There was nowhere to go. And worse, I didn’twantto go anywhere. Heath moved toward me, hands gripping the bars, hips flush against mine, breath on my mouth, and it felt more natural than anything I’d ever done with Garrett Lin.
My body remembered everything I’d tried so hard to forget.
The elevator stopped. We didn’t move. There was no one waiting. No one to see us pressed together through the lattice of the gate.
Our breathing started to sync, his inhales quickening to catch up with mine the way they used to before we took the ice together. His fingertips brushed the shell of my ear, not taming wayward strands into place, but winding my hair around his knuckle, turning it wilder.
I could have reached for the control panel, pressed the number for my floor again. I could have taken him into my room, into my bed, and pretended, for a few hours at least, that the past three and a half years were nothing but a bad dream.
That was what he wanted. For me to forget myself. For me to forget everything I’d worked for.
So I pushed him away. I grappled with the gate, snapping a nail in my rush to get it open.
Heath said my name. Like a prayer, like a promise. Like he used to say it.
Like he still loved me after all.
I gripped the gate so tight the metal rattled. No. I wouldnotturnaround. This was another act. A part of the show. And I refused to stay for an encore.
I stumbled out of the elevator, running toward the lobby doors and out into the night air. At the party, I paused only long enough to seize a bottle of champagne from the maw of a half-melted ice sculpture shaped like some kind of sea creature. Then I kept running until my heels sunk into sand.
The hotel was on the west side of the island, facing open ocean rather than the shining lights of downtown San Diego. In the daylight, it had been beautiful, a never-ending sweep of cobalt reflecting the clear winter sky.
Now all I could see was darkness. The moon was barely a sliver in the sky, giving off only enough light to make out the jagged crest of the breakwater at the end of the beach. I left my shoes next to an Adirondack chair and wandered toward the sound of the waves, clutching the champagne bottle by the neck. When cold water surged over my feet, soaking the hem of my dress, I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was back home by the lake.
It didn’t work. The sand was too smooth, the wind too warm. The spray tasted of salt.
I opened my eyes. My vision had adjusted now, well enough to see the waves crashing against the breakwater.
Well enough too that I could no longer miss the two figures intertwined in the cove.
Garrett. And Ellis Dean.
Kirk Lockwood:Figure skating has this reputation as a super gay sport.
Ellis Dean:So many sports are gayer than figure skating.
Kirk Lockwood:The truth is, it’s heteronormative as hell.
Ellis Dean:Two-man luge, American football, beach volleyball. Fuckingwrestling,hello?
Kirk Lockwood:Back in my day, there was pressure to stay closeted—officially, at least. It was a verydo what you want in private as long as you don’t talk about it in publicatmosphere. Fortunately, the sport has become much more open and accepting.
Ellis Dean:Even now, plenty of male skaters—more than you might think, I could name names if I weren’t such agentleman—get away with hiding in the closet. That wasn’t an option for me. I might as well have been wearing a big-ass neon rainbow sign.
Garrett Lin:My mother never told me to hide my sexuality. She never mentioned it at all. I’m not even sure whether or not she knew I was gay.
Kirk Lockwood:Sheila knew about Garrett, of course. A mother always knows.
Garrett Lin:I always got this…sense. That I had to carry myself a certain way. Be a certain type of man, on the ice and off. I wanted to be perfect.
Ellis Dean:TheshitI had to put up with, being out and proud back then. I don’t want to say Garrett Lin was a coward. But yeah, if he’d come out—with his status in the sport, and all that straight-passing hot guy privilege? It would’ve made things a hell of a lot easier.
Garrett Lin:If I could go back, I’d do things differently. But I wasn’t being truthful with myself at that age, so how could I tell other people the truth?
Ellis Dean:I’m glad the sport is catching up with the times. Then again, I wouldn’t be where I am today without the pathetic self-loathing ofmy elders. It’s like I always say: suck a man’s dick, and he’ll be satisfied for a night. Let him suckyourdick in a hotel suite at the World Championships of Figure Skating? Then you’ll have blackmail material to last a lifetime.
Garrett Lin:I think a part of me wanted to be found out, forced to face who I really was. Honestly, I’m surprised it took so long.
