15. Nico
I splashed cold water on my face while I waited for the shower to heat up. Steam was beginning to cloud the top part of the mirror. I was going to take the world's longest shower to avoid Adrian. Cowardly? Yes. Did I care? No.
I unbuttoned my dress shirt slowly, working down from the collar, and let the last hour wash through me the way Dr. Priya had suggested—not pushing it away, not swallowing it whole, just letting it move.
The interview. My mind kept circling back to it, picking at the edges the way I always did—replaying every answer, cataloguing every pause, wondering if Claire had noticed the tightness in my smile or the careful way I'd said more honesty like it was a teaser for the new season rather than a confession I hadn't meant to make.
Renaud had arranged it before I'd landed.
I'd stepped off the plane in travel clothes and been handed a note from the federation liaison—SkateWorld wanted fifteen minutes.
SkateWorld was not a small outlet. It was the kind of platform where an interview lived permanently, screenshotted and referenced for years.
It would have been incredibly awkward to decline after my uncle had already agreed on my behalf.
So I'd changed in a public bathroom and spent half an hour—not fifteen minutes—with a journalist named Claire who had kind eyes and precise questions.
Why was I absent from the Maple Leaf Classic? Dehydration and exhaustion. My body needed rest and I made the decision, in consultation with my doctor and Coach Renaud, to prioritize my long term health over one competition.
How was I feeling about the Olympic season? Excited and focused.
How was training with Adrian Zhao? Adrian is one of the best skaters in the country. Coach Renaud's program is stronger for having him.
What can fans expect from you this season? Anything different? More honesty, I'd said. It had slipped out before I could dress it up into something safer. I think my skating has more emotional depth this year. I've grown. I want people to feel that.
Every answer clean. Every answer true enough. Every answer built to protect the narrative Renaud needed—his reputation, his program, the carefully managed story that nothing had gone wrong, that his nephew had simply rested and returned and everything was proceeding according to plan.
I was good at this. I had always been good at this and I wasn't sure anymore whether to be proud of it or frightened by it.
Then the last question.
You'll be seeing Théo Beaubien in Osaka. How are you feeling about that? Théo is a tremendous skater and I think his comeback has been remarkable to watch. I'm looking forward to competing with him again. We have a lot of respect for each other.
Clean. Professional. Completely devoid of the fact that Théo and I had once loved each other at the worst possible time.
I stepped into the shower and let the water hit my face and tried to wash the unease off my skin.
Théo and I had been toxic together—two people with disordered relationships to achievement and self-worth, enabling each other's worst impulses while calling it love. Still, getting dumped while your boyfriend was in treatment was a new kind of low.
Then he fled the country, moving to Chicago two months later. I had let him go because I loved him and because his recovery required distance from everything that had contributed to the problem.
Including me.
Losing Théo meant losing the only thing I had outside of skating—and even that hadn't really been separate, since our entire relationship had been tangled up in the same rink, the same coach, the same relentless machine.
So when he left, there was nothing to fill the space he'd occupied except the sport that had hollowed me out in the first place.
There was no one to distract me from my own head anymore, no warm body to reach for at 2 a.m. when the thoughts started spiraling. I stopped sleeping. And that's when the pills got worse—one became two became three until that awful night in October when it felt like nothing would help me sleep.
Théo had come to the hospital. Sat across from me and said it gets different. Not better. Different. He was too honest for better.
In three weeks, I would be in Osaka and so would he. Whatever we were to each other now—that awkward aftermath of we both broke and are trying to become whole again separately—I was going to have to figure that out on international ice in front of cameras.
I turned the shower off and stood in the steam for a moment.
Then I dried off, changed into my pajamas, and went back out to face the music.
Adrian was at least partially dressed now.
The white towel had been swapped for black plaid boxers, still riding low on his hips.
He was sprawled on top of the sheets, one arm behind his head, studying the room service menu.
He gave me a tentative smile, probably due to the little tantrum I had about the door.
I tried not to stare at his half naked body. It was just there. All of it. On display like he had never once considered the concept of modesty.
My eyes traced the line of his collarbone before I could stop them. The dip of his throat. The way the shadows pooled in the hollows of his hips where the boxers sat. Something hot prickled at the back of my neck.
I pulled back the top sheet and got settled on the bed.