Chapter 22: Home Ice

My loft was above the skate shop, up a narrow flight of stairs.

It was one room with a slanted ceiling and a window onto Water Street.

I had not lived in it for fourteen months.

I had moved back in on Thursday, with two suitcases and the whistle.

I brought Soren up the stairs at nine that night, and he had to duck under the beam.

"Your grandmother?" he said.

"She went to bed at eight and told me to turn the radiator off."

"Is that a code?"

"It's a radiator."

He looked around at my rink posters and my secondhand desk, and the one lamp with the yellow shade.

"I said something into your phone this morning," he said. "You didn't answer."

"I know."

"You don't have to."

"Shut up, Soren."

I took his face in both hands.

"I love you," I said.

"I'm saying it with nobody filming and the phone in the other room. It doesn't belong to anyone but us."

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them they were wet, and he did not hide it.

"Say it again."

"I love you."

He kissed me.

It was slow, and it went on so long my knees stopped holding me up.

I turned on the lamp.

"Leave it on," I said.

"You hate being looked at."

"No," I said. "I hate being looked at by everyone. I want to be looked at by you."

He took a long moment, then.

He let his eyes go over me while I pulled my sweater off, then my jeans.

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