~~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
I found Priya exactly where I always found her before her shift ended.
She sat with her legs crossed on the bleachers with her skates already unlaced, scrolling through her phone like the world hadn’t just tilted sideways for me forty minutes ago.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” she said, not looking up.
“I might have agreed to something insane.”
That got her attention.
She glanced up, took in my face, and set the phone down slow, the way you do when you sense a story is about to ruin your evening.
“Define insane.”
“I have to score a goal on Calloway Marchetti by Friday or I lose a tutoring job I haven’t even started yet.”
Priya laughed.
She actually laughed loudly, with her head back.
Loud enough that it echoed off the empty rink before she realized I wasn’t joking.
Her face did a slow-motion collapse from amusement into horror.
“Wait.
You’re serious.
You’ve never skated in your life.”
“I skated once.
At a birthday party.
In sixth grade.
I fell into the boards.”
“Emery,” she called out immediately.
“I know.”
“She’s going to actually enjoy watching you die out there, you understand that, right?
That’s not a bonus for her.
That’s the whole appeal.”
I dropped onto the bleacher next to her, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with my three back-to-back lectures that day.
“I don’t have a choice.
Rent’s due in eleven days and I already told Coach Marsh I’d do it.
I can’t walk it back now, not after the look on her face like she actually believed I could.”
Priya stared at me for a second, something calculating behind her eyes.
The same look she got right before she volunteered for something she’d immediately regret.
“Okay.
Rink’s free for another hour before the Zamboni guy kicks everyone out.
I have extra skates in my locker.
Bad idea?”
“Worst idea I’ve had all semester.” I groaned.
“Get up,” she said, pulling me up.
Learning to stand on skates, it turns out, is significantly harder than it looks on television, where people just glide out onto the ice like gravity had simply decided to stop bothering them personally.
I did not glide.
I clutched the boards with both hands like they were the only stable thing left in my life, which, at that particular moment, they were.
“You’re leaning back,” Priya called from a few feet away, backward-skating with the kind of ease that made me want to throw something at her.
“Your weight needs to be forward, over your laces, not behind you like you’re trying to sit down in a chair that isn’t there.”
“I am trying to sit down in a chair that isn’t there.
That’s the whole problem,” I said, half laughing, half panicking.
“Bend your knees more.
You look like a newborn deer having a nervous breakdown.”
“Thank you.
Very encouraging.”
But I bent my knees, and something shifted.
Not grace, exactly, more like the absence of imminent disaster, and I managed three unassisted strides before my ankles buckled and I grabbed the boards again, breathing hard, heart going faster than three shaky steps should have justified.
“Better,” Priya said.
“Now do that, but pretend someone terrifying is watching you.”
“Someone terrifying will be watching me.
That’s Friday’s whole event.”
“Then we better make sure Friday-you doesn’t die on impact,” she said, laughing softly.
We worked for another forty minutes.
Stopping, mostly not falling, a wobbling attempt at actually holding a stick that Priya produced from god knows where, a puck that skittered uselessly off the blade three times before I managed to send it in a mostly-straight line toward an empty net.
It wasn’t good.
It wasn’t close to good.
But it was something, and by the time the rink lights started dimming in warning, I could at least stay upright for longer than four seconds at a stretch, which felt, honestly, like a personal triumph worth documenting somewhere.
“You’re not going to be good by Friday,” Priya said honestly, as we sat lacing our shoes back on, ice-numb and sweating despite the cold.
“I want to be clear about that.
You will not be good.”
“Thank you.”
“But you might not completely embarrass yourself, which, given where we started tonight, is genuinely impressive.”
I let my head fall back against the boards, staring up at the rafters, at the banners hanging with years stitched into them, championship seasons Marchetti’s face was probably somewhere behind.
“Why do I even care this much?
It’s one shot.
If I miss, I miss.
It’s not like my life ends.”
Priya gave me a look I didn’t love.
“You sure about that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” She was smiling in a way that meant it was absolutely not nothing.
“Just — you’ve been talking about her like she’s a chemistry problem you can’t solve, and I’ve never once heard you talk about an actual chemistry problem with that much intensity.”
“She’s insufferable,” I blurted angrily.
“Sure,” Priya said, smiling.
“She basically laughed at me,” I said, now looking at Priya.
“Sure she did,” Priya said, leaning back.
“I’m doing this for the money, Priya.”
“I believe you,” she said, in the exact tone of someone who did not believe me even slightly, and stood up before I could argue further, offering me a hand off the bench.
“Come on.
You’ve got two more days to not die on ice, and personally, I’d like to actually witness whatever’s about to happen between you two, so don’t disappoint me.”
I let her pull me up, legs sore in places I didn’t know could be sore, chemistry notes still sitting untouched in my bag, exactly the way they’d been three hours ago when this had all still felt like a bad joke instead of an actual plan.
Two days.
I had two days to turn myself from someone who fell into boards at birthday parties into someone who could put a puck past the best player the university had ever recruited.
Someone who, apparently, didn’t lose.
Ever.
I thought about the way her jaw had tightened in Coach Marsh’s office.
The flicker of something underneath all that ice before she shut it down again.
Maybe I wasn’t only doing this for the rent money after all.