“I meant in competition. What’s it been, since 2002 Nationals?”
He gave me a pitying smile. “Oh, little Zara. This isn’t a real competition. You realize this, yes? This is just a TV show we do for cash and notoriety. It is like an endorsement deal. You sell yourself for money, and try not to feel dirty about it afterward.” He gave me a superior look down his long eagle-nose. “But I guess you would not know about that, would you?”
Oh, so that was what this conversation was about. Time to psych out the competition? Fine then. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.” I gave him a polite smile. “So how are those hemorrhoid ads working out for you?”
Serge actually advertised a muscle cream over in Europe, but as jokes went, it was close enough to offend. He glared at me. “I do not advertise for hemorrhoids.”
“No? I thought I heard that. Oh, that’s right.” I snapped my fingers. “I heard that you were working hard on getting the herpes market cornered. My bad.” I leaned in. “I’d tell you that you might wanna warn Annamarie about that, but it looks like she’s currently sinking her hooks into my partner. Sorry.”
He got up from his seat. “You are still an unpleasant little girl, I see. I came over to give you some friendly advice, and you have been nothing but rude.”
I kept my smile pinned to my face. “Friendly advice, huh? What about?”
Serge gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Half the points come from scoring, little one. Half comes from the audience. If you want to win this? You need them both. But I see you don’t care about winning.”
I digested this warning-slash-advice. He couldn’t influence the audience, of course, so he had to be warning me about the judging panel. So they were crooked? Great. Figure skating had a long history of ‘slanted’ judging panels, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, but I did feel a twinge of doubt.
I glanced over at my partner as Serge stalked away. Ty was laughing it up with Annamarie and her supermodel buddies, and I noticed Annamarie had a long, too-tan hand on his back, an almost possessive gesture. And he sure wasn’t fighting her off.
Figured.
~~ * ~~
“No,” Ty said. “Absolutely fucking not.”
I bit my lip, glancing around nervously at the stage hands rushing around. People were everywhere, even crawling around in the dressing rooms, and so were the cameramen. No place was off limits, and that included last minute costume, ahem, alterations.
Ty threw down his shirt and looked at me with disgust. “What did I tell her all week?”
“No sequins,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek and trying not to laugh.
“And what is this freaking…monstrosity covered with?” He gestured at the garish shirt that was now wadded into a ball.
I picked it up and studied it. It was a virtual match to my own, which meant it was incredibly hideous. It was a cowboy outfit…sort of. To go with our “Boot Scootin’” theme. Sort of. Except it was neon. I was neon pink and he was chartreuse. And both were covered in yellow fringe going up the arms (which was bad enough) and purple sequins (which was even worse). To make matters worse, I had bright white chaps and he had purple ones. Again, sequined and covered in fringe. His cowboy hat was bright green, and we had fake ‘boots’ that went over our skates and matched our chaps.
It was pretty much a costuming nightmare. No wonder they hadn’t wanted to show us until the last minute.
Ty shook his head at me. “I’ll wear the goddamn ugly hat. I’ll wear the fucking fringey-ass pants, since I have to, but I refuse to wear sequins. Absolutely and completely refuse. NO fucking way.”
I studied his clothing. It really was an odd choice for a guy as masculine as Ty. Maybe for a traditional figure skater with no sense of taste? But not Ty Randall, big, beefy, incredibly sexy MMA fighter. They didn’t even show off his tight ass.
I shook my head at myself. Where on earth had those thoughts come from?
“I’m sorry, Zara,” Ty said to me. He took my hands in his and gave me an earnest look. “I tried really fucking hard these last two weeks. I did. I understand how badly you want this. But a man’s got to draw a line somewhere, and this is my line. If they have to scratch us from the competition, I’ll take the scratch and work on another way to fix my PR.”
“It’s not that bad,” I told him, giving his hands a squeeze.
“I look like I belong in a gay pride parade.”
Okay, he kind of did. I studied his costume and then sighed. We could either spend the next hour warming up for the show, or I could try to fix his costume. Looking into Ty’s angry gaze, it was clear what my choice was. I pulled up one of the folding chairs and got out my costume alteration kit. “Let me see what I can do.”
Forty-five minutes later, Ty no longer looked like a parade float. We’d scrapped the shirt entirely, as well as the hat, and he’d decided to go bare-chested at my suggestion. After all, he had a gorgeous chest. Seemed a shame not to put that to good use. I couldn’t do anything about his sequined boot-covers, so we ditched them. Instead, I focused on de-fringe-ing his pants and removing the strips of sequins that had been badly sewn down the seam of each leg. When I was done, he had garish neon pants, but now they just looked like they matched mine.
“Do you want a hot pink bandanna?” I asked as he pulled on his pants again. “It could complete the outfit.”
He scowled at me. “Do I look like I want a hot pink bandanna?”
I giggled. Guess not. “Does this mean we can still go on?”
“I guess so,” he said, and sighed heavily. “The guys are going to give me such shit for this.”
~~ * ~~
The music went up, and the show began. I could hear the audience cheering from the Crash Room—horribly named, I thought—in the back where teams sat and waited for their turn to go out on the ice. The judges were introduced, and then a montage of clips from the past two weeks began, showcasing moments from our introductions to trainings.
I could hear a swell of gasps come up from the audience and heard my own voice, loud and tinny, over the speakers, explaining how I’d tripped and fallen. Oh no. They were showing the video of my bruised and swollen face.
At my side, Ty clenched my hand and rubbed his chin, clearly nervous about how it would go over. But then they cut away to another team, and laughter filled the studio a moment later as Michael Michaels had a montage of clips of him falling on his ass repeatedly.
No big drama about my nose, then. Good. I relaxed, too, and touched the bridge of it. It had healed up nicely a week ago, and you couldn’t even tell that it had ever grown to the size of a potato.
The makeup artists had taken their time with me before the show, making sure that I looked like the others…which meant lots of make-up in bright colors. I wasn’t surprised. Skaters were used to heavy eye-makeup, blush, and lipstick so you didn’t look featureless and washed out on the ice. Of course, I was also used to my hair being pulled into an ultra-tight bun so it wouldn’t get in my face, and they’d insisted on braiding it into two cutesy tails over my ears. Ugh. It went with my horrible psychedelic cowgirl costume, I supposed.
I eyed the costumes of the other contestants. Most of them wore a more casual look—jeans and plaid for the guys, denim dresses for the girls, and some sort of cowboy hat or fringe motif. We were the only ones in garish colors, and judging from the sympathetic looks Emma was sending my way, we looked pitiful. Oh well.
We were the first up after the montage, and I tried not to be nervous. Well, tried and failed. I’ve always had a bit of nerves before a performance, and this was no different. Except the difference here was that in Nationals or at the Olympics, I’d be given time on the ice to warm up and prep. On the show, we were expected to take care of that beforehand and just stroll out onto the ice, ready to skate as soon as the music started.
I didn’t like that, but no one asked me. So I simply leaned over and touched my talismans taped to the bottom of my skate with my free hand, trying to increase m
y good juju.
“Okay, first team, you’re up. Montage ends in sixty seconds,” one of the production team told us, then pressed a hand to the headset over his ear. He pointed to the door at the far end of the Crash Room. Another assistant opened it and beckoned for us to come through.
In a daze, I stood. Ty grabbed my hand again and pulled me forward, and the butterflies in my stomach turned into pterodactyls. I stumbled after him, my legs feeling wooden. We were about to be on TV. National TV. Live TV. And Ty still didn’t have the routine down pat. How could he? He wasn’t a skater, and we’d only had two weeks to learn it. I didn’t blame him. It was the show. The entire set-up was stupid. I was stupid for even agreeing to be on it. He’d look terrible and then, thanks to our ugly costumes, we’d be the laughing-stock of the figure skating world. And, oh God—
“Breathe, Zara,” Ty told me as we moved into place. A cameraman was there in our faces, filming us as we waited, and I could hear the host talking to the audience, explaining the rules. There was a bit of chatter from the judges’ panel, and then more from the host. The audience began to clap again, and my panic grew once more.
“Okay, in thirty seconds, you guys are going to step right out onto the ice, wave to the audience, and then get into position,” the assistant told us. “Take off your blade guards now so you can be ready.” She held her hand out.
I did so, obediently—so did Ty. As we did, I looked at the big red curtain that would pull back in mere seconds, cuing us to step onto the ice. There was a problem. I looked at the assistant. “I need to kiss the ice first.”
“What?” She shook her head, taking my skate guards and tucking them under her arm. “Music’s starting. Get ready to go out.”
“I can’t go out onto the ice unless I kiss it first,” I said, and my voice raised to a hysterical note that was quickly drowned by the clapping of the audience. “It’s bad luck. I can’t do that! It’s bad enough that we’re going first!”
“Zara,” Ty said calmly, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I babbled, turning towards him with a panicked look. I tried to move forward to the curtains. I didn’t care how stupid it’d look; if they’d let me just stick my head out and kiss the ice really fast, I’d be fine. My nerves would disappear because I’d have luck on my side. It didn’t matter how torn up or dirty the ice was—I always kissed it. Always. “I have to do this, Ty. I have to. I can’t—”
“Listen, Zara,” Ty said, grabbing my hands before I charged through the curtains in my panic. “Listen,” he said soothingly. “They’re not going to let you kiss the ice—”
“First, no warm up, and now I can’t kiss the ice?” I asked hysterically. Tears were pooling in my eyes. I was going to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe. “I can’t—”
“I know,” he said, and his voice was calm. He squeezed my hands. “It’s okay. I understand. Do you know what I do when I’m about to go out into a fight? For good luck?”
“Time to go out,” the assistant said, urgency in her voice.
We ignored her. My gaze was locked on Ty’s face. I needed reassurance, and I needed it badly.
He let go of my hands. “My coach and I have a secret handshake,” he told me in a calm voice. He grabbed my hand, made a fist, fist-bumped me, and then grabbed my fingers and made a loop. Then he looped his own through it. He did three or four more hand motions before he was satisfied. “There. Lucky handshake. It’ll counteract the bad juju, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Go out,” the assistant hissed, giving us a little shove. “We’re live, damn it!”
Ty winked at me, grabbed my hand, and then surged forward through the curtains. I had no choice but to follow.
After being backstage in the dark prep-room behind the curtains, gliding out onto the brightly-lit ice was blinding. The audience rose up into a wild cheer, and both Ty and I raised our free hands to wave at the crowd, moving to the center of the ice, our hands locked.
Ty stopped, digging his toe-pick into the ice, and then he pulled me close. We got into our starting pose, froze in place, and waited. As I stared at him, my hand clasped in his, I realized his palms were sweating, and he was more nervous than he’d let on. Strangely enough, now that we were on the ice, all my nerves had gone away.
So, I winked at him to let him know everything would be okay.
The music began, assaulting us with the thick guitar twang of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” We jumped into the dance, our hands tightly clasped, and began to perform to the music. I wore my brightest smile, trying to make this seem like fun, since the look on Ty’s face was one of pure concentration. He was supposed to smile at me and look at ease; we’d practiced that multiple times. But it seemed he couldn’t smile and do footwork at the same time, so I settled for footwork.
The chorus swelled, and we began the first footwork sequence, our skates moving fast and in-sync on the ice. Perfect! I knew we’d nailed it when I’d heard the audience clapping, and we continued on through the song.
Somewhere in the second half, Ty began to slow down. Perhaps it was too much to concentrate on, or maybe his nerves were getting to him, but I tried to cover for it as best as possible, making my moves a little more sweeping to disguise the fact that he wasn’t quite able to keep up with the song. By the time the chorus moved through a second time, though, we were a full step behind. Nothing to do but carry on and persevere.
We only had a minute and a half to perform, so the song was truncated. I wanted to wince when the music ended before our dancing did. We flung our hands out into our finale pose, ignoring the fact that we were a step or two off, and the audience burst into applause.
We’d survived the first skate. I sucked in a breath and looked over at Ty, grinning.
He yanked me forward and pulled me into a hug, plastering my smaller form against his big, naked chest. The audience cheered even more, and we hugged even more, and then we gave another wave to the crowd as the host skated over.
Maybe I hadn’t been paying attention to the show itself, but the host I recognized. Chip Brubaker, who hosted a ton of these types of shows, moved over to us, a little wobbly on his skates. He wore a tux, a pound of makeup, and a fake smile. “Ty and Zara,” he announced. “Our first skate of the evening. Give it up for them!”
We smiled and waved as the audience cheered again.
“Let’s give our judges a minute to tally their scores,” Chip said, and moved closer to us. “Ty, I notice you’re missing half of your costume.”
The host shoved a microphone towards Ty for him to answer.
After a moment’s hesitation, Ty leaned in and spoke. “I am.”
Chip took the microphone back, all goofy smiles. “Any particular reason for that?” Again, the microphone went right under Ty’s nose.
“Sequins,” Ty said immediately. “I’d rather be naked than wear sequins.”
The audience gave a startled laugh, and I could hear whistles from one section.
Chip chuckled, as if pleased with our answer. “All right then.” He turned to the cameras. “For those at home, just a reminder of how the scoring works. Fifty percent of the ice dancers’ score will be based on our judges’ criteria. They’ll be looking for artistic performance, originality, and technical expertise, and they’ll be scaling our dancers on a score of one to ten. The other fifty percent of the scoring will be based on your vote. If you like a couple and want to save them, vote. The phone number for voting for Zara and Ty will be on your screen.” He pointed at the air, and I guessed that was where the phone number would show up. “Your favorites need your vote. And with that, let’s go to our judges’ panel and see how Zara and Ty did!”
We turned, and the spotlight went to the first person in the judges’ panel. Penelope Marks, my old nemesis. When I’d walked off the ice at the Olympics? She’d gone on to medal despite having a totally inferior program. I hated her. She also got two of the endorsement deals that had been courting me until
that moment. To say that I wasn’t a fan was putting it mildly.
She looked gorgeous, if a little too tanned. Her limp blonde hair was cut in a jagged style, and she dripped with designer jewelry. She waved to the audience when they cheered, and then gave us a bright, pastel-pink smile, clasping her hands together. “So, Ty and Zara. First of all, I want to say that I appreciate how hard it is to come out here and perform.” She gave us a polite smile. “I know it’s tough, and ice skating is not for everyone. That being said, I do think you both need to work on your form and your footwork along with your artistry. I just wasn’t feeling it at all.” She held up a scorecard. “Sorry.”
She’d given us a two.
Bitch.
The audience gasped. A few courteous ‘boos’ echoed.
Penelope shrugged. “I just didn’t love it. Better luck next week.”
The spotlight moved to the next judge, Irina Brezhlova. She was a Czech coach from back in the day, and very famous. Her motherly smile beamed down on us. “I thought you both did very well for being the first team to come out onto the ice. I wasn’t a fan of the music, but I enjoyed your colorful costumes and the fun routine.” She held up her card. Six. Getting better, at least.
The audience clapped politely.
The third judge was Raul Pacheco, a male skater that I vaguely recognized from the decade before mine. He studied us for a minute. “Your timing was off, but I think you both have potential. I’d like to see what you bring to future performances.”
He unveiled another six.
“All right. That’s a total of fourteen points out of a possible thirty.” Chip patted me on the back since I was closest to him. “We’ll see how that stacks up against the rest of our contestants. Thank you again, Ty and Zara.”
We waved to the audience and then skated away, heading back to the Crash Room.
We were hosed.
Bad juju had totally nailed us.
~~ * ~~
The rest of the show went by in a blur. The others performed, but I barely noticed except that Michael Michaels completely fell on his ass at one point. They had come back to us for one more question, which Ty had glibly answered while I’d sat there, numb. My mind kept playing back the scores. Penelope Marks had given us a two. I seethed at that two. It was like she was deliberately trying to torpedo us. We hadn’t been great, but we hadn’t been that bad. The score had been totally unfair.