24. Nico
Adrian was quiet when we got to our room. He dumped his suitcase at the foot of the bed closest to the window without asking me which I preferred and pulled the sheet back, flopping onto the bed like he had nowhere to be.
I set my suitcase on the luggage holder and started unpacking. Shaking out my costumes, hanging them in the little closet by the bathroom. Arranging my toiletries on the counter in the order I'd use them. Routine. Structure. The small, controllable things that kept the uncontrollable things at bay.
“So. You and Théo.”
It wasn't a question so I didn't answer. I smoothed a crease from the sleeve of my free program costume and hung it carefully beside the short.
“Are you going to say something or just ignore me?”
“What do you want me to say, Adrian?”
“What's the deal with you guys?”
He was lying on his back, arms behind his head, watching me with those sharp dark eyes.
It was not a simple question. I hated how easily he got under my skin.
A reasonable teammate would have read the room.
A reasonable teammate would have seen me carefully hanging costumes in silence and understood that the silence was intentional.
But Adrian had never been a reasonable anything.
“I didn't know you were such a gossip.” I didn't look at him. Kept my hands busy with a hanger. “Did you read all about us on Reddit or The Spill?”
“Please. I have eyes and a dick. The math works out.” He said it so casually, like he was commenting on the weather. “So did you break up before or after he moved to Chicago?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“That's fine.” He stretched, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I'm kind of jetlagged anyway. Maybe I should skip dinner and go straight to bed.”
I turned around. He was looking at the ceiling with a bored expression that didn't fool me for a second. He knew exactly what he was doing—dangling the threat of me sitting through dinner with Théo and Sabrina alone, without even Adrian's abrasive presence as a buffer.
“You're such a manipulative little shit.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I've been called worse.”
I sighed. “Before Chicago.”
“How long were you together?”
“Three years. On and off.”
I don’t know why I was telling Adrian of all people.
Three weeks of avoiding this man—of timing my water breaks and eating lunch in my car and pretending he didn't exist—and it had taken him approximately two minutes in a shared hotel room to crack me open.
I didn't understand it. We had barely spoken since Québec.
And yet here I was, spilling the details of my most painful relationship to the last person who should hear them.
Maybe that was exactly why. Adrian didn't handle me. Didn't tiptoe. Didn't ask with that careful, loaded concern that made me feel like a patient instead of a person. He just asked.
“Ah.” Something shifted in his voice. “So you loved him.”
I didn't respond. Turned back to the closet and adjusted a hanger that didn't need adjusting.
“Still love him?”
“As a friend.” I couldn't seem to stop now.
It was like he'd pulled a thread and the whole thing was unravelling whether I wanted it to or not.
“Théo was going through a lot leading up to his move and we couldn't be there for each other the way we should've been able to.
It got toxic. We hurt each other. If we'd stayed together, it would've been… mutually assured destruction.” I swallowed. “He's doing better now. I think.”
The room went quiet. The heater hummed. Out in the hallway, suitcase wheels rattled by, someone laughed—life carrying on like we weren't cracking something open in here.
“Is he the reason you had to take a break?”
“I really don't want to talk about that.”
“Fuck,” Adrian said softly.
I turned. He was looking at me now and the expression on his face stopped me cold. The cockiness had slipped clean off. No smirk. No sarcasm. He was looking at me like I was a person who was hurting and he gave a shit.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Just—three years is a long time to love someone who's falling apart. That's a lot to carry. Especially when you're the type of person who'd rather carry everyone else's shit than put your own bag down for five minutes.”
Something tilted inside me. The dizzying realization of being seen by the last person you expected to be paying attention.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means you took care of me when I was hammered. You took care of Théo for three years. You take care of Sabrina, your uncle, everyone in this program.” He said it plainly, without judgment. “Who takes care of you, Nicky?”
The question landed somewhere I wasn't prepared for.
“It wasn't all bad,” I said quietly. “Parts of it were really good.”
“The good parts are worse,” Adrian said, like he knew. “They're what make you stay.” A beat. “Happiness doesn't fix everything. Love doesn't either.”
I looked at him—this loud, abrasive, infuriating person sprawled on a hotel bed in Osaka, pink hair fanned on the pillow, something raw and unguarded in his eyes.
The same person I'd been avoiding for weeks.
The same person who had somehow gotten more out of me in ten minutes than most people managed in months.
He saw me. Not the version I pretended to be. The actual me. And he hadn't looked away.
“Speaking from experience?”
“No.” A pause, then a humourless laugh. “I've never stayed long enough for it to go bad. That's a different kind of fucked up.”
◆◆◆
Sabrina found a ramen place five minutes from the hotel—a little hole in the wall filled with more locals than tourists. That was always a good sign. The first landmine was the seating arrangements. Two narrow booths.
Ladies' choice. Sabrina slid in first. Théo slid in beside her as expected. I hesitated for exactly one second before sitting across from Sabrina, which was the coward's choice and I knew it. It meant I didn't have to look directly at Théo.
Adrian dropped into the remaining spot. No calculating, no agonizing over the social geometry, no consideration of whether sitting directly across from a man who clearly disliked him might be uncomfortable. If Théo had a problem with it, that was Théo's problem. Must be nice, living like that.
His knee pressed against mine under the table. I shifted my leg to the left. He followed. I shifted again. He followed again, solid and warm against mine. When I ran out of room, I drove my heel into the top of his foot.
He didn't flinch. Just picked up the menu. “So, what's good here?”
“The ramen,” Théo replied dryly.
This was getting off to a great start already.
Sabrina rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone. “Takaida-kei ramen is what they're known for. Are you allergic to shellfish? The reviews said their shellfish shoyu is also amazing.”
“Maybe I'll have both.”
“Both,” Théo muttered, barely audible. “Of course.”
“Did you say something, Beaubien?”
“Just admiring your appetite.”
Sabrina kicked someone under the table. From Théo's flinch, it was him.
“So,” she said with the bright, calibrated energy of a woman building a bridge in real time. “Osaka. How is everyone feeling about the competition?”
“Good,” I said. “Ready.”
“Focused,” Théo said.
“Hungry.” Adrian set down the menu. “What's that saying about devouring your competition?” He gave me a wolfish grin that I was absolutely not going to acknowledge.
Théo's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. His eyes flicked from Adrian to me and back again.
“This must be different for you,” Théo said, bringing Adrian's attention back to him. “Did Coach Allen have any other senior skaters?”
“Nope.” Adrian didn't elaborate. Just leaned back and draped his arm along the top of the booth behind my head. I resisted the urge to elbow him.
“It's nice travelling with a team, isn't it?” Sabrina added. “I've explored a lot of cities with these two. Remember when we got lost in Tokyo?”
“Yeah, those tourists were convinced Théo was that J-pop star.” I smiled at the memory.
“Yeah, yeah—what was his name? With the dark blue hair?” Sabrina snapped her fingers.
“Reiko!”
“Reiko from Velcro H4rt?” Adrian looked Théo up and down with an appraising squint. “I don't see it. Maybe Sora. If Sora never smiled.”
The table went very still.
“And who do they mistake you for?” Théo's voice was pleasant. His eyes were not. “An anime character of some kind?”
“Actually, I kind of have a big following in Japan. They appreciate individuality. But I guess they also have a thing for robots, so there really is someone—or should I say something—for everyone.”
The waiter arrived before Théo could stab Adrian with a chopstick and Sabrina practically sagged into her seat.
She greeted him in Japanese and he greeted us in lightly accented English.
After we ordered, Sabrina launched into a story about an unhinged fan encounter she'd had the last time she was in Japan.
A group of teenage girls had recognized her at a convenience store in Shinjuku and presented her with a handmade scrapbook of every competition outfit she'd ever worn, meticulously illustrated in coloured pencil with fabric swatches glued to the pages.
They'd included a ranking system—each costume rated out of five stars with detailed notes that Sabrina later had translated, only to discover they'd given her 2024 Worlds dress a 1.
5 and the comment “beautiful skater, unfortunate colour choice.”
“To be fair,” Théo said, “I did warn you about that colour.”
“It was custom House of Lefèvre!”
“Babe, it was salmon. With your hair.”
“I looked amazing in that dress.”
“You look amazing in everything. That dress still washed you out.”
“I liked the beading on it,” I said, because someone at this table needed to be on Sabrina's side. “The craftsmanship was beautiful.”
“Thank you, Nico.” She pointed at Théo. “See? At least someone appreciates artistry.”
“The artistry was lovely,” Théo conceded. “The colour was still salmon.”