Chapter 8
Dmitrii entered the hotel, walking past the front desk before he turned down the hallway to his room.
He was on the first floor. That had been intentional.
If he moved furniture around just a little, he could practice a bit without disturbing anyone under him.
That was the worst part of the host hotels at skating competitions.
Most of them placed the skaters on higher floors so you always felt bad practicing your jumps in your room.
He wasn’t practicing jumps today. Instead, as soon as he was in his room, he walked straight to the bed and collapsed face down on the blankets.
The temptation to give up was strong. He wasn’t making hardly any progress.
He flipped onto his back to stare up at the ceiling.
Maybe it would have been better to stay in St. Petersburg.
Maybe he could have found a psychiatrist who would work with him.
He knew that wasn’t true, though. Maybe he could have found a psychiatrist, but none of them specialized in athletes and their trauma.
He had already exhausted that option in both St. Petersburg and Moscow.
This really was his last chance. Dr. Aubrey had a string of successes.
She had literally written the book on mental trauma after injury in top-tier athletes.
It was pure luck she agreed to work with him.
He had to keep trying. If he gave up, it was over.
He walked over to the ‘living’ area of the room and pushed the coffee table against a wall and moved everything else out of the way.
Then he grabbed his headphones and started his music.
It wasn’t the same as on the ice, but off-ice run-throughs of his program were so important.
He took his starting position as he waited for the song to start.
The step sequence at the beginning was something he had done a million times off the ice.
Here in a hotel room, it was near perfect.
He moved through as much of the program as was possible off-ice in this confined place.
Dmitrii didn’t just mark the jumps this time.
Instead, they were perfectly executed double versions of the real jumps.
In bare feet, he started with a land-based double Toe-Loop and a double Salchow before he moved into the spin positions.
He didn’t turn; instead, he held the spin positions in place.
His leg stretched and curled until he could grab his toes over his shoulder.
He moved through more jumps and then the camel positions were held as he twisted into a donut spin.
He knew this music so well. It was one of his favorites.
He had skated to Prokofiev before, but as a junior, the suggestions had always been one of the other pieces, typically from Romeo and Juliet.
This was music from Dmitrii’s favorite of the Prokofiev ballets – Cinderella.
Maybe it was just wish fulfillment on his part.
Before he knew it, he was leaping into the final spin positions.
This time, off ice, it was no timid hop.
The leap was more than enough to show how ‘flying’ the entry for his flying spin really was.
While he had been going through his program, his phone had gotten a notification, so he thumbed through to read it.
He hadn’t expected a message from Tyler this soon.
He read through it quickly, sitting back on the bed as he did.
It was an invitation to dinner tomorrow.
Tyler offered to drive him after practice and said his mom insisted that he have an actual home-cooked meal.
Dmitrii knew the right thing to do was to accept the invitation.
It would be what a good guest would do. Besides, he had learned that if someone’s mother or grandmother wanted to feed you; they were normally an unstoppable force.
That wasn’t how his mother was, but he didn’t like to think about her.
Tomorrow was Friday though, and he had a long section of time blocked out in the morning with Dr. Aubrey.
Even with the assumption that he’d be exhausted between Dr. Aubrey and being on the ice tomorrow, he still texted back that he would love to.
Tyler had been nice, and maybe that was something that should concern him.
Tyler was rather handsome, and Dmitrii was near certain there had been a little bit of flirting on the short drive.
Maybe that was just wishful thinking though.
He really shouldn’t be looking for anything to complicate his life even more.
He tried to put it out of his mind. It was just dinner.
Tyler seemed like a nice person, so it only made sense that his mother would be a nice person as well.
Dmitrii was too tired to do much tonight.
He used one of the meal delivery apps on his phone to order something from a local diner.
He could think about his meal plan some other day.
Besides, if he returned to Russia a few pounds heavier but with the ability to skate again, no one would be upset.
They could get him back in shape as long as his mind was good.