Chapter 14
“Don’t fall asleep,” I warn Maria when she flops down onto the plush hotel room bed.
We’re in Paris.
I mean, we’re actually in a hotel room in Paris.
The room is gorgeous, gilded and ornate fixtures with dark mahogany furnishing and glittering light fixtures.
The walls are covered with intricately lined wallpaper, and a Van Gogh print hangs between the beds.
That’s pretty much all I’ve seen of Paris, beyond what I could catch outside my window from the airport to the hotel lobby, but we’re actually, finally, here, after all this time.
So many incredible things have happened in this city.
Winning a Junior Figure Skating World Championship would probably rank pretty low on the list, but that it could be on the list at all is kind of amazing.
“But we left home yesterday and now tomorrow’s already half over,” she whines, covering her face with a pillow.
“That barely makes sense, and we have the Opening Ceremony soon, then the athletes’ reception like right after. You know, we have to let the judges and sponsors see our brightest and shiniest faces.”
“Sponsors?” she asks, pulling the pillow away.
“Yeah, Mr. Monroe has a couple of, he called them face-to-faces, set up for me and Brayden.” Where we’ll have to pretend to be a super-happy couple and I have no idea if I’m capable of that right now. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him since the flight.
“I’m going to have to talk to Charlie. If his dad is already setting up sponsorships for you guys, then the least he can do is save some for his son and his son’s partner.”
I hum in response. Maria and Charlie are going to be junior competitors for at least another season, if not two, so there’s definitely still plenty of time for things like sponsorships. “I’m going to steam my dress for the party. If you get yours out, I’ll do yours too.”
There’s a sharp rap on the door and I go to answer it. Camille’s on the other side, with a package in her hands.
“Hey,” I say, waving her inside.
“The NFSC had these made for you guys. Team tracksuits.”
“They’re really into this now, aren’t they?”
Camille shrugs. “They’re pretty fed up with how we finished in Beijing. They want the generation coming up to succeed.”
“And tracksuits equal success.”
“A healthy team concept before you all make it to the senior ranks,” Camille says, handing one to me and then tossing one to Maria, who sat up immediately at the mention of free clothes. “So yes, tracksuits.”
“Happy to represent Team USA,” I say, opening it up to reveal a dark blue set with red piping at the edges of the collar and wrists and matching bottoms. USA is emblazoned on the left lapel, in case anyone wasn’t sure which country we were representing.
I had my first international assignment two years ago, the first year Brayden and I teamed up. It was an incredible jump from brand-new partners to skating for our country, and even though we finished dead last it was still exciting. Now? Just being here isn’t enough. We’re here to win.
“Get dressed. There’s a bus picking us up in fifteen.”
The bus is one of those high-end transports, with blacked-out windows and large leather seats. Brayden’s already at the back of the bus, earbuds in, staring out the window, and maybe I should just rip the Band-Aid off, sit next to him and talk this through, but…I’m not that brave.
I slide into the seat next to Riley, who holds up her phone immediately for a picture.
“Maybe some of your internet fame will rub off on me? Maybe I can hit the hundred-K mark too,” she says, laughing, tagging me in the post. I take the hint and immediately pull out my phone, like and comment on the post with a bunch of American flags and red and blue hearts to match our outfits.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand as of this morning.”
“Do you know what we’re going to have to do at this thing?”
“Literally nothing except go out on the ice and wave to the crowd when we’re announced.
Last year we did that part and left like right afterward.
It’s more a show for the fans. It should be pretty full, I think.
Last year in China it was sold out and, like, figure skating is an even bigger deal in France than it is there. ”
“Especially ice dance,” Riley says with a smile. “Papadakis and Cizeron are basically royalty here.”
Thanks to nearly three Olympic quads where the ice dance competitors (including the French team, like Riley said) stole the show, our little corner of the sport is finally starting to pull in some real attention.
Like, sometimes my dad’s attitude about ice dance really gets to me, but it’s easy enough to explain when you remember that no one paid attention to it when he was competing.
Now, though, ice dancers are sometimes even more famous than the skaters in the other disciplines.
Fame isn’t something I ever really thought I wanted. Growing up, we were already sort of semi-famous, and it seemed weird to want more than that, but every day my social media following seems to be growing and that’s the true measure of fame now, right?
The bus comes to a halt outside the arena a few minutes later and it’s starting to feel like the only way I’m going to see Paris is as scenery racing past a bus window. And not even that much of it because the arena isn’t far from the hotel and we probably could have walked over.
We’re hustled into a back entrance and through a tunnel that leads underneath the arena’s seats toward the entrance to the rink. There are athletes in tracksuits from all the countries participating wandering around.
“It is very simple,” says a tall woman with a headset, her English accented with the slightest hint of French. “You will skate out onto the ice, wave to the crowd, and when you hear the announcer call the next names, skate off the ice, still waving. Questions?”
We all look back and forth at each other and then at her, nodding.
“Bien. Attends ici,” she says, slipping back into French, but we get the gist.
The teams are being announced in alphabetical order by country and then by discipline: girls, then boys, then pairs, then ice dance.
“Guys, we should line up how we’re going to go out. Katya and Gillian first. Then Ben and Jimmy…” I trail off when Katya wheels around and glares at me with an eyebrow raised.
“We’re U,” Katya says, “it’s gonna be forever.”
“Actually, we’re…”
“We’re E,” Freddie fills in. “We’re in France, so états-Unis d’Amérique.”
“Exactly,” I say, and send him a small smile, which he returns. It’s sort of soft and feels like the Freddie I knew before everything got so screwed up. A slight flush warms my cheeks and I have to look away.
Katya huffs, but the team gets into some semblance of order, Brayden and I falling to the back with Riley and Freddie.
“Hey, did you bring those pants?” Brayden asks out of nowhere, like the last thing he said to me didn’t implode my brain.
“What pants?” I ask, staring at him like, seriously?
“The leather ones,” he says, clarifying, eyes flicking down to my legs.
“Um, no, why?”
“Damn, those would have been good to wear tonight.”
“You want to wear my leather pants?”
Jimmy and Ben lose it at that, laughing so hard they actually have to hold each other up to stay standing.
“Not for me,” Brayden says, “though I could rock some leather pants. I mean for you.”
I tilt my head. “Why would I wear leather pants to an athletes’ reception? That’d be a little much, no?”
“Not for the reception. For after.”
“After?”
“We’re in Paris. Aren’t we going out?”
He says it so casually, so sure that I’m going to agree. Are we just going to ignore what happened on the plane? Is that his plan? Pretend like it never happened. We’ve gotten pretty good at pretending in the last couple of weeks. What’s one more thing?
“We have training tomorrow,” I say, squinting at him. “We can’t go out tonight.”
“Sure, we can. Training’s not until late and we’re six hours ahead of where our internal clocks need to be.”
“That is so not how jet lag works.”
“C’mon, Russo, it’s the city of lights! We have to see it.”
“Well, I’m in,” Riley says.
“Riley,” Freddie and I say at the same time, to my total mortification.
“I know some people here,” Brayden says, and I’m not even surprised. He knows people everywhere. “We’ll keep it super low-key, no drinking, nothing crazy, just hanging out together. Think of it as team bonding.”
“See!” Riley agrees immediately. “We go out, and see something that isn’t the hotel for once at one of these? How much trouble could we get in?”
“The sheer possibilities running through my brain right now would be taller than you.”
“I’m not that tall, so what are the odds,” Riley sings at me, “that you’re going out tonight?”
I groan and shoot a desperate look at Freddie, who shrugs. It’s his stupid game, after all, but there’s no helping it.
“One out of five,” I say, and Riley smiles.
“Three, two, one, shoot!” she counts us down and I put down four fingers and, shit, so does she.
“Yes! Victory is mine!” she shouts, raising her arms in celebration. “We’re going out.”
“If you guys are going out tonight, we’re coming too,” Maria says from up ahead.
“We’re going out?” Charlie asks, but then nudges Ben behind him. “We’re going out tonight.”
And by the time the news reaches Katya and Gillian at the front of the line, there’s no more time to protest. I’m not sure this was the kind of team building the NFSC had in mind, but it’s too late now.
“états-Unis d’Amérique!” the announcer calls, and our names begin to echo out immediately afterward.
Freddie and Riley go out before us, and then finally: “Adriana Russo et Brayden Elliot!”
I wasn’t prepared for the shrieking.
The last time I heard a noise like that, it was when Elisa convinced Dad to take us to a Jonas Brothers concert. A spotlight follows us out onto the ice and the screams only seem to get louder. Brayden takes my hand and we skate at a measured pace, waving to the crowd as we go.