Power Play

Chapter 2

Dante Espinosa. He’s a few inches shy of six feet and hell on skates. The crowds love him, the girls especially—they swoon over his dark eyes, his wavy hair, his quick smile. He’s always smiling, it seems, in the midst of a race or when he’s the first across the finish line. Magic on ice, that’s what he is. The fans know it, he knows it, and it’s the only thing he’s counting on anymore to get him somewhere in this world.

Eighteen, graduated last May from a local high school in the bad part of town, one of those places where the latest budget included metal detectors at all exits. He’s too short for basketball, too small for football, and the only thing that kept him out of the gangs and the drugs and the trouble was skating. He can outrace the wind itself on a good day. When someone asks how he got so fast, he tells them it’s from outrunning bullies on the way home from school. He’s only half kidding.

If life were fair, he’d be able to skate 24/7, round the clock, day in and day out and there would be nothing he couldn’t do on the ice. He was born with skates on, he’s almost sure of it, though his mother tells him not to be loco. It’s just the two of them, and she works long hours at the DA’s office as a legal assistant, something she hates and can’t quite describe when Dante asks her what exactly it is she does for a living. He’s raised himself since middle school, came home afternoons and cooked his own dinner of Ramen noodles or Chef Boyardee, cleaned up the dishes without being told, tucked himself into bed at night. Graduating from high school was sort of anticlimactic after that. It’s the same things, only he’s at the skate shop full-time now, twelve to nine most every day, longer hours if there’s a meet coming up and he needs the extra cash. He pays for the training himself, pays for the club, fifteen dollars each time he gets to the rink just to participate. If the rent’s due or his mom can’t afford food one week, he gives her money from his skating fund and has to train twice as hard the next time he gets on the ice.

But it’s what he wants to do. College? No, not really, not unless they offer short track programs, which they don’t. None of the local ones do anyway, and he can’t afford to go out of state. Maybe further up north, but he was born and raised in New Jersey and if he goes anywhere else, it’ll be Lake Placid, that’s it. That’s his dream…well, one of them, to train with other athletes and make the Olympics one day. He knows it’s probably futile—he’s already getting too old for the sport, most short track skaters burn out before they’re even twenty-five—but it’s his dream, even if it never comes true. He’ll strive to reach it until it slips completely out of his grasp.

He’s got another year or so before he can go out for the us team, though—it’s only the end of January, and the next Winter Olympics aren’t for another two years. He hopes to be in Lake Placid by then, skating rings around the judges. His best race is the five hundred, he’s great at short distances, and he’s not too shabby with the relay, either. Just give him some good teammates, let him skate anchor, and he can almost taste the victory and the gold.

Before that, though, State championships, and he’s a sure win for the club’s nomination. This is his second meet today, the club’s third but he had to miss the last one because his mom needed his fifteen bucks to help pay the water when the city came around to cut it off. Dante’s been practicing though, worked over at the skate shop each night last week, came to the rink first thing every morning, even before the hockey team claimed the ice. At the shop Bobby likes him, really likes him, Dante should take up fencing for all the warding off he’s done of that man. He’s in his late twenties, an old school skateboarder who still sports thick dreadlocks and wears his pants down low. He tells Dante if he ever needs a few extra bucks, he can show him how to make it. Off the clock too, under the table, it’ll be good for both of them. Worth his while, Bobby promises.

Dante always says no.

It’s not that he’s not interested, because he likes boys and Bobby’s not hard on the eyes, he’s even toyed with the idea of maybe hooking up with him later on down the road, but right now someone steady will distract him from skating and that’s the last thing Dante needs. He’s easily distracted as it is, the first off the ice after a race, wins and losses are all the same to him. It’s the speed he likes, the freedom, the sense that if he goes fast enough, if he pushes himself just a little more, he’ll somehow manage to slip free of the brownstone projects where he lives with his mom, he’ll break out of this sedentary life that tries to suffocate him, he’ll soar with the best.

That’s all he thinks about when he skates. He wants to be the best.

* * * *

Distractions. The girls in the crowd don’t bother Dante—he waves at them when they call out his name, gives them a smile to swoon over, and then it’s back to the race at hand. Only today, when his gaze drifts over the stands he sees the guy on the landing, strawberry blonde hair that’s parted straight down the middle, hanging to the tops of his ears on either side of his face, half in his eyes. A smattering of freckles across his nose that probably gets worse in the sun, pale skin that looks like porcelain from here. He’s sitting down, leaning onto the railing, watching the race—Dante fancies he’s there to watch him, that sends a thrill through his body, he’d like that. Knowing that someone out there today is someone he’d be interested in, someone he might want to meet afterwards, just to talk to the guy, get to know him better. The only guy he knows is Bobby Trevor and he’s almost ten years older than Dante is, not to mention he owns the skate shop so he’s technically his boss—

The starting gun goes off.

Shit! Dante tears his thoughts away from the boy on the landing and Bobby and everything else that isn’t this race, the ice beneath his skates, the chill air against his face. He’s the last off the line, dammit, that’s what he gets for looking around. See? he tells himself as he hurries to catch up with the others, his skates click click clicking on the ice. This is why you don’t need to be messing around with anyone right now, chico. Keep your mind on the heat. You have to at least place second to make it to the next round and look at you, trailing the pack.

Four and a half laps around the rink, that’s all he gets. Around the first curve he slips in front of Pennock—that wasn’t hard to do. The kid’s too damn big for this sport anyway. When he pulls up from the turn he sees Pennock stumble over one of the track blocks, he goes down on one knee, comes back up, falls again. As Dante takes the next curve, he notices Pennock skating to the edge of the ice, his helmet thrown down in disgust. Pissed, and he’s not even giving himself a chance just because he screwed up in the first lap. Dante can’t believe that—he knows this sport well enough to know anything can happen, anything at all. Quitting just because he might not win isn’t an option.

For Dante, winning is the only option.

The stands are a blur around him, the ice speeds away, he watches for an opening up ahead but Dietrich and Johnson are too close, one on the inside track, one going wide, there’s no room to squeeze by. One lap down, two, and he tries to pass Dietrich but the other skater sees him from the corner of his eye and cuts him off. It’s an illegal move but Dante’s not going to push it, he’ll wait for the referee’s call at the end of the race. Instead he comes out of the next turn on the outside track, and he’s just about to overtake Johnson when a hand touches his hip. It’s Dietrich again, coming up too fast for either of them to pull away. Dante feels the guy’s skate slip beneath his blade a second before he’s thrown head first to the ice.

Somehow he manages to turn onto his back and when he hits the boards, he hardly touches them before he’s struggling to his feet again. The crowd’s roar is a deafening surge in his ears as he regains the ice, but the other skaters are already across the finish line, he’s out of the running for a chance at the state competitions. Because you were slow off the gun, he tells himself, gliding over the line. The crowd calls out his name, even though he finished last. You weren’t paying attention and you didn’t get the speed you needed from the start. Distracted by a cute hombre—

“Johnson finishes first,” the announcer is saying, and then, incredibly, “Espinosa second. Two disqualifications, Dietrich and Pennock. Both skaters are out of the heat. Johnson and Espinosa advance to the men’s quarterfinals.”

Already unbuckling his helmet, Dante nods at the fans as he skates to the sidelines. He leans against the boards, laughs at Johnson’s thumbs up, nods again. He can’t speak, he’s winded and it was a fast race, just under a minute—he looks up at the scoreboard and winces at the number by his name, 00:55:03. Definitely not his best time. Doesn’t have to be, he reasons. It got you in the quarterfinals, didn’t it? You’ll do better there. You’ll have to.

But that race isn’t until the weekend, and he might have to ask Bobby to let him work over a few nights between now and then to get up enough money to practice. His skating fund is getting low—just a few crumpled bills wadded up into an old Mason jar that he keeps in his closet, most of the money in his jacket right now because he needs to pay half the rent for his mom. “You’re out of school,” she told him last night, when she came home from work in one of her evil moods, the kind he knows to avoid. “You have a job, you’re not a little chivato anymore. You want to live here? That’s fine, but you have to help me out, Tay. I can’t do this alone.”

He can do that, he thinks, slipping skate covers over his blades. It’s cheaper than moving out on his own, at any rate. One of the skaters on the women’s team, Josey Banks, holds the small door open for him as he enters the player’s box. “You were real good out there,” she says, leaning back against the door to close it. Flipping her golden braid over one shoulder, she adds, “Good form.”

Dante laughs. “Thanks.” He’s not interested in talking about his form, though—the race is over and the results are in, he’s not going to dwell on it any longer. He got what he wanted, he’s in the quarterfinals now, still has a shot at State. Already his mind is flitting back to what distracted him out there on the ice, and he looks up to see if that guy with the light hair is still on the landing above.

He is, and it may be Dante’s imagination but he thinks the boy is still looking at him. There’s a camera in his lap, a notebook on the seat beside him. A school project on speedskating? A reporter for a local paper? Dante wants to find out.

He slips on his leather jacket, the one with l8r sk8r embroidered on the back—he couldn’t afford something this nice but Bobby’s his only sponsor, and below the skate shop’s logo reads, Anyone Else is a Poser. Good for business, Bobby tells him, but Dante’s not too sure about that, since his is one of the only shops in the city, and the only one to cater to all skaters, inline or ice or hockey, even boarders. Unconsciously he pats the inside pocket to make sure his money’s still there—it is—and when Josey starts to say something else, he cuts her off with a smile. “Thanks.”

She grins. “You going to hang around a bit?” she wants to know. “I skate in the third heat.”

With a shrug, Dante grabs onto the railing above the player box and hauls himself up into the stands. “I’ll be around,” he says, swinging first one leg, then the other over the railing. Leaning down, he snags his bag from the bench and shoulders it. Then he flashes Josey another smile. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes say more. Dante’s used to that lovesick look. He doesn’t think he’s all that, really—it’s his hair mostly, thick black waves that fall to his shoulders and frame his face, girls really seem to like it. And his eyes, he’s been told he has pretty eyes, Bobby’s even mentioned it once or twice, for all the good it’s done him. But Dante’s not interested in Josey’s schoolgirl crush, or her girlfriends giggling further down the bench.

Instead, he hurries to the end of the row, his skates not as agile on the concrete stands as they are on the ice. Up a short aisle to the back of this section and the landing is right above him now. When he looks up, he sees the guy—reporter? student?—bent over his notebook and studiously ignoring Dante. This close Dante sees the steel brace around one of the boy’s legs, and for the first time he notices the wheelchair.

Before he can change his mind, he jumps up, grabs the railing with both hands, pulls himself up over it onto the landing. Now the boy looks at him, surprised, and Dante gives him a bright smile as he picks up the camera on the seat beside the wheelchair. Then he sinks into the seat with an exasperated sigh. He lets his bag slip to the floor between them and toys with the camera. “God, what a race.” Offering his hand, he says, “Dante Espinosa. You skate?”

The kid looks at the hand, at Dante, then at the hand again as if wondering how to respond. Of course he doesn’t skate, you i***t, Dante thinks. He’s in a wheelchair. Open mouth, insert foot. When the boy looks at him a second time, Dante whispers, “Don’t leave me hanging here, man. I ain’t gonna bite you. Most anything else I’m willing to try at least once but biting’s no fun.”

That gets him a laugh and a shy grin. “Ryan Talonovich,” he says, shaking Dante’s hand. He has a firm grip that belies the wheelchair and the brace on his leg. “You don’t think biting can be fun?”

Now it’s Dante’s turn to laugh. He settles back in his seat and props his feet up on the railing, his skates reflecting the light from the ice below. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I never really tried it.” Talonovich, that name sounds familiar for some reason he can’t quite place. He should apologize for that skating remark but doesn’t want to bring it back up again if he can help it.

But Dante’s mouth is faster than his skating sometimes, especially when he’s nervous, and this Ryan makes his stomach flutter in a way Bobby only wishes he could. “I feel like I should know you,” he says, tapping the arm of his seat to work out the energy coursing through him after the race. “Talonovich…”

Ryan points out over the ice and Dante sees it, a hockey jersey with that name written across the back, hung above one end of the rink. “That you?” he asks, surprised. Ryan simply nods. “What happened?”

Turning back to his notebook, Ryan tells him, “Accident at practice just before the start of the season. Another player ran me into the boards.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s an automatic reply, something he says because he thinks it’s expected of him, but Ryan just shrugs like it’s no big deal. There’s something Dante likes about this boy, something he can’t quite put his finger on, maybe the way his hair falls in front of his eyes, or the freckles across his nose, or the hoop earring high up on his right ear, almost hidden beneath his hair and so incongruous with everything else about him. That earring hints that there’s more to this boy than his twisted legs, his sad eyes. Dante waits for Ryan to look at him—when he doesn’t, he leans closer and asks, “You’re not paralyzed, are you?”

Ryan blinks quickly as if surprised. “I can move my legs,” he says, almost defensive.

That touched a nerve. Dante senses Ryan’s sullen anger and tries to think of some way to take it back, start all over again. I don’t know why I like you, he thinks, studying Ryan’s bunched jaw, but I do. This close, his skin still looks flawless, and Dante fancies he can see faint blue lines just below the surface. He thinks maybe Ryan needs to get out more—he’s in a wheelchair, true, but he’s not dead. Looking over Ryan’s shoulder as if he’s interested in the notebook in his lap, Dante lowers his voice and whispers, “Can you still get it up?”

Ryan’s eyes go wide and then he starts to laugh, breathy giggles that make Dante grin. “No one’s asked me that yet,” Ryan admits. Now he’s looking at Dante, finally, really seeing him for the first time, and the ice, the skaters, the crowd, even the race below all dissolve in the boys’ breathless laughter.

* * * *

“So does it hurt?” Dante asks. He pokes at Ryan’s denim-clad knee, just above the brace that stabilizes his lower leg. It’s only been what, fifteen minutes? A half hour? But he feels as if they’ve known each other for years, it’s like they’re the only two in the whole rink. Down on the ice the heats are still going on—they need to whittle the ranks to just four skaters in each group before they can start on the quarterfinals. The skating club has eight divisions in all, four groups and each broken down by gender. Dante’s in Group A. The quarterfinals will narrow it down further—only one skater in each event will advance to the state competitions. Dante’s sure he’ll be among those, as long as he gets in some more practice time this week. He should really be practicing now, but he likes sitting here by Ryan, he likes the guy’s laugh, and he can’t get out on the ice until today’s heats are over anyway. Another hour or so, if he waits around that long. If Ryan stays here that long.

Ryan swats at Dante’s hand. “Of course it hurts,” he says. With the tip of his pen, he pokes at Dante’s own knee, a ticklish sensation through the skin-tight bodysuit he wears. “Does that hurt?”

With a laugh, Dante catches Ryan’s hand, pries the pen from his grip. “Hey!” Ryan cries, reaching for the pen. Dante holds it out at arm’s length, where Ryan can’t get it, but he tries. He leans across Dante’s lap, digging his fingers into the satiny sleeve of his jumpsuit, laughs when Dante tries to move further out of reach. “Gimme it.”

“You didn’t say—” Dante starts.

“Please?” Ryan asks. He looks up at Dante, his eyes a hazy shade of blue, the color the sky gets just before it snows. From this angle Dante can see thick lashes like a girl’s, so light he didn’t notice them at first. Those freckles flecked across his nose and cheeks, just below his eyes. If he wore glasses, they’d be hidden. His lips a nice ruddy shade and not chapped like so many of the skaters out on the ice, healthy lips, curved just right…

Skating, he thinks. That’s why he’s here. Skating, and the championships, and if he’s not going to practice he should at least catch the next bus home so he can run the errands his mom expects of him. This playing around is just another distraction.

He lets Ryan take the pen. “I should get going,” he says, but he doesn’t move. Ryan frowns at his notebook and doesn’t say anything. “You gonna be here tomorrow?” Dante asks.

Ryan shrugs. “Maybe,” he mumbles. Dante gets the impression that he doesn’t want him to leave. That makes two of us, he thinks. With a sigh, Ryan adds, “I don’t know. I have therapy at ten.”

“For your legs?” Dante asks, before he can think better of it. He shakes his head, disgusted at himself. He never was one for good first impressions. “That’s a stupid question,” he says. “Don’t answer it.”

“Okay,” Ryan laughs. “I won’t.”

Suddenly there’s an awkwardness between them, a what now? feeling that Dante doesn’t like. He should say goodbye, he knows this, and they just met, that should be easy enough to do. But no one’s ever really managed to hold his attention for as long as this boy has, and Dante would be lying if he said he wanted to go. In fact, he thinks that there’s nothing he’d like more than to simply sit here for the rest of the day with Ryan beside him, though Bobby wouldn’t like that much. His shift at the skate shop starts at noon.

Leaning over Ryan’s shoulder, Dante asks, “What’re you drawing?”

“Layouts,” Ryan says. Dante must look confused, because he explains, “I’ve got to do the team web site. Since I can’t play this season, I guess they thought it was something I could handle.”

Dante’s impressed. He moves Ryan’s arm away from the notebook, very much aware of the elbow resting against his stomach, the sweatshirt sleeve warm with Ryan’s body heat. “You do web sites?” he asks. “You have a computer?”

“I don’t really use it much,” Ryan admits. “This is sort of my first site—”

“I need a web site,” Dante declares. That’s just the thing, isn’t it? Everyone’s online nowadays, everyone, and if he had a site out there he could post his meets and pledge sponsors, make a little bit of money on the side to help out with his skating expenses. “How much do they cost?” he wants to know. Probably more than he can afford. Absently his fingers rub a smooth spot into Ryan’s sleeve as he tries to figure out just how much he could put aside every pay for a web site. He’d have pictures of himself racing, and banner ads to click on and raise money, and when he does get to State, he’ll have more than enough cash to cover the racing fee. “Are they expensive? You need a computer to have one, don’t you?”

Gently Ryan extracts his arm from Dante’s grip. “You can hire someone else to make it for you,” he explains. “Most schools give students free space on their servers. If you want—”

“I’m not in school anymore,” Dante tells him. “I work full-time at Later Skater.” He turns in his seat so Ryan can see the back of his jacket. “Bobby spells it with the eights. Can I get sponsors through a web site?”

“You could.” Ryan looks at the logo on his back, then at Dante’s face, his hair, the bare strip of his throat that peeks above the top of his neck guard. “I should have some space on the college server. If you want, I can put a page together for you.” Meeting Dante’s gaze, he adds, “No charge.”

“Why not?” Dante wants to know, suspicious. That’s something Bobby would say, no charge, and then later on down the line he’d come back with something he’d want Dante to do, no charge because didn’t he remember that time…? It’s happened before, when he needed to do inventory, and Dante ended up missing a heat because of it. If this is just charity work for Ryan, Dante would hate that. “I work, you know,” he says. “I can pay you if you do it.”

Ryan drops his gaze to the pen in his hands. For a moment Dante thinks he’s not going to speak. Then he thinks he’ll say something like, “I was just trying to be nice.” He’s not sure what it is he wants from this boy, if anything, but he’s certain it’s not pity.

But when Ryan does reply, his answer surprises Dante. “Since the accident? No one’s asked me anything. Not, how are you doing, Ryan? Not, what’s it like to sit all the time? Not, how the hell do you take a piss anymore?” He forces a wan smile. “Nothing. No one mentions the chair or my legs. Like they’re scared they might offend me.”

“The doctors,” Dante suggests, settling back in his seat.

Ryan shrugs. “Sure, the doctors ask. Where’s it hurt? How’s this feel? Can you do this?” With a lusty sigh, he says, “For all their talk of me walking again, it hasn’t happened yet. All I do at the therapist’s are sit-ups and leg-lifts and damn warm-up exercises. I want back in the game, you know? I don’t want to sit on the sidelines, I don’t want to warm up with the rest of the team just to watch.” He looks at Dante, his eyes pleading for empathy. “You know?”

Dante nods—he knows. He doesn’t want to watch other skaters, not when he can be out there on the ice himself. Ryan’s smile brightens. “I don’t even know you, and despite the chair, the first thing you asked me was if I skate.”

Covering his eyes with one hand, Dante groans. “That was a stupid question,” he tells Ryan. “I’m full of them. Get to know me, you’ll see.”

Ryan laughs. “Stupid or not, it gets you a free web site. I’m not guaranteeing the best…”

Dante peeks between his fingers at Ryan and smiles to see those eyes lit up with laughter. Such a cute boy, he thinks. “You strike me as the type who doesn’t settle for less.”

“Well, I’m just warning you now,” Ryan tells him. “It’ll only be my second web site, so I’m not promising miracles. You’ll be back here tomorrow?”

Mentally Dante pictures the jar that holds his skating fund—he thinks there’s enough in there for the next two days, at least. He’ll practice in the morning as soon as he gets to the rink, let Ryan snap a few photos for his page, his site, on the web, he can’t believe that. Then they’ll do this again, just sit like this and talk, or maybe they’ll go out and get something to eat, or Ryan will invite him back to his house, and whatever’s bloomed between them today will grow into…something more, that’s as far as Dante will let it go for now. He has the quarterfinals to worry about, and State championships. He doesn’t really need a boy to distract him from that. Still…

“I’ll be here,” he promises Ryan.

* * * *

The bus was a little off schedule, that’s Dante’s excuse when Bobby asks him why he’s fifteen minutes late for work. To be honest, though, he lingered at the rink for another half hour after he told Ryan he needed to go, and he would’ve stayed longer but Ryan’s mother showed up to make sure he was doing alright. “I really should go this time,” Dante said. As he left, he heard Ryan’s mother say he seemed to be a nice boy, and Ryan hushed her quickly. That brought a smile to Dante’s face that stayed in place for hours.

He stopped by the apartment complex to pay the rent, then ran up to his place for a quick lunch. Ramen, that’s about all he eats anymore, but the starch is a good source of energy and the noodles are so damn cheap, five for a dollar at the grocer’s down the street. He ate straight from the pot, leaning over the sink so he wouldn’t make a mess, and as he shoveled the last of the curled noodles into his mouth, it occurred to him that he didn’t know Ryan’s number. You’ll see him tomorrow, he told himself, but it would’ve been nice to at least ask for it. It might have shown he was interested in the boy, and not just because of the web site he planned to make, either. Maybe he could check the phone book, or call information—

But he was running late. Dropping the pot into the sink, he caught the noon bus down to Bobby’s and ducked behind the counter while his boss was with a customer. He didn’t say anything then—Bobby’s the type to let something fester before he mentions it, another reason Dante doesn’t think a relationship between them would work out. He’s blunt, painfully so, doesn’t dwell on anything. If it bothers him, he gets it out in the open and moves on. Bobby though, he broods over the littlest things, Dante hates that. Like now, he waits until the shop is dead, twenty minutes until they’re ready to close, before he leans on the counter and, watching Dante flip through the phone book, says, “Quarter past twelve isn’t noon on the dot.”

Dante glances at his boss and doesn’t respond. Bobby’s near thirty, too old for Dante’s tastes, but the guy likes to think he’s still hip. His word, hip, which dates him right there. He wears his dark hair kinked into dreadlocks, even though the color that tans his skin isn’t ethnic—he’s purebred Long Island, through and through, as Rastafarian as Santa Claus. But the dreads are clean and short, twists of hair that shoot up like sprouts from the top of his head and hang down to his eyebrows, they don’t go much farther than that. He wears more earrings than Dante can afford, five in one ear, three in the other, all solid gold. An eyebrow ring too, and he’s hinted that he’s pierced in places he’d like Dante to see, if he ever gets the urge. So far, he hasn’t.

He feels Bobby staring at him, trying to will him to look up, meet his gaze. He doesn’t. Bobby’s got quick eyes and thin lips twisted into a perpetual smirk, and a little tuft of stubble down the center of his chin that he’s trying to grow in. “Looks like you missed a spot,” Dante told him once. The glare he got in return was enough to keep him from commenting on it again.

“Dante,” Bobby says softly. He steps closer, Dante knows what’s coming. The shop’s well-lit, true, but this isn’t exactly the best part of town and no one’s passed by their windows in a good five, ten minutes. No one to see the hand that finds its way into the back pocket of Dante’s jeans. The fingers curve around his ass with a familiarity that bothers him. Sidling closer, Bobby brushes against his arm and murmurs, “We can make up that time, if you want.”

Dante steps easily out of his embrace. “And if I don’t?” He finds the page he wants, tal–tan, and starts to scan through the numbers listed. How many Talonovichs can there be in the city anyway? When Bobby’s arm starts to snake around his waist, Dante warns, “Don’t.”

The arm stops, Bobby’s hand resting high on Dante’s hip. “How’d the heat go today?” he asks, probably hoping to distract Dante long enough to get further than this. “You qualify?”

“You know I did,” Dante replies. He runs a finger down the listings, hoping Bobby clues into the fact that he’s busy here and drifts off to find something else to do.

No such luck. Leaning over his shoulder, Bobby glances at the phone book and breathes on Dante’s neck. Is that supposed to be sexy? Dante wonders. Is it supposed to turn him on? Because if so, it’s failing miserably. “What ’cha looking for?” Bobby wants to know.

Dante shrugs him away. “Someone’s number.” Before Bobby can ask, he adds, “Talonovich? He plays hockey for the college.”

“Played,” Bobby corrects. Folding his arms on the counter in front of him, he leans against Dante and frowns at the phone book. “Isn’t he crippled now? Paralyzed for life, or something?”

“His legs are messed up,” Dante tells him, “that’s all. It’s nothing permanent.”

“Why do you care?” Glancing up at Dante, that frown still worried into his face, Bobby says, “I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

Dante finds the name, Talonovich, and then an address in one of the classier suburbs. It’s the only listing so it has to be him. Memorizing the number, Dante closes the book and steps away from the counter, away from Bobby and the press of his hip against Dante’s own. “We’re not,” he admits, “not really. I just met him today.” He slips the phone book back into place beneath the register and remembers the way Ryan laughed when he asked if he could still get it up. That sure broke the ice between them. “He’s real nice.”

“He’s playing again?” Bobby asks, incredulous. “Already? He just got hurt what, a month ago? I heard he broke his back. Snapped his spine right in half.”

With a grin, Dante shakes his head. “You heard wrong. He’s just got a brace on one leg, that’s it.”

“He’s in a wheelchair,” Bobby points out.

“He’ll walk soon enough,” Dante tells him. “Jeez, Bob, he’s not an invalid. He just got hurt during practice, it happens to the best of us.” Dante himself has a scar on the inside of his left arm, almost seven inches long from end to end, stretching between his wrist and his elbow where he took a tumble with another skater during a heat last year. The other guy’s skate caught him as he slid on the ice, and the razor-sharp blade sliced into him, he didn’t even feel it until he saw the blood. He can place his whole hand over the slit, it reaches from the tip of his pinky finger to the tip of his thumb, and he was off the ice for weeks before the stitches finally came out. Stuff like that happens all the time—it’s one of the risks of sports. You fall, you get up again, you get back in the game. And Ryan’s going to do that, isn’t he? He wants back in the game.

“So you gonna call him now or what?” Bobby asks. Propping an elbow up on the counter and chin in hand, he stares at the middle of Dante’s chest with a look on his face that suggests he’s thinking thoughts about the two of them that Dante would rather not know about. “You like him?”

“He’s nice,” Dante says again. Later on tonight, after his mom comes home from the office, he’ll make her some soup and tell her he met a boy—he can almost see the disappointed set of her mouth, the tips of her fingers whitening as her grip tightens on the spoon, but she knows skating still comes first. “At least that can’t get you into much trouble,” she’ll mumble. “As long as you take care…” That’s as close as she’ll come to telling him to use protection. He’s eighteen, what else is she going to say?

But he’s not going to tell Bobby he likes Ryan, he’s not going to even hint at it, because as much as he’s not interested in the older man’s advances, he’d be stupid to lose this job. It’s his one and only sponsor, and he knows he won’t make better money anywhere else, Bobby pays him well to keep him here, gives him incentives like free blades when he needs them, the racing suit he wears, his helmet, that jacket. He even fronts Dante cash from time to time, when he’s between checks and his skating fund is running low. As long as there’s the hope that one day Dante might give in, take Bobby up on his offer to meet with him after work, then he’s fine. He can come in late every now and then, he can take off when he has to for his skating, he can work extra hours to pull in some more dough for the championships.

That’s going to set him back, if he makes the cut. When he makes it, he knows he’ll win, he’s the best skater in the whole club, any division, any gender. But the state competition is held in Atlantic City, which means group trip, hotel expenses, bus fare, dining, the whole works. Skaters who make it into the championships have to come up with a couple hundred dollars, Dante’s not sure on the exact amount just yet, but it has to cover two people, the skater and another traveler of their choice. He’s already thinking he can maybe talk to the skate club committee, see if he can just pay for himself. They want each skater to bring along a friend or family member, someone for support, but he knows his mother will be too busy to go. She’s always so busy with work—she’s never even seen him skate.

“Nice,” Bobby says, bringing Dante’s mind back to the present. Five minutes until closing now, they should start cleaning up the shop. Grabbing a broom propped up against the counter, Dante starts to sweep the floor behind the register. He feels Bobby’s gaze on his arms and shoulders and he’s glad he wore long sleeves, he hates to feel like eye candy when he’s trying to work. “You think he’s nice?”

“Yeah.” Dante wonders how he can change the subject, but nothing comes to mind.

Bobby steps around Dante and for a moment he thinks the guy’s going to touch him again, just ease an arm around his waist and press against him, he’s done it before. But not this time—he rings out the register, starts to count the till, and there’s an angry air about him that makes Dante think he’s mad at him. Because of Ryan, how silly. He just met the boy, and it’s not like Bobby has much of a chance anyway…“So you gonna call him?” Bobby asks again.

Dante shrugs—he hasn’t really given it much thought. “I doubt it,” he says. “I’ll see him again tomorrow anyway.”

Icy silence. Dante suppresses a smile, he can almost feel the ire radiating from his boss in waves, as cold as the air in the rink when the refrigeration unit is going full blast. With a dramatic sigh, Dante says, “Don’t be pissy, Bobby. He’s making me a web site, okay? That’s it.”

“A web site?” Bobby asks. The way he says the word, Dante wonders if he’s ever even heard it before. “I didn’t know you wanted one. My sister can do it—”

Dante laughs. “I don’t think so, Bobby.”

“Why not?” Bobby wants to know. Dante just gives him a sardonic look over his shoulder and continues to sweep. He’s not even going to answer that.

Marnie Trevor made the Later Skater site, over three years ago now and it’s not all that great. She has flashing graphics, Welcome! across the top of the main page in sparkly text and graphics she swiped from all of the skating sites she could find. It’s not a very creative page, to be honest, and Dante wants something a little more professional for his own site. Something like what they have for the Olympics, maybe, or one of the major league hockey teams. Plus, Marnie just turned fourteen—every page she makes has to be linked with the phrase Another Marnie Marvel to her own web site, which is pink and flowery and full of cutesy little anime girls with wings. Not to mention the fact that she has a crush on Dante, almost as bad as her brother’s, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to spend any amount of time over at the Trevor place, not if he can help it. It’s hard enough eluding Bobby most days, but Marnie too? No thanks.

“Why not?” Bobby asks again.

“Just no,” Dante tells him.

“She’d do it for free,” Bobby says, as if that’s added incentive.

“Ryan’s doing mine for free, too.” Dante sweeps around the counter, away from the register and the threat of Bobby’s hands straying to his ass. “He says he has the time—”

Bobby snorts. “Not doing much else now, is he?”

Shut up, Dante thinks, but this is his boss, he’s not going to say that. Instead he ignores him, concentrates on the broom across the floor and Ryan’s smile, his freckles, his thick, reddish-blonde eyelashes and the fact that he’s going to see him again tomorrow.