Ice Games (Games #3)(14)
Author: Jessica Clare

Imelda huffed. “There’re two of you on this team. I’m staying.”

Ty skated to my side. “I agree with my partner. I think you need to go.”

I gave Imelda a blissful smile. “Problem solved.”

She stared at both of us, and then pointed her phone in my direction. “I’m calling the network.”

“Call,” I bluffed, skating away. “Either you walk out, or we do. Let’s see which one they put on the show next week.” And I skated away, just because I could. It wasn’t like she’d follow me onto the ice, anyhow.

By the time I turned around again, she was gone, and Ty was there on the ice, arms crossed, giving me an impressed look.

I skated a circle around him, thinking. “You mad?”

He laughed. “Hell no. I was just thinking you have balls of steel sometimes.”

I gave him a flirty look. “Don’t f**k with me when I’m on the ice. That’s my home territory.”

“No kidding,” he drawled, his look appraising. “I like it. So…what now?”

I thought for a moment, skating in circles around him. “This is different than regular figure skating competitions. We’re pretty much f**ked with the judging panel no matter what we do.” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t that different than some skating competitions. “We need the audience on our side. Which means we have to impress them. Dazzle them.”

“Oh god. Dazzle. With sequins?”

I gave him a look. “Give me more credit than that?”

He chuckled. “Fine, fine. So tell me what you’re thinking.”

I continued to skate circles, thinking, my hands clasped behind my back. “We need to shock them somehow. This week’s theme is cinematic. Movie stuff. We just need to find the perfect movie that fits in with who we are….” An idea dawned on me, and I snapped my fingers. Oh my god, it was perfect.

It was perfect if Ty went for it.

I skated toward him and put my hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. “Do you trust me?”

“As much as I can trust anyone in this chickenshit outfit,” he said with a grin. “And as long as you don’t dress me as one of the Village People, I’m fine.”

“Nope,” I said enthusiastically, heading to the edge of the ice and stepping off. I went to my workout bag and pulled out my phone, then searched the internet for a clip. When I found it, I went back to Ty and handed my phone to him, looking for approval.

He snorted at what I picked, even as the music began to stream out from my phone, tinny and muffled. “Jaws? Cute.”

“That’s right,” I told him. “It is cute. People will think we’re poking fun at ourselves. They won’t expect it, and it’ll catch their attention. It’ll make you look like you have a sense of humor about the biting thing, and people will talk about it. That’s exactly what we want. It defuses an ugly situation and shows we can laugh at ourselves while having fun.”

He considered, staring at my phone for so long that I thought he was getting angry. Maybe I’d pushed too far and he’d tell me to f**k off. Maybe Ty didn’t have a sense of humor about the whole biting thing. When I’d asked him before, he’d shrugged me off.

But as I watched, a slow smile spread across his face. He looked over at me, and chuckled again. “Balls of steel, all right.”

Relief cut through me sharply, and I laughed. He wasn’t mad at me. Thank goodness. “I figure we can shock them into loving us, or go home anyhow.”

Ty regarded me. “So how do we skate to that music?”

I thought for a minute, and then grinned, my mind full of ideas. “We follow the pattern of the song. We can do slow movements at the start, and build up to the crescendo. When the crescendo hits, we can do a lift. You can put me on your shoulders, and I can raise a leg into the air. Oooh!” I clapped my hands. “I know. We can design a costume for me so that when I raise my leg into the air, it looks like a shark fin rising from the water.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ll admit, that’s kind of cool. So what do I wear?”

“You can dress as the main guy from Jaws. In the black shirt and jeans. Glasses, the works. What was his name?” I snapped my fingers, trying to think.

“Brody.”

“That’s it. Something simple and masculine.” I gave him an impish smile. “No sequins.”

“I could kiss you for that right now.”

I blushed. Hard. “No kissing necessary.”

He chuckled. “Spoilsport. So…partner lifts. How do we work those in?”

I considered for a moment, and then held my hands out in our dancing position. “Let’s try a few different things.”

We experimented for a few hours and came up with a loose routine. I made notes and decided to work on the choreography in my spare time. Meanwhile, we set one of the production assistants on getting the music rights to Jaws and some concepts for costumes.

At least if we went down this time, we’d go down on our own terms.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jaws, of all things. The girl’s a genius, I have to admit. — Ty Randall, Pre-Show Interview for Week Two

The next week passed surprisingly quickly, and before I knew it, it was competition night again. I was more nervous this time than last time—Ty had our routine down pat, since a lot of it simply consisted of hefting me into the air and gliding. Even our costumes were awesome, right down to Ty’s black mock turtleneck sweater and tight black pants. He even had a big brown gun-belt, which was in the movie clips and was a great touch that Ty himself had thought of. He wore a pair of wire-rim glasses to complete the look.

My outfit was a plain, dark blue to about mid-calf, and then it changed to gray. There were ‘wings’ tied to each leg that I was going to release about halfway through our dance, and hopefully they would surprise everyone.

Ty and I had practiced day and night for this particular routine, and I was so proud of it. We’d even worked with the production and lighting crew to get the look just right.

This time, we’d drawn the last skate. Jon Jon and Julia Mckillip were up first. I tried to pay attention to the other routines like Ty was, but I was a bundle of nerves. I kept crossing my legs and reaching down to touch my talismans over and over again, rubbing the newest—a sequin from last week’s costume.

No one fell tonight. I couldn’t watch the TV in the Crash Room—bad luck—but Ty had no such qualms. He’d lean in close every time a couple went on to ice skate, and he would give me a bit of a play by play.

“Jon Jon and Julia look pretty stiff,” he’d tell me as the strains of ‘Love Story’ echoed in the room.

Then, “Emma’s cute. They stuck to country again,” he told me. “Nine to Five” played, and I could tell from the clapping of the audience that they were definitely into their theme. Good for Emma.

“Annamarie went for hotness, clearly,” Ty told me with a chuckle when the next couple went on. I glanced at the TV, unable to help myself despite the bad juju, and rolled my eyes. The theme was clearly Titanic, but Annamarie had taken her own interpretation, her costume showing more skin than was probably legal in that time period, while Serge was dressed as Jack from the movie, complete with suspenders and rolled up white sleeves. I looked away again, quickly, when Annamarie ran her hands down her br**sts in a showy motion.

“Damn,” Ty said. “She’s clearly here to win.”

“Or to hook up,” I muttered under my breath.

“Hmm?” Ty asked, leaning in to me.

“Nothing.” I wouldn’t look at the TV again if it killed me. No sense in psyching myself out.

Toby and Victoria were next. The familiar strains of “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King filled the speakers. I heard Ty chuckle. “They look cute. They’ll do well.”

“You’re not helping me,” I told him, and I rubbed the talismans on the bottom of my skate even harder.

“You two are up,” one of the production assistants called.

“Let’s do this,” Ty told me. He put an arm around my waist as we headed to the curtained staging area.

“Thirty seconds,” the assistant whispered to us.

“You ready?” Ty murmured in my ear. It sent shivers through my body. He raised his fist, and I gave him a fist-bump back, and then we did the motions of his lucky handshake.

I smiled at him. “Juju is now in place.”

“We are going to kick ass,” he told me. Then he took my hand, and we skated out onto the center of the ice.

Our beginning ‘pose’ started with the two of us together. I stood in front of Ty, and his arms were wrapped around mine. As soon as the music began, we began to skate, the low notes soft and deceivingly smooth. No one was making a sound as we danced and skated our way around the ice, preparing for the first lift.

Then it began. The familiar, haunting chorus of Jaws with the ominous notes. As soon as it started, Ty raised me into the first lift, and I moved over him, my body flat, one of my legs raising into the air. The lights in the stadium had gone dim, and a spotlight shone on our lift.

The flaps in my pants were now undone, and when I raised my leg into the air, I did so slowly, even as Ty lifted me higher. With the gray of my costume and skate cover, and the surge of our movements, it mimicked the rising of a dorsal fin into the air.

There were ripples of shock and laughter in the audience, and then cheers.

The routine continued on. Ty gracefully let me down onto the ice and we clasped hands, moving to the music in a fluid motion that we’d practiced hard to make look so incredibly easy. Then, the crescendo rose again, and we did another “dorsal fin lift.” This time, there were wild cheers from the audience.

I tilted my leg forward, and did a slow flip down Ty’s front, landing on my skates as we began to dance once more. The hardest parts of the routine were done, and now we just needed to finish well. I’d added a spin for myself at the end, and Ty raised an arm over my head as I started to spin around like a top. I curved my leg in, whirling faster and faster as Ty continued to skate a wider circle around me. The swing of my specially-made pants flared outward; the dual colors making the spin more visually stunning than it really was.

The last few notes of our routine hit. I slammed to a stop and dropped into a dramatic dip. As we’d practiced, Ty was there to catch me inches before I smacked onto the ice, his hand behind my shoulders. We froze, waiting for the audience reaction.

There was a roar of applause.

Breathing hard, I grinned up at Ty, and we both got to our feet. I put my hand in his, and we waved at the audience. They were standing up. A giddy wave of excitement shot through me, and I gave Ty a triumphant look. See? We didn’t suck after all.

Once the audience calmed down, Chip skated over to us.

Ty looped a casual arm around my shoulder, leaning in over my shoulder as I moved in next to the host.

“Well, that was original,” Chip said with a laugh. “It’s a big change from last week.”

“We decided to take things into our own hands a bit more,” I said with a smile, glancing over at Ty. “Show off our personalities.”