Page 51

"That's it," I say. "That's defense."

"That's so boring."

"It's so boring," I agree. "Do it forty more times."

He laughs. It echoes all the way up into the dark rafters.

We go until one-thirty. He gets it more than he doesn't, by the end. He's fast, and he's smart, and when he decides to do something, he does it all the way.

We're coasting in slow circles, cooling down, when he says, "Your turn."

"For what?"

"I taught you nothing. That's not fair. It's your turn to learn something." He skates backward in front of me, grinning. "The spin-o-rama."

"No."

"Yes."

"I'm not doing a spin-o-rama."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm thirty-five and I have one working knee."

"So spin on the other one." He picks up a puck with the blade of his stick and flips it to me. "Come on. Nobody's watching. Gus has headphones. It's midnight in a church. You're allowed to do something stupid."

"It's one-thirty."

"It's one-thirty in a church." He puts his hands together. The same way he did on the dance floor in West Hollywood. Please. "One time. For me."

I look at him. His face is flushed from skating and his hair's plastered to his forehead with sweat, and he's smiling at me like I'm something good.

I take the puck.

I come down the ice, not fast. At the top of the circle, I plant my good leg, the left one, and I turn. My whole body goes around. My weight's wrong and my knee's screaming and the puck gets away from me halfway through, and I finish the spin with nothing on my stick and about three feet of air between me and the ice.

I go down hard on my hip. I slide into the boards.

For a second there's no sound at all.

Then he's laughing. Really laughing, bent over his stick, holding on to it to stay upright. He skates over to me, still laughing, and gets down on his knees on the ice next to me.

"Are you okay? Oh my God. Are you okay?"

"No."

"Is it your knee?"

"It's my pride."

He laughs so hard he has to put his forehead down on my shoulder. His whole body's shaking with it. I can feel his breath through my practice jersey.

I start laughing too.

I don't mean to. It just comes up out of me, from somewhere I don't go anymore, and once it starts, I can't stop it. I lie there on the ice, flat on my back, with the lights buzzing over us and the cold coming up through my jersey, and I laugh until my stomach hurts, until the laughing goes somewhere else in my chest, somewhere tight and hot and aching, and I don't know what it is.

He lifts his head off my shoulder. He's still smiling. He's right there, inches away, kneeling on the ice beside me, and he's looking at me like he's never seen me before.