Icebreaker

“Summer jokes the only reason I want her is because she’s not interested, and she’s the only woman who’s ever rejected me. Hearing her say she’s not interested makes me want her more, so thinking about it logically, she’s probably right.”

At the start of the novel, Nathan is characterized as someone who chases women without any intention of looking for something more permanent. It is the chase he enjoys; the more challenging the chase, the more intriguing the process becomes. Grace also hints that Nathan is likely desired by most other women and that he looks at rejection as a challenge, too. Thus, it is logical that Nathan and Anastasia’s relationship begins in the midst of conflict and antagonism that slowly but surely transmutes itself to love and mutual trust as they both grow and mature in their relationship needs.

“He’s a different guy in a matter of minutes. It’s like being friends with Jekyll and Hyde sometimes, especially after a drink when his nasty side comes out. It’s disappointing because most of the time he’s great, but he’s so fucking good at hiding the nice side of himself.”

In this description of Aaron, Grace sums up the essence of an emotionally abusive person and describes the unpredictable and deceptive nature of their behavior toward others. By referencing the classic tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Anastasia dramatizes just how different Aaron can be from moment to moment, and this reality helps to explain why his bad behavior can still blindside her with its suddenness despite her understanding of the larger dynamic at work. Grace’s characterization of Aaron thus falls squarely within the classic “cycle of abuse,” for Aaron forces Anastasia through a cyclical pattern of uneasy truce to emotional explosion at some imagined “transgression,” to reconciliation, and back into uneasy truce, until the cycle inevitably repeats. As Anastasia will eventually learn, the only way to break such a cycle is to disengage from the relationship entirely.

“Looking at her makes me want to be the funniest guy in the room, so I can be the one to make her laugh. But I’m going to have to settle for her not scowling at me for now.”

Nathan falls for Anastasia early in the novel, even while she still despises him for the debacle over the shared ice rink. Whenever he makes her smile, he feels victorious, which is part of the thrill of chasing her. However, these interactions also reveal that Nathan has a possessive streak, for he wants to be “the one.”

“You don’t hate me like you pretend you do, do you? If you want me on my knees, Anastasia, we can make that happen.”

In their first sexual encounter, Anastasia lets slip a challenge to Nathan to put his head between her legs. When she says it, her body immediately responds, and this rather steamy moment marks the first time that Nathan realizes that their attraction is mutual and her antagonism is just an act.

“I make allowances for Aaron, desperate to cling to those lovely moments we share. He does care about me, and he does care about Lola. But sometimes, like now, he says something that makes me question his real motives. There are times when the idea he’d say anything bad about either of us feels impossible. When he’s fiercely loyal and protective, without being toxic, and when the three of us are tucked up together in our living room, watching movies and laughing. Then there are times like now when the nasty streak he has seeps through the cracks. Sometimes it comes so out of nowhere it feels like whiplash, making me wonder if I know him at all.”

In this long passage that reveals the true extent of Anastasia’s contemplations and rationalizations, it becomes clear that Aaron was once more than just a skating partner. He was a friend that Anastasia truly cared about and with whom she enjoyed spending time. This is the real reason for the hurt that his unkind words now cause her—because Anastasia drops her guard during the “lovely moments.” By comparing his mood swings to “whiplash,” Anastasia portrays just how violent the experience is whenever his mood shifts from welcoming to punishing. Once again, her experience of the dynamic reveals the ongoing cycle of emotional abuse—a classic pattern.

“I was going to ask if those ridiculously optimistic quotes you post are something to do with therapy, or if you just like catfishing people into thinking you’re not the most temperamental, bossy, and terrifying woman they may ever meet.”

In this passage, Nathan is referring to the inspirational quotes that Anastasia posts every morning on social media, which make Anastasia sound like a positive person. He compares this practice to “catfishing”—pretending to be someone else on the internet—in order tease her, not because he believes it to be true. By this point of the story, he has a strong sense of who she truly is and is starting to love her for it.

“Being friends with Henry is easy; you know what he says is the truth, and there is no sneakiness or backhandedness. This week, that kind of unfiltered honesty has been a huge comfort in the face of tension with Aaron, and I’m more than a little gutted when we arrive at the rink and he immediately ditches me. Why couldn’t he have been a figure skater?”

Anastasia loves Henry because she loves honest communication, and Henry lacks the social baggage that prevents everyone else from saying what they want to say. In a sharp contrast with the clean honesty of Henry’s friendship, however, Aaron’s words tend to mean something deeper than what they mean on the surface, for his main forms of communication are manipulation and deception.

“I should be given an award for knowing how good Nathan looks without any clothes on and still managing to leave his bedroom. Having the motivation to push him off me was beyond difficult. Even my ovaries were screaming.”

Anastasia transitions from describing how Nathan looks naked to thinking about her own body’s fertility. She implies that sexual attraction is related to her body’s desire to reproduce.

“Parents, well, good parents like yours, who have high-achieving children with very specific interests, sometimes struggle to know what to talk about outside of those interests.”

In this section, Dr. Andrews explains why Anastasia loves her parents and yet also avoids talking to them. While it seems sometimes that Colin and Julia put Anastasia’s skating career before her happiness, in reality, they only focus on what they think is most important to her. Thus, Anastasia’s own drive for success has ironically caused her internal insecurities. She is the one who has created the idea that she is only loved because of her success at figure skating, but at the beginning of the novel, it would be more accurate to say that she herself only believes she is lovable if she is successful.

“Even with the best of intentions, sometimes Aaron’s kindness feels like control. My tears were understandable, but only if they were about skating.” 

As Anastasia becomes more aware of Aaron’s possessiveness, she starts noticing that his kindness is not always innocent. This observation makes her question not only whether she can repair their friendship, but also whether the friendship she thought they had was ever real to begin with. As the story unfolds, Aaron’s attempts at manipulation and his instances of abuse become even more extreme, until his behavior can no longer be ignored, tolerated, or explained away.

“I can’t mix skating and whatever we are. I like you, which pains me greatly to say out loud, but you’ve wormed your way in and made me enjoy spending time with you. I’m nice to you now. It’s a true representation of how far I’ve fallen. A disaster, some people would say.”

In this conversation with Nathan, the imagery of “falling” takes on multiple layers of significance. By this point in the story, Anastasia is afraid of falling on the ice after being dropped by Aaron. However, she is also afraid of falling in love because that would involve losing control over her own life. Here, she admits that she has fallen in love, drawing a connection between both kinds of “falling.”

“I’ve been totally and utterly unhinged by a man. I’m disgusted with myself, for being distracted, for knowingly letting every sliver of feminism shrivel up and die over dimples and thick thighs.”

With this quote, Grace acknowledges the contradiction of all heterosexual romance novels. By using sexual desire for a man as the engine by which the female protagonist finds satisfaction, the novel must submit to the notion that a woman’s path to complete satisfaction is through romance with a man (and not only through success in her career, friendship, etc.). While Icebreaker makes no attempt to deviate from these common tropes, the author does acknowledge the conceptual difficulties that the traditions of her genre present within the values of contemporary culture.

“It’s not that she doesn’t like the food she’s eating; she has this unwavering fear of gaining weight and being too heavy to lift or not fitting into her skating outfits. It’s scary—practically conditioning—making me question how many times she’d heard it.”

Anastasia does not just follow a bad meal plan. The issue runs much deeper than that, for by forcing an inadequate meal plan upon his professional partner, Aaron has directly caused her unhealthy relationship with food. He has conditioned her to fear becoming too heavy for him to lift, and so her eating is also influenced by her lack of self-esteem, for she perceives her own body as never being thin enough.

“Selfishly, I love having her around all the time, and so do the guys. They’re as on board with her staying as I am and told me to stop being a dipshit when I offered to book the two of us into a hotel. They don’t want her going back to Aaron any more than I do.”

Throughout the novel, Nathan is the only person chasing Anastasia romantically, but many other characters want Anastasia’s friendship. That includes not only Aaron, but also the entire hockey team. They tease Nathan’s inability to charm her in the beginning, but they root for him throughout the story because they to keep her around as a cherished friend. This dynamic also reinforces the concept of Found Family as the novel progresses.

“There’s a warm, full feeling in my heart when I’m around this team. It’s unfamiliar but familiar at the same time; a contradiction, I know, but so specific that it feels like it was specifically designed for me. It’s the feeling I didn’t know I needed until these guys crashed their way into my life three months ago.”

Anastasia has been missing something vital in her life—the kind of unconditional acceptance and support that lucky people get from their family or close friends. At this point in the novel, she is still avoiding her parents, and her positive relationship with Lola is always complicated by her problematic relationship with Aaron. However, she does finally find that ideal sense of acceptance at Nathan’s house.

“It’s like there’s a spot in your life you keep just for me. One I don’t have to share, one where you don’t expect anything from me. Do you know how amazing it is? How lucky I feel to know you? You make me want to be the best I can be.”

Nathan echoes what Anastasia says about the hockey team when she says they give her a happy feeling “specifically designed for me” (273). Nathan says that Anastasia keeps a sport in her life “just for [him],” a place he feels he belongs.

“Rolled-up sleeves are a JJ classic. He insists it’s the sluttiest thing a guy can do, and it has a 100 percent success rate.”

This quotation displays the novel’s frequent attention to details that, while frivolous on the surface, also provide further scope for the more physical aspects of attraction that help to drive the larger plot. For example, Anastasia swoons at Nathan in a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves. While she is appreciative of the sight of Nathan naked, she also finds his appearance just as appealing when he is clad in rolled-up sleeves and gray sweatpants. Similarly, the novel often notes Nathan’s interest in Anastasia’s appearance in tight dresses in various scenes, further emphasizing the importance of physical relationships in this typically “steamy” romance novel.

“Going from frenemies to lovers in three months wasn’t something I ever thought would happen. But despite my best efforts, I’m so freaking in love with this man.”

Grace often has her characters reflect on their own development as compared to the events of earlier chapters, even adding summaries that explicitly name the romance novel tropes that she uses in her novel. This particular quote also makes it clear that because Anastasia reads romance novels, she, too would know the trope in question.

“Stassie calls me beautiful all the time, even when I’ve just woken up. At first, I was a bit taken aback. I’m not sure what it was in the beginning; I sort of had it ingrained in my head I was supposed to be the one complimenting her, and trust me I do, but it turns out I like hearing it.”

Traditional heterosexual gender norms dictate that men compliment women’s beauty, as Nathan suggests. The word “beautiful” is usually gendered feminine, whether it refers to people or to the natural world. In this instance, however, Grace has her male protagonist deliberately subvert that stereotype by admitting that he likes it when Anastasia applies the word to him directly.

“This is the problem with people. Nothing is straightforward; everyone has good and bad. Look at people like Nate’s dad; is he the father Nate and Sasha need? No. But is he an evil person? Also no. It’s the same with Aaron. I wouldn’t be this upset and conflicted over someone that is a totally bad person.”

Aaron is sometimes so cruel in the novel that it is hard to imagine him as a sympathetic figure. In fact, the only person in the novel who ever considers him worth spending time with is Anastasia. Her time in therapy has taught her that hurting people comes from being hurt; however, all of her therapy sessions do not prevent her from falling under the spell of his cycle of abuse, for she frequently makes excuses for his behavior and repeatedly puts herself in situations that allow her to get hurt yet again. This is a common aspect of being in an abusive relationship of any kind, for the moments in which the abuser behaves kindly trick the other person into believing that the abuser really is capable of changing their behavior. Thus, Anastasia gives Aaron far too many opportunities to “change” as the novel progresses.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I feel jealous. I swear I don’t feel like this normally and I don’t care what you did before me, I promise I don’t. I don’t even think it’s about sex, I think it’s because she fits into the version of you that exists here. The one who wears snow boots and plays hockey on the lake in his backyard.”

Anastasia feels jealousy when the waitress at the ski resort acts familiar with Nathan, but she is not jealous of any other women that Nathan slept with in the past. She regrets that she does not have access to this portion of Nathan’s life, and will never have access to it, because Nathan never wants to go back to the image of him in Colorado that she paints in her mind.

“He leans back against the pillows, letting me trail my fingers across the smooth, warm planes of his stomach, all the way down to his sweatpants. Gray, obviously, because Nathan Hawkins is a man who was most definitely written by a woman.”

Typical of romance novels, the male romantic lead is idealized in this scene. Here, Grace speaks through Anastasia, to convey the metafictional admission that she has done her best to dream up the “perfect man” in the character of Nathan. In the moment she is describing his body, but her portrayal of “perfection” extends to his emotional intelligence, his wealth, as well as his competence in life and in the bedroom.

“The girl who would only eat salad, didn’t want a relationship, and couldn’t stand hockey players is nowhere to be seen.”

The very last line of the penultimate chapter portrays Nathan’s reflection upon the events of the story as he emphasizes how much Anastasia has changed. This change is objectively a good thing, especially as he references her repaired relationship with food, but it also emphasizes how little Nathan had to change to reach the same level of happiness.