Illicit Love

“Gabriella! You must lunge deeper in order to get enough power to complete this jump,” Coach Erik scolded, clearly getting annoyed with her. She had been practicing this one jump for nearly an hour, and has not been able to land it once. Each time she had attempted it, she had fallen on her butt. She was getting fed up with herself, and thought about abandoning it altogether in her routine. She was normally able to pick up on new tricks with ease, so not being able to land this one just once on nearly thirty attempts was extremely frustrating for her. “Run it again,” he instructed with an aggravated sigh.

Gabriella obeyed, slowly skating to the opposite corner of the ice. Taking a deep breath, she began going through a small portion of her routine, just enough that allowed her to pick up full speed. As she neared her jump; she stuck out one leg straight out behind her and lunged as deeply as she could with falling over. Using all the strength she could gather, she jumped, twirling her petite body through the air. However, as per usual, she could not rotate her body fast enough, and ended up falling on her side.

Erik let out a short, frustrated yell. “That’s enough! We have been practicing this jump for an hour every day for the past week. And you haven’t been able to land it once! I’m beginning to question how badly you really want this. I don’t think you realize how much is really on the line.”

Tears poked at the corners of Gabriella’s eyes. She didn’t understand how he could say all these things about her. He saw how much she worked, on and off the ice. She wanted this more than anything in the world. And that fact that he couldn’t see how much of herself she was pouring into these new routines broke her heart.

“Why are you fucking crying? I can’t take anymore of this right now.” He rotated himself so that he was staring at Carl, who was silently leaning against the boards, watching this scene unfold. “Make sure she doesn’t leave here until she lands this jump,” he threatened with a pointed finger.

Carl nodded his head quickly, slightly scared of the man before him. He and Gabriella remained silent, watching Erik closely to make sure that he was gone before they let out the breaths that each of them was holding in. Once he was officially out of hearing range, Gabriella got up from where she had previously fallen, and skated over to the players’ bench. She sat down, and put her head in her hands. Carl followed her, but stayed on the ice, leaning against the half-board that was right in front of her.

“I’m never going to get land this fucking trick,” she mumbled under her breath, just loud enough that Carl could hear it.

Carl shook his head in amazement. She had been so hard on herself all week because she could not land this. He hated that she did this to herself, but that’s part of what made them so compatible. They were both their own worst critics. “What’s so special about it? You do lots of other crazy jumps that look incredibly difficult. Why do you need this one?”

Gabriella looked up at him like he had three heads. As soon as she did this, Carl immediately felt stupid for asking the question. “We’re talking about a quad here, Carl. A jump that has only been landed in a ladies figure skating competition once before. If I could land this, I would be a shoe-in for the Olympic team. And I would etch my name into the record books of figure skating history. If I could just land this fucking jump, it would be the high point in my career,” she explained, her voice beginning to quiver. She furiously rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hands, not wanting Carl to see her cry. She didn’t want to come off as weak.

Seeing how much this trick actually meant to her made Carl’s heart ache. He hated the fact that she was visibly upset about this. He wanted to be able to tell her that she didn’t need the quad; that her routine was already amazing without it, but he couldn’t. He understood that she wouldn’t be able to give up on this. She wouldn’t be happy until she landed it. He had the same mentality, and Lord knows he never gave up learning a new deke until he mastered it.

Carl knew he had to do something to help her be able to land the quad. But, at the same time, he knew nothing about figure skating. He couldn’t distinguish a salchow from a triple axel, but that wouldn’t stop him. What Gabriella needed was power, and learning how to generate force was a concept that Carl was very familiar with from his years of hockey.

“Get up,” Carl ordered. Gabriella looked up at him through puffy eyes. She sniffled slightly before getting up and hesitantly headed towards the ice. “The legs feed the wolf, young Gabriella. And I’m going to teach you how to feed the wolf.” Gabriella gave him a questioning look before agreeing to listen to him. Nothing she had been trying had worked, so she figured she mine as well give his advice a chance.

“You see, Gab, it’s all in the hip thrust. As you jump, you need to drive your hips upwards, giving you more momentum towards the sky. You kind of just drive your hips forwards, which is why you go forward instead of up.” Carl proceeded to show her, in an upright position, how she needed to jump, making sure to put extra emphasis on the hip thrust.

She could not stifle her laughter as she watched Carl demonstrate. He had made a good point, but he had made it sound so sexual as he explained it. “Are you sure you’re training me for my competition and not for the bedroom?” she questioned. This caused Carl to reveal his dazzling smile, the one that could instantly make Gabriella’s day 100x better.

“What’s wrong with killing two birds with one stone?” he chuckled. As he said this, he skated towards Gabriella, and then wrapped his arms around her waist. He placed an innocent kiss on her lips before playfully smacking her ass. “Now get to work on that quad!”

“You got it, Coach Carl,” she said teasingly.

Heeding his advice, she tried her hardest to create as much upward momentum as she possibly could. Of course, she ended up falling on her stomach with a loud smack that echoed through the empty arena. She got up quickly, looking over at Carl who currently looked like he feared for his life. The fall looked excruciatingly painful and easily could have cracked one of her ribs in Carl’s opinion.

“Don’t worry. Kreiders have strong bones.” She dusted herself off, and then skated over towards Carl to assure him that she was okay.

Once he was a thousand percent sure that she was not injured, Carl went on to explain that she was still directing her momentum forwards and not straight up. “You really need to drive your hips towards the sky,” he explained again. Gabriella guaranteed him that that’s what she was doing. “Clearly you weren’t,” he teased. “Let me show you,” he pleaded as he positioned himself behind her. He took hold of her hips and instructed her to assume a squat position. “On three, drive up. One… Two… Three.” Carl used his hands to guide her momentum upwards. Although she did not jump, the magnitude of the momentum caused Gabriella’s skates to come nearly two inches off the ice.

“Hopefully this works,” she sighed, clearly tired of continuously failing. She took to her corner of the ice and began to go through the portion of her routine leading up to the quad. Again, she lunged deeply, keeping her leg pointed behind her. She sucked in a deep breath as she leaped upwards, drawing her arms close to her chest to cause as little air friction as possible.

Carl watched with bated breath as Gabriella twirled through the air. His jaw nearly dropped to the floor as she made her fourth full rotation. As she came back to the surface of the ice, she caught an edge, which caused her to fall yet again, but her look of sheer excitement was not faltered by this.

“I did it!” she shouted, waving her fists in the air like a little kid. “I didn’t land it, but I did it!” Carl laughed at her expressions, happy to see her so ecstatic.

“Yeah, you did,” Carl chuckled, breathless at the sight of Gabriella: a beautiful, ecstatic, lump on the ice. “Does this mean we can go now? I’m starving.”

Pulling herself off of the cold surface, she replied, “Not just yet. I want to try this a couple of more times to see if I can actually land it.” She took back to her corner, determine to master the jump.

Again, she performed her routine. When she did her jump, she was able to land it, but stumbled a little on her feet. So she gave it another shot. This time, she was able to land it perfectly. When her feet gracefully hit the ground, she immediately started waving her tiny fists in the air in triumph. The feeling she had attained by perfecting her quad was exhilarating. And she had to feel it again. And so she did. Two more times she elegantly executed the trick.

“I just want to do it one more time, and then we can pick up lunch,” she offered upon hearing her own stomach asking for food.

Hearing this, Carl whipped out his phone and started looking up restaurants between the training center and his apartment where he could pick up take-out, for they still did not want to be seen in public together. A smile found its way onto his face at the sound of Gabriella’s skates slicing through the ice. It was a sound he would never get tired of loving. However, his smile was quickly replaced by a look of anxiety and a cold sweat taking over his body. He had only looked at his phone for two minutes, and in that time he had missed Gabriella fall.

She now sat on the ice, clutching her ankle and whimpering in pain. Carl sprinted towards her, hands shaking in fear as the thought of her having a broken ankle crossed his mind. Nationals were too close, only a month and a half away. If she couldn’t perform in them… Well, that would just break both of their hearts.

“Gab, what happened? Are you alright?” Carl asked franticly. He kneeled down next to her, and pushed her stray hairs out of her face, only to reveal her tear filled eyes. Carl could hear his heart shattering for her.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. She sounded as crushed as she felt inside. The same thoughts that Carl had were streaming through her head as well, and she couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to perform in her next competition. She had trained so hard. This couldn’t happen to her. She needed this chance.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” he explained as he swooped down to pick her up bridal style. Knowing there was no use in arguing against him, she simply snuggled into his chest, hoping the scent of his cologne would help to calm some of her unrelenting anxiety.

***

Gabriella tapped her fingers nervously as she waited for the doctor to return with the prognosis of her injury. Carl’s head hung low in nervous anticipation. After what seemed like an eternity, the white curtain of her emergency room area was pulled back, revealing the tall, slender doctor.

He let out a low sigh as he pulled his clipboard closer to his body. “Well Ms. Kreider. I have good news and I have bad news. Would you like to hear the bad news first?”

“I guess,” she shrugged. Truth be told, she didn’t want any bad news. She was hoping that this visit to the ER would just end up being a huge waste of her afternoon.

“The bad news is that you have a severely twisted ankle. You’ll be out anywhere from 3-5 weeks,” he explained casually.

Gabriella felt the anger well up inside of her as she heard her recovery timeframe. She couldn’t be out for five weeks. That would only give her one week to get back onto her training program. That wasn’t nearly enough time.

“Then what’s the good news?” Carl asked for Gabriella, who was too preoccupied to remember that the doctor had mentioned an upside to her injury.

“The good news is that her ankle is not broken,” he replied bluntly. “I recommend staying off of it entirely so that the healing process will run its course faster. Here is a prescription to see me again in two weeks.” He handed Gabriella the small sheet of paper and rested a pair of crutches up against her bed.

As soon as the curtain was closed again, she couldn’t help but start to cry. “This isn’t fair!” she wailed. “I don’t deserve this to happen to me! Not again. I just want to be able to go out on the ice and prove myself to the world. But every goddamn time I get the opportunity, I get injured! Goddamnit Carl!”

He slowly picked up her hand to intertwine their fingers. He figured there was no point in trying to soothe her. If he was in her shoes, his heart would be shattered. It’s like not being able to play in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals (or so he imagined).

“I know, Gab, I know. It sucks and it’s just not fair. Bad things happen to good people, but jest remember: everything happens for a reason. You may not know why this happened just yet, but the answer will reveal itself all in due time,” Carl replied philosophically.

The eloquence with which Carl answered her cries actually caused Gabriella to stop crying. She couldn’t believe such a beautiful statement could come from the same guy who would bend her over the counter. “Do you need to see the doctor, too?” she questioned, a hint of humor behind her voice.

“No,” Carl chuckled. “But you, on the other hand, need to talk to Chris about your ankle.”

***

An hour later, Gabriella sat alone in her dorm room with a carton of Ben & Jerry’s in her hand waiting for the arrival of her brother. She had called him once she was safely tucked into her bed as Carl was on his way out the door. According to Chris, Coach Erik had taken Gabriella to the hospital and then back to her dorm. Thank God Chris was so gullible.

When Chris finally came, he had a bouquet of red orchids, Gabriella’s favorite flowers, in his hand, as well as a bag of DVD’s that she could watch throughout her recovery. Being an athlete, he knew a thing or two about bed rest after injuries.

After informing him about what had happened, and how long she was expected to be out, Chris knew he had to change the subject. Drawing on the topic of her injury for too long would only cause more frustration for her.

“I know it’s only December 1st, but Mom and Dad wanted me to ask you whether or not you plan on going home for Christmas this year.”

Gabriella rolled her eyes, angry that her parents could be so stupid as to think she would actually return to Massachusetts for the holidays. “Do they plan on attending Nationals?” she snapped back, venom laced into every word. Chris could only stare at her, speechless. She took that as a no. “Well then that’s your answer,” she huffed.

“Oh come on, Gab. You can’t sit there and tell me you would rather be alone in New York than back home with your friends and family on Christmas. It’s only for two days. How bad can it be?” he questioned softly. He knew he was treading dangerous territory, and he did not want to step on a nerve.

“Well you better believe it because there is no way in hell that I am going up there to see those two assholes any time soon,” she fumed. She crossed her arms to signal that there was no room for further discussion on this topic.

Chris did not want to leave her alone and injured in her current state of anger. “Do you want to hear a funny story?” he asked. She opened her mouth to answer, but he cut her off before she could speak. “I really don’t know why I asked because I’m going to tell you anyways whether you want to hear it or not.” Gabriella rolled her eyes, but a slight grin formed on her lips as a result of her brother’s excitement at remembering this anecdote. “So this morning at practice, we were having a scrimmage, as usual. But all of a sudden, Hagelin’s in a one on one situation against Staal and he fucking ballerina twirled away from him, and ended up scoring a goal. He looked like Jeff Skinner out there!” he laughed heartily.

Gabriella chuckled to herself, imagining Carl’s precious flow flying through the air as he twirled like she had taught him to in her own practices.

“It’s almost like he took a page out of your book,” he added. “You haven’t been teaching him how to do stuff like that, have you?” he asked jokingly.

Although she knew Chris was not being the least bit serious, a lump formed in Gabriella’s throat. Were they being too obvious about their relationship? Could Chris sense something between the two of them? God, she hoped not.

“Come on, Chris. You know I try to stay as far away from that egotistic jerk as possible.”

“I know kiddo.” He quickly ruffled her hair before giving her a brotherly kiss on the top of her head. “It’s almost four. I have to get down to MSG. Stay off your ankle and maybe it will be healed by tomorrow.”

If only that were possible.