This is not at all the novel I was expecting. First of all the characters are much younger than I thought.

Ryan is a 19 years old college student and hockey player who, during a game, was badly injured. Now he is in a wheelchair and ahead of him he has many months, maybe years, of therapy for the hope to walk again, but not more skating for him. He has lost everything: he is not a striking guy, not a good student, he is plain and simple, and maybe a little surly, and being the star of the college hockey team was his change to be someone in college. Now he is a cripped guy living with his parents and with no chance in front of him. And he is also virgin, he likes guys but he has never had the courage to near someone, only an interrupted attempt of blowjob during a frat party.

Dante is a 18 years old boy from the wrong side of the city. After high school he didn't go to college, cause he has no the necessary money, and to be true, neither the inclination. He only loves speed skating, he is very good at it, and his dream is to arrive to Olympics. He works to pay his lessons and the fee to the trials. He is a beautiful latino guy, the dream man of many girls, but he is gay. He has had only a lover, a very bad experience with a schoolmate, but he has not given up the hope to find a boyfriend. Yes, a boyfriend, cause Dante is only an eighteen years old guy, and for him love is someone to call mine, someone to hung out with, someone who, like a knight in shining armour, stand up for him and claim to all the world and above all to the men who bother him, that he is his boyfriend, so hands out from him!

The story is very well written and compelling. Dante's trouble to find the money for simple things but also for the month's rent, his daydreams of glory. Ryan's struggle with the therapy, his bad attitude, very right considering his situation, his relationship with his mother. Oh yes, his mother... cause we are speaking of a nineteen years old guy, not a man, and mothers are still a very present costant in a guy's life. And Ryan's mother is a wonderful character, not the perfect mother of fantasy, but a real mother, bothering but loving.

And then there is the sex, that at that age is the most important thing you have, but it is naive and tender. Sex is also a kiss stolen in the shadow, but sex is also something more, you do careless and with enthusiasm. Condoms are a joke, not a life's necessity... they are teens in heat.