Keeping this one (hopefully) short and sweet, guys! X
Call Out My Name
I – Friday I’m In Love
By the time I was seventeen, I was already a champion. A thick layer
of foundation hid my adolescent pimples – few,
gone by the time I was nineteen – from the strong spotlights of the World Championship podium. I was on the
top of the world of figure skating and there I would remain until two years
later, when I became Olympic Champion
with a rendition of Mata Hari (even though I knew nothing about seduction
and very little about men in general).
Where do you go when all your dreams become true? When the adversary
to beat is your own reflection?
You reinvent yourself. You become something else
and dream another dream.
That’s how I entered the universe of ice dancing. The principles
were similar, and I thought that I could adapt easily enough – and I did. The
feet work, the posture, the rhythm – it all came to me effortlessly.
The problem is that I was no longer alone on the ice. I depended on
a partner, to train everyday until all our barriers broke and we became a
creature of four legs and two heartbeats; to understand when I would come out
of a turn a fraction of second too late, so he could catch up to me and finish
in sync; to hold me like a flying banner across the ice, without letting me go;
to avoid the soft spot on my shoulder tendon, where it had ruptured when I was
thirteen.
I thought I had that with Frank. It had been a mistake, the first of a spotless career, that culminated with a
thunderous and embarrassing fall from a one-hand lift on the ISU Grand Prix Final and an altercation
that woke half of the London’s neighbourhood of Marylebone, where I lived on a
small rented flat.
That’s how I found myself in a kind of audition to find me a new partner,
sat on a bench next to Mrs. Fitz, my
trainer since I had switched to the dance variety. I felt like a downright
snob, staring at the checkboxes I was supposed to fulfil to grade the
candidates. But in all truth, at twenty-two I couldn’t afford another miss –
not in a sport where the expiration date was about as wide as that of a yoghurt.
The current young-man being evaluated grinned while he entered the rectangular
rink for his sample programme – we had decided that I would only do a rehearsed
routine without skates with a few selected, since we could gather plenty of
information just from watching them doing short solos. When he glided close to
the edge where we were observing, he winked in an inviting and slightly lascivious
manner, that propelled me to draw a skull on the corner of the sheet with his
name.
The next contestant was short –
not dwarf-like, but definitely several inches away from own my height. Although
I didn’t necessarily need a gigantic companion, his Lilliputian attributes were
a hinderance when it came to what we could perform together on the ice.
After that came a cocky bastard, that I already knew from the
circuit, when I was competing with Frank. He had also split from his previous
partner (his girlfriend, or at least she
was under that impression) and, even if his attitude wasn’t entirely to my
taste, he was good – with a few mumbled
words, I agreed with Glenna about seeing more of him in a choreography.
We had carefully picked three possible matches for the next round,
when the last candidate approached the rink, still wearing his black blade
guards. His shoulders were beautifully made – the promise of his strong arms
finishing with black gloves, that hid his hands -, a stark contrast with his narrow
waist. He was leaner than I remembered, but brawny in an understated way.
I couldn’t believe my eyes and had the distinctive feeling that I wouldn’t
need to breathe for a long while.
James Fraser was a legend of the ice rink. Undefeated champion in
singles four years in a row, he had ruled the sport and brushed superstardom – featured
as cover of stylish magazines and starred in alluring commercials of men’s
clothing and posh fragrances – until his sudden disappearance three years previously.
Word on the street was that he had suffered a terrible accident during a
training session, and after a couple of surgeries it had became highly unlikely
that he would ever skate again at a professional level.
We had met briefly on several occasions, overlapping in time during
our solo career. He was two years my eldest; I vividly remembered the last European Championships I had seen him,
back in Bratislava, on a Friday morning.
I was pissed and already ripping
locks of hair from my careful hairdo in distress, kneeling on the warming up
area. There was a red rose somewhere amidst the brown streaks, because I was skating
to Carmen’s soundtrack.
“What’s amiss, lass?” Jamie
asked me gently, squatting beside me. The men’s competition started a day
later, so he had been practicing without skates, wearing a sweaty green shirt
and training grey pants. I flushed when I saw him so close to me, the blue of
his eyes overpowering.
“I brought my new skates by
mistake!” I sniffed, biting my bottom lip in self-reprimand, while I pointed to
the offending white pair of ice skates. “I haven’t break into them yet. There’s
no time to get the right ones from the hotel now. It will be a fucking
massacre.”
He quirked a brow and
without further notice fished one of my feet from the floor, still bare from
the pantyhose. His palm was very hot and still almost pulsing with energy from
his exercise. He fished a tape roll from his pocket and, before I could
complain, he was skilfully tapping my foot, his thumb tracing the edges of skin
to figure out the small calluses, which revealed the places where I applied
more pressure when skating. My skin prickled with goosebumps, not from cold but
from a dark thrill.
“There.” He smiled widely,
a small dimple appearing on the left side of his full mouth – my stomach
fluttered, like a puppet animated by the corners of his lips – “All better. These
should hold until ye finish yer program.” Jamie nodded confidently and reassuringly
squeezed my hand before he departed. “I’ll be rooting for ye, Claire.”
Whispers in the death of the night. His name cascading like a waterfall from her lips. His rumbling voice murmuring prayers. His calloused hands travelling the pathway of every curve. Her lips stamping his skin with a trail of goosebumps. Ecstasy, until complete abandonment.
Cats are programmed to get UP IN YOUR FACE between 4am and 6am. We may never know why
[image description: a grayscale comic of a person lying in bed with a gray cat in her face. In the corner of the picture it says “6:00 AM ???” In a digital font. The cat has one paw on her face, one on her shoulder, he is staring wide eyed into hers. They are conversing with each other. The cat’s dialogue is a in caps, the human’s is lower case.
Tori