The Year We Fell Down (24 page)

“Really?” I asked as I levered myself off the one low step, onto the sidewalk. “I don’t go in there,” I said, hearing the sound of dismay in my own voice.

The van pulled away, and I realized how quiet it was. There was no hockey game tonight. There was nobody around except for Hartley and I.

“I know you don’t,” he said, stepping close to me. “But I want you to come in with me, just this once.”

“But
why
?”

He only shook his head. “If you hate it, I’ll never ask you to come back.” He leaned down. And in the orange glow of the street lamps, he gave me a single soft kiss.

My heart contracted in my chest. There was plenty I would do to get a few more of those kisses. But Hartley didn’t know that I hadn’t been into a rink since my accident. I wasn’t afraid to go in — I just didn’t
want
to. Too many happy hours of my life had been lived at rinks. And now that entire part of my life was gone.

“Please?” he asked. He put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “Please.”

Who could say no to that?

Hartley walked me downhill, around to the side of the building. Taking a set of keys from his pocket, he opened the ice level door.

Inside, the familiar sensations overwhelmed me immediately. Every rink I’d ever visited had the same smell — the crisp scent of ice, mixed with body odor and salty pretzels. I breathed it in, and my stomach did a little twist.

“Just a little further,” Hartley said. He walked me right down the chute, where the players step onto the ice before the game.

Ice gleamed a few feet ahead of me, its surface a recently Zambonied sheen. I stared down at the threshold between the rubber matting and the clean edge of the rink. The memory of how it felt to put one skate over the lip, push off, and fly was so vivid. The lump in my throat swelled.

“Have you seen one of these before?”

I looked down. Hartley knelt in front of two…sleds? Each one had a molded plastic scoop-shaped seat. When Hartley tipped the thing to the side, I could see two blades underneath. A wooden strut stretched forward from the seat, toward a footrest with a metal ball under it.

I shook my head, clearing my throat. “What is that?” I asked, my voice hoarse. “Some kind of adaptive bullshit.”

He looked up at me, his expression worried. “They’re…it’s
fun
, Callahan. I tested it out first. You can go pretty fast.” He positioned one of them next to my feet. “Let’s just give it a little spin. If you hate it, we’ll go home.”

Still, I hesitated. How many times had I stood a few feet from the ice, ready to step out onto it, without ever a clue that it was a privilege? A thousand? More? I’d never known that I had so much to lose, that a few bad minutes could end it forever.

Hartley stood up and came around to stand behind me. He put his hands under my arms. “Just bend at the waist, and I can set you down on it.”

With a sigh, I gave in. I bent.

It took the usual eternity to remove my braces, strap me in and set me up. Then Hartley handed me not one, but two, short little hockey sticks. “Be careful of the ends,” he prompted. When I studied them, I noticed that each stick had three little metal spikes sticking straight out of the top. “That’s how you push yourself,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Then he wrestled my sled over the lip and shoved me out onto the rink. I skidded about thirty feet, then came to a stop. Raising my chin, I looked up at the stadium lights several stories above. Harkness had a gorgeous arena. I’d watched my brother play here. And after my Harkness acceptance letter arrived, I thought I’d play hockey here, too.

Hartley slid onto the ice beside me. “Come on, Callahan. Let’s move.”

I turned to look at him, but his smile did not reach all the way to his eyes. He waited, watching me while I wrestled with invisible demons. “Alright,” I said, finally. With one stick in each hand, I reached down, digging the ice picks into the surface. My sled shot forward about three feet. The blades under my backside must have been decently sharp.

“There you go,” he said. Hartley dug in too, and went shooting off toward the blue line. I watched him pick up speed. The ice looked enormous from where I sat. I dug in my sticks and pushed. He was right — it was possible to pick up velocity. But when I leaned my body to turn the sled, I quickly lost speed. A real skater tilts on a single blade edge to turn. The sled was less negotiable.

But still, it worked.

I took a few deep, steadying breaths of ice rink air. And then I turned around and skated towards Hartley.

“Getting a feel for it?” he asked, reaching inside his jacket. He pulled out a puck and tossed it onto the ice.

“It’s not very maneuverable,” I said. “How am I going to get past your fat ass if I can’t turn?” I shot forward and smacked the puck with the business end of one stick.

He grinned. “Actually, the blades can be set closer together. But you tip over a lot. It’s kind of like kayaking.”

I skidded to a stop. “Hartley, are you telling me you have this thing on the baby setting?”

He raised both his sticks defensively. “Simmer down. It was an oversight.” He hitched himself closer to me. “Bail out for a second.” I tipped myself onto my side, and he reached over to adjust the sled. “Try it now.”

I righted myself, and immediately fell onto my other side. “Wait…” I pressed up again and then began sticking like mad. I shot across the ice, leaned, and turned quickly in an arc. When I looked back at Hartley, he was kneeling on the ice, tweaking the blade under his own sled. I fetched the puck while he strapped himself back in. “Face off?”

“Bring it,” he said, steering himself toward the dot.

I tossed the puck up into the air, and it came down to his advantage. Hartley hooked it with his stick, keeping it out of my reach. But then he fumbled, trying to use the wrong end of the stick for propulsion. I shot ahead and took possession, stickhandling toward the net. The next thing I saw was Hartley’s sled skating past. He spun around, taking a defensive position. With a stick in each hand, his long arms covered quite a bit of the crease. I lined up a wide shot, watching Hartley stretch in preparation for meeting it. At the last second, I flipped my stick around and shot the puck backhand, into the narrow space between his sled and his stick. The puck sailed through into the net.

The look of surprise on his face was priceless. “You deked me?”

I began to giggle, and my sled tipped onto its side. Poised with my forearms on the ice, I shook with laughter. But the joy unhooked something else in my chest, and my eyes got suddenly hot. There were too many ghosts on the ice with me — sweaty little versions of my former self, darting around on sharpened skates, shooting to kill. My chest tightened, and my breath came in heaving sobs. And then tears began running down my face, falling onto the ice beneath me.

Seconds later, Hartley swept into place beside me. With gentle hands he pulled me up off the ice, leaning me against his body. There were sweet words spoken into my ear, but I couldn’t hear them. I was too busy shaking, and crying into the collar of his jacket. “Shh,” he said. “Shh.”

“It’s…” I tried. “I was…”

He only held me tighter. “This was a mistake,” he whispered.

I shook my head. “No, it’s
good
,” I bit out. “It is. But
before
…” I shuddered. “It’s so hard…to
accept
.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hartley said, his own voice breaking. “I’m so damned sorry.”

“I was
perfect
,” I said. “And I didn’t even know.”

“No,” he whispered into my ear. “No, no. Perfect isn’t real.” I took a deep, shaky breath, and the feel of his strong arms around me began to feel steadying. “There’s no more perfect, Callahan. Now there’s only really damned good.”

Chapter Twenty:
Cry Like a Little Girl

—
Corey

Eventually I stopped crying. When Hartley looked at his watch, he said, “there’s twenty minutes until the van comes back for us.”

My face was a dribbling mess, and I wiped my eyes on my jacket. “You’d better fish that puck out of the net, then,” I said. “I can probably score on you a few more times. In between crying jags.”

“We’ll just see about that, Callahan.”

I managed to put the puck away one more time, to Hartley’s three. When we got back on the bus, I was sweating everywhere. “We wore the wrong gear,” I said. “Next time I’ll lose the jacket. But gloves and elbow pads would be nice.”

Hartley winked. “Next time.”

I was drained. All day I’d wanted to quiz Hartley about what would happen next. I’d wanted to know where we stood, even if it was difficult to ask. But just then, with the memory of the gleaming white ice dancing before my eyes, it was enough to rest against his shoulder. He put an arm around me, and we barely spoke at all before the bus pulled up on College Street.

“Where did the sleds come from?” I asked as I maneuvered out of the van.

“I saw them in a storage room last year — like a dozen of them. So I asked the facility manager if we could use them.”

“And the ice time? That couldn’t have been easy.”

“That’s Bridger’s doing. Coach is still pissed at me.”

“Will you thank Bridger for me?” I said quietly.

“Sure.”

As we approached the front door to McHerrin, Dana caught up with us. “Hi guys.” She squinted at me. I’m sure I looked like a train wreck, with red eyes and a sweaty brow. “Everything okay?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But I need a shower. You’re home early.”

“My groupies are headed to a bar, but since my fake ID sucks…” She shrugged. “I’m going to make some tea.” She swiped her ID to open the front door.

I wanted to thank Hartley again, but his phone rang. He checked the display, and then he answered. “Hey, Mom,” he said, trapping the phone beneath his chin. “Yeah, I did call you. There’s something I wanted to tell you, and you’re going to love it.” As he went into his room, I heard him say, “I’m finished with Greenwich, Connecticut.”

I left Hartley to his call and headed for the shower.

The reason might sound silly, but I pinned up my hair before stepping into the spray. The icy smell from the rink lingered in my hair, and I wasn’t ready to wash it away. I was happily rinsing the sweat off my body when Dana came into the bathroom. “Corey?” she called.

I stuck my head out of the curtain. “You’re supposed to knock!” Dana knew I was a psycho about privacy.

“
Sorry.
” Her grin was mischievous as she shut the door behind her. “But Hartley just came looking for you. He said, ‘tell Callahan that I’m
waiting up for her
.’” She giggled. “I swear I kept a straight face. Almost.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“So…” she gave me a devilish look. “I came in here to tell you, in case you were on the fence about shaving anything…”

I pulled the curtain closed. “My God. You’re giving me a complex.”

“Why?”

“I’ll bet Stacia has her garden tended professionally.”

Dana hooted. “But she’s history, Corey. Tidy pubes and all.” I heard her leave the bathroom, giggling.

After I’d dried off, I wrapped the towel around myself and transferred to my chair. As I rolled past Dana in the common room, she asked, “what are you going to wear?”

“Excellent question. Let me see.” I stared into my dresser drawers far longer than I’d ever done, finally settling on a skimpy camisole top and yoga pants.

“
Perfect
,” Dana said when I emerged for her approval. “Sexy, but it doesn’t look like you’re trying too hard.”

“Dana? You’re making some high-level assumptions here, I think.”

She shook her head. “I saw that boy’s face. I think he drooled a little on our rug. Did you put on slinky underwear?”

“I don’t own any, so I went without,” I said, running a brush through my hair.

She squealed. “I guess you don’t need my help.”

“Sure I do. Big decision: the sticks or the chair?” This was the real fashion question in my life.

Dana considered. “The chair. Definitely the chair. It will be easier to tear your clothes off that way.”

I wheeled toward the door. “Is this the point where I’m supposed to say, ‘don’t wait up?’”

She arched her eyebrows. “I’ll expect a full report.”

I gave Hartley’s door two knocks, feeling self-conscious. But I could hear the low thump of house music coming from inside his room, so I opened the door. Inside, Hartley was holding a basketball in the middle of the room, wearing jeans and nothing else. My mouth went dry at the sight. Though the light was low, I could see each perfect muscle on his chest, and the trail of fine brown hairs running down the center and into the waistband of his jeans. He shifted, tossing the basketball aside. And then he was coming for me.

For
me
.

It’s not easy to get close to someone sitting in a wheelchair. So when he leaned down, I wrapped my arms around his neck. His skin was velvet under my palms. Hartley put his hands on my hips and lifted me right out of the chair, pulling me to his chest. He slung one arm under my bottom and just held me there, nose to nose, studying me with his serious brown eyes.