Twenty feet offshore, an ice volcano erupts, a spout of water shot high in the sky.

Phishhhhhhhhh …

It’s been a long time since I’ve run a competitive program. Even with months of dedicated practice, there’s no guarantee I’d be good enough to win—especially without a coach. And what about my mother? How could I tell her?

For Mom, my skating was never a career track or even a once-in-a-lifetime shot at something great. It was a hobby. Something to dry off and put away in the closet with the tap shoes, the clarinet, and the Barbie dolls as soon as I was old enough/smart enough/tired enough/broke enough to move on. Now my skates are just another reminder that I used to have a dad around to encourage me, and she used to have a husband to brush the snow from her car and bring her a cup of hot coffee with two sugars every morning before he left for work, and now we don’t.

I tighten my legs and propel backward, feet scissoring over the ice, mind drifting into my parallel life—the one where I didn’t throw that event, killing my reputation as a top competitor and losing Kara Shipley and my other skating friends. In my parallel life, I don’t live in Watonka anymore. I’m a real competitor, always on the road, sending Mom and Bug postcards from beautiful cities as I win medal after medal, title after title. I’m cool and confident, toughened by the difficulties of my childhood but still optimistic as I perform a perfect program for the World Figure Skating Championships. One by one, the judges rise in applause. They’ve never seen anything like it. They shout to be heard over the cheers, and then a voice cuts sharply through the din …

“Hey! Look out!”

I’m cold and horizontal, helplessly pinned beneath a boy. A cute one. Our skates are all tangled up and our hearts are knocking against each other like they’re ready to take this outside. His fingers cradle the back of my head just over the cement-hard ice; with his free hand, he brushes the hair from my eyes and I blink.

Josh Blackthorn, co-captain of the Watonka Wolves varsity hockey team, stares down at me, breath mingling with mine in a thin white soup.

“Are you okay?” he asks. His touch across my forehead makes me shiver. I blink again, trying to piece together the evidence. My head hurts, Josh is holding me, and all I can think is …

I didn’t wash my hair this morning. I totally smell like last night’s bacon burger special.

“Can you hear me?” Josh waves his fingers in front of my eyes, his face twisted with worry. Perfect. First time I’m this close to a really cute guy in years—and by years I mean ever—and save for my adorable pink leg warmers and the lip balm I slicked on when I got here, I’m ninety-two percent hygienically unprepared. He probably thinks I’m a pig farmer or a pig wrestler or some other person who regularly interacts with pork products … and I probably have a concussion.

“I hear you.” I pull myself into a sitting position to put some space between the co-captain’s nose and my bacon-infused hair. “I’m okay. Just … what happened?”

“We crashed.” Josh kneels on the ice in front of me. “I sort of … sorry. It’s my fault.” He manages a weak smile. I’ve never seen his eyes up close before, and when he looks at me full on, I notice all the color in them. Gray-blue with an outer ring of dark purple, flecks of gold near the center. Beneath the left one, there’s a tiny freckle hidden behind a row of soft, dark lashes.

I squeeze my eyes shut, breaking through the fog in my head. “How long have you been out here? How do you even know this place?”

Josh pulls off his knit hat and rubs his head, ears going red in the cold. His hair is short and dark, not quite black, and one side sticks out a little funny from the hat. There’s a scar near his temple, a tiny white V where the hair doesn’t grow. Probably some puck-diving, two-seconds-left-in-the-big-game, one-chance-to-save-it-all kind of injury from his last school.

“I come here to think sometimes. Skate,” he says, looking out over the lake. “Get away, you know? I’m Josh Blackthorn, by the way. Hudson, right?” He turns back to me and smiles, his lips an inch closer than they were a moment ago.

“Yeah,” I say as if I’m not totally shocked he knows my name and thinks I don’t know his. “Avery. I’ve never seen you out here, though. I never see anyone out here.”

“No? I’ve seen you once or twice. But I’m not, like, stalking you or anything. If you’re on the ice when I get here, I usually bail. Today I just thought I’d … I don’t know. Say hi or something. Be less … um … creepy?” He raises his eyebrows and gives me another smile, tentative, like he’s waiting for confirmation.

No, dude. You’re not creepy. You’re, like, the opposite of creepy. In fact, you’re kind of …

My stomach fills with a swarm of bees. As far as stalkers go, Josh would definitely be a good one to have. But I don’t do spectators—not anymore. I don’t like to be spectated, inspected, spectacular, or even a spectacle. I just want to be a speck. A tiny, anonymous speck in an indiscernible sea of white.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod as another breeze unfurls over the ice. His jaw tightens, firm and strong as he braces against the chill. We laugh together when the cold hits again, harder this time, our mutual shivering enough to bond us in shared discomfort. In all this frigid whiteness, his mouth looks red and warm, and my eyes trace the curve of his lips as the laughter fades. He watches me, too. When the air stills, his eyes hold mine a millisecond too long.

And right before it becomes, like, I’m-about-to-kiss-you awkward, he looks away.

“I thought you saw me over there.” He nods toward the edge of the ice where he must’ve been standing earlier. Watching. Spectating. “I skated this way, but then you were just speeding up. I tried to warn you, but … impact.” He slams his hands together to demonstrate, startling a seagull out from behind a nearby snowbank.

“I didn’t see you,” I say.

“You sure you’re okay? No dizziness or anything?” He gets to his feet and reaches down to help me.

“Don’t worry about it.” I stand and straighten my fleece, ignoring his outstretched hand. “Seriously. But I need to get back to work.” I smile a little, even though the mortification meter is exploding off the charts.

“You do? I mean, okay, that’s cool.” He looks at me straight on again, his crazy-beautiful blue-gray eyes bright and clear beneath the colorless sky, and Parallel Life Hudson goes off on another fantasy. I imagine her sitting at some cozy little café table with Josh, sipping hot chocolate with those irresistible baby marshmallows on top, laughing about their head-on collision. He smiles and tells her she’s got chocolate on the corner of her mouth, and she pretends to be embarrassed as he erases it gently with his thumb. There are sparks and laughs and flirty little jokes with lots of subtext, and later, after he walks her back to work, he pulls her into a passionate kiss in the parking lot. The word “bliss” appears in a cloud over her head, surrounded by red and pink hearts, and from that moment on, the frothy feel of hot chocolate against her lips will bring her back to the day they …

“So, yeah, I should head out,” I tell him, before my fantasyland mind starts naming our unborn children. “Storm’s coming, and I’m … I’ll be late.”

Josh’s smile fades. Despite the icy fingers of the lake, my neck is hot and itchy under the wool scarf. I lean forward on my toe pick and take a step toward the edge, but the wind hits me again, throwing me off balance. My feet skid, skates connecting with Josh’s in a clash of metal.

For the second time in five minutes, the two of us are laid out like a car wreck, that dumb seagull and his motley friends whooping it up on the ice around us.

Stupid birds. Don’t you know it’s winter?