Unsteady

It’s been two weeks of this routine, getting my feet under me again sans panic attacks while tying skates. Two weeks of waking to the promise of seeing her settling my stomach, skating to her eclectic music taste that swings from Steely Dan to Ethel Cain to Harry Styles in the same hour.

Now, I feel as though what she first selects is how I can read her moods. I can tell she’s in need of settling when she plays Phoebe Bridgers, or desperate for a fast dancing skate when she blares Two Door Cinema Club and MGMT back-to-back, usually smiling with endorphins as she freestyles across her side of the ice.

But sometimes, she starts Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Those days she doesn’t usually speak to me, only stares at me on our way in with eyes that always look half full of tears.

I try to listen most on those days, as if the lyrics she hears might be another language for her, picking up the smallest of hints, desperate for as much of her as I can consume.

Today, however, she’s late.

Most days that Sadie comes in late, she’s having an angry day, so I prepare to shoot and race the rink to anything loud. But today doesn’t seem to be one of those days.

The anxiety at being on the ice without her settles as I hear her coming, echoing from the tunnel into the silent rink.

It takes all my strength not to turn and stare as she comes in, to wait until I hear her skates slice the ice before looking.

She’s wearing her usual outfit: a threadbare gray Waterfell University shirt and leggings with a flare over her white skates, hair pulled up and mostly off her face.

She skates over to me in that same style; a little angry, graceful but with a touch of vengeance.

“I made you something,” she says, and there’s that divot between her eyebrows like she is frustrated or questioning everything at a near constant. Her hands hold nothing, but she sticks them out to me like I’m the one with a gift.

“What?”

“Your phone.”

I open it and hand it to her, watching over her shoulder, where she settles right next to me, as she pulls up the app and selects her profile and clicks the first playlist.

There’s a picture of a very sad looking beagle with a party hat on his head, even while he lays spread flat on the floor, but across it in sparkly letters the name of the album is bright.

“Sadie’s Songs for Reece’s Sad Demon Brain,” I read aloud, before adding, “You spelled Rhys wrong.”

“Your parents spelled your name wrong on the birth certificate. Your way looks like Rise. So if anything, I fixed it.” She rolls her eyes, but her teeth clasp onto her lip a little self-consciously. “I made it last night. I… Well, graphic design isn’t my major.”

My heart pinches for a moment, like a lingering stab wound at the thought of her in her bedroom, up all night curating songs and making art for the cover so it looked like this. For me.

“I thought maybe you could listen to it while you skate and… I don’t know. It’s stupid—“

“It’s not,” I cut her off vehemently. “You made me a playlist.”

“Yeah.” She nods, rocking in a wide circle on her skates back and forth, pushing off my chest each time. I grab her when she returns this time, my hands on her wrists to keep her touching me. I transfer her wrists into one of mine, selfish with her touch as much as her time. Digging the second set of AirPods from my pocket, I slip them into her ears and gently let her go.

“Do you want to pick first?”

“I think you should just shuffle it. That’s what I do, then you focus on that instead of panicking.”

I hover my finger over the button as she starts to skate off to the other end, before I see her pause and swizzle backwards.

“It might not work, and I don’t really know what’s bothering you, but music helps me.”

She stops there, but the unspoken words are just as loud. If anything, her eyes say it easily; it’s I wanted to help and this is all I have and I see you.

“Thank you,” I offer, but it feels too insufficient.

I press shuffle and chuckle a little laugh when “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” starts blaring in my ears.

She skates around quickly, zigzagging along and warming up, focused like always. But when she passes me again, her eyes meet mine and she mouths along with the words playing through our headphones.

A laugh rumbles in my chest. I want to stay just like this with her forever.

“Your father mentioned something interesting—damn it!”

I look up from my perch at the countertop, checking over my mom as she rushes her finger under the tap while boiling sauce bubbles over the pot behind her.

“You okay?” I smile, watching as she wipes her hands on her overalls and turns back to the stove.

My dad might have been an incredible hockey player, but my mother was well known in her own right. “Architecture’s Darling” according to many news articles and magazines, Anna Koteskiy is mostly known for designing grand gazebos and extravagant gardens. Now, she mostly spends her time running a few charities for sustainable housing projects.

Still, my mother loves to cook—no matter how hazardous it is for her and everyone in the vicinity.

Somehow, my father’s entrance scares her enough to drop the pan on her forearm, shouting a little curse and still managing to keep hold of it. My father and I both race towards her. While I take a mitten from the counter to grab the pan, Dad dotes on her like she’s suffered a life-threatening injury.

As he mutters to her in a mix of Russian and English, my mom and I share an eye roll.

“Maybe I’ll take over dinner.” He sighs, letting her go with another kiss to the burned skin. “It’s nice outside, take our son out to the patio and set the table.”

Mom grabs the stack of dark green pottery plates while I pile silverware, napkins and other table necessities in my arms, and both of us leaving the large kitchen through the attached glass greenhouse and out onto the back patio. The string lights are already on, warm golden light casting an added glow to the amber of the six o’clock sun.

The custom oak wood table needs a slight dust off, which is usual for this time of year, with the obscene amount of flowers and blossoming trees near the outer perimeter of the sunken patio.

“So, who’s the girl?”

I choke on the gulp of water in my mouth, coughing repeatedly as my mother—the traitor—laughs and waits on me to regain my composure.

“What are you talking about?”

“Clearly there’s a girl.”

My fingers dance along the perspiration of my glass. “Did dad say something?”

Her eyes twinkle like I’ve confessed my love for whoever she’s imagining. “Should he have?”

“No.”

“Rhys, if your father knows about a girl before me, I will never forgive you.” She glares daggers at me for a minute, before relaxing with a knowing smile. “Besides, I thought you were still keeping him in the doghouse when it comes to your dating life after the prom incident.”

A full body cringe rolls through at even the mention of prom, shoving the memories back behind the brick wall in my brain.

“Don’t remind me.” I shake my head again. “What makes you think there is someone, anyway?”

I wait for her light teasing, but her voice drops into the soft whisper she’s used on every failure and scrape or bruise as a child.

“Because you are my son; a piece of my heart, love, and you have been drowning. Maybe you still are.”

I feel sick. Of course my mother would know, saving me from nightmares as often as she has.

“Probably.” I sigh, my knee kicking up, bouncing anxiously.

“But lately, you’ve seemed different.”

She’s waiting for me to fill in the blanks, but I’m not sure what to say. That there is a girl, at least for me, even if she’ll hold me at arm’s length forever. That’s fine, I’ll stay an arm’s distance away as long as it still means she’s near me, chasing out the shadows crowding my empty body.

I know it isn’t healthy. I just don’t care.

“Sadie is just a friend.”

“Sadie? Pretty name.”

Pretty girl. I bite down on my tongue, smoothing a hand over my knee to try and slow the shaking.

“We’ve been splitting our ice time in the mornings. She’s a figure skater, for Waterfell actually.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think she really likes me,” I snort, unable to stop talking about her now that I’ve started. “But she’s funny. And she has good music.”

“Sounds like a cool girl.”

“I like skating with her.” The words pour like vomit.

“The angry one?” my dad asks, slipping beside me to plate the eggplant parm in the center of the table. “Her brothers are adorable.”

“She has brothers?” Mom asks, giving Dad a quick kiss on the cheek before settling as we pass around a blend of roasted veggies, Caesar salad and pasta.

“Oliver and Liam,” I offer. “Oliver is pretty good.”

“More than good. That kid’s a star. And little Liam is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen, rybochka, all his freckles and missing teeth.”

Finishing her bite, Mom waits before adding, “They’re in the program, then? That’s good.”

“Didn’t know you were skating with someone at the rink those early mornings.” There isn’t an accusation in his words, not really, but my back is up anyways.

The lie slips quickly. “I invited her. We, uh, had a class together last year.”

“World’s worst liar award still belongs to you, Rhys.” Mom sighs, reaching for the wine bottle across the table. My dad beats her to it, refilling her glass for her.

It feels good to talk about her, at least a little, but it’s another reminder that no matter how often I think of her—of the way her gray eyes settle on me, her music in my headphones after another nightmare, the fantasy of her hips in my hands haunting my empty head—Sadie is not really anything to me. I doubt she’d even call us friends.

Meanwhile, I find myself desperate, if only to be near her.