Being part of an Olympic skating pair should be excitement enough for one life, but for Erika that's only the beginning. Her skating partner, Tom Alan, is her ex-husband, who fell in love with former British ice dancer Milo, and all three of them live together and raise her daughter, whose father is Erika's ex-boyfriend, Bill, a rabid hockey fan who is old friends with Milo. Whew! As if that's not enough, Erika still loves Bill, loves Tom Alan, and might just love Milo, too. Add a couple of troubled teenagers to the pile, and suddenly training for the Olympics is the easy part. But Erika's never been a fan of the conventional, and one way or another the four of them will find a way to make their strange tangle of love, sex, and family work.

Transitions

“Our ‘Sounds of Silence’ routine…all about words…it was his idea,” Tom Alan said, full of love, “not just because of this, but also for what’s been going on right here…shootings and hate of all kinds.”


“We’re saying something every time we skate,” Erika added. “We hope we are, about how words hurt or how they help, how silence is often detrimental, too. Sometimes people need to know someone cares. Milo did a lot of the choreography.”


“That’s really cool.” Jesse looked at Milo with stars in her eyes.


“Oh…I’m nothing special,” he said.


Kensuke agreed. He was ready to move on. “You should do an Ani and Otouto video, Tom Alan.” Naturally, he was obsessed with the anime duo Tom Alan had created and published. The comic had a small but rabid following in the U.S. and was a bestseller in Japan. “It’d get, like, a million more hits than that. I know this underground metal band. Their stuff would be perfect in the background. Forbidden Fruit. They’re sick!”


Chapter 12