CHAPTER 51
Troy
ANA FACES ME, her pout lifting shrewdly as she brings her hands to her hips. “So, what do you usually do now? Stare into your mirror? Drive up and down the street in your sports car? Play with your Nintendo?”
The invitation was genuine, though, never in my wildest thoughts did I imagine Ana would accept, that she’d ever agree to even step foot into my apartment.
And now that she’s here, her car parked in the resident parking lot, her bags all occupied in the guest room, her voice bouncing off the walls, well, to be honest, feels like a huge mindfuck.
Gesturing to the bathroom, I drop the rest of her luggage next to the queen bed. “Fresh towels are in the bottom left drawer.”
She lifts up a snarky brow. “And room service hours?”
“For you, all day, all night. You let me know what you want, and I’ll have it personally delivered to you, myself.” Her lips shut at my teasing tone. “Welcome home, dearest.” She rolls her eyes before I leave her to unpack.
_________
Ana
My phone rings, and it’s Donya requesting to FaceTime.
I tap the screen, accepting her call.
“Wait, where are you?” She searches through her screen, trying to guess my location with the scraps of ivory wallpaper and headboard peeking around me.
“At Troy’s apartment,” I reply, taking a deep breath. “I’m staying with Troy.”
“What the fuck?!”
My exact words since accepting his offer.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
“Ana.”
I sigh. “I know.”
“What happened to staying with Naomi?”
“I told her I wouldn’t be able to study with Sam being next door.”
A half-truth, I gave my closest friend a sugarcoated version of my excuse, dragging her brother into it, because the alternative would’ve sounded pathetic.
Donya listens, thoughtful, as I continue, “She didn’t buy that, though, and told me she wouldn’t get offended if I told her the real reason I didn’t want to stay with her. That it’s because of her parents fighting.”
Except, that was Naomi’s reason, not mine.
Naomi’s mom, Hana, ultimately had to do with me declining the invitation.
I never got the impression that she was particularly fond of me.
Pictured all the awkward conversations that we’d share with the setup: her asking about figure skating out of courtesy, me pretending she doesn’t despise the sport and that my words are of any interest to her.
It's a deep-rooted insecurity of mine, how Naomi’s grandmother chose me, after she couldn’t skate with her biological daughter.
Her real daughter, a fact fans and critics love to point out to me, even a whole nine years later.
That bottle of resentment running across my veins reminds me of the figure skating bloodline I lacked, the one I try my best to ignore, the one holding dominance in our world.
Hana was birthed into a family of skating royalty, a lineage that no amount of brutal training could anoint me into.
Though quiet and keeping to herself, Rina Yamamoto, luckily for me, wasn’t known for following the rules.
Choosing to coach a wild card skater who established fans had bet against over retiring from the sport completely was a gamble.
To any other one of the greats, it would’ve been total career suicide, a wager daring enough that only Yamamoto, the greatest of all-time, was willing to take.
With any controversial sports move, I expected the backlash.
From the media, fans, the other athletes at our rink.
I didn’t expect it from my own coach’s daughter.
That’s what everything boiled down to: it was either Hana or me. Rina Yamamoto didn’t train anyone after she initially retired, convincing the entire skating community she’d never coach, if not her own daughter, why bother, right?
Decades passed, then Hana chose not to follow in her mother’s famous skates and Rina made her decision to resume her legacy through coaching. A decision that felt like a loss after the initial glimmer of my golden opportunity tarnished.
It’s a loss I’ve tried to shove away, though it always has this uncanny habit of resurfacing when Naomi’s mom and I are in the same room, sinking me down into a pool of darkness.
My skating career would’ve been hers. Maybe she wanted it to be hers, had her father not been against Rina’s preferred skating path.
That particular thought still haunts me, a black hole of sharp-edged oblivion, confirming all those blank, often snide glances Hana Yamamoto aimed at me since I was fourteen weren’t mere projection.
Or perhaps it wasn’t jealousy Hana held in her heart, maybe she actually wished for death, a household where an obsession with skating would have finally taken its last breath.
For women like Rina and me, we let skating consume us to the point of insanity, and maybe all this time, Naomi’s mom wished for the sport to die when her mother’s career on the ice did.
Luckily for me, Naomi’s younger brother is loud. Which gave me the coward’s dream: holding back emotions in hopes of not hurting my friend’s feelings. Her eagerness at the prospect of us spending more time together killed me, squeezing my heart in friend-betraying pain. But it’s better this way.
There’s plenty of moments where I’ve wanted to tell her, then wondered maybe she shouldn’t know. Adding to family drama at her house isn’t something I wanted to do, Naomi doesn’t need the extra burden of my fractured mind.
You are not weak, I remind myself, most days. Today, not so much, still shellshocked that I actually caved and landed in the guest room of a Larsson household. But…here I have quiet, which unfortunately means: Troy’s place will have to do until my repairs are finished.
“Naomi’s parents’ fighting must have escalated quickly for you to be staying with Troy,” Donya replies through a laugh, innocent.
I know it’s not to make fun of me, and I know I’m not going to be the one to correct her either. None of my friends need more problems. And I will fix it. I have my diary and things are getting better slowly.
“Yeah,” I say, laughing softly to avoid suspicion.
“Wait, I just thought of something.” Donya clutches over her mouth, her smile visible from the corners of her cheeks. “What if you walk in on Troy naked?” My mouth parts at her bluntness, relief also filling me at the diversion of topics. “Or wait, what if he walks in on you naked?”
I feel my cheeks blush.
“Donya. No one is walking in on anyone naked. No one is going to be naked. No nakedness in this building, not allowed.”
“But…it would be pretty fucking funny if you ran into each other naked.”
What, is “naked” suddenly the word of the hour?
“No one is going to be naked,” I scold for the last time.
_________
Updated calendar’s set, items all unpacked, the scent of pineapple fused with coconut calms from my skin—courtesy of the guest room’s bath salts—the scent intoxicating the air even an hour following the bath.
Heavenly, it was painfully good. And quiet, Troy’s place is actually as quiet as he said it would be.
Just an hour after midnight—an hour past my bedtime—and I decide to check my phone for an update. It’s been almost a full week of not checking notifications, the self-control at least deserving of one indulgence.
Blue light scorches my eyelids, the room suddenly erupting with heavy noise.
The adrenaline that spikes from returning to my Instagram app quickly drops to pain at the trail of DMs, piles and stacks of digital praise that somehow seem invisible when suffocated between bullets of hate.
Not to mention, my follower count has tanked in the past few months, continuing to drop by the daily—2.
1 million now sits at 1.4 million. Violet’s reached 2 million today.
I didn’t need to check, not when my first DM was there to inform me of the news.
No wonder the sponsors keep dropping me too, the thought of the two brands still working with me ultimately extending me with charitable discount codes or useless merch as well, now bubbling my stomach with worry.
Troy’s social media following beams at 20 million. This, I didn’t receive notice of; I shamefully just checked that all on my own.
While on his page, I accidently click on his tagged posts, confusion twisting my forehead when I find a picture of me photographed outside the ice rink by paparazzi after Worlds this year, a particularly unflattering angle that intentionally skews my weight in favor of this online troll’s agenda.
Not MY Ice Princess, the user’s caption reads.
I hope Ana gets hit by a bus before Milan, another user comments, already receiving 10 likes: 10 people want me to be hit by a bus. Noted.
It doesn’t end there.
I hope Violet’s driving the bus, a reply reads.
LMAO, another adds.
Reflexes reign over, trying to delete the original comment, then remember the post isn’t from my page, my sanity briefly leaving my body.
But deleting it, erasing it, destroying the words with the touch of a tiny button, would be fruitless, a snake that’ll grow ten more heads if I could cut off this one.
I toss my phone onto the nightstand, not caring if it cracks.
Naomi was right, warning me of a permanent ban from all social media. I should’ve listened to her. But needing to know where I stand among the public, the fans, and yes, even my haters, is a poison, a fucking addictive drug it seems I can’t part ways with.