Ink and Ice, Erin McRae [primary phonics .txt] 📗

With that, she hung up.

Zack pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at it. Well, that was all sorts of data points. About Aaron. About Katie. About, by extension, Brendan. He half-sighed and half-laughed. What a damn mess.

“Well, respect to you, Katie,” he muttered at his phone.

And then he called Matt. It was after six, his shift was over by now, and Zack desperately needed advice.

Matt answered, sounding as cheery as ever. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I have a problem,” Zack said. He wandered out of his new kitchen into his new living room, which was empty except for a futon and a folding lawn chair. He dropped down onto the futon.

Matt’s tone shifted instantly to one of concern. “What’s going on?”

Zack did his best to explain. The things that had led up to this moment, at least, Matt already knew. “Katie wants me to go to Salt Lake to help get Aaron’s head screwed on straight but I am the one who unscrewed it in the first place, and I am absolutely sure he has no idea Katie called me.”

“Okay,” Matt said slowly. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know!”

“What do you want to do?”

Rewind time and not put in that damn paragraph about the island. Or the picture. But that wasn’t an option. “What I want doesn’t matter. What matters here is what Aaron wants, and making sure I don’t intrude where he doesn’t want me.” Saying that out loud helped. How on earth could he even be considering taking such a step? And yet, he was.

“You think he doesn’t want you there, then?”

“Given that the last time we spoke he was shouting at me, I do think that, yes. If there’s time or space to start making what I did right, it is not during the latest most important competition of his career.”

“So don’t go,” Matt said simply.

Zack felt his heart lurch in disappointment. He knew Matt was right, but that hadn’t been what he wanted his friend to say.

“So you do want to go,” Matt said, too knowingly, when Zack didn’t say anything.

“What I want doesn’t matter,” Zack said firmly.

“Okay. Yes. In this instance, you’re right,” Matt said. “He’s a big boy who gets to make his own decisions. And based on what I know of her, I am also sure Katie didn’t tell Aaron she was calling you.”

Zack dropped his forehead into his free hand. “If I show up there without warning he’s going to murder me. Why couldn’t Katie just tell me to call him?”

“Because she’s his coach, and that’s not what she thinks he needs. Okay. Zack. I need you to listen to me.”

“Okay?” Zack asked warily. His head and his heart were a mess. He honestly didn’t know what to do. But he could listen to his friend.

“The stakes for Aaron here are like, massive, right?”

Zack nodded, even though Matt couldn’t see him. “The most massive,” he said.

“Do you trust Katie to have his best interests at heart?”

“Absolutely.” There was no question of that.

“Do you trust Katie to have the knowledge to accurately assess what Aaron’s best interests are?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” I know more details of the mess you two are in with each other than any of us want. But just because Aaron liked being tied up didn’t mean he had a subby bone in his body. Zack was entirely sure he didn’t. And even if he did, Zack still didn’t have the right to make decisions for him.

Matt continued. “If you go, will you make things worse?”

Zack thought about that one. “Probably not. Aaron might hate me forever but that’s kind of already what we’re dealing with.”

“If you go, will it help?”

“Katie thinks so.”

“Then trust Katie. Because yeah this is fucked up, but so’s figure skating. If he didn’t need you there, she wouldn’t have asked.”

It was a gamble. A wild, long-shot gamble both for Aaron’s Olympic dreams and their relationship. Which probably wasn’t going to come through this intact. But if Zack could save his dream, he had to at least try.

“How far is it from here to Salt Lake City?” he asked, not expecting Matt to have an answer. But he did.

“Nineteen hours by car. I just googled.”

“How long by plane?” Zack asked.

“You hate flying.”

“I can’t drive nineteen hours alone and get there alive.”

“Which is why I,” Matt said grandly. “Am coming with you.”

“THIS,” MATT SAID AS they pulled out from a gas station where they’d stocked up on extremely unhealthy snacks that would probably appall real athletes, or at least their nutritionists. “Is a nearly heterosexual level of disaster you are engaged in.”

“Uhhhh, thanks?” Zack said, having no real idea how to interpret that. It was his turn to drive, and his focus was marginally occupied by figuring out how to turn on the windshield wipers in Matt’s truck. Their stuff, including Zack’s camera bag, were stashed behind their seats.

“It’s like a romantic comedy,” Matt said. “Filled with things you shouldn’t actually do in real life but work in the movies. Because I used to try to do things like the dudes in romcoms, and girls super told me to stop doing that.”

“You know the gays have romantic comedies too, right?” Zack asked.

“Yes. But are they this ridiculous? Really?”

It was, Zack thought, a nearly fair philosophical question. And to the extent it wasn’t, it was perfect for a useless road trip debate.

“OKAY,” MATT SAID AS they approached the Wyoming state line and the clock approached midnight. “We’re going to stop for the night, right? Because I am all for true love and shit but not for one of us falling asleep at the wheel.”

Zack decided not to argue. Death was, after all, bad. “Will we still be able to get there in time?”

“When’s his thing?”

“Five-thirty p.m. tomorrow,” Zack said.

“Which time zone?” Matt asked.

“Which—fuck!” Zack fumbled for his phone. “Uh. Mountain Time. Which apparently we crossed into like an hour ago.”

“Okay. So it’s midnight now, we have...” Matt tapped his fingers on