Chapter 12 Théo
I cut my skate time short.
Another frustrating session—the triple still wrong, that stubborn, unreliable wobble in my centre of gravity.
I knew what would fix it. I knew it the way I knew edges and timing and air: someone watching, correcting, giving me drills and reference points, an external eye to recalibrate against. My body had lost its internal map. It needed someone to hand me a new one.
Calling Coach Miller meant letting someone see what I’d become.
The jumps I couldn’t land. The stamina I’d lost. The gap between who I used to be and who I was now, measured in rotations and seconds and all the small failures I’d been cataloguing alone.
At least when I was the only witness, I could pretend it wasn’t that bad.
Mostly, I wanted to feel in control of my own body again.
I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had.
On the Blue Line, I nibbled a protein bar with my skate bag wedged between my feet and my backpack on my lap.
Outside the windows, the city slid by in grey blocks and glaring sunlight.
Inside, the train was freezing—air conditioning cranked up to combat the lingering heat.
I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and hunched into myself.
My body had never been good at holding warmth and lately it was worse.
One more thing recovery was supposed to fix eventually.
My mind wandered the way it did on transit—loose and unfocused, snagging on random things.
I thought about Benji.
I don’t know why. Maybe because I was on my way to take care of someone else’s dog. Benji had been a squat beagle mix with short legs and a loud opinion about everything. We got him when I was little and when my parents divorced, he became one more thing my mom was expected to take care of.
So I did it instead. Fed him. Walked him. Cleaned up after him. Slept with him curled against my feet.
Avery was already wrapped up in hockey by then—early morning practices and weekend tournaments and summer training camps that ate up every school break.
He couldn’t walk Benji because he had dryland at six.
Couldn’t feed him because he was at a showcase in Detroit.
Couldn’t take him to the vet because there was a scouts’ game in Buffalo and Dad was already loading the car.
The whole family rotated around Avery’s schedule, his trajectory, his future.
I didn’t mind taking care of Benji. He was mine in all the ways that mattered.
He died when I was fifteen. Cancer. We found out and put him down the same week. No time to adjust to the idea before it was done.
The sting of tears hit the back of my eyes on a packed train over a dog that had been dead for six years.
Embarrassing.
The train slowed into the next stop. I stood, hoisted my bag, and let the crowd carry me onto the platform before I could really embarrass myself.
Walking out of the air conditioned train car and into the stifling heat was like being hit in the face with a hot, wet towel.
The humidity was extraordinary. Despite it, I had on a long sleeved white t-shirt and baggy cargo pants, my skate bag hefted across my chest as I made the short walk to Derek’s building.
Aspen heard the key in the lock before I’d even finished turning it. The whining started immediately—urgent, delighted, the full body anticipation of a dog who treated every return as a rescue.
I dropped my bags by the front door and went to let him out of the crate. He launched himself at me with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting specifically for me and no one else would have done.
He licked my face thoroughly and without apology.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
Could dogs grin? Because the look he gave me before bounding toward the front door suggested strongly that yes, they could.
His leather leash with the poop bag dispenser was looped around a row of hooks near the door.
Next to it hung a black and teal Frost hat—Derek’s, obviously, probably left there for the sole purpose of taking Aspen in and out.
I had forgotten a hat. It was aggressively hot outside. I yanked it on without overthinking it.
I double checked my pockets for keys and headed back out into the heat with Aspen trotting beside me.
He walked with authority, like a dog on a mission.
I let him lead. We circled the block and he conducted an extremely thorough olfactory investigation of several points of interest without producing any results.
I snapped a photo of him mid-stride, ears flopping, looking very serious about the business of walking.
Made it to your place. He’s doing great.
The response came back faster than I expected—a heart on the photo, and then: Thank you. I’m glad he’s in good hands.
He’s easy to take care of.
I pocketed my phone and let Aspen drag me toward whatever had caught his attention next.
◆◆◆
Derek had told me I could sleep in his bedroom while he was on the road trip.
I took the couch.
The couch was fine, firm but workable. Something in me balked at taking his bed. It wasn’t about comfort. It was about boundaries. He’d handed me a key, left me alone in his place, trusted me with Aspen. The bedroom felt too… personal. Like more than I’d earned.
He’d had enough people take what they wanted from him. I wasn’t going to be another one.
Still, I noticed things I couldn’t help noticing.
The way his kitchen was organized with the particular tidiness of someone who was a touch neurotic.
A Traverse City postcard pinned to the fridge with a magnet.
Physical therapy resistance bands coiled on the shelf by the door next to his gym bag, as routine as car keys.
Aspen took me outside two more times before noon, nudging the rope of bells with his nose.
I was fairly certain he had trained Derek to take him outside as often as he liked and was now running the same experiment on me.
Twice he circled the block in apparent seriousness and did absolutely nothing.
I walked him anyway. The heat was brutal but the fresh air was worth it, even when it plastered my hair to the back of my neck and my shirt to my chest.
I checked out the gym on the fifth floor. It faced a communal outdoor space—a large pool catching the summer light, a hot tub beside it, cushioned lounge chairs. The gym itself was empty, the particular quiet of a space usually full of people who were currently at work.
I found the stretching mat and spent an hour on off-ice conditioning.
Jump rotations—the mechanics of the takeoff, the air position, the landing edge, all of it rehearsed without ice.
Box jumps and jump squats until my legs burned.
Planks and dead bugs until the muscles in my core protested.
When I was finally too exhausted to continue, I headed back downstairs.
◆◆◆
Derek had left an envelope on the kitchen counter with my name scrawled on the front. Inside were five crisp hundred dollar bills.
American money still looked like play money to me. The colours were wrong, the scale slightly off from what my hands knew.
I treated myself to an early dinner from the deli inside Walsh & Wilde, the gleaming high end grocery store across the street from his building.
A kale salad with grilled chicken breast and tahini lemon dressing—light, clean, something I could account for precisely.
I ate it at one of the small tables near the window, watching people bustling down the sidewalk, traffic snarling down the block.
After dinner, I took Aspen for another walk. Sent Derek another photo. Aspen sitting in a square of window light, ears up, dignified.
He hearted it within minutes.
He misses you.
Derek: Seems like he’s doing just fine without me.
He’s putting on a brave face but he keeps checking the door. Very loyal. Very tragic.
Derek: Now you’re just trying to make me feel guilty.
Aspen made me do it. Are you having a good trip?
Derek: Depends on how tomorrow goes.
What’s happening tomorrow?
Derek: I see how it is. Safe to say you’re not watching the game tomorrow?
I’ll put it on for Aspen. Good luck.
The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it. I pocketed my phone and looked down at Aspen, who was still watching me with those patient, expectant eyes.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
◆◆◆
I showered after my second round of off-ice conditioning, letting Derek’s water pressure—noticeably better than Avery’s—hammer my shoulders loose. I tried not to notice anything else.
I failed.
The body wash was bright and citrusy, clean in a way that felt expensive. Bergamot. I’d clocked it on him when I had slid past him the other night. Even the shower shelf was freakishly organized—everything lined up, labels facing out, like order was a reflex.
I turned the water to cold for the last thirty seconds the way I always did and stood there until my pulse settled.
In the mirror afterward, towel around my waist, I brushed my wet hair back and looked at myself for a moment.
This was something my therapist in Montréal had called grounding.
You look at yourself. You name what you see.
You stay in the present tense and you don’t let the image become a verdict.
I had been very good at it for about three months and then I had stopped going to therapy and now I was standing in someone else’s bathroom doing an amateur version of it with mixed results.
I didn’t recognize this version of Théo.
The dark circles were newish—not new exactly, but deeper than they used to be, more permanent looking, the kind that a full night’s sleep didn’t fully fix anymore.
They stood out against my skin, which was pale in the particular way of someone who burned in under twenty minutes and had therefore made SPF 50 a non-negotiable daily practice since adolescence.
Religious about it. Sabrina called it my vampire routine.
My hair was wet and pushed back from my face, bluish black in the bathroom light, the color it always went when it was damp.
I had wanted to dye it since I was 15. Something dramatic—bleached, or a deep red, or even just a lighter brown.
I had mentioned it to mom once and she had looked at me like I had suggested something genuinely criminal.
Don’t you dare touch that beautiful hair, Mathéo Beaubien, she had said, It’s the only thing you inherited from me. You look too much like your father.
So the hair stayed.
My cheekbones. I stared at them for a beat too long—the way you stare at something you haven’t figured out how to feel about yet.
It was never just about the scale. The numbers were confirmation but the obsession lived in what couldn’t be measured—the satisfying hollow beneath my cheekbones when I traced them with my fingertips.
The collarbones that cut sharp lines beneath my skin, visible proof of discipline.
The knobs of my spine I could count in the shower like a private ritual.
The iliac crests rising above my waistband, twin monuments to everything I’d denied myself.
My cheekbones had been the crown jewel. Sharp enough to cut glass, someone had commented once. I’d carried that phrase around like a trophy.
Five months ago, I could see every edge. Now they had softened. The sharp architecture that had stared back at me from competition photos—that particular gauntness that was all the rage in the 90s—had filled in. The edges blurred. My face looked rounder. Fuller.
For better or worse.
My logical brain knew the answer to that. Had always known, technically, the way you can know something completely and feel something else entirely about it at the same time. My therapist had a name for that too. Most things had names, I had learned. That didn’t make them smaller.
I looked at myself for another moment. Dark circles, pale skin, blue black hair, cheekbones that were returning to something a nutritionist would call healthy and that some part of me still hadn’t made peace with.
Present tense, my therapist would say. What do you see right now.
I see Théo Beaubien, I thought. Twenty-one years old. Standing in a stranger’s bathroom in Chicago wearing a towel, having accomplished nothing today except walking a dog and eating a salad and doing box jumps alone in an empty gym.
Riveting. Someone should write a biography.
I reached up and wiped the steam from the mirror’s edge. Then I got dressed, went to check on Aspen, and didn’t look at the mirror again.