Chapter 9
It Doesn't Help
I expect to leave alone. That has always been part of the routine. Train. Stretch. Ignore the fact that my legs feel like they might detach from my body. Go home.
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets while stepping out of the rink into the freezing early morning air. The sky is still dark enough that the streetlights glow gold against the sidewalk. My favourite time of day. Usually.
The rink door swings open behind me a few seconds later. I glance back automatically.
Calder.
Of course.
He catches up without saying anything at first. No question about where I'm going. No awkward attempt to explain himself. He just falls into step beside me naturally, like this is already normal.
Our footsteps echo softly against the pavement while cold air curls between us. Calder shoves both hands into the pockets of his hoodie, and I notice him shorten his stride slightly to match mine. Automatic. Like he does it without thinking.
Neither of us says anything.
A car passes at the far end of the street. Somewhere behind us a delivery truck rattles over a pothole. The city is beginning to wake up around us.
Calder stays beside me. I don't ask why. He doesn't explain. Somehow that feels unnecessary.
"You always walk home after practice?" Calder asks eventually. His voice sounds rough from exhaustion, low in the cold air.
"Usually," I say. "Unless the weather's bad enough to justify a cab, which I then feel guilty about for the rest of the day."
Calder nods once and keeps walking, like there was never any question he would stay beside me.
"You look like somebody who forgets breakfast exists," he says.
I glance over.
"What does that even mean?"
"It means I've watched you drink coffee instead of eating actual food at least four times."
"That is an aggressively rude thing to say before sunrise."
"It's also correct."
Unfortunately, it is.
"I eat breakfast," I say, which is technically true on the days I remember. "Coffee counts."
"Coffee absolutely does not count."
Calder snorts softly.
"That explains the personality issues."
I laugh before I can stop myself, the sound escaping easier out here than it ever does at the rink.
"You survive entirely on caffeine and protein bars."
"That is called elite athletic nutrition."
"That is called future organ failure."
Calder grins briefly. There's something different about him outside the rink, less sharp around the edges. At the rink every conversation feels like sparring. Out here it just feels like talking.
"You always this annoying in the morning?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "Consistently. It's one of my better qualities."
"Good to know," he says, like he's filing it away somewhere.
We stop at a crossing. The bakery light glows across the street, warm and yellow against the dark.
Calder looks at it.
Then at me.
I recognise the look immediately.
"Obviously," I say before he can open his mouth.
Something shifts at the corner of his mouth. The pedestrian light changes and we cross.
Inside it smells like cookies, coffee, and exactly the right amount of vanilla syrup to caffeinate a figure skater.
We order without much discussion, which is its own kind of strange given that three weeks ago we were conducting open territorial warfare on the ice, and find the table near the window that has apparently become ours through accumulated habit rather than any explicit agreement.
Neither of us comments on that either.
The conversation keeps going the way it has been going, easy and slightly formless, neither of us steering it anywhere specific.
Calder complains about morning conditioning in the resigned tone of someone who will absolutely be there again tomorrow.
We argue about whether terrible sleep is more damaging to performance than emotional exhaustion, a disagreement that produces no useful conclusions.
He tells me about a road trip where the team's bus broke down in a town with one restaurant that had already closed for the night, and the image of twelve professional athletes sitting on their equipment bags in a dark parking lot eating vending machine sandwiches is funny enough that I laugh properly, the kind that takes a second to arrive and then lands all at once.
Calder watches me laugh and looks briefly like he wasn't expecting it to go that far, and then something in his expression loosens.
We drift into conversation about terrible sleep schedules next, then the fact that the convenience store near the rink somehow always smells vaguely burnt, then whether the city is actually better before dawn or whether we have just convinced ourselves it is because the alternative is admitting we both have genuinely unreasonable relationships with early mornings.
None of it matters. All of it keeps going.
No drills. No half-ice divide. No movement to retreat into when the conversation gets too close to something.
Just Calder across a small table in ordinary morning light, listening with the same focus he brings to everything else.
Not waiting for his turn to speak. Not checking his phone.
Just there. The realization lands unexpectedly hard.
I have spent years surrounded by people who wanted something from me.
Advice. Access. Results. Attention. Calder is the first person in a long time who seems content to simply sit here and drink his coffee.
At the rink, Calder always carries tension like a second set of equipment. Every reaction measured. Every movement controlled. Every sharp edge kept exactly where he wants it. Here, something has shifted.
He laughs more.
Not the dry, sarcastic sounds he throws at me across the ice during practice. Real laughter. Unfiltered enough that it catches me off guard. It leaves his shoulders lower afterward, the tension easing for a few seconds before he remembers to pick it back up again.
Even the way he sits is different. Less braced. Less prepared for impact. Like the world has stopped asking him to defend himself every second he's awake.
We stop briefly when our coffees need replacing.
At the counter, Calder glances at the barista and says, "Same again."
For both of us. The realization lands a second later. He remembered my order. I don't mention it.
"You ever get injured badly?" he asks when we sit back down.
"Stress fracture last year."
Calder winces. "That sucks."
"You?"
"Separated shoulder." He rolls one shoulder absently. "Played through it because our coach at the time was clinically insane."
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. Calder's grin flashes briefly.
"There it is. I was worried you'd gone emotionally serious on me."
"I regret showing vulnerability immediately."
"Smart," he says, and one corner of his mouth lifts.
Not quite a smile. Close enough.
The conversation drifts somewhere else without either of us choosing the direction. One second we're arguing about whether protein bars count as actual food. The next Calder is asking why I train before dawn.
"Less people," I say. "The rink feels quieter early. Less pressure."
"That's ironic," he says, "given that you spend the whole session generating your own pressure at twice the usual volume."
"You don't look like somebody who enjoys silence unless you need it either," I say.
His gaze flicks sideways. A clean hit. Not enough to make him answer immediately. Enough to know I wasn't wrong.
"What about you?" I ask. "Why stay after practice every day?"
Calder shrugs.
"Easier than going home sometimes."
The words slip out with the careless balance of someone who didn't mean to put weight on them. By the time they settle between us, I get the feeling he wishes they hadn't.
"You ever sleep?" he asks before I can touch the subject.
"Not properly before competitions," I say. "You?"
"Same."
His eyes stay fixed ahead. Most people hear answers.
Athletes hear recognition. The word lands with a familiarity I know too well.
The endless replaying. The mental run-throughs.
The certainty that one mistake is waiting somewhere in the future and all you can do is keep searching for it before it finds you first.
"If I screw up at Nationals, it ruins four years," I say before I can talk myself out of it.
The admission settles between us. Calder goes quiet—not uncomfortable, just thinking. The same stillness he gets at the rink sometimes, right before he says something that matters.
"One bad game can follow you for an entire season," he says eventually.
His voice carries a fatigue I recognize immediately—not the kind that comes from sore muscles or long practices, but the kind that settles in when you've held yourself tight for so long that the strain stops feeling temporary and starts feeling like part of who you are.
Eventually the city outside the window has shifted from dark to grey to the pale gold that belongs to people with sensible schedules—people who slept, people who are heading to work instead of home. We both have somewhere else we're supposed to be. Neither of us moves particularly fast.
The last block to my building disappears beneath easy conversation and comfortable silence, the streetlights still glowing faintly overhead, caught between useful and unnecessary, while cold air slips between us as we walk. We slow near my front steps and stop, neither of us announcing it.
"Well," I say.
Calder shifts beside me.
The movement looks familiar. The same tiny hesitation he gets before interviews. Before questions he doesn't want to answer. Like he started toward one response and changed direction halfway there.
His gaze drifts back down the street, toward the rink.
"I didn't expect to like sharing the ice," he says.
Something tightens briefly along his jaw, and for a second I can't quite place it. Not regret. Something closer to surprise.
"But?" I ask.
Calder exhales through his nose.
"But I got used to you."
The words land between us, simple and matter-of-fact, and somehow harder to dismiss because of it. His hand drags across the back of his neck as his attention shifts somewhere over my shoulder, away from me, as if looking directly at me while saying it would have been asking too much.
"The mornings are better now."
For a second, everything inside me loses rhythm. The way it does when a landing goes wrong. Not enough to fall. Enough to feel it. Enough to know I'll remember it later.
Calder goes quiet. The silence shifts. Not awkward. Not finished. Something else. His gaze flicks toward me and then away again. The pause stretches. Long enough that I find myself waiting for whatever comes next.
Nothing does.
Whatever thought got close enough to reach daylight disappears before it arrives.
"Anyway," he says.
His voice settles back into something familiar. Flat. Controlled. Safe.
"You should probably eat at some point."
"I'll see you tomorrow," he adds.
Not maybe. Not if. Tomorrow. Like the decision was made somewhere without me.
"Yeah," I say. "Tomorrow."
Calder nods once. Then he turns and heads back down the sidewalk. One hand lifts in a loose half-wave without looking back. I watch him until he disappears around the corner. Only then do I go inside.
Warm air meets me in the lobby. My legs protest the stairs. My skate bag drags against my shoulder with every step.
The mornings are better now.
The words replay themselves. Then the pause afterward. The one that felt unfinished. I think about the way his voice changed when he said it. About how certain tomorrow sounded.
Second floor.
Third.
Somewhere between the stairs and my apartment door, I realize I'm smiling. I press my lips together. The smile stays anyway.