Chapter 9
ELIDA
The rink is empty at this hour.
I let myself in and don’t turn on the main lights - just the low practice lights, the ones that make the ice look pale and ethereal. There’s a coaching session later today but I needed time on my own first.
I lace up slowly.
I haven’t skated my own routine since my last competition. It felt too much like picking up something I’d put down for a reason, something I wasn’t sure I had the right to anymore. But this morning, my head was too loud, and this is the only thing that has ever reliably fixed that.
I step onto the ice.
I stand there for a moment, feeling the surface settle under my blades, letting my weight find itself.
Then I push off.
It comes back immediately, like a language you never forgot even when you stopped speaking it. The first sequence flows into the second, the transition changes clean and automatic. I let the muscle memory take over and skate.
The routine is three minutes and forty seconds long. I competed with it for two seasons. I know every beat of the music even in silence, the timing living somewhere in my chest. For three minutes and forty seconds, I’m not a scandal or a cautionary tale.
I’m in the middle of the final sequence - the one that used to make the crowd watch in a hushed silence, the spin combination and jump that cost me two years of mornings to perfect. I land and spin and suddenly there’s someone sitting at the very back of the arena, completely still, watching.
I stop.
He raises a hand. Not a wave exactly - more like I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
Russo.
Of course.
MATEO
I came in early to skate.
That’s it. I’ve been doing it all year and last night was not a good night so this morning I need it more than usual.
Except when I push through the door the ice isn’t empty.
I stop.
She doesn’t see me. She’s in the middle of a skating sequence, moving through it with her eyes forward and her whole body committed to it in a way I’ve only seen with athletes on TV. I stand in the doorway and I don’t move.
I’ve watched her coach. I’ve watched her demonstrate dozens of times.
But this is different.
This is what she actually is.
The spin combination she runs is - I don’t have the vocabulary for it, I’m a hockey player, I don’t know the names of things.
Those moves shouldn’t be possible, but somehow they are.
She lands and the edge is so clean it’s almost silent and she goes straight into the next sequence without pausing.
I’m standing at the back of the rink barely breathing.
This is what she gave up.
I find a seat without deciding to and I watch. I’m aware that I should announce myself, that every second I don’t is another second this becomes something other than accidental, but I can’t make myself interrupt it.
Then she lands the final spin and turns.
She sees me.
I raise a hand. Caught. Sorry. Not sorry enough to have left.
She stops.
I stand up and come down towards her. I open the gate and step onto the ice in my shoes which is stupid, but I’m already committed.
“I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“You should have announced yourself.”
“Yeah.” I stop a few feet from her. “I know.”
She’s still in her skates, which means she has about three inches on me. Her hair is loose and her cheeks are flushed from the skating.
“It was incredible.”
“Thank you.” But of course, she’s a champion – she already knows she’s good.
We stand there for a moment.
And then I remember what I need to confront her about. What I’ve decided after last night, since watching Skelly’s hand on her back outside Tierney’s.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Skelly. Northern State coach. You’re aware they’re in our conference.”
“I’m aware.”
“You’re our skating coach. You’re working with this team, you have access to our sessions, our technique work, our-”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m saying it looks bad. It’s a conflict of interest and someone needs to say it.”
Her chin comes up. “It’s a drink with a colleague.”
“It’s dinner with the opposition.”
“It’s none of your business.” Her voice has gone very cool. “Who I spend my time with outside this rink has nothing to do with you or this team.”
“It has everything to do with this team.”
“Does it.” It’s not a question. “Or does it have everything to do with you.”
I open my mouth.
“Because I find it interesting,” she continues, and there’s an edge to it now, “that you’re standing here talking about professional boundaries and conflict of interests-” She stops.
“What?”
“Is it really more wrong than having a thing for someone you’re supposed to be coaching?”
She goes absolutely still.
Like she’s heard what she said at exactly the same moment I did.
I watch her realize she can’t take it back.
I shouldn’t smile.
I smile.
“A thing?”
“I didn’t-” She stops. Lifts her chin. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
“It was a hypothetical.”
“Was it.”
The color in her cheeks, already pink from the skating, goes slightly pinker, and she looks at me with an expression that is trying very hard to be withering and is not quite getting there. I find that I am enjoying this more than I’ve enjoyed anything in recent memory.
“Russo.”
“Eriksson.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
She points at my face. “Stop smiling.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You’re insufferable.”
ELIDA
I need to not be standing this close to him.
I push back - a small movement to create some distance - and he steps forward on his stupid shoes on my ice so the distance doesn’t happen.
“It was a figure of speech.”
“Elida.”
My name in his mouth, calm and certain, and I feel it the same way I felt it outside the bar.
“It doesn’t matter what it is. The point stands about Skelly. You want to talk about professional boundaries-”
“You’re not my coach,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“Officially. You’re a skating consultant. Brought in to work on technique. You’re not on the permanent coaching staff.”
“Well, it might become permanent.”
“And,” he continues. We’re practically the same age. Everyone knows that - you’re an international athlete, you have a profile online.”
“You looked it up?”
He evades my question. “You’re twenty-three. I’m twenty-two,” He shrugs. “Not exactly scandalous.”
I push off again, a proper movement this time, putting real distance between us, and I hear his shoes on the ice behind me. I turn around.
“You can’t skate,” I say. “You’re in shoes.”
“I’m managing.”
He is, annoyingly, managing - picking his way across the ice with the careful balance of someone who spends his life on skates and can find his footing on most surfaces. He stops about a foot away. I have nowhere to go because the boards are behind me and he’s in front of me.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably,” he agrees.
“I coach your team.”
“You consult on our skating,” he says. “Technically.”
“Technically I still need you to do what I say in sessions - how exactly would that work?”
“I always listen to you.” He says it simply.
He’s standing so close now, with the rink empty around us and the admission still hanging in the air between us.
I put my hand flat on his chest. Stopping whatever this is before it becomes something else.
“I have to finish my practice.”
“Okay.”
“And you have to go put your skates on.”
“I do.”
“So. I’ll be done by the time you’re ready.”
He steps back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “it’s not hypothetical for me either.”
He turns and moves carefully off the ice, and I stand there with my hand still raised. I watch him go to the bench and sit down and pull his skates out of his bag like nothing happened.
I push off hard toward the far end of the rink.
I want to run my routine one more time and then get off this ice.
I land the first jump and it’s a tiny bit crooked.
That has never happened before.
I blame him entirely.