29. Nico
Toronto felt different after Osaka.
The city seemed to match my mood—grey and cold and miserable.
I knew it was just one skate but it felt like I had proven all the haters right.
That the golden prince might be tarnished beyond repair.
I scraped through my quad Salchow during the free skate and managed to cling on to fourth place.
My worst international result since juniors.
Renaud hadn't said much on the flight home. He hadn't needed to. His silence was louder than any critique.
So I did what I always did when the world got too heavy. I made dinner plans with my best friend.
The sea bass was resting under foil, the lemon and dill fragrant enough to fill the small kitchen. Side salad dressed. Kat's favourite cocktail—vodka, elderflower, a splash of grapefruit, more ice than liquid—sweating on the counter beside mine.
I'd been standing at the window for ten minutes, watching the city lights blur into streaks against the glass, not really seeing any of it.
This morning's practice session kept replaying. Adrian on the opposite end of the rink, moving through his step sequence. The careful distance we'd maintained since well before Osaka. At least publicly.
Weeks of dancing around each other. Not avoidance exactly—we still trained in the same facility, still passed each other in hallways, still occupied the same competitive universe.
But something had shifted. A door had opened that neither of us knew how to close and now we were both pretending it hadn't happened while being excruciatingly aware that it had.
This morning, for one unguarded second, our eyes had met across the ice.
He'd been mid-crossover, I'd been resetting for my step sequence, and it just—happened.
A zap of awareness that went through me like a current.
Everything from Osaka compressed into a single look—the anger, the heat, his hands on my skin, the way he'd said there he is like finding the real me was something worth celebrating.
Then he'd looked away. Quickly. Deliberately. And kept skating like the moment had never happened.
It was for the best. I knew that. I had finally confessed to Dr. Priya that I was attracted to Adrian but stopped short of confessing that we had slept together.
We spent the whole session dissecting what it meant.
Why I kept reaching for people who ran too hot.
The pattern was clear enough that even I couldn't pretend not to see it.
But knowing the pattern didn't stop the ache.
Because Adrian had made me feel like I was allowed to want things.
Like my anger wasn't shameful and my desires weren't inconvenient and the messy, imperfect, unpolished version of me was worth showing up for.
He had kicked open a door I'd spent my whole life keeping shut and then—what?
Walked away? Gone back to his side of the rink and his sleeveless training shirts and his unbothered existence like none of it mattered?
That was the part that made me want to throw something.
Not the rejection—I could handle rejection, I'd been handling it my whole life.
It was the permission. He'd given me permission to be real and then taken it back without warning, and now I was standing here with all these sharp, inconvenient feelings and nowhere safe to put them.
My phone buzzed.
Kat: Sorry, running late. Madame is a sadist. Be there in 20.
Kat was always late. I blamed her ballet mistress more than her—the woman was a dictator in pointe shoes.
She had a cane. Claimed it was for keeping the beat but I'd visited the studio enough times to watch her use it to correct a turned out hip or a lazy port de bras.
Old school Russian training at its finest.
I checked the sea bass. Adjusted a place setting. Tried not to think about Adrian in his sleeveless training shirt, the tattoos on his forearms glistening with sweat, the way his jaw had clenched when he'd looked away from me.
Failed.
The buzzer finally sounded 30 minutes later and then Kat was sweeping through my door in a flurry of cold air and expensive perfume, shedding her ankle length wool coat to reveal a cropped cream sweater over high waisted pinstriped trousers.
Effortlessly chic—like she'd thrown it together in five minutes and accidentally looked like she'd stepped off a runway.
Katerina Smirnova was the principal dancer for the TMB and she looked the part even offstage.
Dark hair swept into a low knot at the base of her neck.
Cheekbones that could cut glass. Eyes so blue they bordered on unsettling—pale and sharp and always watching.
Full lips that defaulted to a pout that photographers loved and that she weaponized in conversation when she wanted something.
We'd known each other since we were five, thrown together in the same beginner ballet class before either of us understood what our bodies would eventually be asked to do.
She'd stayed and I'd pivoted to the ice.
But something about those early years had bonded us in a way that nothing since had managed to undo.
“That woman,” Kat announced, dropping onto my couch and immediately reaching for her cocktail, “is going to be the death of me. Fifty years old and she still moves like she has something to prove. Today she made the corps repeat the snow scene 17 times because—and I quote—the falling was not tragic enough.”
“The falling?”
“The choreography. When we collapse at the end. She wants existential despair and she's getting mild inconvenience.” She took a long sip and closed her eyes. “I'm going to murder her before opening night. They'll have to find a new Snow Queen.”
“I’m sure Natasha would love to step up.”
“God, I would rather dance on a broken toe than let her take my part.” She kicked off her ankle boots and tucked her feet beneath her. “It's fine. I love suffering. It builds character.”
“Let’s eat and you can tell me all about it.”
I plated the sea bass and brought everything to the coffee table because Kat preferred eating on the couch after a long day of dancing. She made appreciative sounds at the food—light, protein forward, exactly the kind of meal we both defaulted to during performance season.
“So good,” she said around a bite. “You should quit skating and become my personal chef.”
“I'll consider it.”
Listening to her talk about rehearsals—the politics of the company, the ongoing war between the artistic director and the board, the specific drama of this year's Nutcracker casting—I found myself wondering what it would have been like.
If I'd stayed in ballet. If I'd made a different choice at twelve when Renaud had demanded I focus on dancing or skating.
Would I be happier? Less broken? Or just broken in different ways, with different scars?
Impossible to know. I'd made my bed and now I had to lie in it.
“—anyway.” Kat set down her plate on the coffee table and fixed those pale eyes on me. “Enough about my suffering. How was Osaka?”
I'd been waiting for the question. Dreading it.
“Not my best,” I said. “I messed up on my quad Salchow during the short program and it fucked with my head. Fourth place.”
“I'm sorry, babe. That sucks. What does that mean for your season?”
“I'm still in contention but…”
“But what?” She picked up her cocktail and watched me over the rim.
“But I'm not sure I'm in the right headspace this season. And I have to be. It's the Olympics, Kat. And I'm fucking it all up.”
I couldn't seem to speak past the lump in my throat. I took a long sip of my own drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.
“Nico.” The single word carried an impressive amount of concern.
“You made a single error. It's not the end of the world. Is your uncle giving you a hard time?” The way she said your uncle could have curdled milk.
Kat had never bothered to hide her feelings about Renaud—she thought he was a controlling narcissist who treated me like an investment rather than a person and she'd told me so roughly once a month since we were fifteen.
“Let me guess. The great Jean-Pierre Renaud had some inspiring words about focus and dedication while conveniently ignoring the fact that he's the reason you—”
“I slept with Adrian.”
Kat went still, cocktail suspended halfway to her lips. She blinked once. Twice.
“I’m sorry, I must be losing my hearing.” She shook her head. “No, wait. I'm losing my mind.”
“Don't make me say it again.”
“You slept with Adrian. As in Adrian Zhao. Cotton candy hair, too many piercings, looks at you like he wants to either fight you or fuck you Adrian Zhao.”
It wasn't a question but I nodded anyway.
“Holy shit.” She tucked her legs underneath her and turned to face me fully, cocktail forgotten. “How did that happen? Last I heard you couldn't stand him. You called him—what was it—aggressively exhausting.”
“He is aggressively exhausting.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” I parroted.
“Well?” She gestured impatiently. “How did that happen?”
“You see, when two people are attracted to each—”
“Skip to the spicy parts.”
“Don't be crude.”
“Don't act like a prude. You fucked your number one rival.”
“He is not my number one rival.”
“Fine. Top two. The point stands.” She picked up her cocktail again and took a long sip. “Also, technically you fucked your other rival too, so maybe this is a pattern we should discuss.”
“Oh trust me, I've discussed it at length with Dr. Priya.”
“And? What does the good doctor have to say about your toxic behaviour?”
“That I choose intensity because it's the only thing that cuts through the numbness. And that I need to learn the difference between someone making me feel alive and someone making me feel unstable.”
“Smart woman. So which one is Adrian?”
“Probably both. I'm completely out of my depth with him.”
“Walk me through it. How did you go from fighting him to fucking him?”
“We had a group dinner with Sabrina and Théo.
It was a disaster. Adrian and Théo spent the entire evening going at each other—passive aggressive comments, thinly veiled insults, stupid alpha bullshit.
Adrian called Théo's skating robotic. Théo called Adrian a rich kid playing at skating. Sabrina almost stabbed Adrian with a chopstick.” I took a sip of my drink.
“We got back to the room and started arguing about the dinner, about Théo, about whether I needed him to fight my battles for me. And the tension just... snapped.”
“And then bam.” She made an obscene gesture with her fingers that I chose to ignore.
“It was a moment of passion. He called it a hate fuck.” I stared at my glass. “And it was—Kat, it was the hottest thing that's ever happened to me. I'm not exaggerating. I didn't know sex could feel like that. Like being set on fire and not wanting anyone to put it out.”
Kat's eyebrows shot toward her hairline. She set down her cocktail with exaggerated slowness.
“Okay, that's hot. But is that what you actually wanted? A hate fuck?”
“Like you said, it was either fight him or fuck him.”
“Holy shit.” She pressed a hand to her chest and stared at me like I'd just announced I was quitting skating to become an accountant. “My sweet, gentle-as-a-lamb Nico hate fucked his rival.” She took a breath. “How do you feel about it?”
“I don't know. That's the part you're supposed to help me with.”
Kat studied me. The teasing edge faded into genuine concern.
“Are you okay, Nico? Is this a cry for help?”
“No. I don't think so.” I turned my glass in my hands. “He's not as bad as I thought. He's arrogant and cocky and a complete show off. But he's also unapologetically himself.” I took a breath. “And when I'm with him, I feel like maybe I'm allowed to take up space too.”
Kat was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached over and squeezed my knee.
“Oh, my darling,” she said softly. “That doesn't exactly sound like you hate the guy.”
I thought about after—lying beside him in the wrecked sheets, tracing the script along his collarbone with my fingertip before the panic set in and I'd bolted for the shower. Fall seven times, get up eight.
Would I survive falling again?
“I don't know what I'm feeling,” I said finally. “I just know it scares me.”
Kat nodded slowly. “The good things usually do.”