Mike sat on his bed in front of the open closet. The box with the skates rested on his knees. The boots smelled of leather, highlighting just how new this object was, how out of place.

Daya gave him an opening big enough to drive a truck through and he didn't take it. He could have told her about the decades-long competition between his parents and his own gastronomical excesses when she spoke up. Or afterwards... and he didn't. When she goes down the rabbit hole of the rare food sensitivities and medical conditions to help him, it would be on his own head. 

He sighed and replaced the sharpened skates in the closet. They looked so out of place next to the folded sweaters, the row of familiar shirts and slacks, alien even.

But he was the one who brought up the skating first. It was also him who let Daya talk him into accepting skates as a Christmas gift. 

And how could he refuse? Daya seemed less tractable since she came back from Toronto, as if an unfamiliar energy buoyed her into a different plane of existence. She always had a dancer's walk so light that he used to steal glances to check if she really walked like that all the time... but now she floated.

Her head floated too, as if she had left a bit of herself back in Ontario. She'd incline it, smiling dreamily, listening to an inaudible tune, miss what he was saying, apologize, ask him to repeat, then would drift away again, the popular fluff on the wind.

A shiver ran through him whenever he thought of it: was it all family business and would it let her go? It had been two days already since she had come back... at least physically.

Two whole days, oh my! Any woman should have forgotten her entire past by now in my intoxicating company. 

He scratched his ear... the only time Daya's attention didn't waver from him was when they went shopping for the skates and in the gym. Ironically, he wouldn't have minded less scrutiny at those locations, particularly in the gym.

Maybe it would have been better to say straight out, I want you to stay with me, instead of working out a rental agreement, but he was prepared to confess his love to the old Daya. The Daya who returned from Toronto was... intractable. And these were the times when quickly sparked passion was looked upon with derision. His acquaintances back at the university cited years of dating before moving in together like it was a work experience on a resume.

He did it in a reverse order: asked the lady to move in, then fell in love with her. Such romantic arrangements had plenty of historic precedents, normally in the absence of choice. Modernity made his feelings suspect and it wouldn't do at all. 

Hence, the quest for a reasonable rent amount that wouldn't ruin...what?

Everything, his thoughts whispered at him, ruin everything...

A light tap on the door interrupted his calculations. "Come in."

The object of his thoughts poked her head into the door, a pair of skates hanging around her neck. "I... ahem..." She blew a run away strand out of her eyes and started again. "Mike, sorry to bug you, but they are forecasting a Chinook for tomorrow. Let's go tonight before the ice melts."

"Ah, the motherland is blowing me a kiss, how nice." Through his first winter in Calgary, Mike came to appreciate the Chinooks, the warm coastal winds that made it over the Rockies from his native BC to Alberta. They thawed the city for a few days, melted the snow in the streets, inspired the more reckless citizens to wear shorts. And made an arch in the clouds over the horizon.

But the Chinooks were no friends for those interested in outdoor skating. "Give me a few minutes to get ready, Daya, and we'll go." 

He took the skates out of the closet again and sighed. An alien thing...

***

It was a little after 6 pm when Mike found parking downtown. If he was to compose a song about his love for Daya, parking would make a refrain for every verse.

In February and in Calgary, 6 pm meant full dark of a midwinter night. Chinook wind did not let out its mighty breath over the mountains yet, so the air was still. Snowflakes dotted the cones of light given off by the street lamps. Some settled on Daya's eyelashes to twinkle at him: S.O.S. Save Our Souls... He ignored the signals of the melting snowflakes, way too distracted by her eyes.

Just before they emerged on the Olympic Plaza from the mini-forest of the fir trees bordering it, a fluffy branch dumped its snow load on Daya's red hat, matching scarf draping her shoulders, and skates.

"Hold on a second, Red Riding Hood." He dutifully dusted her off. The noises coming from the skating rink should have drowned out her soft chuckles, but the public could have been playing the bagpipes, and he would still picked out every single note of Daya's laughter. Oh, god, I am lost...

Her face had never been closer to his. Some features, his imagination had filled in to compensate for his poor eyesight, were there. For example, there was a dimple on her cheek when she smiled. The two birthmarks, one under the corner of the left eye, another—at the chin, he had never guessed at.

Just as he filed the new discoveries in his memory, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him from the trees and into the floodlight. 

He dusted the snow away again, this time a stone bench for her to sit on and lace up the skates, but she forced him down with an authoritative hand on his shoulder. "You first."

It was much harder to put the skates on outdoors, with his fingers numbed by the cold, perched uncomfortably on a narrow bench, and not knowing where to put his foot between taking it out of the boot and inserting it into the skate. He did not want Daya to hold up the skates for him like she did in the store, even if he dragged snow inside and it melted under the sole of his foot. I'll live.

By the time he straightened up from the laces and gasped for breath on account of his stomach squished under his chest, Daya stood in front of him, ready to go.

"I'll wait for you on the ice," she said. "Remember to lean forward, toward me, and grab my shoulders if you have to."

"I shall endeavor to do just that." His heart thumped, once, twice, and just like that, holding Daya's gloved hand, he stopped caring about making a fool of himself, though he wished the place was less popular. Far less popular.  Daya and him would have been enough, and this wish had nothing to do with embarrassment. All I want for Christmas...

But he spent Christmas with his folks, and she went away to Toronto. She'd probably long forgotten their silly conversation about love.

"Mike?"

He was standing at the ice's edge, on the last step of the little amphitheater around the rink, a mere inch above the ice. Daya slipped her hand from his, jumped on the ice, twirled round to face him, and extended her arms towards him. As if she was prepared to catch him.

If he fell, he'd steamroll Daya under. He dry swallowed. No falling then.

"Lean forward," she repeated, lifting her face up to look him square in the eye, as if she trusted his feet to do the right thing. It did not last long. She looked down, frowning. "Bend your knees. More. More. More."

Okay, doing squats was one thing he hated more than falling, so he stepped forward and down. His right foot went sideways, the left hit Daya's precious skate, and his chest jerked backwards.

He wobbled like jelly mold salad with marshmallows from the nineteen-fifties. "The ice is slippery..." he grated.

Daya's brows strained into one line across her forehead, her lips puckered. She balanced him out, grunting with every oscillation of his awkward body. "Steady. Slippery is good. If it was not, the skates would make terrible shoes."

"Don't make me laugh," he pleaded, catching glimpses of the ice, the faces of the random strangers, Daya's hat, a strand of hair across her forehead, and the patterns on her scarf. It must have been Nihal's gift. Why couldn't he give her something practical like that? Something she could wear. A plastic rose, how droll...

She scrunched her nose and blew the runaway hair out of her eyes. It slipped right back. Breathlessly, he reached out from her shoulder to her forehead, and tucked it away under the rim of her hat. The strand was stiffening with frost at the very end, but closer to her skull it looked suppler than silk. I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm hopelessly lost...

"Thank you." His still reaching fingers lost contact with her skin, as she slipped back a step, inviting him to close the distance. 

He tipped forward... that thing at the top of the blade, the pick, catching the ice. Because he needed extra challenges.

But Daya was within reach by some sorcery and caught him. "Good. Push, then let it glide. Bend your knees. Bend forward." She checked behind her shoulder, and slipped back another step, a quick and graceful motion. His was neither.

"That's how the knights must have felt in steel armor," he huffed, straining under the weight of his jacket.

"Relax your shoulders. Bend your knees."

"Mercy, my Queen."

"Look, Mike, look! You've almost finished the loop."

A glance slanted from his feet to the side of the rink, to the benches and the trees, confirmed her observation. His breath caught for a proud moment when he didn't topple in the direction he was looking at. That made him cautiously optimistic, but he thought it necessary to establish the truth. "One can never finish a loop. Circle is a symbol of eternity, since the ancient times precisely because it has neither the beginning, nor the end."

And he moved towards her little by little, while she escaped him with the same persistence. "There, maybe the circle does not have a beginning, but that's where we had started. You look like you could use a bit of a break, Mike."

He plopped on the stone border, splaying his legs wide to the sides to unbend his shaking knees. "Yes. You can take a break too... do your thing."

"My thing?" She held his eyes with a brat's smile budding on her lips. "You want to see my thing?"

The hot flush of embarrassment he generated could have heated the whole province, but he didn't have time to harness it.

Daya checked over her shoulder and took off to the biggest gap in skating public. She was right in front of him, at a few meters' distance. Her skates seemed to draw charge from the ice, as she gained the momentum of an arrow.

With no warning, her leg—he could not even tell if it were the left or the right one — pointed to the side. Her hands closed over her chest, she bent upper back and leaned her head back. And she spun on the spot. All at the same time.

Just as he started to wave and say wow, Daya arched backward, and without breaking the spin grabbed her skate with her hands... a few more rotations. Then the leg and the arms stretched to the sky, pointing. She looked like a folding knife, still spinning on the spot.

The other skaters scooted to the side, all gawking at a girl breaking the rules of the public skating rink with her figures. The only thing missing to make a frame from a sport's movie was a little girl to pull on Daya's sleeve and ask her with an adorable lisp if she was a figure skater...

It was one thing to know she was a skater. It was something different entirely to see it for himself.

Daya dropped out of her spin and skated toward him so purposefully that the eyes turned on him. Despite this uncomfortable realization, an obscure force lifted Mike to his feet.

He stumbled onward. The gap between him and Daya closed—too rapidly! He threw his arms up for balance. Good lord, how do you stop in these things?! Apparently, one could do it by bumping into a laughing girl. She caught his hands into hers, a gloved palm to gloved palm, threaded her fingers through his.

"Merry Christmas, Mike, and Happy New Year."

Her lips touched his. They were hot, moist. The best thing he had ever tasted.

The kiss was too chaste, gone too soon.

He wished he had seized the moment. He wished he had made it last. He wished he had been on solid ground so he could keep her for long enough to ask for a proper kiss. He wished, he wished, he wished... as desperately as children wish upon a star.

"Happy New Year," he repeated after her in a daze. His tongue moved even slower when he talked than when he was kissed. Surprise, surprise. "What... what was it that you've just did? It was beautiful."

"A combo spin. Biellmann spin at the end."

"Ah." he knew nothing, and it was painfully obvious. 

She laughed and pushed him gently to the side. "Mike, I have a confession to make."

He plodded back to the ice edge; the movement was getting easier once he figured that he could push with only one foot.

"You were right, Mike. I needed skating in my life."

His heart plunged toward his liver. What did he expect? 'I love you more than life itself, Mike...'?

"I didn't tell you, but I made a friend who lets me sneak on the ice and practice. Another friend in Toronto... well, he wants for me to try out for pairs. It's probably nonsense, but, Mike, I need to find a coach, buy ice time. Even if I stay in Calgary, I have to train the jumps again. I have to."

His lips parted, but since the gift of speech deserted him for the time being, she went on: "That's why I need you to figure out how much you want for rent, see? To budget the training."

"Brilliant."  There you go, a credit to all humankind. "It's brilliant." 

His heart climbed down to the bottom of a glacier crevice. It could very well stay there for all eternity. What he needed was a modicum of brain activity. "Why... why don't you take over the food bill? You do most of the shopping anyway."

Daya made some mental calculation before nodding and smiling so happily that he could hear the shattering sound from below the ice. That's the last of my heart. 

"Thank you," she said and poked him in the ribs to do another loop. Strangely, his flattened hopes made skating easier. He didn't even have to clutch her every minute, so she fluttered around him like a firefly.

Snowflakes dropped over him. 

Words dropped in time with the snow: Toronto, Shanti, Pavel.

He did everything right; he did. Told her the truth about the society lying about being able to achieve anything you want if only you try hard enough. And she found inspiration in his words. Moreso, she found a new opportunity. He should be happy for her. Then why did he taste vinegar on his tongue?

Pavel, Toronto, lutz. Triple throw...

Snow fell, one cold prickle after another, methodically, flickering in the light of the streetlamps. 

 Grade five lasso lift, Pavel. Toronto. Mike...

"Mike? Mike! Are you okay?"

Far from it. "Just focusing." 

She hooked her arm through his and gave him another chance to enjoy the excited glimmer of her eyes. "That's enough for the first time. You are rolling your ankle. Oh, Mike, thank you so much for coming! It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful night!"

There was a silver lining in this. He behaved like an impeccable gentleman, which was its own reward. He just had to wait until it started to feel like one. 

Until then, he yearned to drown in a bowl of ramen noodles. Let the salty broth close over his head, curly strands weigh his mouth, and sliced onions be so pungent that they cut through the mind-numbing flavor. Yes... ramen noodles, just the thing on a cold day like this.