He Switched Partners. I Switched Countries. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ring on the Glass

In front of her mother's skating class Lena returns Wyatt's ring and refuses to stand at his boards; he will sign her release only if she does, and a board hearing is set for Thursday.

On Saturday at six in the morning, I walked back into my mother's rink with my skate bag on my shoulder.

Theo had given me the day off.

"Go and get it over with," he had said, without looking up from the lace he was tying. "Be back Sunday."

It was the nicest thing he had said to me, and he had said it to a bootlace.

My mother's Saturday class was already in the stands.

There were fourteen eight-year-olds in rental skates and puffy jackets, with their parents beside them holding paper cups.

On the ice, in the middle of the surface I had learned to walk on, Wyatt and Paige were running a lift.

He saw me before I reached the gate.

He let Paige down too fast, and she stumbled, and he caught her elbow without turning his head to look at her.

Then he came off the ice with both hands out, smiling.

"Len. There you are."

He looked very good.

He always did, rested or not, with his sandy hair pushed back and his face open.

"You scared me," he said. "Your phone's been off since Thursday. I drove by your apartment twice."

"I was in Canada."

"I know you were in Canada. Your mother told Paige's coach." He laughed softly. "You drove all night and got scared, and I get it. Come sit with me, and we'll talk like adults."

Every parent in the stands had stopped pretending not to watch.

"I heard the toast," I said.

His smile did not change at all.

"Which toast?"

"The one a teammate filmed for the team chat. The one where I cry for a while and sign on as your alternate."

For half a second, his eyes went to the stands.

Then he was gentle again, and that was worse.

"Len, those guys were drunk, and I was putting on a show. Paige needed a partner, and it's one season. I was going to explain it all tomorrow."

"You were going to explain it after midnight."

"After the forms locked, yes, because I didn't want you to panic." He reached for my hand. "I'd never leave you. You know that. Gold first, then forever."

I looked at his hand.

I had worn his promise ring since I was eighteen.

I twisted it off my finger, and my knuckle was pale where it had been.

The ring was thin and gold with a chip of a diamond, and he had paid for it with two summers of coaching other people's kids.

I set it on the ledge on top of the glass, where he would have to look at it.

"Don't be dramatic," he said quietly.

"I'm not. I'm returning it."

A small girl in the second row said, very clearly, "Why is the lady giving it back?"

Her mother shushed her.

Nobody in the stands shushed her very hard.

Paige came off the ice in her blade guards and put her arms around me before I could stop her.

"Lena, I'm so sorry," she said into my shoulder. "He told me you knew. I would never have said yes if I'd known you didn't."

She smelled like vanilla and a rink.

She felt small and she was shaking.

I thought of Monday, and the alternate button, and I stepped back.

"He told you I knew," I said.

"He said you'd agreed. He said it was a plan."

"I'll talk to you later, Paige."

"Please," she said, and she stayed where she was, with her eyes wet.

My mother had come across the lobby without anyone seeing her.

She stood at the gate in her black coach's jacket, with her whistle on its cord, and she did not look at me at all.

"Wyatt," she said. "My class takes the ice in six minutes."

"Marianne, I need two minutes with her."

"I taught you to stop a spin on one foot. I did not teach you to ask for two minutes. Say what you came to say in front of my students, or take your bag."

He did not like that.

Something tightened at the corner of his mouth, just for a moment.

Then he turned to me again with his hands open and spoke softly enough that only the first row could hear.

"There's the release," he said. "Skating needs my signature. You know that."

"I know."

"I'll sign it. Of course I will. Come to the boards Monday morning, stand where you always stand, and I'll sign it the minute the session ends."

"At the boards," I said. "With my stopwatch."

"It's one week, Len. After that you can go back to your Canadian."

He said "Canadian" slowly, and he smiled when he said it.

I picked my skate bag up off the floor.

My wrist, the one Theo had held, still remembered where his thumb had been.

That was a stupid thing to notice with Wyatt standing in front of me.

I noticed it anyway.

"No," I said.

"Lena."

"Sign it by Monday, or I'll ask the board to take it from you."

He laughed, quietly, and shook his head, and for the first time his voice went cold.

"My father sits on that board," he said. "Ask him."

On my phone, in my pocket, an email arrived that I did not read until I was in the car.

It said that the regional board would hear my release request on Thursday, and that both partners were required to attend in person.

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