Chapter 30
I Refuse to Be Socially Tortured Alone
The invitation sits unanswered in my messages for almost six hours. I do want to go. But lately there's still a small dangerous part of me that wants to disappear whenever the emotional exhaustion gets too heavy.
The event is some post-Worlds networking thing hosted by sponsors and federation people at a rooftop bar downtown, athletes, media, coaches, the kind of social night I used to avoid automatically unless absolutely necessary.
I lie stretched across my couch in leggings and one of my old training hoodies staring at the glowing screen while rain taps against the windows outside my apartment.
You should come tonight. Everyone's going. It'll be fun. Fun. The word feels suspicious.
My body aches pleasantly from practice this morning.
My ankle is wrapped in compression sleeves.
The apartment is warm and quiet and safe in the specific way isolation sometimes becomes after heartbreak.
It would be easy not to go. Easy to text some polite excuse about exhaustion and stay here instead.
Because the truth is part of me still organizes itself around absence now.
Not dramatically. Just instinctively. Big emotions still make me want to retreat inward first, protect myself, shrink the world smaller and quieter until nothing can hurt me unexpectedly.
And for a second, lying there with my phone balanced against my stomach, I almost let myself do it.
Then another message appears. Please come. I already said yes and I refuse to be socially tortured alone. Maddie and I survived Worlds team media week together. That has to count as friendship trauma bonding at this point.
I laugh before I can stop myself. The sound startles me slightly in the silent apartment. My thumb hovers over the keyboard afterward.
Calder would have told me to go. The thought arrives.
Not because he loved social events, God, he hated most of them, but because somewhere along the way he became the person constantly pushing me gently outward instead of inward.
You don't have to disappear every time you're overwhelmed.
The memory of his voice settles through my chest. I close my eyes briefly.
Missing him still arrives in waves sometimes.
Unexpected. Physical. Tonight it feels less like devastation and more like standing near an old bruise that never fully stopped aching.
I sit up slowly and glance around the apartment.
Practice clothes draped over a chair. Sponsor folders stacked beside the kitchen counter.
Skates drying near the door. My life keeps moving whether I isolate myself from it or not.
The easier choice would be staying home.
Which is exactly why I know I shouldn't.
Because somewhere between Calder leaving and Worlds and rebuilding myself afterward, I accidentally learned the difference between protecting my peace and hiding inside loneliness.
I exhale slowly. Then type: Okay. But if this turns into awkward networking small talk, I'm blaming you personally. The response arrives immediately. Too late.
I laugh again, warmer this time, and the apartment suddenly feels less heavy around me. Not fixed, not magically healed, just easier to breathe inside.
I toss my phone onto the couch and push myself upright before I can change my mind. The decision feels strangely important while I move toward the bathroom to start getting ready. Small and ordinary and important anyway.
The rooftop bar overlooks the harbour. Glass walls.
Low golden lighting. Music soft enough that conversation still carries easily across the room.
By the time I step out of the elevator, the event is already busy, athletes in fitted jackets and dresses, federation people balancing drinks while discussing schedules, media staff moving through the crowd with practiced social ease.
For one brief second, instinct tells me to turn around. Too many people. Too much noise. Too much expectation. Then Maddie spots me from across the room.
"There you are!" She waves dramatically hard enough to nearly hit the man beside her with a champagne flute. I laugh immediately and the tension loosens slightly in my chest before I even fully cross the room.
"You're violent when emotional," I tell her. "You're late when emotional." "Fair."
Social situations used to feel like performances I had to survive carefully. Now they just feel human, messier and warmer and less frightening.
People keep stopping by the table over the next hour.
A coach congratulating me on Worlds. Another skater asking about choreography changes.
A federation representative discussing travel schedules for next season.
Every conversation pulls me slightly further into this new expanding version of my life.
At one point a woman from a sportswear brand asks if I'd be interested in testing a new training line before launch.
Another person asks whether I'd consider appearing on a panel for younger athletes later in the year.
The opportunities keep arriving in ways that still feel faintly surreal, not because I don't deserve them, but because emotionally I still haven't fully adjusted to people wanting things from me outside skating results alone.
"You've become impossible to book lately," someone jokes lightly while passing me another drink.
"That sounds deeply threatening." "It's a compliment.
" "Still threatening." The group laughs around me.
The ease of it catches me off guard occasionally throughout the night, not the conversations themselves, but the fact that people genuinely seem happy I'm here.
Not because of headlines. Not because of Calder.
Not because of some public relationship narrative that used to orbit around us. Me. Arabella.
Something inside me shifts strangely while I stand near the railing later listening to two skaters argue passionately about music interpretation like it's a matter of national security.
The city glows beneath us. Music drifts through warm air.
Someone nearby laughs loud enough to turn heads across the patio.
And standing there with a drink cold against my palm while conversations continue easily around me, my world has become visibly larger over the last few months.
Not just professionally. Personally. There are people here who know me now.
Who seek me out. Who value my presence independently from who I loved.
Heartbreak narrowed my world temporarily.
Worlds expanded it again. The strange part is learning both things can exist simultaneously.
A federation media coordinator stops beside me while checking something on her phone.
"You're handling all this attention really well, by the way.
" I blink slightly. "All what attention?
" She gives me a look. "You do realize people are obsessed with you right now?
" Heat rises into my cheeks. "No. Absolutely not.
I reject that statement completely." She laughs.
"I'm serious. People like you." The sentence lands harder than she intends.
Simple. Casual. Enough to tighten something softly in my chest. Because for so long, so much of my emotional world revolved around whether Calder could openly choose me without fear reshaping the answer.
Meanwhile life kept quietly placing me in rooms full of people already welcoming me, supporting me, wanting me there.
I glance out across the city lights while warm air brushes against my bare shoulders.
By the second hour, the event stops feeling like something I'm attending carefully and starts feeling like a night I'm actually inside.
The difference is subtle but enormous. Music pulses through the rooftop space while groups shift naturally between tables and the dance floor near the far side of the bar.
Someone opens the glass doors wider to let warm night air move through the room.
I lean against the bar beside Maddie while she dramatically recounts a travel disaster involving three lost costume bags and a man in Finland who apparently cried over rhinestones.
"I'm serious," she insists while I laugh hard enough that my drink nearly slips from my hand.
"Full tears. Actual emotional devastation.
" "That's because skaters are deeply unstable people.
" "You are a skater." "Exactly my point.
" The bartender snorts while passing over another round.
I laugh again. Not politely. Not carefully.
Real laughter. The kind that escapes before I think about whether I'm emotionally allowed to feel it.
The awareness comes half a second later.
And for a moment, I just stand there slightly stunned by myself.
Because grief used to interrupt joy constantly.
Every happy moment automatically collided against the absence afterward.
Calder would love this. I wish he were here.
This would be funnier if— The ache always arrived immediately after.
Tonight it doesn't. Or maybe it does and I simply don't drown in it this time. The distinction feels important.
Someone drags a few of us toward the dance floor after that.
I protest automatically. "I absolutely do not dance recreationally.
" "You literally skate for a living." "That is structured suffering set to music.
Completely different." Nobody listens. A remix starts somewhere overhead while people laugh and move around us beneath strings of warm lights stretched across the rooftop ceiling.
And somehow, against all logic, I end up dancing anyway.
Not gracefully. Mostly terrible bouncing and laughing while Maddie nearly spills her drink trying to imitate one of my spin positions badly enough to count as a public safety hazard.