though I’d already spent an hour warming up and stretching. Maybe I wasn’t skating six or seven hours a day like I used to—when stretching for at least an hour was absolutely necessary—but old habits died hard. And suffering for days or weeks from a pulled muscle wasn’t worth the hour I’d save from skipping my warm-up.

“She said she overheard someone say that they think he’s retiring because he’s had so many problems with his partners.”

Now that caught my attention.

He. Retiring. Problems.

It had pretty much been a miracle that I’d graduated from high school on time, but even I knew who they had to be talking about. Ivan. Who the hell else? Other than a few younger boys, and the three years that Paul had spent training at the Lukov Ice and Sports Complex with me, there was no other “he” that anyone here would talk about. There were a couple of teenage boys, but none of them had the potential to go very far, if anybody gave a shit about my opinion. Not that they did.

“Maybe if he retires he’ll go into coaching,” one of the girls said. “I wouldn’t mind him yelling at me all day.”

I almost laughed. Ivan retiring? No way. There was no chance in hell he’d retire at twenty-nine, especially not while he was still killing it. Months ago, he’d won a US championship. And a month before that, he’d taken second place in the Major Prix final.

Why the hell was I even paying attention anyway?

I didn’t care what he did. His life was his business. We all had to quit sometime. And the less I had to look at his annoying face, the better.

Deciding that I didn’t need to be distracted starting the first of only two hours I had in the day to practice—especially not being distracted over Ivan of all people—I made my way out of the changing room, leaving the two teenagers in there to waste their own time gossiping. This early in the morning, there were six people on the ice, like usual. I didn’t come in as early as I had before—there wasn’t a point—but every face, I’d been seeing for years.

Some more than others.

Galina was already sitting on one of the bleachers outside the rink with her thermos of coffee that I knew from experience was so thick it looked and tasted like tar. With her favorite red scarf wound around her neck and ears, she had on a sweater I’d seen at least a hundred times in the past and what looked like a shawl on top of it. I’d swear she’d started adding an item of clothing to what she wore every year. When she had first plucked me out of lessons almost fourteen years ago, she had been fine in just a long sleeved shirt and a shawl, now she probably would have frozen to death.

Fourteen years was longer than some of these girls had been alive.

“Good morning,” I said in the choppy Russian I’d picked up from her over the years.

“Hello, yozik,” she greeted me, her eyes darting toward the ice for a brief moment before returning to me with a face that was the same as it had been when I’d been twelve, all weathered and fierce, like her skin was made of bulletproof material. “Your weekend, it was good?”

I nodded, briefly reminiscing on how I’d gone to the zoo with my brother and niece and then gone to his condo afterward for pizza—two things I couldn’t remember ever doing in the past, the pizza part included. “Did you have a good one?” I asked the woman who taught me so many things I could never give her credit for.

The dimples she rarely showed came out. She had a face I knew so well I could describe it to a sketch artist perfectly if she ever came missing. Round, thin eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, a thin mouth, a scar on her chin from taking a partner’s blade to the face back in her competing days, another scar at her temple from smacking her head on the ice. Not that she would ever go missing. Any kidnapper would probably release her within an hour. “I saw my grandchild.”

I thought about the dates for a second before it clicked. “It was his birthday, right?”

She nodded, her gaze moving toward the rink again in the direction of what I knew was the figure skater she’d been working with since I’d left her to start skating pairs four years ago. Well, I hadn’t wanted to leave her but… it didn’t matter. It didn’t make me jealous anymore to think of how quickly she’d replaced me. But sometimes, especially lately, it bothered me. Just a little. Just enough.

I’d never let her know that. “Did you finally buy him skates?” I asked.

My old coach tipped her head to the side and shrugged a shoulder, the gray eyes, which had stared me down countless times, still settled on the ice. “Yes. Used skates and video game. I waited. He’s almost same age you were. Little later, but still good.”

She’d finally done it. I remembered when he’d been born—before we’d split—and how we’d talked about him figure skating when he was old enough. It had only been a matter of time. We both knew that. Her own children hadn’t made it out of the junior level, but it hadn’t mattered.

But thinking about him, her grandson, just starting made me feel… almost homesick, remembering how much fun figure skating had been back then. Back before the bone-crushing pressure, the drama, and the fucking critics. Back before I’d learned the shitty taste of disappointment. Figure skating had always made me feel invincible. But more than anything, back then, it had made me feel amazing. I hadn’t known it was possible to feel like you could fly. To be so strong. To be so beautiful. To be good at something. Especially something that I cared about. Because I hadn’t known that contorting body parts and twisting and turning them into shapes that shouldn’t have been possible could be so impressive. It had made me feel special to go as fast as I could around the oval shape, that I would have no idea until years later, would change my life.

Galina’s chuckle snapped me out of my funk. At least for a moment.

“One day, you coach him,” she offered with a snort, like she was imagining me treating him the way she had treated me, and it made her laugh.

I snickered at the memories of all the hundreds of times she had smacked me on the back of the head throughout those ten years we were together. Some people wouldn’t have been able to handle her brand of tough love, but I’d secretly loved it. I’d thrived with it. My mom always said that if anyone gave me an inch, I’d take a mile.

And the last thing Galina Petrov would ever do is give up a single centimeter.

But this wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned the idea of me coaching. Over the last few months, when things had become… more desperate, when my hope of finding another partner began to shrivel up, she’d started dropping the possibility on me when we’d talk, not subtly or swiftly at all. Just Jasmine, you coach. Yes?

But I still wasn’t ready for that. Coaching felt like giving up, and… I wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not fucking yet.

But maybe it’s time? Some nagging, whiney voice in my head whispered at the same time, making my stomach clench.

Almost as if she could sense what was going on in my head, she made another snorting sound. “I have things to do. Practice your jumps. You aren’t committing, you are too much in your head, that’s why you have been falling. Remember seven years ago,” she said, her attention still on the ice. “Stop thinking. You know what to do.”

I hadn’t thought she’d noticed me struggling since she was busy coaching someone else.

But I focused on her words, remembering exactly what time period she was talking about. She was right. I had been nineteen. That had been the worst season of my singles career, back when I hadn’t had a partner and skated all by myself; that season had been the catalyst for the next three seasons that had led me down the path to pairs, to skating with a partner. I’d been in my head too much, overthought everything, and… well, if I’d made a mistake transitioning from singles, it was too late to regret it at this point.

Life was about choices, and I had made mine.

I nodded and swallowed back that old shame at the memory of that horrible season I still thought about when I was by myself and feeling more pitiful than usual. “That’s what I was worried about. I’m gonna go work on them. I’ll see you later, Lina,” I said to my old coach, fiddling with the bracelet on my wrist for a moment before dropping my hands and shaking them both out.

Galina’s eyes quickly moved over my face before she dipped her chin gravely and turned her attention back to the rink, shouting something in her deeply accented voice about going into a jump too slowly.

Taking off my skate guards and setting them in their usual spot, I stepped out on the ice and focused.

I could do this.

Exactly an hour later, I was as sweaty and as tired as I’d been back when I’d have a three-hour session. I was getting soft, damn it. I’d ended up doing a few jump combinations—a sequence or at least one jump followed immediately by another, sometimes two more jumps—but my heart hadn’t really been in it. I’d landed them, but only barely, wobbling and fighting to stick each one while trying my hardest to focus on them and only them at the same time.

Galina was right. I was distracted, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly was distracting me. Maybe I really did need to rub one out real quick or go for a run or something. Anything to clear my head, or at least this funky feeling that had been following me around like a ghost.

I made it back to the changing rooms, only slightly frustrated to find a plain yellow Post-It note on the door of my locker. I didn’t think anything of it. A month ago, the general manager for the LC had left me a similar note, asking me to go to her office. All she’d wanted was to offer me a job coaching beginner lessons. Again. Why she thought I’d be a good candidate for teaching young girls—practically babies—I had no idea, but I’d told her I wasn’t interested.

So when I picked the note off the locker and slowly read Jasmine, come to the GM office before you go, twice, just to make sure I read it correctly, I didn’t think much of it except the fact that whatever the GM wanted from me was going to have to be quick because I had to get to work. I had my days timed to the minute. I had lists with my schedules just about everywhere—on my phone, on sheets of paper in my car, in my bags, in my room, on the fridge—so I wouldn’t forget or get flustered. Being organized, prepared, and constantly keeping track of time to be punctual were important to me. As it was, I was going to need to skip sitting under the hot water and putting on makeup to get to work in time, unless I let my boss know.

Pulling my phone out of my bag the moment I had my locker unlocked, I typed up a message, thanking spellcheck like I always did for existing and making my life easier, and sent it to my mom. She always had her phone on her.

Me: The LC GM wants to talk. Can you call Matty and tell him I’m running a little late but will be there asap?

She responded immediately.

Mom: What did you do?

I rolled my eyes and typed a response. Nothing

Mom: Then why are you going to the office?

Mom: Did you call someone’s mom a dirty whore again?

Of course she’d never forget that. No one did.

Then there was the fact that I hadn’t told her about the three other times the GM had asked me into her office to try and talk me into coaching.

Me: I don’t know. Maybe my check last week bounced.

That was a joke. She knew better than anyone how much LC fees cost. She’d paid for them for over a decade.

Me: No. I haven’t called anyone’s mom a dirty whore again, but that other dirty whore deserved it.

Knowing she would reply almost immediately, I set my phone back into my locker and decided I could text her back in a minute. Rushing through my shower after putting my things up, I slipped into my underwear, jeans, collared shirt, socks, and the best looking comfortable shoes I was able to afford, in record time. By the time I was done with that, I checked my phone again and found my mom had replied.

Mom: You need money?

Mom: She did deserve it.

Mom: Shoved anybody lately?

It killed me inside that she still asked me if I needed money. Like I hadn’t taken enough of hers over the years, month after month. Failed season after failed season.

At least I wasn’t asking her for it anymore.

Me: I’m okay with money. Thanks.

Me: I have not shoved anyone again.

Mom: You sure?

Me: Yes, I’m sure. I would know if I did.

Mom: Positive?

Me: Yes

Mom: It’s okay if you did. Some people need it.

Mom: Even I’ve wanted to punch you sometimes. It happens.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Me: Me too

Mom: You’ve wanted to punch me in the throat?

Me: There is no right answer to that question.

Mom: Ha ha ha ha.

Me: I never did it. OK?

Zipping up my bag, I gripped the handle, fisted my keys, and walked out of there as fast as possible, basically jogging down one hall and then another to head toward the part of the building where the business offices were located. I was going to have to eat the egg white sandwich I’d left in my lunch bag in my car as I drove. Just as I made it to the door, I typed up another message to be on the safe side, ignoring my misspellings, which I usually didn’t.

Me: For real ma. Can you call n tell him?

Mom: YES

Me: Thank u

Mom: Love you.

Mom: Tell me if you need money.

My throat tightened for a moment, but I didn’t text anything back. I wouldn’t tell her even if I did. Not anymore. At least not if I could help it, and the truth was, I’d turn to stripping if it ever got to that point again. She’d done enough.

Holding in a sigh, I knocked on the door of the general manager’s office, thinking that I really wanted whatever conversation was about to happen to last all of ten minutes so that I wouldn’t be too late to work. I didn’t want to take advantage of my mom’s closest friend being lenient with me.

I turned the knob the second I heard a voice inside the office shout, “Come in!”

Let’s get this over with, I thought, opening the door.

The problem in that moment was that I’d never been a fan of surprises. Ever. Not even when I was little. I had always liked to know what I was getting myself into. Needless to say, no one had ever thrown me a surprise birthday party. The one time my grandpa had tried to pull that off, my mom had told me in advance and made me swear I’d act surprised. I had.

I’d been ready to face the general manager, a woman named Georgina that I’d always gotten along with. I’d overheard some people call her a hard-ass, but to me, she was just strong willed and didn’t take shit from people because she didn’t have to.

So, I was pretty much shocked as hell when the first person I spotted sitting in the office wasn’t Georgina, but a familiar, fifty-something woman with a bun that was so neat, the only other times I’d seen one so perfect was during competitions.

And I was even more surprised when I saw the second person in the office, just sitting there on the other side of the desk.

My third surprise came in the shape of the realization that there was no general manager in sight.

Just… them.

Ivan Lukov and the woman who had spent the last eleven years training him.

Someone who I couldn’t have a conversation with without arguing, and the other who had said maybe twenty words to me over the course of those eleven years.

What in the hell is going on? I wondered, before settling my gaze on the other woman, trying to figure out if I’d misread the note on my locker. I hadn’t… had I? I had taken my time. I had read it twice. I didn’t usually butcher reading things any more.

“I was looking for Georgina,” I explained, trying to ignore the instant frustration in my stomach at the possibility I’d misread the words on the Post It. I hated messing up. Hated it. Screwing up in front of them made it even worse, damn it. “Do you know where she’s at?” I ground out, still thinking about the note.

The woman smiled easily, not at all like I’d interrupted something important and not even a little like I was someone she had basically ignored for years, and it immediately put me even more on edge. She had never smiled at me before. Actually, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her smile, period. “Come in,” she said, that smile still holding strong. “I left the note on your locker, not Georgina.”

I’d feel relieved later that I hadn’t misread the words, but at that point, I was too busy wondering why the hell I was standing there and why she had sent me that note…. And why the hell Ivan was sitting there not saying anything.

As if reading my mind, the woman’s smile grew wider, like she was trying to reassure me, but it did the opposite. “Sit down, Jasmine,” she said in a tone that reminded me she’d coached the idiot to my left through two world championships. The problem was, she wasn’t my coach, and I didn’t like people telling me what to do, even when they had a right to. She also hadn’t been particularly nice to me either. She hadn’t been rude, but she hadn’t been kind either.

I mean, I understood. That didn’t mean I was going to forget about it though.

For two years, I’d been in the same competitions Ivan had. I was competitive, and so were they. It was easier to want to beat someone that you weren’t friendly with. But that didn’t explain the years before that, back when I’d skated by myself and had nothing to do with him. Back when she could have been friendly with me… but hadn’t. Not that I’d wanted her to or needed her to, but still.

So, she shouldn’t have been surprised when all I did was raise my eyebrows at her.

Apparently, she decided that raising her eyebrows right back at me was the best way to respond. “Please?” she offered, almost sounding sweet.

I didn’t trust her tone, or her.

I couldn’t help but sweep my gaze in the direction of the chairs across from her. There were only two, and one of them was occupied by Ivan, who I hadn’t seen since he’d left for Boston before Worlds. Those long legs of his were stretched out straight, those feet that I’d seen more in skates than in regular shoes were tucked beneath the desk his coach had taken over. But it wasn’t the lazy way he was sitting there with his arms crossed over his chest showcasing those lean pecs and leaner torso, or the navy blue turtleneck bringing to life the almost pale skin over the face that the other girls at the facility went nuts over, that caught my attention for the longest amount of time.

It was his gray-blue eyes totally zoned in on me that made me pause. I never forgot how intense the color was, but it always took me off guard anyway. I never forgot how long the black eyelashes surrounding them were either.

Then there was everything else around those eyes.

Ugh.

So many girls went nuts over his face, over his hair, over his eyes, over his figure skating, over his arms, his long legs, the way he breathed, the toothpaste he used…. It was annoying. Even my brother called him a pretty boy—he called my sister’s husband a pretty boy too, but that wasn’t the point. If that wasn’t enough, girls worshipped the broad shoulders that helped him hold his partners a full arm’s length above his head with one foot balanced on the narrow slice of metal called a blade. I’d overheard women swoon over a butt I didn’t need to look at to know had to be a perfect example of a bubble butt—tight buns were pretty much mandatory in this sport.

And if he had a best feature, those creepy eyes would have been it.

But he didn’t. The devil didn’t have any redeeming qualities.

I stared at him, and that evil pretty-boy face stared back at me. He didn’t look anywhere other than my face. He didn’t frown or smile or anything.

And that shit put me on edge.

He just… looked. With his mouth shut. And his hands—and fingers—tucked into his armpits.

If I had been anyone else, he would have made me uneasy with that gaze. But I wasn’t his groupie. I knew him well enough to not be distracted by the bodysuit he wore over his natural form. He worked hard, so he was good. He wasn’t a unicorn. He definitely wasn’t a Pegasus. He didn’t impress me.

Plus, I had been there when his mom ripped him a new one once years ago for talking back to her, so there was that, too.

“What’s this about?” I asked slowly, staring at Ivan’s semi-familiar face for another second before finally dragging my gaze back to Coach Lee, who was almost hunched over the desk, if someone with her posture was capable of hunching, elbows firmly planted, the thin, dark slashes of her eyebrows still high in interest. She was just as pretty as she’d been back when she competed. I had watched videos of her back in the 80s when she’d been the national champion.

“It’s nothing bad, I promise,” the older woman answered carefully, like she could still pick up on my uneasiness. She gestured toward the chair beside Ivan’s. “Can you take a seat?”

Bad things happened when someone asked you to take a seat. Especially one next to Ivan. So, that wasn’t happening. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding as weird as I felt.

What was going on? I couldn’t be getting kicked out of the facility. I hadn’t done anything.

Unless those shit kids from the weekend had tattled on me. Damn it.

“Jasmine, all we need is two minutes,” Coach Lee said slowly, still motioning toward the chair.

Yeah, this shit wasn’t adding up, and it was only getting worse. Two minutes? You couldn’t do anything well in two minutes. I brushed my teeth for longer than two minutes twice a day.

I didn’t move. They had tattled on me. Those little fuckers—

Confirming that I wasn’t hiding my thoughts at all, Coach Lee sighed from her spot behind the desk. I didn’t miss the way her eyes slid toward Ivan briefly before returning to me. In a navy suit jacket and a crisp white shirt, she looked more like a lawyer than the figure skater she had been and the coach she currently was. The woman shifted in her seat and sat up straight, her lips pursing together for a moment before she spoke again. “I’ll get to the point then. How set are you on being retired?”

How set was I on being retired? Was that what everyone thought I was? Fucking retired?

It wasn’t like I’d chosen not to have a partner and miss an entire season, but… whatever. Whatever. My blood pressure did something weird it had never done before, but I decided to ignore it and the r-word at least for now and chose to focus on the most important part of what had just come out of her mouth. “Why are you asking?” I asked slowly, still worried. Just a little.

I should have called Karina.

In a straightforward move I could appreciate at any other time, the other woman didn’t beat around the bush. And that’s what surprised the hell out of me even more than I’d already been, because I wasn’t expecting the sentence that came out of her mouth. It would have been just about the last thing I’d ever expect to hear out of her. Shit, it was the last thing I would ever expect out of anyone’s mouth.

“We want you to be Ivan’s next partner,” the woman said. Just. Like. That.

Just like that.

There were moments in life where you asked yourself if you did drugs without realizing it. Like maybe someone had put some LSD in your drink and didn’t tell you. Or maybe you thought you took a pain reliever—and didn’t remember—but it was really PCP.

That right there, standing in the general manager’s office at the LC, was that moment for me. All I could do was blink. Then do it some more.

Because what the fucking fuck?

“If you’re ready to come back out of retirement, that is,” the woman continued on, using that r-word one more time, like I wasn’t standing there wondering who could have spiked my water with hallucinogenic drugs, because there’s no way this shit was happening. There was no way these words were actually coming out of Coach Lee’s mouth.

No fucking way.

I had to have misheard her or just completely missed a giant part of the conversation somehow because…

Because.

Me and Ivan? Partnering? There was no way. No chance.

They had to be full of shit.

…right?