“She kissed him while staring straight at me. Filthy. Tongue and all.” I let another guy slide his hand up my thigh—just to make her squirm 😏. She answered by choking her crush in a closet. We’re not girlfriends. We’re not even friends. But the way Maddie watches me from across the room while riding her boyfriend like a show pony? That’s not hate. That’s a challenge 💋. One day soon, we’re going to snap. And when we do, I’m going to taste every dirty word she’s ever thrown at me 🥵. Chapter 1 [Emily’s POV] The thing about starting over is that nobody tells you how exhausting it is to pretend you know what the fuck you're doing. Two hours ago, things were simpler and I knew what my day held. First practice, new team, fresh start in a new city. The motel’s bedspread had a pattern that seemed designed to hide stains of unknown origin and I chose not to investigate. I'd been there almost a week, waiting for dorms to open. Plenty of time to memorize every water stain on the ceiling and develop a complicated relationship with the vending machine down the hall. Coach Marquette recruited me specifically. A scholarship, a way out of my old program which wasn’t bad, but opportunities here are better. A way away from my mother. She thought I was making a mistake, she usually does. But she also drove me to the airport and told me to call when I landed. We're complicated like that—like her sending me to learn ice skating at the age of four, and years later trying to find me a ‘nice guy’ to settle down with because apparently my head got into the game a little too much. Typical mother-daughter stuff. Not even worth mentioning. Just like the endless guys she’s trying to set me up with. I'm standing in the Lakeview University’s ice rink, trying to look like I belong here. The rink itself is beautiful. Cold and bright, the ice freshly resurfaced and gleaming under the fluorescent lights. "Don't stretch there." I look up to find a girl with wild curly hair pointing at the spot I'd been eyeing. She's got the kind of face that makes you want to trust her immediately—open, amused, slightly chaotic. "That's Maddie's spot," she continues. "Actually, everything from here to the Zamboni entrance is basically Maddie's spot. The girl has more territory than a medieval lord." "Maddie?" I stand, grabbing my water bottle. "Our illustrious captain. Think Regina George but with triple axels and daddy's credit card." The girl extends her hand. "I'm Ava. You must be the new scholarship kid Coach has been hyping." "Emily,” I said, shaking her hand. “And 'hyping' feels generous. More like 'mentioned once in passing.'" Ava laughs, and it's the first genuine sound I've heard since arriving. "Trust me, if Coach mentioned you at all, it is hype." We settle onto a bench, and I start lacing my skates while Ava gives me what she calls "the survival guide to not getting emotionally murdered." "Maddie, she's…” Ava's voice drops. "Look, she's an incredible skater. Like, stupid good. But she's also the kind of person who'll smile at you while calculating exactly where to insert the knife for maximum damage." "Sounds delightful." Then I follow her gaze to a cluster of girls near center ice. They're all variations on a theme—long legs, perfect ponytails and casual confidence. And in the center, like the sun they're all orbiting around, is… No way. My stomach drops through the floor, possibly into another dimension where things make sense. Because the girl holding court out there, the one with the perfect posture and the laugh that carries across the ice like a threat, is Maddie. My Madison. Or at least, the Madison who used to be mine, back when we were twelve and thought friendship meant forever. Ava keeps talking, but I can't stop staring. Years have turned her into something out of a magazine—all sharp angles and deliberate beauty. The baby fat's gone, replaced by cheekbones that could cut glass and a presence that sucks up all the oxygen in a room. She's gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that makes you stupid. Makes you forget things like self-preservation and the fact that she apparently rules this place through fear and superior conditioning. Before I can answer, my traitorous legs are already moving. There's this stupid, hopeful part of me that thinks maybe—maybe—when she sees me, something will click. We'll laugh about the odds, she'll introduce me to everyone, and it'll be like those years apart never happened. I'm an idiot. "Madison?" She turns, and for one perfect second, I see recognition flash across her face. Her eyes, still that impossible shade of brown that used to make me forget my own name, widen slightly. Then her expression smooths into something cold and polished, like she's pulled on a mask. "It’s Maddie. Can I help you?" The words are ice water to the face. She's looking at me like I'm a stranger. No, worse. Like I'm an inconvenience. "It's me. Emily? We used to—" "Oh my God." She cuts me off, and her voice is loud enough that her bees all turn to stare. "Emily Harper?" The way she says my name makes it sound like a disease. "Yeah, I…" "This is hilarious." She turns to her followers, who are watching us with the kind of anticipation usually reserved for reality TV disasters. "Girls, this is Emily. We were friends when we were... what? Twelve?" "Eight to twelve, actually." The correction slips out before I can stop it. "Right." Her laugh is crystalline, sharp enough to draw blood. "Back when we thought matching friendship bracelets were peak fashion. How embarrassing." My face is burning. "You made those bracelets too." "Did I?" Maddie tilts her head, studying me like I'm a particularly boring museum exhibit. "I blocked out a lot of my tragic phase. You know how it is. We all have that friend from childhood we're embarrassed about." That friend. Not her best friend. Not the girl she used to sneak into movies with. Not the person who knew she was terrified of thunderstorms and would stay on the phone with her until they passed. Just that friend. The embarrassing one. "Though I guess some people never grow out of their tragic phase," she continues, her eyes doing a slow scan from my skates to my definitely-not-designer practice gear. "Cute that you still skate though. Recreation league?" "I'm on the team," I manage, my voice barely steady. "Coach Marquette recruited me." Something flickers in her expression—surprise, maybe, or annoyance. But it's gone before I can process it. "How... special." She draws out the word like it tastes bad. "Try to keep up, won't you? We have standards here." She starts to turn away, then pauses, looking back over her shoulder. "Oh, and Emily? That thing where you used to follow me around like a puppy? Let's not do that here. It's giving desperate, and honestly?" She smiles, and it's all teeth. "It was embarrassing then, too." The words land like physical blows. Follow her around like a puppy? I was her best friend. We were equals. At least, I thought we were. The blonde leans in to whisper something in Maddie's ear, and they both laugh—that specific kind of laugh that tells you you're the punchline. I'm still standing there, frozen like an idiot, when Maddie skates away with her entourage. They move like a unit, synchronized in their superiority. When my legs finally remember how to work, I retreat to the boards and try to look normal. Practice is brutal in the good way—the kind that means Coach Marquette actually knows what she's doing. She runs us through drills until my thighs burn and my lungs feel personally victimized. I'm grateful for the distraction. Physical exhaustion is simpler than whatever's happening in my head every time I catch sight of Maddie across the rink. Near the end of practice, the energy shifts. A few girls start showing off—someone lands a clean double axel, someone else answers with a flying sit spin. Casual one-upmanship disguised as fun. Then a blonde girl calls out, "Queen of the Ice! Come on, it's a tradition for rookies!" The attention swivels toward me and I feel it like a physical weight, fifteen pairs of eyes recalculating my presence. "New girl should go against the captain," someone adds. "Welcome her properly." The rink goes quiet. Maddie's expression doesn't change, but something sharpens behind her eyes. She glides toward center ice with the easy confidence of someone who's never lost at anything that mattered. "Well?" She gestures me forward, gracious and unreadable. "Let's see what Coach found." My heart pounds as I skate to meet her. Whatever we were to each other at eight, at ten, at twelve, this is what we are now: two skaters on opposite sides of the ice, everyone watching to see what happens next. The blonde who called for the game is grinning like she's purchased tickets to something entertaining. I make a mental note to learn her name later, for revenge purposes. Maddie settles into position across from me, and for half a second something flickers in her face. The ghost of two kids who used to practice crossovers together until their ankles gave out. Then it's gone, smooth as freshly resurfaced ice. "Ready?" she asks. I lower my center of gravity, feel the edges of my blades grip the surface beneath me. Whatever this is—a test, a welcome, a very public measuring of skills—I'm not going to flinch first. I didn't drive eight hundred miles to flinch. "Ready." Chapter 2 Maddie moves first, and of course she does it like she's auditioning for the Olympics and a Vogue shoot simultaneously. She launches into a combination spin—camel to sit to upright—each position flowing like water. Like gravity is just a suggestion she's politely declining. The team whistles. Someone actually whoops. It's good. It's very good. It's the kind of spin that says ‘I could do this in my sleep, but I'm choosing to dazzle you anyway.’ I hate that I'm impressed. I hate it a lot. My turn. I match her spin sequence because I'm petty like that—same transitions, same positions. But I snap the rotations faster, tighter. When I finish, the clapping is polite but confused. Like they're not sure if they're allowed to be impressed by the peasant who dared to match their queen. Maddie's smile doesn't even flicker. If anything, it gets brighter, which in Maddie-speak probably means she's calculating exactly how to destroy me. She takes her time skating back to center ice, building anticipation like she's about to reveal the meaning of life instead of just doing another jump. Then—triple flip. Perfect extension, perfect landing, arms raised like she's accepting an Oscar. The team loses their minds. You'd think she just cured cancer with that landing. And here's where I should be smart. Strategic. Do a nice, safe triple lutz and call it a day. Live to fight another day. Be the bigger person. Fuck that. My body makes the decision before my brain can file an objection. One hand up triple axel—the jump that got me recruited, the one that made Coach Marquette literally gasp when she saw it on video. The one that less than ten percent of female skaters can land consistently. The takeoff is perfect. Three and a half rotations in the air, and for those seconds, nothing exists except me and the physics of defying gravity. The landing is so clean it's almost silent. And speaking of silence… The entire rink goes dead quiet. Like, horror-movie-right-before-the-killer-appears quiet. Fifteen pairs of eyes stare at me like I just pulled a rabbit out of my ass instead of a hat. The blonde who started this whole thing actually has her mouth hanging open. Maddie's face is a masterpiece of controlled nothing. Not surprise, not anger, just... nothing. Like I didn't just out-skate her in front of her entire kingdom. Then she laughs. It's light, airy, completely unbothered. She glides toward the boards with the casual grace of someone who's decided this game is beneath her. "Saving my ankles for the actual competition season," she announces to no one in particular. "Some of us think long-term." Translation: I can't match that jump and we both know it. Technically, I won. The triple axel beats the triple flip in the invisible hierarchy of jumps that every skater carries in their head But she walks away like she chose to end the game, like continuing would bore her. The victory sits in my mouth like ash. Like she let me win, which is somehow worse than losing. Then Coach Marquette, clipboard in hand and whistle around her neck, calls for attention from the rink board she occupied during training. "You all saw that triple axel up close, girls. That's the standard I'm looking for this season. Study it." She says more after that, something about competition schedules and lineup considerations. Someone behind me mutters something that sounds suspiciously like "teacher's pet," but when I turn, everyone's suddenly fascinated by their skate laces. And I'm too aware of Maddie's gaze burning into my back. After practice, Maddie catches me near the locker room door. Her smile is bright and sharp, like something designed to cut. "Nice work out there." Her smile could cut glass. "Coach does love her shiny new toys." She steps closer, but I don't step back. "Just a heads up," she continues, voice dropping to something almost intimate, "she gets excited fast and bored faster. Last year's recruit barely made the travel team by spring." The threat would be more effective if she wasn't standing close enough that I can see the faint freckles across her nose. The ones she used to hate. The ones I used to count when she fell asleep during our movie marathons. Stop it, Emily. She's evil now. Evil doesn't get to have cute freckles. I hold her gaze. My pulse is doing something inconvenient, but I refuse to acknowledge it. "Good thing I'm not last year's recruit." "We'll see." She brushes past me, shoulder glancing mine with calculated precision, and disappears into the locker room like she owns every square inch of it. Inside, my bag has migrated to the far corner, wedged behind a trash can. My towel is missing entirely. I find it later, stuffed in a supply closet beneath a stack of orange cones. Points for commitment, I suppose. Two girls from Maddie's orbit—a brunette and a redhead whose names I don’t know yet—are talking just loud enough for me to hear every word. "Coach always plays favorites with transfers," the brunette says, examining her nails. "Scholarship kids," the redhead agrees, voice dripping with something poisonous. "They try so hard. It's kind of sad, honestly. Like they think effort matters more than where you come from." Maddie sits at her locker, not participating but not stopping it either. She's watching me with this little half-smile, like she's taking notes for a scientific study on how much bullshit one person can take before they snap. I pretend I don't hear. I pretend my jaw isn't tight. I pretend this doesn't remind me of every other rink, every other group of girls who decided I wasn't worth knowing. Mean girls are a natural resource. Ava appears beside me, already changed, bag over her shoulder. "Hey, want to grab food? The dining hall has decent pasta on Tuesdays. Not great, but decent." She's doing that thing where she pretends everything is normal and fine, and I appreciate it more than I can express without getting emotionally inconvenient. "Sure." I grab my relocated bag and follow her out, not looking back at Maddie or her court. We're halfway across the quad before she speaks again. "So. You and Maddie. That was... a lot of energy for two people who supposedly just skated together as kids." "We were at the same rink. Lost touch when she moved." I keep my voice casual, like I'm describing a distant acquaintance rather than someone who used to know every secret I had. "It was a long time ago." Ava nods slowly, but her expression says she's filing this information away for later analysis. "Okay. Just… the way she looks at you. And the way you look at her. It's not nothing, Emily." I don't answer. Some things are too fragile to name out loud, especially to someone I met two hours ago. Whatever Maddie and I were—best friends, inseparable, the most important person in each other's worlds—that was a different life. Maybe the Maddie I knew really is gone. Replaced by this polished stranger who wears her face. The dining hall is chaos. Freshmen trying to look cool, seniors trying to look like they're not dying inside. Ava chatters about teammates and professors while I make appropriate listening noises and spot across the dining hall a familiar blonde ponytail. Maddie's holding court at a corner table, surrounded by her loyal subjects. As if she can feel my gaze, she looks up. When our eyes meet across the crowded room, she raises her water bottle in a mock toast, that razor-sharp smile playing at her lips. This is fine. This is totally fine. I'm just going to survive an entire season with my ex-best friend who now hates me, wants to destroy me, and also happens to be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. What could possibly go wrong? The challenge was issued, the crowd is waiting, and backing down isn’t an option. 🔥 Keep reading Kiss Me, Captain now. 🥶
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