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There is a grace in skating. Eric Bittle, who is not yet seven, understands this. He sits on the rug in front of the television and watches Alexei Yagudin twist and curve on the ice. He's never seen someone move like that. He's never seen someone so beautiful. Eric cheers when Yagudin takes home the gold, but he's too little yet to know if he cheers because he's happy for him or if he cheers because he finally knows what he wants.
There is a grace in baking. When eleven year old Eric comes home with a bloody nose and scraped knees, his mama sits him down in a kitchen chair. He ices his knees and cleans up his face while he watches her capable hands press pie crust into a tin. Eric is learning but he still leaves deep fingerprints in the dough when he does it. Mama's turns out so smooth, even if no one will ever see the inside. I'll know it's there, she says, and Eric never lets himself forget that.
There is a grace in hockey. Seventeen is a good age to feel powerful, and for the first time in his life, Eric Bittle feels powerful. He's not very tall and he's at least twenty pounds lighter than the smallest girl on the team, but he's fast and he's captain of the Coed Club Hockey Team and people listen when he talks. They move as one body, on good days. When one of his dad's football players corners him around the back of the gym, Eric's wingers are there to make sure it never happens again.
There is a grace in Jack Zimmermann. Eric "Bitty" Bittle, who is not yet twenty, understands this. Jack is all focus, all muscle, all power when they're on the ice together. When they're not on the same line, Bitty can appreciate the rest of him. The curves. The lines. They aren't figure-skating shapes but it wouldn't look right if they were. Jack's grace is in his skating, in his carefully rehearsed comments to the press, in his hands clumsily constructing a crust lattice, in his laugh, in his accent, in his eyes, in his eyes, in his eyes. He's never seen someone so beautiful.
In Jack's bedroom in Providence, the two of them are quiet. Jack's head is tipped back against the headboard. Bitty's in his lap, knees on either side of Jack's hips. He presses lazy kisses to the column of Jack's throat. Jack's fingers count the ridges in Bitty's spine through his t-shirt, up and then down again. There is a grace, Bitty thinks, in this.