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Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Summer 2016

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Erika hadn’t said a word since “Hello.” A slim ray of hope had existed, at least at the beginning, that a romantic dinner date with Jimbo Wormel might be the start of her happily ever after. That likelihood was quickly dashed, along with the restaurant’s ambiance, by the clank of dishes being dropped into a plastic bucket and the busboy’s off-key singing.

“You know, you look vaguely familiar,” Jimbo said. “Perhaps a resemblance to one of my ex-wives.” There was a glint in his mud-brown eyes, maybe from the flickering candle, but possibly as if he was kidding. “Have you ever been married?”

Apparently Jimbo didn’t follow figure skating. Erika Tsuchino had been semi-famous—for at least fifteen minutes—back in 2014. A run at an Olympic medal, the death of her father and coach right before The Games, a short-lived marriage to her on ice partner and the pregnancy that followed; it had all been tabloid and TV news.

“Well,” she began.

“My heart bleeds gold. My sexy parts get hard with steel. I want you, babe. I want you, babe. Come to my room and let me, let me, let me, let me, ahhhh.” The teenage boy danced about as he sang—if one could call it that. After Jimbo flashed him a dirty look, he stared at Erika expectantly. The truth was quite tempting.

Actually, yes. I married a gay guy, Erika wanted to say. Tom Alan—that’s his name, like two, but it’s just one. While my father was grooming us as champion pairs skaters from childhood, he was also, unbeknownst to me until I was practically standing at the altar, grooming us for an arranged marriage, which isn’t as uncommon in modern day Japan as you’d think. She’d tell him everything. Papa died before we could wed, but my mother insisted we respect his final wishes, even though everyone knew Tom Alan was hung up on a British guy named Milo. So, we did it, honeymoon and all. I slept with Tom Alan every night, for weeks and weeks and fell deeper and deeper in love, which I never told him, because he’d found his way back to the Brit. The marriage was annulled just about the time the baby came, but I’m still not over him two years later.

She sighed, but said none of that. Tom Alan and Milo were living their fairy tale ending. As she stared at the spinach stuck between Jimbo’s teeth, as she recalled blind dates, computer dates, reconnecting with high school crushes on f*******:, and fix-ups her best friends from her sport swore would be the men of her dreams but weren’t, Erika wondered what had happened to hers.

“I guess I’m in sort of a transitional state at the moment,” she said.

“Let me, let me, let me, ahhhhhhhhhh.”

“Is it just me,” Jimbo asked, “or is that fairy waiter annoying the s**t out of everyone?”

“Busboy.” Erika knew deep down that wasn’t the word she should have objected to. She thought a lot about words lately. As she and Tom Alan got back on the ice to try and recapture their place as one of the top pairs skaters in the world, they were performing their short program to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sounds of Silence. A few sign language passages had been worked into the choreography, including “Words hurt,” “Words heal,” “Silence kills,” and “Speak up.” The piece was a tribute of hope for those struggling for human rights all over the world, including the l***q community in Russia, where Erika and Tom Alan had skated at the last Olympics.

“And really, Jimbo, the word fairy is totally—”

The kid with the bucket sashayed right into their table, causing Jimbo to spill cabernet all down the front of his shirt. “Son of a b—”

“Holy s**t, yo! I’m so—Oh. My. God. You’re Erika Tsuchino.”

Jimbo stood. “I’m not. I’m wet is what I am.”

“Not you, dude. Her.” The busboy was at her side in a shot. His nametag read Kensuke. He was a strikingly handsome kid with sparkling black eyes and a scruff of sparse facial hair. “Can I get your autograph?”

“Is there a problem here?” The gentleman who had seated Jimbo and Erika joined the fracas. “Sato! Get back to work!”

“In a minute, yo! I’m talking to a celebrity.”

“Now or you’re fired,” the kid’s boss snapped.

“I’ll leave it up front,” Erika said. “Don’t get in trouble.”

“Oh, he won’t can me. He’s all ‘Blah, blah, blah.’” Kensuke made a moving mouth with his hands. “‘I’m the boss of you. Blah, blah, blah.’ Yo, you were awesome in Sochi and at Worlds with Baranowski.” He pronounced it spot on. “Sick, man, sick!”

“Thank you.” People were staring, so Erika took a pen from her purse, rather than argue anymore. “I don’t know what to sign.”

“Here.”

Kensuke handed her a used napkin from the other table. Eww, but she signed it anyway. Best wishes. Jump higher. Erika Tsuchino.

“OMG! Thank you so much.” Kensuke seemed on the verge of fainting. “Is Tom Alan here?”

He even got that right. Some people dropped the Alan even after being told repeatedly the two names went together as one.

“No. Sorry.”

“If I give you my cell, can you have him call it?”

“Oh…I…”

“Who’s going to pay my dry cleaning?” Jimbo demanded.

Was he seriously going to ask a kid making less than minimum wage to cover the cost of washing his stupid shirt? “I will,” Erika said.

“Chillax, old man.”

“Sato!” The manager was suddenly involved again. Kensuke’s charming smile and good looks probably got him out of a lot. This time, however, his boss wasn’t wooed. “Get out.”

“In the middle of the dinner rush?” Kensuke took off his blue apron and maroon bow tie. “No prob, yo. My pleasure.” He dropped them both to the floor, and offered a parting shot. “Eat my ass, Hideki.”

So ended another shot at finding Mr. Right. Erika and Jimbo didn’t even wait for their entrees. She was grateful she had taken her own car. As she got in, she checked her phone.

Billy: Gimme a buzz.

A text from the other ex—the redheaded baby daddy—maybe looking for a booty call. Recalling the last one, Erika seriously considered it.

Billy liked it when she rode him like a cowgirl, but there was something about feeling his weight on top of her that got her off. She’d leaned down to kiss him, and then managed to roll them both over so she was underneath, all without him pulling out. Their choreography was almost as flawless as what she and Tom Alan could do on the ice.

You’re not supposed to be thinking about him now, Erika had told herself.

With one of Billy’s hands on her breast and the other between her legs where he alternated between a gentle sway and quick, jolting thrusts, she’d given herself over to the heat down below that soon rose as a tingle over her entire body. When Billy shuddered, so did she. It was not unusual for them to climax together, despite the fact Erika could still count the number of times they had actually made love—or was it just s*x? When Billy kissed her neck, when he left his mouth there and began to hum—Celine Dion, she thought, not the song from Titanic, but one of her other romantic ballads—she’d had to ask herself again.

“This is sweet, babe,” he’d said.

“Yes.”

“Be nice if, ya know, we made it kind of a regular thing.”

“Hmm.” Burrowed into Billy’s sweaty chest, Erika had agreed.

“Except, I’m probably not really ready for that stuff, I guess…commitment and…whatever.”

“Then why do you bring it up?”

It wasn’t the first time he had. Erika had gotten out of his bed then. She’d stood at the side of it, naked, just looking down at him.

“Here comes the pissed off woman stance,” Billy had said with a smirk. “Arms across boobs, like, ‘No way are you getting at these again now.’”

“Nope. Let me tell you something about women.”

“Let me tell you something about women.” Billy sat up, back against the headboard, the sheet falling away so Erika could see almost all of him. He was usually a man of few words, unless he had a reason to use a lot of them. He was particularly fond of post-s*x monologues. Erika wished she hadn’t gotten up. The bed would have been a far more comfortable spot to take in what was about to come. “I love women,” he said. “I love women hard.” What he did with his eyes, where he put them, she felt as if she might climax again, just from his look. “You may not know this about me, because we got together and fell apart pretty fast and there wasn’t a lot of time for talking, but women are my main role models in life—my mother and sisters, Irina Mischen, all those years at the rink working with her, Coach LeDoux…I must have mentioned her.”

Erika couldn’t really recall.

“You know when I first got into hockey?”

“When?”

“The sixth grade. We played floor hockey in gym. I wanted to play it every day, but we moved on to stupid basketball. There was no such thing as a floor hockey team anyway, but we did have a field hockey team—a girl’s field hockey team. In seventh grade, when we were eligible to play sports, I tried out.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. I was a freakin’ pioneer, and Coach LeDoux, she put me on her team—went to the principal and the school board to do it. Stuck up for me when other schools complained about having a boy on the team, how it was unfair. She assured them I sucked.”

Erika smiled.

“Which I did, but damned if she didn’t fight for me, and by the end of the season, maybe I didn’t suck as much…because of her. Not long after that, we found the rink up here and I started playing youth hockey, but I’ll never forget the shot she gave me. She’s principal now—sadly in another district. We keep in touch. She’s all up in this upcoming election and I’m with her…and with her…because now I’m the father of a little girl and these things are even more important to me.” Billy looked at Etsuko, his daughter. “Nobody’s going to make my baby girl feel like less. Nobody’s going to disrespect her or take away any right she has. She won’t need me to fight for her, if she’s anything like her mother, but bet your ass I will anyway.” Billy slid back down the mattress and pulled up the covers. No way was she getting back at his body parts either. “You didn’t know some of that, did you?”

Erika had to admit she didn’t. “No.”

Only nineteen when she’d gotten pregnant just after the Games, Erika also had to acknowledge the fact she still wasn’t sure how young was too young when it came to…whatever.

“Do we even really know each other at all?” Billy had asked. “Like, everything…all the way?”

Erika thought they did—the important stuff, anyway—unless Billy knew about the secret she was keeping. Could he read her that easily, she wondered as she looked down at her phone again?

Billy: Just heard about your dinner disaster.

So much for s*x. And how the heck did he know about the date from hell before it even ended? In no mood for conversation, Erika decided Billy would have to wait.