My return to college was mostly uneventful. I settled in with my usual group of friends. We spent weekends together hanging out. We drank, but we didn’t get drunk. I couldn’t afford either the physical issues or the threat of stumbling into legal jeopardy. As a hockey player, I had to stay clean. We spent time in the gym every day, and it was apparent if you had a few too many drinks the night before.

Unfortunately, my hockey game was struggling. My goal production was down, and I was distracted during practice. The day after I stumbled through a game we ultimately won, I stayed out on the ice after our practice session was over, and the rest of the team retired to the locker room.

I set my stick aside and skated laps around the rink. Soon, I was imitating Lucas’ speed skating stride and seeing how fast I could push myself. It was exhilarating to skate fast. It was exhausting, too.

I was startled by a loud voice from the side of the rink asking, “Are you sure you’re a hockey player, James?”

Looking up, I saw Coach Collins standing on the edge of the ice. He was assistant to the head coach, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he would move up to a head coaching assignment somewhere. Coach Collins spent two years as a player in the NHL before exiting due to an injury.

I glided across the ice to him. “What else would I be? Why do you ask that?”

I knew the answer to my question, but I wanted to play innocent. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to talk about my fixation on speed skating, and I was curious about whether or not Coach Collins had any wise words to share.

He shrugged. “I thought I saw someone out there who looked like a speed skater.”

“Was my form that good?”

“I’m no expert, but I don’t think it was bad. I had a buddy in college who abandoned hockey to skate on the oval. He nearly made the Olympic squad.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Wow, that really happened, coach?”

“It happened, but don’t you start thinking that way. We need you to be a reliable hockey forward. Don’t bail on us now, James. Can I count on you?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah, you can. I just met a guy over Christmas break who is a speed skater. He shared a little bit of his style, and I was curious. It’s exciting to skate fast. It’s kind of like going down a long hill on a bicycle. You know?”

“You like that speed, James? It can be addicting. Be careful where it takes you.”

* * *

Later that evening, I stumbled upon a detail from Lucas’ skating career that he didn’t share with me. He made a major mistake on the ice in an important race. Someone posted a video clip of it on YouTube. I watched it five times in a row. I wasn’t as interested in the mistake as I was in watching Lucas skate.

I learned my lesson about Googling boyfriends my freshman year in college. I looked up a guy that I was starting to date, and I found a lot of negative information including YouTube videos showing his arrest. After reading everything, I decided that I needed to confront him about it.

He asked, “So you’ve decided that you’re going to break up with me because of what you found? Are you worried about who I really am based on what you’ve read? Does it matter if I say you don’t know what you’re talking about?”

I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I didn’t know what I could have misunderstood. Everything I read was clearcut. He was a criminal with felonies on his record. I said, “I’m confused.”

He explained that he had a cousin by the same name who was two years older. They looked like brothers, and it was impossible to be confident about who was who while watching the YouTube videos. At first, I thought he was trying to weasel out of the situation, but then he showed me Facebook accounts, newspaper articles, and even more information to clear his name. Then he lowered the ax saying, “And I’m breaking up with you because you didn’t trust me enough to ask about what you found before jumping to conclusions.”

I searched for Lucas online, because I was missing him. I knew the risk that I was taking. I missed him anytime we weren’t talking on video chat. I wanted to see if I could find any clips of him skating. The mistake was a small one to someone who didn’t know much about speed skating, but I understood how it could be huge. I had hockey mistakes in my past that cost our team the game.

He missed changing lanes in the middle of a long race. Then he almost collided with the other skater when they ended up in the same lane. For me, there was a comic side to the mix-up. I thought about the classic clip of Roy Riegels running the wrong way for a touchdown in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Coach Collins said that he always remembered it when he made mistakes. “It can happen to anyone.”

I wondered if the mistake had anything to do with Lucas’ decision to stop racing, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I knew that I needed to ask him about it first.

Unfortunately, I had the rest of the evening and a night’s sleep to go before I would get to talk to him again. I had homework that would take at least three hours. I needed to get started, but turning Lucas off in my mind was getting harder and harder. I looked at the clip of him skating one more time. It brought me back to our first meeting when he let me win the race. It was a shrewd decision. My thoughts about him would have been very different if he demolished me in the first race the way that he did on our second visit to the skating ribbon.

* * *

“It really happened that way?” I stared into Lucas’ eyes while I asked questions about the skating mistake. I was doing my best to avoid distraction from his abs or his thick biceps. I wanted to kiss the smooth skin of his chest and see how his nipple felt under my tongue.

He said, “It did, but I don’t like to talk about it. Can we talk about something different? How is your hockey? Have you designed any new buildings lately?”

I wasn’t sure why I was so fixated on Lucas’ unintentional moment in the spotlight, but I found it difficult to change gears. The mistake made him appear to be very human. Before I located the video clips, everything about Lucas was perfect, and that was sometimes intimidating. With the mistake, he was more like me.

I ran his questions back in my head. I said, “Oh, I should tell you what happened yesterday after practice.”

Lucas leaned back toward the camera. “I would like to hear about that.”

“I stayed out on the ice after everyone went to the locker room. I thought I was completely alone, and I started to skate like a speed skater. I did laps around the rink. At least I thought it was like a speed skater. I tried to imitate what I remembered seeing you do.”

Lucas said, “You’re a hockey player, James.”

“I know, but after the third lap or so, I really started to skate fast. I loved it. It made my heart pound.”

“That speed is exhilarating.”

“It was like I was gliding. We never get to build up that kind of speed in a hockey game. Then I found out I wasn’t alone.”

I watched Lucas raise an eyebrow. “Someone else was skating?”

I said, “It was Coach Collins. He told me not to get addicted to the speed. He told me how valuable I was as a hockey player.”

“He has a point,” said Lucas.

“You know, sometimes I make mistakes in hockey games as you did in that race.”

Lucas frowned. I could hear the exasperation in his voice when he asked, “You’re back to that again? Do you have a one-track mind?”

I tried to back up. “No, I don’t, but it’s kind of funny, too, if you look at it that way. I try to find the humor in the hockey mistakes I make. Then I can laugh, and it doesn’t seem so bad.”

Lucas looked down, and I missed his blue eyes immediately. He mumbled, “It was bad.”

I was like a dog with a favorite bone. Something inside me said it was wrong to pick at an emotional scab, but I kept going anyway. I said, “It couldn’t have been that bad. It was just a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.”

Lucas looked up, and I was startled. I saw the pain in his eyes. It was unmistakable. Then his hand reached forward as he said, “I can’t.” Suddenly, the camera was blank, and Lucas was gone.

I shouted, “Lucas, wait!” but I knew that he was gone. I had upset him, and four thousand miles away, he did what was necessary to ease his pain. He shut down the conversation.

I waited to see if he would come back. I didn’t know how long I waited until my housemate Cal knocked on the door to my room and asked, “Are you gonna eat breakfast today, James? We leave for class in ten minutes.” That meant I’d spent almost half an hour staring at the computer and hoping that Lucas would return.

My stomach twisted into a knot. I called back, “I’m coming.”

My usual morning pattern involved talking to Lucas for thirty minutes, and then I rushed through taking a quick shower and inhaling a protein bar for breakfast. It wasn’t the best way to kick off a day, but Lucas was my priority in the morning. Talking to him set everything on a positive track for the day. Until I upset him, and he disappeared.

I stared at my phone lying on the desk and thought about sending a text message. I stopped myself as my fingers were hovering over the letters. I didn’t want to risk upsetting Lucas any further.

I got up and rummaged through my closet looking for a shirt. With about three minutes to spare, I emerged from my room. All of my friends were already on their way to class. I had to jog part of the way, but I made it on time, just barely.

By the time dinner rolled around, I still hadn’t heard from Lucas, and I knew he was in bed for the night. I was worried. The skating mistake was more significant for him than I imagined. I wondered if my cavalier attitude touched off other worries about me.

After dinner with my friends, I decided to go for a walk. It was cold outside, but there was no wind, and the cold wasn’t bitter and cutting. I walked for more than half an hour before returning to the shared house where I lived at the edge of campus.

Cal met me at the door. He said, “We were just discussing whether we should send out a search party.”

“I needed to go for a walk.”

Cal sighed. “You could have called or sent a text message.”

I said, “You could have done that, too, if you were that worried.”

“I did, and so did Erin.”

I opened my eyes wide and fumbled to pull my phone from my pocket. If I missed messages from Cal and Erin, it was possible that I missed a message from Lucas, too. I stared at the screen hoping to find one. After scrolling through multiple messages of concern from my friends, I sighed heavily.

Cal put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s not that bad. We decided to not really worry unless we saw you featured on the news before bed.”