Chapter 48 Ankle wrap

Chapter 48 Ankle wrap
Mia's POV

I did not think about it during practice.

That was a lie. I thought about it three times. Once during the step sequence when Zack adjusted his grip and my brain said ankle wrap instead of focus.

Once during the second run when I hit the cue a half beat late and Zack looked at me like he knew I was somewhere else.

And once at the boards during water break when I looked across the rink at the empty lobby and imagined Portia still standing there with that smile.

I did not bring it up in the car. Zack drove. I sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window and he did not push me because pushing was not what Zack did. He waited. He was very good at waiting.

I did not bring it up at dinner. Dad made pasta. Jade set the table. Luca came down late with his hair still wet and sat in his usual chair and ate without talking. I watched him from across the table. He used his fork with his left hand. He always used his left. He reached for the salt with his right. Normal. Nothing different.

I looked at his feet under the table.

He was wearing socks. I could not see anything.

I ate my food. I washed my plate. I went upstairs. I sat on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I picked up my phone. I put it down. I picked it up again.

Eleven o'clock.

I got up.

His door was half-open. The light inside was low. Yellow. The lamp on his desk, not the overhead. I stopped in the doorway.

He was on the bed with his back against the headboard. His right leg was stretched out. A bag of ice was wrapped around his right ankle with a kitchen towel holding it in place. His phone was on the mattress beside him. He had not heard me yet.

I looked at the ankle. The wrap underneath the ice was clean. White. Neat. On the right foot.

He looked up.

He saw me. He saw where my eyes were. He tracked the line from my face to his ankle and back. Something moved through his expression. Not surprise. Recognition.

"Don't."

"Don't what."

"Don't ask Portia for information about me. Ask me."

"I didn't ask her for anything. She volunteered."

"Of course she did." He shifted his weight. He winced. Small. Quick. He covered it by adjusting the ice. "What did she tell you."

"She told me your ankle wrap is on the wrong foot."

"It's not on the wrong foot. It's on the injured foot."

"Your left ankle is the one you've been wrapping for three years."

"And now the right one needs wrapping. Things change."

"What happened to it."

"I twisted it last week."

"On which session."

He paused. Not a long pause. Just enough for me to know he was choosing his words.

"The Friday solo."

"You don't do Friday solos. You do Wednesday solos."

"I changed my schedule."

"When."

"Three weeks ago."

"Why."

"Mia."

"Why, Luca."

He closed his eyes. He leaned his head back against the headboard. The ice bag shifted on his ankle. The kitchen towel slipped. He reached down and fixed it without opening his eyes.

"I had been doing Friday solos for three weeks," he said.

"Why Friday."

He opened his eyes. He looked at me. Straight at me. No performance. No composure. Just him. Stripped back. The version of Luca that I had not seen since we were seventeen and he had told me he loved me on the back steps of this same house.

"Because Friday is when you and Mercer have the rink to yourselves."

My breath stopped.

"And I wanted to be the one in the building when you finished."

I stared at him. He held it. He did not look away. He did not soften it. He did not try to make it smaller than it was.

"You hurt yourself," I said. "Because you wanted to be in the building."

"I hurt myself because I was skating angry and I landed wrong. The reason I was there is the part I just told you."

"You were skating angry."

"Yes."

"About what."

"About you, Mia. About you and him on the ice together every Friday doing the program that should have been ours. About the fact that I can hear the music through the walls when you're running it and it sounds right and I hate that it sounds right. About the fact that I have been in this house for weeks watching you fall for someone else and I can't say a damn thing about it because I lost the right to say anything two years ago when I let you walk away."

The room was quiet. The ice bag dripped onto the towel. One drop. Two.

"You didn't let me walk away," I said. "You didn't even try to stop me."

"I know."

"Why not."

"Because I thought you wanted to go. I thought you sent that text. I thought it was over."

"It was over."

"Was it?"

I did not answer. He did not push. He just sat there with his ankle on ice and his eyes on me and two years of everything between us sitting in the air like smoke that neither of us could clear.

"Go to bed, Luca."

"In a minute."

"Your ankle needs rest."

"My ankle is fine."

"It's not fine. You twisted it because you were stalking my practice schedule."

"I wasn't stalking your practice schedule. I was memorizing it. There's a difference."

I almost smiled. I caught it. I killed it before it reached my mouth. But he saw. He always saw.

"Goodnight, Luca."

"Goodnight, Mia."

I turned to leave. I got one step into the hallway.

"Mia."

I stopped. I did not turn around.

"I would do it again. Every Friday. Even knowing how it ends."

I walked to my room. I closed the door. I pressed my back against it and I stood there in the dark until my breathing was steady again.

It took a while.