Chapter 25
Smile While Your Entire Life Quietly Falls Apart
The hardest part about heartbreak is how ordinary everything stays around it. The rink still smells the same, cold air, sharpened blades, coffee drifting faintly from the vending machines near the lobby. Nothing changes structurally just because your chest feels split open.
I arrive at practice ten minutes early out of habit.
Calder used to call it my psychotic pre-warmup ritual.
The memory hits so fast I physically stop walking for half a second.
That keeps happening. Tiny things. Everywhere.
I force myself moving again before the feeling can settle properly into my body.
The rink is mostly empty this early. Good.
I don't want anyone looking at me long enough to notice I'm barely sleeping lately.
I toss my bag onto the bench near the boards automatically.
Then instinctively glance toward the stands.
My stomach drops immediately. Because some part of me still expects Calder there, coffee in his hands, baseball cap pulled low, watching me with that impossible focused softness he only ever showed me privately.
The empty seats hit harder now than they did the first few days.
Not sharp anymore. Just constant. Like grief settling permanently into the shape of routine.
I sit down slowly to lace my skates. My phone lights briefly beside me on the bench.
Every nerve in my body reacts instantly.
Hope arriving before logic can stop it. The notification is from my federation travel coordinator.
The emotional drop afterward feels exhausting.
Not dramatic. Just tired. I stare at the screen too long anyway.
Because technically, Calder is still reachable.
That's the worst part. He isn't gone. Not really.
I could text him right now. Could probably still call.
Still hear his voice. Still fall apart the second he says my name softly enough.
Grief is cleaner when somebody disappears completely.
This feels unfinished. Like my entire nervous system keeps waiting for the relationship to restart itself somehow.
I shove the phone face down against the bench before the thought can deepen further. I already know where that road leads.
Back into smaller versions of myself.
Coach walks onto the ice carrying a clipboard. "Morning, Arabella." "Morning." My voice sounds almost normal. Good. I stand and skate out before I can think too much harder about anything.
The first few laps hurt immediately. Not physically.
Emotionally. Because Calder exists inside my training now too, in corrections I hear automatically in my head, in breathing patterns, in pacing.
Relax your shoulders. Don't rush the landing.
Again. The memories arrive instinctively with movement.
I hate how comforting that still feels. By the time I start jump drills my chest already aches with exhaustion.
Not from skating. From absence. Every pause between exercises feels too quiet now.
Every successful landing feels strangely incomplete without somebody there to notice it.
Calder used to look proud of me over tiny things. Clean rotations. Recovered mistakes. Good practices I barely acknowledged myself. The realization presses painfully into my ribs. Because I didn't understand how much emotional space he occupied until suddenly all of it emptied at once.
I miss him. The truth exists quietly beneath everything now.
Not just physically. I miss being known by him.
Regulated by him. Looked at like I mattered outside performance.
My skate catches slightly on the next landing because my focus slips.
I stumble hard enough to scrape the toe pick against the ice.
Frustration flashes instantly through me.
Then, automatically: Reset. The thought arrives in Calder's voice so clearly I nearly stop breathing.
Not memory. Habit. Something he built into me through repetition and care.
I straighten slowly at centre ice while cold air burns deep in my lungs. Loving Calder changed the architecture of my life so completely that even heartbreak cannot fully remove him from it yet.
By the second week, I stop waiting for grief to become easier before functioning again.
Because heartbreak is apparently deeply inconsiderate about scheduling.
Worlds doesn't care that I can barely sleep properly.
My body doesn't care that my chest hurts constantly.
Training still exists whether I feel emotionally stable enough for it or not.
So I stop negotiating with myself. Wake up, stretch, conditioning, ice time, recovery, repeat.
Structure saves me. Not perfectly. Enough.
I start sleeping in compression boots again, actually following nutrition plans instead of surviving on coffee and emotional damage, recommitting to physical therapy exercises I'd been getting lazy about before Nationals.
Small disciplines. Tiny acts of self-preservation.
The routines don't erase the grief. They just stop it from swallowing entire days whole.
Coach notices the shift after morning practice one Thursday.
"You look steadier this week." The comment catches me slightly off guard.
Because steadier is probably exactly the right word.
Not happier. Not healed. Balanced enough to keep moving.
I nod once while toweling sweat from my neck.
"I'm trying." Coach studies me for another second like she understands more than she's saying. Then: "Well. It's working."
The words settle quietly into my chest. Not the relationship. Me.
I skate longer now. Partly because Worlds demands it.
Partly because exhaustion helps. There's something merciful about physical tiredness, muscles burning, lungs aching, ice forcing complete concentration for thirty uninterrupted seconds at a time.
Skating leaves less room for spiraling. Not no room.
Less. And unlike heartbreak, skating gives immediate answers.
You land the jump or you don't. You recover or you fall.
You try again. Simple. Honest. The structure of that steadies me emotionally in ways nothing else currently can.
One afternoon after practice I sit on the ice stretching while the rink empties slowly around me.
Cold air burns lightly in my lungs. My legs ache.
Sweat cools slowly against the back of my neck.
And underneath the exhaustion, something sits that feels dangerously close to calm.
Not because I miss Calder less. Because I finally stop building my entire emotional state around missing him.
I still love him. Still think about him constantly. Still instinctively reach for my phone after difficult practices before remembering there's nowhere safe for those feelings to land anymore. But I also still have myself. My body. My future. My career. Worlds.
By the third week of Worlds preparation, Calder exists inside my skating so completely that I stop noticing it every time. Until suddenly I do.
I miss the landing on a triple combination late Friday morning.
Not badly. Just enough to throw my balance slightly off-centre.
Three months ago I would have spiralled instantly, frustration, overcorrection, another bad attempt fuelled entirely by anger at myself.
Instead I reset automatically. One breath. Shoulders down. Again.
Calder. Not memory this time. Conditioning. Something he built into me slowly enough that I never noticed it happening while we were together.
I land the combination cleanly on the retry. Coach nods once from the boards. "Better recovery."
I skate another lap pretending my chest didn't tighten painfully around the words. Because that's him too. Not the jump. The recovery afterward. Calder taught me how to stop treating mistakes like emergencies.
His voice lives inside my training instincts through the rest of practice.
Tiny things everywhere. Relax your upper body before the takeoff.
Breathe before the turn. Don't rush the correction.
Calm. Steady. Infuriatingly rational. And God, I miss him.
The thought arrives softer lately. Less catastrophic.
More constant. Like grief settling into companionship instead of active bleeding.
I stop near the boards afterward to retie one skate.
My fingers work mechanically through the laces while sweat cools slowly against my spine.
I'm stronger now than I was before Calder.
Not because heartbreak transformed me into somebody harder.
Because being loved by him changed the way I move through pressure.
Before Calder, every mistake felt isolating.
Every bad practice became proof I was failing.
Every criticism dug too deep. Every imperfect performance spiralled into self-punishment.
Calder interrupted that cycle constantly.
Not by fixing my skating. By refusing to let me destroy myself emotionally every time I struggled.
He grounded me. Not just emotionally. Athletically.
I skate cleaner now because I panic less.
Recover faster. Trust myself more after mistakes.
And somehow the worst part is that Calder probably has no idea he did that.
Coach calls for another run-through of my short program.
I push back onto the ice automatically. Music fills the rink.
Movement takes over. I stop fighting the fact that Calder still exists inside me.
Because pretending otherwise would mean pretending the relationship only hurt me.
That isn't true. Loving Calder broke my heart.
It also made me steadier. Softer with myself.
Stronger in ways that have nothing to do with endurance and everything to do with emotional survival.