Chapter 10
Elisa came in tenth.
Top ten in the world; not bad, right? Especially with two falls.
But somewhere along the line in the history of athletics, probably the original Olympics, now that I think about it, someone decided that only the top three count.
Only first, second, and third get rewarded for their efforts and everyone else, fourth through last, goes home with nothing.
And that’s what’s happening to Elisa today.
She’ll be home, after more than a decade of training, with absolutely nothing to show for it.
The February air is crisp this morning, but not the brutal frigidity of the last few weeks.
The sun is shining brightly and it seems like it’s capable of warming my face when I turn toward it.
It hasn’t snowed in days and for once the sidewalks seem pretty clear, so I’m taking a chance this morning and running outside.
I…I need to get away. Everything about Kellynch right now feels suffocating, and it doesn’t help that by tonight Elisa and Dad will be back home, adding two more complications to my already incredibly tangled emotions.
It’s quiet, way too early for anyone else to be awake.
It’s too early for me to be awake too, but there’s so much nervous energy racing through my bones that I need to burn some of it before the day really starts.
I put in my earbuds as I leap off our front porch ready to sprint down past Kellynch House and the rink into the anonymity of Greater Boston.
Once I’m over the river no one will even glance twice at me, just another girl from whatever college out for a run, they’ll assume, no idea who I am, no idea what I’m going through.
No idea that thousands of people around the world have spent the last week blowing up my social media feeds, asking about Brayden, obsessing over every post, so much so that it’s impossible to read all the comments and DMs or even scroll through the things I’m tagged in.
As soon as we post anything, it’s immediately dissected and analyzed and then thrown into a tribute set to a song or edited with a filter and reposted hundreds of times.
Brayden’s so good at it. He keeps up with it, reposting and commenting, liking dozens of posts a day, creating even more chaos in our mentions. I’m not really sure how he does it. It’s like he was made for this kind of life.
My feet slap against the pavement and I’m almost clear of our property, trying to find the right music for this morning’s run when I hear the slam of Kellynch House’s door and footsteps behind me answering my own.
I glance over my shoulder and a flash of brown hair and a sharp jawline tell me all I need to know.
Freddie.
He sends me a tight smile, awkward and unsure, and I return it, hoping mine is a little brighter than I feel.
Last night sucked and he was there to witness it all, and is that why he’s smiling at me today? Pity?
Ugh, the last thing I want is his pity.
“Hold up a sec,” he calls, and part of me wants to take off at a full sprint, but that would be incredibly freaking rude, even ruder than I was last night.
“What’s up?” I ask, turning as he catches up, trying not to relive the night before when I ran into him in a panic.
“You running into the city?” he asks, nodding over my shoulder in that general direction.
“Yeah,” I answer, fiddling with my phone, pulling up my music.
“Mind if I join?” he asks, doing the same.
If this was two years ago, I’d roll my eyes and joke that he already had, but it’s not, so I shrug and say, “Sure.”
We used to do this all the time when we trained together—everything became a competition, who could run farther, faster, who could veer off the sidewalk and leap the bike racks lining the street like they were hurdles.
Sometimes our arms would collide, and we’d shove at each other playfully and keep running, needing to make it back to Kellynch before we were late and Camille made us do laps.
I choose a random playlist that my thumb blindly finds on my screen, then tuck my phone into the pocket of my running jacket before taking off down the sidewalk at a good pace, knowing he’ll be right beside me.
For a few blissful minutes, it’s only me and the guitar riffs from The Band CAMINO pouring out of my earbuds, running through a mental checklist of the things I need to do today.
First training and then later on I need to try on my costumes for the competition to make sure we don’t need any last-minute alterations and then I need to pack.
I’m nearly to the bridge when my earbuds lose connection, the song cutting off completely.
Crap, I forgot to charge them last night.
The sounds of the city slowly waking up on a Sunday morning filter in instead—a few cars rumbling down the street, a couple of sirens in the distance, a plane overhead paired with the soft wind coming off the icy Charles River, and the slaps of our feet against the pavement.
It’s not the worst thing to run to.
When I slow down to tuck my dead earbuds in my pocket, Freddie matches my stride and we run in silence, over the bridge into Boston itself, the river disappearing behind us. It’s kind of nice, actually.
I could say something to him, though.
Should I say something?
I could…apologize, maybe? Apologize for what, though?
For doing what was best for my career? That’s not something to apologize for, is it?
Maybe not, but why does it feel like it is?
I never really got the chance to fully explain, though, that I was doing it as much for him as I was for me.
It sounds like such an excuse, but it’s the truth.
We were a mismatch, physically; even if we were on the same page with everything else, it didn’t matter.
He hadn’t grown yet, and I grew too fast. Neither of us would be here right now, ready to go to the Junior World Championships, if we’d had to sit out a year while we waited to see whether or not he’d be tall enough, strong enough to lift me up off the ice the way he can with Riley, the way Brayden can with me.
It turns out he is, but what if he wasn’t?
It’s not like figure skating careers last forever and it’s not like we could just push back the Olympic Games because our growth spurts happened a year apart.
That’s the logic behind it, and it was logical, even if it still feels like I didn’t do the right thing, like I should have waited, just like he did for me.
Still, there’s something between us, a deep cut, not fully healed, and maybe it’s scabbed over in the last couple of years, but for some reason this morning, I want to pick at it.
And it’s perfect timing because I’ve hit the spot where I normally turn around, just as Fenway Park looms into view.
I glance up at him and find he’s already looking at me with his bright green eyes, but instead of the passive disinterest I’ve gotten for the last week, there’s something there, some emotion I have no idea how to identify.
Maybe two years ago I could have, but not now.
I slow my strides down to a halt and he does the same before coming to a complete stop just outside the ballpark. Wanting to say something, the only thing I can think of is, “I’m gonna head back.”
“What?” he asks, pulling one of his earbuds out, and I almost snort when the exact song that was playing when mine died echoes out of the tiny speaker.
Actually, I did snort. Shit. “Your music.”
“I thought you liked The Band CAMINO?” he asks, sounding genuinely confused.
“Yeah, I do,” I say. “I’m gonna head back.”
“Okay,” he says, almost like he means “goodbye” or “see you later,” but when I start up in the direction we came from, he follows, his stride matching mine again even though his legs are longer and can outpace me whenever he feels like it.
I bet I can run for longer, though. He’s not used to running in the cold anymore.
And if it was two years ago, I would have said that, I would have challenged him to a run until someone had to stop.
But it’s not, so we just run in silence and suddenly I’m annoyed.
Annoyed at myself, annoyed at him. It’s stupid, after all this time, to still be like this.
Especially because my annoyance doesn’t have anything to do with him, not really.
I open my mouth to say something, anything that might inch us away from this awful place of cold acquaintances with more history than most people could wish for in a lifetime when my foot catches on something.
I don’t even see what I tripped over before I’m falling, my body sprawling down toward the concrete.
I don’t reach out with my hands to break the fall; I roll, the way I was taught when I first started skating.
“Shit,” I mutter, pushing up off the ground and examining my knee. It’s barely a scrape, but it ripped open the fabric of my running tights and the skin is broken. I’m not hurt beyond that; I can put weight on both feet no problem, but it stings like a bitch.
“You okay?” he asks, his brow furrowed, leaning down to peer at my knee.
“Yeah, fine. You go ahead,” I insist, waving him on. I’m going to have to walk home now. I’m pretty sure I’m okay, but running another three miles on it without really checking it out is probably a bad idea.
“That’s okay, I’ll walk with you,” he says, even though he’s still bouncing on his toes, like the energy in his body is colliding against itself inside of him, desperate to be let out. At least some things never change.
I’m not in the mood to argue with him, so I start walking and he follows. It’s weird to walk together in silence, even though we had no problem while running. He seems to feel the same because he reaches up and pulls an earbud from his ear and offers it to me.
I take it and pop it into my ear. “Roses” is playing and we walk to the beat, nodding our heads along.