Chapter 5
This Is A Coincidence
The cold hits first, then the silence. But not the wrong silence from yesterday. Temporary silence. The kind that feels like it is waiting for something.
I step into the rink and automatically glance toward Calder's usual side before I even finish pulling my gloves off. No internal argument first. No pretending I am not checking. Just immediate attention, which is its own problem.
The bench is empty.
No hockey bag. No scattered tape wrappers. No abandoned water bottle beside his stick.
I shove my bag down harder than necessary and step onto the ice. Warm-up first. Thinking later. I push through a few edge drills while the rink stays quiet around me, and then the back entrance slams open.
The sound hits before I consciously process it. A second later comes the low dull crack of something heavy dropped onto the bench. My next turn settles cleanly beneath my blade. The tight, restless feeling that's been following me around all morning eases off without permission.
Which is deeply concerning.
I glance over. Calder is halfway onto the ice already, dark hoodie shoved up to his elbows, tape wrapped loosely around one hand while he adjusts his grip on his stick.
He looks up immediately.
Like he felt me look.
"Miss me?" he calls casually.
The fact that my answer almost exists is horrifying.
"Your ego is genuinely exhausting," I say instead.
Calder's mouth shifts slightly at one corner, almost a smile, and then he pushes fully onto the ice.
"You're late," I say.
"You noticed?"
"I noticed the temporary improvement in vibe."
"Cruel."
"Honest."
Calder taps the blade of his stick lightly against the ice. "You look offended I interrupted your dramatic little warm-up sequence."
"It's called preparation."
"It looked like interpretive suffering."
I glare at him while adjusting my training jacket. "You voluntarily get punched for entertainment."
"That's hockey culture."
"That's unresolved emotional issues."
Calder laughs softly under his breath. The sound is familiar enough now that I recognize it before I've consciously registered it.
Which feels like information I did not ask for. He pushes into another lap while I move through a stretch sequence near centre ice.
"You always this cheerful before sunrise?" he asks.
"I'm delightful before sunrise."
"You threatened my existence three minutes ago."
"You survived."
"Barely."
I snort and push backward into a turn. Calder skates past close enough that cold air trails across my arm before he loops back toward the boards. A few weeks ago one of us probably would have made a comment about it. Now neither of us even breaks stride.
That feels like information worth examining.
I choose not to.
Calder complains about morning conditioning in the specific tone of someone who will absolutely be there again tomorrow. I complain about coaches who treat sleep as a character flaw. He mocks the amount of tape figure skaters use. I tell him hockey players smell like aggression and poor decisions.
"You have any weird pre-competition rituals?" Calder asks, somewhere between a shooting drill and me resetting for a combination entry. Casually. Like he's just filling space.
I hesitate for half a second. Then answer anyway, because the conversation has been easy enough that my guard has apparently taken the morning off.
"I reskate my free program the night before. In my head. In real time."
Calder slows slightly. "What do you mean, real time?"
"I mean I lie completely still and run the whole program. Every transition. Every jump. Counting the beats." I push into the combination entry, keeping my voice even. "Four minutes and nine seconds. If I lose the thread I start over."
There is a pause that lasts exactly long enough to be noticeable.
"Since when?"
"Since I was twelve."
"Does your coach know?"
"No."
Another pause. I land the combination and transition out before I have to look at him.
"Because it would sound like anxiety," Calder says. Not a question.
Something tightens briefly in my chest.
"It isn't anxiety."
"I didn't say it was."
I glance over. He is watching me with that focused expression he gets when he has assessed something and is simply waiting to see if I will acknowledge it too. Not pushing. Not arguing. Just aware.
I look away first.
Then I push harder into the next sequence.
"You tape your stick differently depending on your mood," I say.
"That's strategy."
"That's emotional support equipment."
"At least I sleep before competitions."
"I sleep."
"After four minutes and nine seconds of lying completely rigid running imaginary figure skating."
"It's a system."
"It's a cry for help."
The laugh escapes me before I can stop it. Genuine.
Calder's mouth shifts at the corner.
His eyes stay on me for a fraction longer than necessary.
I immediately wish I hadn't noticed that.
He skates past me during a drill, close enough that cold air cuts sharply across my skin. My concentration slips for half a second before I can pull it back. I reset and push into the next transition.
Calder circles back toward the boards, adjusting the tape around one hand. White tape against his knuckles. The movement is quick and automatic, done without looking. The same kind of muscle memory that lets me tie skates in the dark or find an entry edge without thinking about it.
I immediately shove the thought away and nearly miss the next turn.
"You planning to skate today or just glare at me professionally?" Calder asks.
"I'm deciding whether your existence violates several health codes."
His mouth shifts slightly at one corner, the almost-smile again, and that should not affect me as much as it does. I push aggressively into another jump sequence before I can examine why it does.
Calder skates past again while retrieving a puck near centre ice. Damp hair curling slightly at the edges from training. Stubble shadowing his jaw. The details keep arriving before I can stop them, which is new and deeply unhelpful.
My focus slips during the landing. Not enough to fail. Enough that Calder notices.
"You're drifting left again," he says casually.
I glare at him mostly because he interrupted the extremely inappropriate direction of my own thoughts. "Stop noticing things."
Calder looks genuinely confused.
"That's literally how sports work."
Which is somehow not reassuring at all.
At one point Calder cuts sharply across centre ice while I transition backward through a sequence. Too close. Before I can fully adjust, his hand catches lightly around my wrist. Not lingering. Not possessive. Just efficient pressure redirecting my momentum slightly away from his path.
My breath catches anyway.
Calder releases me immediately and keeps moving.
"Careful," he says over his shoulder.
I stare after him for a second longer than necessary.
The worst part is that none of it feels flirtatious. That would almost be easier. Instead it feels exactly like everything else Calder does. Fast. Practical. Instinctive. A correction made without thinking about it.
Which means my reaction is entirely my own problem.
We end practice without either of us formally deciding to. The session just slows the way it does now, naturally, like neither of us is in a particular hurry to restore the silence. Calder peels tape from one wrist. I pull guards onto my blades. The rink hums quietly around us.
"Four minutes and nine seconds," Calder says, not looking up from the tape.
"Drop it."
"I'm just saying. That's very specific."
"It's a precise program."
"Do you time yourself? Like, do you have a stopwatch?"
I pick up my bag with more dignity than the question deserves. "Goodbye, Calder."
His low laugh follows me toward the exit. I do not look back. Which takes more effort than it should.
Outside, the cold hits sharp against my face. The sky is still dark at the edges, that specific pre-dawn grey that belongs entirely to people with terrible life choices and elite athletic ambitions. I pull my jacket tighter and walk. The laugh follows me outside anyway.
The bakery on the corner has its lights on.
Of course it does.
It always does at this hour, which I know because I walk past it every single morning and think about going in approximately every single morning and never do.
Partly because that would be rewarding myself for training that isn't finished yet.
Partly because standing alone in a warm bakery before sunrise feels dangerously close to admitting something about how the mornings actually feel.
Today I stop walking.
I look at the lit window for a second. Then I go in. Because I just told Calder Hayes about the four-minutes-and-nine-seconds thing and apparently my self-preservation instincts have already taken the morning off, so I might as well have a coffee.
It is warm inside and smells like something just came out of the oven. I order at the counter and find a small table near the window while I wait, dropping my skate bag against the wall and wrapping both hands around the cup the second it arrives.
Outside, the street is still mostly empty. A delivery truck. A cyclist. The particular quiet of a city not yet fully awake.
The door opens behind me.
I don't have to look up to know.
"This is a coincidence," Calder says.
"Obviously," I say.
He orders at the counter. Then he comes and sits down across from me, setting his hockey bag against the wall beside mine, and picks up the menu even though we both know he has already decided.
I look out the window. He reads the menu.
The silence is completely comfortable, which is its own kind of problem.
"You come here every morning?" he asks.
"No," I say. "First time."
Calder sets the menu down.
"Me too."
I look at him then. There is a beat where neither of us says anything.
The bakery has existed for years. We both know that.
He looks back at me. Something shifts briefly in his expression.
Not quite a smile. Definitely amusement.
My eyes narrow. Calder glances toward the counter where his coffee is waiting.
I look back out the window.
The street is getting slightly lighter now. Somewhere behind me Calder wraps both hands around his cup the same way I am, which I notice without meaning to, and the bakery smells like bread and warmth and morning.
I think about four minutes and nine seconds. About the fact that I told him. About the way he said I didn't say it was. About how he didn't immediately try to fix it or analyze it or turn it into a conversation I didn't want to have.
A strange pressure settles in my stomach. That might be the most alarming thing that has happened this week.
Including the wrist thing.
And the laugh.
"Same time tomorrow?" Calder asks.
He means the rink. Obviously he means the rink.
"I'm always there at the same time," I say. "That's what a schedule is."
"Right," he says.
We drink our coffee. Outside, the city wakes up around us. Neither of us is in any particular hurry, which I am absolutely not examining, and this is definitely not the beginning of anything, and I am going to finish this coffee and go home and that will be that.
I stay until the cup is empty.
So does he.