Chapter 17
The lights in the arena are down low and music plays softly in the background as we wait for the presentation of medals.
There’s a red carpet laid out over the ice and a podium at the end of it.
A few officials from the ISF are standing beside event volunteers holding trays with the gold, silver, and bronze medals and the bouquet of flowers that will accompany the prizes.
Dad is down on the ice with them too. When the event organizers realized he’d be here for the duration of the competition, they asked him to be the one to give out the medals to the winners.
Dad, never one to refuse a spotlight, obviously agreed.
We spent the last two hours watching the best junior men’s skaters in the world battle it out.
“Médaillé de bronze, de la Fédération de Russie, Vladimir Fedorov!”
The Russian skater sprints out onto the ice and presents himself to the crowd with a flourish before skating to the podium and carefully stepping up onto the lowest platform.
“Médaillé d’argent, du Canada, Bastien Roy!”
The crowd goes wild for the French-Canadian skater and he shows appreciation for their support when he moves out onto the ice, turning to each section of the arena and placing a hand over his heart with every bow.
“Le médaillé d’or et le champion du monde junior, des états-Unis d’Amérique, Ben Woo!”
“WOOOOOOOOO!” Brayden and I stand up and scream as Ben appears on the ice, waving up at the fans with both hands and a huge smile on his face.
He skated brilliantly in the last couple of days, something I would have noticed if I hadn’t been caught up in my own drama.
I’m so proud of him, though, from not being able to skate less than a year ago to the Junior World Champion is obviously impressive.
Maybe he’ll be coming with us to Senior Worlds in a month too.
The medal ceremony doesn’t take long and then we’re all standing while “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays through the stadium speakers.
In the far corner of the arena, the Russian, Canadian, and American flags rise, and Ben’s face is up on the screen as he sings along with the song.
Our free dance is in three days.
Will we be up there at the top of the podium?
Or will we be like Jimmy, standing on the sidelines after finishing a disappointing fourth?
Yesterday after our rhythm dance, when that score came in, I thought nothing could touch us.
I thought there was zero chance that we don’t win this whole damn thing and skate off to the senior career we’ve been working toward for four years.
Training today was okay. Not bad, but not great, at least I thought so.
Camille didn’t say anything about it, so maybe it was better than I thought.
I still feel kind of off-balance though, after what Brayden said about Freddie.
I think I was able to reassure him, but…
now it feels like maybe I wasn’t being entirely honest, not with him and not with myself.
“I’ve gotta go,” I say, once the anthem is over and the lights come up.
“Where are you going?” Elisa asks. “Dad made reservations for us tonight for dinner after this. Apparently, it’s the hottest restaurant in Paris.”
“I promised Riley I’d visit her in the hospital,” I say, shouldering my bag and shrugging.
“Isn’t she getting out tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but I told her I’m coming. I’m not going to blow her off.”
Elisa shrugs. “Brayden, are you coming?”
He looks to me and raises an eyebrow.
“You should go. We’ll hang out later, okay?”
For a second he looks back and forth between us and then nods, leaning down to brush a kiss on my cheek. Gotta keep up appearances, after all.
“Have fun,” I say, turning away, and scroll through my phone, pretending I’m way more confident about ordering an Uber in Paris than I am.
Instead of exiting the arena with everyone else, I use my athlete’s credential to get down into the locker room area underneath the stands and by the time I make it down there, Ben is finishing up his last interview.
“You won!” I yell, and reach out to pull him into a hug.
“I did! You should try it. It’s amazing.”
Giggling, I reach out and hold the gold medal that’s still around his neck. It’s awesome.
“Where are you headed?”
“I was going to visit Riley in the hospital. You know, try to cheer her up a bit.”
“Give me a few minutes to say hi to my family and I’ll go with you.”
“Don’t you want to go out and celebrate?”
Ben shrugs. “We’re going to do dinner later tonight, but I’ve been where she is. Some things are more important.”
True to his word, ten minutes later, Ben is showered, dressed, and meeting me outside the changing room, skating bag over one shoulder where I assume his gold medal is safely tucked away.
“You must be freaking out,” I say when the car pulls away from the arena.
“I am. I didn’t think this was possible.”
“You worked hard.”
“Sometimes hard work isn’t enough,” he says with a shrug. “I’m really proud of myself for not giving up.”
“That’s what matters, in the end.”
His phone buzzes, so I focus on the view out the window. It’s raining today. It’s been raining since before we woke up this morning. I don’t read a lot of poetry or anything, but it feels poetic, like Paris can’t be sunny and happy when Riley is stuck in a hospital bed.
I glance over to Ben. He swipes out of whatever conversation he was having and turns to me. “It’s not only figure skating where that matters, you know.”
“What?”
“Not giving up. It’s a universal thing.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Do you?”
“Ben, what are you—”
“Just,” he says, cutting me off, “sometimes you think something is over or that it can’t be fixed, no matter what you do, but I’m living proof that’s not true.”
I blink at him. Is he talking about his injury? It sounds like he could be, but it doesn’t feel like he is.
There’s no time to ask him, though—not that I’d even know what to ask exactly—because the car pulls up to the hospital. He gets out on one side, I on the other, and by the time we’re walking inside, it feels like it would be too awkward.
We sign in and get visitor badges from the nurse at the front desk using a translating app and pulling out Ben’s gold medal as proof that we are who we say we are. I’m pretty sure she’s violating their policy by letting us through, but whatever works.
“Hey, guys,” Riley says quietly when we knock on the open door.
There’s an empty bed next to her and she’s hooked up to a bunch of machines, which is super scary, like the beeps and toots are proof that she’s really not okay.
She looks so small in that bed wearing a hospital gown that’s definitely at least three sizes too big.
“You just missed Freddie. He’s been here for hours and won’t stop hovering, so I made him leave and go get snacks. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Of course we came,” I say, trying to ignore that any minute now Freddie is going to be back here. I perch on the end of the bed since Riley’s feet don’t come anywhere near the footboard while Ben sits in the chair beside it. “How are you feeling?”
She shrugs. “Still kind of woozy, but the doctor says that’s probably more the meds for my knee than the concussion. They scheduled the surgery for when we go back at the end of the week.”
“You’re staying till the end of the competition?”
Smiling, she nods. “Yeah, I want to cheer you guys on and see you kick everyone else’s asses instead of mine, but right now talk to me about literally anything other than skating. What’s up with you and Brayden?”
“Why would anything be up?” I ask quickly. Too quickly.
“Do you guys need, like, girl talk time?” Ben asks. “I can go.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s fine. We’re fine. I think—”
“What?” Riley asks, leaning forward, clear interest in her face. This is what she needs right now, a distraction.
“I think he got jealous over something really dumb and now things feel weird.”
Riley laughs. “Brayden Elliot gets jealous?”
“I thought that dude had two modes: confident and more confident,” Ben says.
“Yeah,” I say, kind of wishing I could just tell them.
Or, well, at least Riley. It would be so nice to be able to talk about this weird tangle I’ve gotten myself into, but I can’t.
I promised Brayden. “We figured it out, though, and we’re good to go for tomorrow.
Hazard of mixing skating with other stuff.
Things get weird off the ice and it’s a domino effect. ”
“Yeah,” Riley says softly. “That’s what you were worried about before, right? You never really said anything, but I feel like that’s what it was.”
“I mean…it’s fine, though, as long as you talk, which, you know, Brayden and I did so it’s fine now. Everything’s fine.”
She doesn’t look convinced.
“I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world,” Ben says carefully, “but then again, I don’t skate with a partner.”
“The frustrating thing is that he got so worked up over something so small,” I say. “I really need him to, you know…not.”
“That’s so immature,” Riley says. “Aren’t you worried that if he can’t handle this now, what would it be like if you broke up?” Some kind of panic must show on my face, though, because she grimaces. “Sorry, the meds have, like, removed any filters I had.”
She’s right, though. Really right. It’s not about whether or not Brayden and I could handle dating and being skating partners, because we’re not actually dating.
It’s about what it would be like if it all blows up in our faces somehow.
What if he meets someone or what if…what if I do?
Then what? From what I can tell, it would be like the last couple of days, but you know, way bigger.
It would totally destroy us and our dreams along with it.
“I don’t know,” Ben says. “There are no guarantees in figure skating. Sometimes you gotta take a risk and hope it works out.”
I tilt my head at him. “Says the boy who already has a gold medal.”
“Touché.”