Daya pulled her hook-around sleeves over her fists, then stuffed her hands into the kangaroo pocket. Her Lulu hoodie was marvelous, but it was too light to let her linger here, at the Olympic Plaza.
The skies turned to winter for the fourth time this year. The wet chill in the air threatened to become prickling ice crystals. She should leave downtown, take a bus, go home...
She slouched. It did not come naturally to her, and she would not have done it for the gusts of wind.
What made Daya bend her neck was the questioning eyes stopping on her. She'd glance around discreetly, and nope, no one paid her any heed. It was all in her head, as usual. Nobody looked at her, not this time, not every other time she had sneaked to the Plaza after teaching a lunch-hour bootcamp downtown. Why would they, save for a bum angling for spare change?
Daya's notoriety was never much, even in the narrow circle of true Canadian skating aficionados. She was a pretender to the end, even in her imagining that someone would spare her a second thought, pointing a finger at her: here is another quitter who came to walk a distant memory.
The distant glow of the 1988 Olympics was not even her memory to cling to, rather a collective one as Mike would have said if he knew what she was thinking.
She glanced past the pink colonnade topping the brick-faced cascade. The sandstone block of the city library took up the corner of the street. If only he was there, in the library. Or hobbled toward her down the pathway between the leafless trees. He'd talk, and she'd forget her worries to keep up with the onrush of his flighty thoughts.
Though Mike would probably scoff at relegating 1988 to history. The guy acted like he was on the first-names basis with the Flintstone family, so the eighties was more like yesterday's afternoon for him than history. She cocooned her hands even tighter in the magic fabric that did not stretch out, was warm on a cold day, cool on a hot one, and did not absorb the stench of sweat.
No matter his weird perception of time, it would have been cool to have Mike here... A sigh came unbidden: how easily her thoughts turned to Mike, always turned to Mike. I think I like him a little... or a little too much? He is... he was... She gave up with another sigh: he was likable, that's why she liked him, no other reason.
Plus, the guy who thought about Borgia when he looked at a girl's ass in yoga pants couldn't think it was weird that she was pretending to live in 1988 and be Katarina Witt's BFF.
And if he would not think it embarrassing, why should she?
Daya closed her eyes and let the fantasy take over.
Friends? Why lie to oneself? They were not friends, Katarina Witt, the figure skating star, and her. They were rivals.
Katarina Witt, East Germany... Daya Dhawan, Canada...
No.
She dropped her eyes to the bricks that paved the Plaza. The names etched on them were slowly fading from sight, from history, the citizens chiding her: It's easier to insert yourself in our past, Daya Dhawan, than fight your own battles? Please...
The pad in the middle did not have the named bricks, but it had a wading pool all summer. Now drained of water, it sheltered some brown leaves instead. Come December the City of Calgary would turn it into a skating rink, not as big as they had on the Waterfront in Toronto, but nice enough. It would fill with slipping and sliding Calgarians.
When she came here last March, she found a place to stand at the edge of a small amphitheater at the corner, and watched, missing the ice time. She kind of liked it, missing the all-important, the precious, the pricey, the coveted ice time back then. Her heart was still raw.
YOU ARE READING
Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)
ChickLitWhen a total stranger knows what eats you, maybe they are your one true love. Even if you don't know it yet. || On Friday the 13th, two twenty-something, Daya and Mike, end up in a mutually beneficial arrangement: she is his caregiver after he break...
