Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm now apparently making them ice skate.

Anyagal is kindly prereading for me. Thank you, my friend!

Rhythm & Blues

"Davai, davai!" Katya bellows, clapping and stomping her little red foot. "Otlichno, Belka!"

Sweat trickles down my temples. Cool rink air saws in and out of my lungs, burning my chest. Nonetheless, I gulp the rare praise from my coach and race down the ice, executing the intricate, lightning-quick series of tango steps that Alice just added to my rhythm dance.

And then I do it again and again, until the whole routine becomes second nature, and I miss absolutely nothing.

"This is more like it!" Katya says, tugging my ponytail when I glide to a stop beside her.

"What?" Bent at the waist, I try to catch my breath. "Me dying?"

Giving my ponytail another pull, Katya laughs and laughs because along with her bizarre lack of boundaries, her sense of humor is equally skewed.

"No, this skating. This is Bella I know. This is Bella who wins," she says, wildly gesturing at me, then the rink. Suspicious ice-blue eyes narrow in on my face, and her arms cross her chest. "What happened to you?"

I feign ignorance and, still folded in half, glance up at her. "What are you talking about? Why does it have to be something?"

"Pfft! You were moping around like wet dishrag." Lips turned down into a ridiculously exaggerated pout, Katya hunches over and drags her toes across the ice. She looks like Quasimodo… but blonde and with lipstick and cheekbones that could probably cut glass. "Wah-wah-wah-blya-blya-blya!" I snort as she abruptly pops up and twirls with a beauty queen's flourish. "And now… now, you are focused. Now, you skate-skate."

"Is that so?" I ask, laughing, even as unease curls in the pit of my stomach.

"What changed with you?" She raps me on the back of my skull as she makes her way over to the boards, pointing for me to stay put. "Did you fall and finally break that hard head on ice?"

"Nothing's changed," I tell her, rolling my eyes, lying even though I suck at it. "No concussions either."

Katya harrumphs but, for whatever her reasons, she doesn't press. Instead, she jabs a bright red lacquered nail at me and has me run through it all again.

Thirty minutes later, my muscles start screaming. Numbness creeps into my toes, and when I give in and throw her a pleading smile, she finally relents and grants me mercy.

"Khvatit! That's enough!" Katya eyes me with clinical detachment, weighing muscle tone against posture, and clucks her tongue. "Skip Pilates tonight. You need to ice down instead." When I just pant and nod, she gifts me a vicious grin, spins on her heel to target Alice, and yells over her shoulder. "We will do everything again tomorrow. And if you are late, you will be sorry."

Cursing under my breath, I skate over to the boards to grab some water. Halfway there, I finally notice the stationary figure in the black hoodie sitting three rows up, and I slow as he rises and descends the steps to meet me.

"Hey." Edward swipes my water bottle off the wall and hands it over.

As I repeat his greeting from the other day, an involuntary grin tugs at my lips. "Hey, yourself."

Edward's eyes glitter with amusement, but he doesn't say a word. Instead, he just stares out across the ice while I chug my water. When I'm done and I wipe the sweat off my face with my sleeve, he reaches behind him, grabs my jacket off the bleachers, and tosses it over with a pointed look that makes me laugh.

"Thanks, Mom," I say, yet even as I say it, a pang of longing hits me square in the chest. I try to remember the last time someone took care of me after practice, and I can't.

"Whatever." Edward's eyes roll, and then he motions to the ice. "That's the new elements your choreographer added?"

"Yeah." My stomach gives an involuntary flip. "Alice loves it, but Katya's worried the program's too busy. What do you think?"

"What do I think?" His forehead creases. "I think you looked amazing."

Air catches in my throat. "I– I didn't mean… I just meant the program."

"I know." Edward looks at me again, and like the other night when he was watching me skate, it feels like something intimate and private. "And I meant what I said."

I have no idea what to do with that, so I duck my head and focus on shoving my arms into my jacket. I'm pretty sure he knows he's tipped my equilibrium, too, because he just keeps watching me, and when I peek over, a lop-sided smile steals across his lips.

A beat later, after I'm all zipped up, his hands clasp, and as he leans across the boards, he squints up at the banners swinging from the rafters. The playful amusement disappears, and when he speaks again, his tone turns unexpectedly serious. "Is everything okay?"

I follow his gaze and flinch when I realize he's staring at my name on the banner from Jake's and my last US title. "What? Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

Edward searches my face and licks his lips, like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. "I missed seeing you the last couple of nights."

My heart thumps a disjointed rhythm, and sweat slicks my palms. "I was… really tired after ballroom last night, and I just crashed."

It's such a lie.

But then again, I think that's a more acceptable excuse than my feelings were irrationally hurt by him confirming what I already suspected and I was too chickenshit to show up.

Edward's jawline tenses, and his thumb rubs the calligraphed tattoo on the back of the opposite knuckle. "I get it. I understand."

I hate the disappointment in his voice almost as much as I hate the way my chest twists and swells with foolish hope. It's a confusing sensation, but my mental calculus says that having him as a friend–or whatever the hell we are–is a lot better than nothing. I hesitate, then blurt. "I'll probably be there tonight."

He stills, then motions to my scowling coach across the rink. I can hear her bickering with Alice even from here. "Thought Katya told you to ice down."

"She did." I shrug. "But I don't really feel like freezing my ass off tonight."

"Your funeral." As he straightens off the boards, Edward shoots me a devilish grin. Before I know what he's doing, he reaches over and tucks a damp strand of hair behind my ear. When he pulls away, his fingertips brush my cheek, lingering a heartbeat too long, and I swear I can feel that touch down to the bone. "I guess I'll see you later."

"I guess so."

Tonight, Edward beats me back to the arena, but not by much. He's still pulling on his skates when I push through the doors.

"At least I'm not the only one who's paranoid," I say, laughing at the complicated pattern he knots into his laces.

Edward flashes me a row of teeth, then pulls one leg of his joggers up past his knee. A thin iridescent scar runs across his upper calf, just above a wicked-looking skull. "Happened during a warm-up. Had to go to medical for stitches right before we skated."

I don't ask if it was his blade or hers.

"Ouch."

"Ouch?" he says, mimicking my crinkled nose. "That's not the phrase I used at the time."

Another giggle spills out before I can stop it, but I just shake my head at him and yank on my skates. He waits at the gate for me to lace up, then swings it open while looking over my head with straight-lipped faux politeness. "After you."

Grinning, I hop onto the ice and flip around to back skate toward the center. After today's training session, my muscles still feel like mush, but having the ice to ourselves is worth it, and a zingy rush of exhilaration floods my limbs, banishing my earlier fatigue.

We skate a few laps in companionable silence, just loosening up and letting the blood flow. For fun, I throw in some blues steps from an old routine–just some edging, swing-rolls, and one-footed turns. Edward copies my footwork with surprising ease and precision. I look over, only to find him staring down at my skates, brow furrowed in concentration and nodding in time to the beats.

"Thinking of adding some Midnight Blues to your program, too?"

His head pops up, and his lips curve. "It's just different than how I'm used to skating. What you do is more… I don't know, rhythmic… more artistic."

"You mean like… dancing?" I can't help it and snicker.

"Yeah, yeah." He makes an ugly face, but then abruptly lunges, taking a swipe at me as I skate by. He misses, and before he can swipe again, I pour on the speed and race across the rink.

Laughing, Edward follows, chasing me, and my God, he's fast. I weave back and forth, flipping around and spinning, dodging him with every bit of nimbleness I possess.

He catches me on lap three. Without warning, one hand lands on my hip. His other grabs my right as his head ducks beneath my outstretched arm to drape it across his shoulders.

He lifts me off the ice like I'm nothing, at full speed, cantilevering me out to his side as he goes into a long arc around the top of the rink.

This is a lift I know.

And my body responds instantly, simultaneously relaxing and tensing until my toes point and I'm perfectly vertical. Trusting him not to wipe out, I grin at him and nod. Without a word, Edward shoots me an impish little smile in return, adjusts his grip from my hip to my inner thigh, and lifts me higher and higher. And as he goes into the spin, I raise my chin and present to our invisible audience and make-believe judges with all the grace of the champion I was–and will be again.

We're both laughing by the end, and when he juggles me across his shoulders and flips me over before letting me back down to the ice, every cell in my body sings with the utter rightness of it.

"Shall we practice your new singles waltz, good sir?" I ask, breathless, halfway joking.

He gives me another smile, this one a little more serious, a little less playful. "Let's see if I can keep up this time."

Confusion rattles me as he repositions in front of me instead of beside me. I still, and my heart hammers. "Edward… what are we doing?"

Unfazed, he skates forward until there's maybe a foot between us and offers me his hand. When I hesitate, he just shrugs. "Come on. We're just messing around… just letting off a little steam."

Sparks race across my skin as he takes me into a polite yet intimately close waltz hold. Five finger-sized points of heat burn into my back. I glance down at the curving lines of ink decorating his forearms, so incongruent with both the discipline and the dance that I barely register him tapping his phone and sliding it back into his pocket. Familiar strains filter down from the overhead speakers.

"I thought you didn't like this song?" My cheeks ache.

One brow climbs high, disappearing beneath messy bedhead hair. "I said the lyrics were cracked, and I stand by that assessment. But you were right. The melody is… nice."

"Nice?" I laugh as we go into the first walkaround three, perfectly in-sync and with the kind of symmetrical lines that would make Katya swoon. "And slow."

"Fine," he says, lifting our hands to twirl me under. "And it's slow."

We skip the twizzles and make it all the way to the Cascade and Dip before we falter. It's not a bad dance at all–especially for a pairs-turn-singles skater and especially for just messing around–and again, my body feels like a livewire. For four minutes and ten seconds, I'm painfully aware of every step we take, every spin and every turn, every point where our bodies touch, and every time his eyes scan my face only to fall and focus in on my mouth.

As we dance our way back and forth across the rink, it feels like I've fallen under a spell, a misty blur of time and motion, set to a slow, sweetly lulling 6/8 beat and the muted scratch of metal on ice.

.

.

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Notes:

Midnight Blues is a pattern skate from back when ice dance competitions also required a compulsory dance, which was a routine with standardized steps and patterns that all competing couples had to skate.

Thank you all for reading. I'd love to hear from you.