Frozen Hearts

Chapter Six- Hazel

I feel ashamed and saddened as Crew watches me grab the brace from my bag. I carefully wrap it around my back and take deep breaths, trying to will the pain away.

It's not that I care I shattered my entire back last year. It's everything that came after that.

This is the reason I lost my dreams and everything good in my life. Everything that saved me from drowning was taken away in an instant and now I feel as though I can barely stay afloat.

"Hazel?" His voice comes out shaky and uneven and for some reason, it chips away a tiny piece of my frozen heart.

"Yes?" I meet his deep blue gaze for the first time since yesterday.

"Your back? Can uh, can you still...skate?" His words feel like heavy rocks dropping right onto my chest.

Can I skate?

"No," I answer, sitting on the corner of my bed, trying my best not to put all that much pressure on my still-healing back.

"But, it will heal...right? And then you can skate again?" He sounds almost worried and I don't know what to make of it.

"I can't skate competitively again, Crew. My career is over." I cringe, hating how the words taste like poison on my tongue.

"Fuck. Andrew- he told me you were out for the season. He said you wouldn't be coming back, but- but I thought he meant just the rest of our senior year. I didn't know you were out...forever. Fuck!" He brings his hands to his head where he scrapes them through his thick brown hair, pacing the room back and forth a few times.

"It's fine, Crew. It's not like you lost hockey or anything." He stills at my words and I immediately regret saying anything.

He turns to face me, piercing blue eyes swirling with my green ones.

"It's not fine, Hazel. If I knew? God, if I knew-"

"What? You would call me more names? Made fun of me for losing my footing on a skill I've done numerous times?" I shout, jumping to my feet which I regret at the first shock of pain that strikes at my spine.

"You think I meant it when I called you those things? I was having fun, Hazel! You were the only person in that entire rink who could take my shit and dish it back to me just as well! You pushed me in hockey, even if you didn't know it at the time. You still do! I mean, that one time in seventh grade when you beat me in a race lives rent-free in my mind, and I haven't stopped working on my speed since." He pauses, brushing his hair across his forehead and rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand.

"And then freshman year when you would wake up at five in the goddamn morning to train, I woke up at four-forty-five because I wanted to be up before you." I then proceeded to wake up at four-thirty as soon as I saw him pass my house on his run before I was even up. I was faster and had much better endurance than the other girls in my age bracket because of it.

"You're the reason I'm so good, Hazel. Our stupid competitions and the playful banter we had made us both better skaters, and you know it. But I never meant it. I thought you knew that." He looks genuinely hurt at my choice of words and it only makes the pit in my stomach sink deeper.

For as long as I can remember, Crew and I have been at each other's throats.

It all started when we were little and practiced at the same time at the same rink. He and I were the best in our age group and over time, we both got invited to play for competitive teams that happened to work as a unit, traveling to competitions together. That's where it all began.

Shared ice time and shared competitions.

Crew and I would race each other every single day, working on our speed and agility like maniacs until we could beat one another.

He would call me a slow-poke and whisper snarky comments in my ear from the other side of the ice before I would start my short program, but in hindsight, Crew's right. Those little comments worked like fuel to a burning fire in my soul that made me skate like there was no tomorrow.

I nailed it. Every single time.

He and I were the best and everyone knew it. Before his games, I would tell him all the ways he would screw up, or all the guys that thought they were so much better than him. I would also call him names and berate him from the sidelines, but looking back, that was just us.

My so-called enemy growing up was part of the reason for my success. He was the one who pushed me so far that I felt the need to hurdle over that muddled line and become the skater no one thought I could be.

But then with one small, minuscule error, it all ended.

"I'm sorry, Crew. I shouldn't have said that. We had our moments, but yes. I think we were good for each other- even if you made me miserable half the time." I admit reluctantly, throwing in the punch at the end because it feels too strange to be solely nice to my so-called former enemy.

Crew Williams and I are polar opposites. We shouldn't be compatible to any extent. Yet on the ice, it was a different story.

Too bad being roommates isn't anything like skating.

"So...Are you gonna let me stay?" Am I going to let the one person I've grown up hating my entire life move in with me?

"You seriously have no other options? Aren't you rich, Williams?" He rolls his eyes and gives me a coy smile.

"C'mon, Hazelnut? Pleaseeeeee?" When we were six, Crew saw me eating trail mix in between rehearsals and immediately assumed they were Hazelnuts. Ever since then, one of his million annoying nicknames for me has been Hazelnut.

"If you live here, you cannot call me that. Or Haze. Just call me Hazel. Or better yet, maybe we won't ever see each other and I can continue living in perfect peace and harmony." I brush my hands together as if I'm ridding them of something gross and begin putting away the rest of my things still left in one of my backpacks as a way to busy myself.

"I think you'd get pretty lonely if you never saw this beautiful face, Hazel." I can't help but give a small smile at how stupid he can be sometimes. Wait- how stupid he is all the time.

"I think I'd manage." I retort.

He chuckles and starts unpacking his things box by box, bag by bag until both of us are sitting on our respective beds engaging in our own quiet activities.

"Well, Hazel, I gotta get going. But, I'll see you later." I cock my head to the side.

"Where are you going?" His expression crumbles and he stares down at his massive feat tucked away in Nike sneakers.

"Uh, hockey. I have to go and meet the team." Right. Only one of us lost our dreams. Not both of us.

"Okay. Bye, Crew." I try to say as cheerfully as I can manage.

"Bye, Hazel." And then he's gone, and I'm left alone once again with my consuming thoughts and the silence that comes with being tucked away inside a luscious forest in the middle of Vermont.

This is going to be an interesting few weeks. I can only hope someone moves out of the athletics dorms in the near future.

I can't live with Crew Williams forever. I just can't.