"Stay on your end."
"Yes, sir." He gave me a lazy salute that shouldn't have been charming.
It was, though. That was the problem.
I grabbed my bag and headed for the rink before my face could do something stupid.
The ice was fresh, Zamboni marks still visible under the lights. I stepped on first and pushed into a few warm-up laps. Behind me, the heavier sound of hockey skates cut across the ice.
I glanced back.
Even hungover and half-dead, there was something about the way he moved. His body knew what to do when his brain was barely online.
I looked away and focused on my edges.
We skated in silence for a few minutes. Him on his end, me on mine. Same as yesterday. The arrangement that had worked until I'd started watching him instead of my feet.
"So, what's the plan?" His voice carried across the ice. "You do your spinny jumps, I do my sad little rehab laps, we pretend we're strangers?"
"That was the plan, yes."
"Boring." He skated toward the center line and stopped, hands on his hips. "What if we made it interesting?"
"Interesting how?"
"Race me."
I arched an eyebrow. "You're joking."
"Ten laps. Full speed. Loser buys coffee."
"You can barely stand upright."
"And yet." He spread his arms, that crooked grin back on his face. "I'm still gonna beat you."
"Ten laps," I said.
His grin got wider. "Try to keep up, quad guy."
We lined up at center ice, shoulder to shoulder. He was shorter than me by a good six inches, which meant his center of gravity was lower. The bad hip would slow him on corners. The hangover would catch up by lap five.
I gave him three laps before he started flagging.
"On three," he said. "One. Two—"
He took off on two, the cheater, and I was half a second behind before my legs caught up.
He was fast. Even injured, even wrecked, he exploded off the line like he'd been shot out of a cannon, eating up the ice in short, powerful strides.
I let him have the first straightaway. Let him think he'd already won.
Then we hit the corner.
Figure skating was about edges. Understanding that the ice wasn’t flat, that every blade had two sides. Hockey players took corners wide, scrubbing speed to stay in control. I took the corner tight, leaned into my edge until my hip nearly touched the ice, and came out three feet ahead.
He swore behind me.
Good.