The Favorites: A Novel(96)

At first I’d been clumsy on my blades, my limbs pathetically uncoordinated from disuse. I fell on my ass over and over and over again, until my backside was one big blue-purple bruise. But there was no one there to see, no one to judge. For the first time in my life, I was skating only for myself.

“We need music,” Bella announced after lacing up her skates.

“There aren’t any speakers.”

“You built yourself a whole damn rink and didn’t bother to install a sound system?”

“I’m usually alone.”

Some days, I skated with headphones in and a playlist blasting, but most of the time my only accompaniment was the meditative scrape of my blades.

Undeterred, Bella took out her iPhone, starting up a pop song with a lively drumbeat and propping the device against the boards to make the most of the tinny speakers.

She did some basic footwork in time with the tempo, singing along—something about traffic lights and busy streets. When she saw my blank look, she laughed.

“Oh my god, you really have turned into a hermit, haven’t you? This has been all over the radio for months. One of my junior teams wants to skate to it next year.”

I joined her on the ice, and we circled each other, tracing overlapping ellipses.

“The younger skaters still talk about you, you know,” Bella said.

“What, as a cautionary tale?” Katarina Shaw, the Wicked Ice Queen Who Destroyed Her Own Career in a Single Day. Sounded about right.

“No,” Bella said. “They talk about you the same way you talk about my mother.”

“So they think I’m a bitch?”

“Mm-hmm. And they want to be exactly like you when they grow up.” She did a graceful pirouette, arms above her head. “This is amazing. I want a skating rink in my backyard.”

“It used to be a stable. It’d been on the verge of falling down for years, but—”

“Wait.” Bella stopped, blades spraying snow. “This is where your brother made him sleep? In the middle of winter?”

So Heath had told her about Lee’s abuse. I wondered what else he’d told her.

My fury over finding Heath and Bella together had long since cooled, but the thought of him confiding in her about the childhood trauma that bonded us stung like a fresh scald.

“So.” I’d put off the subject as long as I could. “You and Heath.”

“It’s not like that,” Bella said—a little too quickly.

“What’s it like, then?”

“Well, at first, it was revenge.”

Hearing her admit it was almost a relief. They’d both been furious that night, and they couldn’t have found a better way to wound me than jumping into bed together.

“Then after Vancouver,” Bella continued, “I was assisting my mother, and Heath started choreographing programs for some up-and-coming teams at the Academy.”

“Really?” I’d assumed Heath would want nothing more to do with the skating world.

“He’s great with the younger kids. Especially the boys who don’t have formal dance training; they really look up to him. But anyway, Garrett moved away, and my mother…” Bella shook her head. “I don’t know why I thought working with her would improve our relationship. She treated me like I was just another junior coach. So Heath and I ended up spending a lot of time together.”

I thought of the way she’d leaned toward Heath at Sheila’s funeral, seeking solace from him instead of her twin. Part of me—the part that loved them both, in spite of everything—was happy they had each other to rely on, in whatever capacity.

The rest of me wanted to rip Bella’s hair out at the root and use it to set the building on fire with her locked inside.

At least a hint of that impulse must have shown on my face, because Bella quickly added, “We’re just friends.”

“Friends with benefits.”

“Friends,” she insisted. “Until…well, there was this one night. I had an extra ticket to see Adele at the Palladium, and Heath offered to go with me.”

I wasn’t sure which was more shocking: Heath willingly attending an Adele concert or Bella taking a night off to have some fun for once.

“I swear,” Bella said, “it was purely a physical release. It meant nothing.”

“So that was it?” I fought to keep my face neutral, to keep any hint of hope from sneaking into my voice. “Just that one time, and then—”

“What, you want an exact count?” Bella’s eyes flashed. “You left, and Garrett left, and Heath and I stayed. All we had was each other.”

And I had no one. But that was my own fault, wasn’t it?

For the next few songs on the album—which later, after I’d officially rejoined society, I learned was Taylor Swift’s Red—we skated in silence, improvising to the music. Eventually we turned toward each other and clasped hands in a dance hold, switching off lead and follow roles.

By the end of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Bella was bent double, breathing hard, while I’d barely broken a sweat.

“Jesus,” she said. “This whole time I thought you were, like, sitting on the sofa watching soap operas, and instead you’ve been secretly training for Sochi.”