Chapter 14 #2
Someone had taken them - when, how, I still don’t entirely know - and they were everywhere overnight.
I woke up to my phone exploding and Erik beside me already on his - talking to someone in a low careful voice.
I lay there and watched his face while he spoke and understood, with a cold clarity, that he was not talking to someone about how to protect me.
He was talking to someone about how to protect himself.
I wake up at 3am, gasping.
I sit up and press my hands flat on the mattress and breathe - in, out, in, out - the way my therapist taught me.
And then, without meaning to, I think about last night.
And my brain does a terrible thing - takes the lovely memory of last night and holds it up against the memory of Erik and finds the shape of them horribly, suffocatingly similar.
A professional relationship with blurred edges.
Me, giving in, laughing, saying you’re supposed to be coaching me like it was a joke, like the line was already so blurred-
I pull my knees to my chest.
It’s not the same, says a small voice.
Eventually I get up and stand at the window in the dark drinking coffee, trying to figure out what to do.
By the time the sky starts to lighten, I’m sure of one thing.
I can’t do this with him.
But I don’t know how to undo it.
MATEO
I text her Tuesday morning.
I keep it simple. Hey. You okay?
I watch it sit there on delivered for four hours before I put my phone face down and go to practice.
Wednesday I try again. Can we talk?
Delivered. Read, eventually - I see the two ticks turn blue late that evening which means she’s seen it - she’s made a choice not to respond, which is its own kind of answer.
Thursday I don’t text at all.
I show up to the session.
She arrives and sets up at the blue line and doesn’t look at me, which I feel immediately and say nothing about. The session starts and I run the drills.
Then she comes around to me and gives me an individual correction in that brisk voice - weight forward, outside edge, you’re dropping it again - and moves on before I’ve finished processing it, and something about the efficiency of it, the way she steps back so quickly, like proximity is a thing to be managed-
I dig into the next rep harder than I need to.
Chen, skating past, gives me a look.
I ignore it.
We move into transition work and Calloway takes the lead while she steps back to the boards with her notebook.
I pull up at the boards for water.
She’s ten feet away with her notebook, writing.
“Russo.” Calloway’s voice. “You’re up.”
I push off.
I run the drill. I run it again. And again.
I’m midway through the transition drill when I notice she’s gone.
There was no announcement or goodbye. She was there and then not there, like she timed her exit for exactly the moment Calloway had everyone’s attention on the drill.
I find her in the corridor after.
Not planned - I’ve been telling myself all session to leave it, to give her space, to be the mature version of myself that the situation requires. And then I turn the corner and she’s there and the mature version of myself apparently takes the day off.
“Can we talk?”
“Fine. Quickly.”
We find the small meeting room off the main corridor empty. It’s functional and neutral. She stands with her arms folded and her notebook against her chest and waits.
“The session was weird today. The guys are noticing.”
“What exactly are they noticing, Russo?”
“Just-” I stop. “Things are off. Between us. Anyone paying attention can feel it.”
“Well.” Her chin comes up. “It’s a gigantic problem if they’re noticing anything. Especially regarding me and you. That’s exactly why we’re cutting this.”
“Cutting this,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“Just like that.”
“There was nothing official to cut,” she says, and her voice is very controlled. “That’s the point. We make sure it doesn’t happen again and we move forward professionally, and that’s it.”
“Did you think about my job?” she asks. “When this was - when we were-” She stops again. “I’m the one with stuff to lose here. You’re leaving at the end of the season. You’ve got an offer coming, or you will have, and you’ll be gone and I’ll still be here and if anyone thinks-”
“So that’s what this is? You’re protecting your job.”
“Yes. Among other things.”
“Among other things,” I repeat. “Right.”
Something is building in my head that I know I should put a lid on but I’m not quite managing it.
“What do you want me to say? I made a mistake. We both did. I’m trying to handle it like an adult.”
“An adult. Great. Very adult. Very professional.” I can hear myself and I know I’m losing it, but I can’t stop. “What are you so worried about? You’re a consultant, not a tenured, real coach. And I’m leaving soon anyway - so what’s the actual problem?”
ELIDA
“I’m not a real coach,” I say softly.
He opens his mouth.
“I gave up everything.” My voice comes out low and even which I’m grateful for. “I gave up a career that I spent my entire life building and I came here and I have been working every single day to do this job properly and to be taken seriously and to-” I stop. Breathe. “And you just-”
“I didn’t mean-”
“I’m not a laughing-stock. I’m not someone you can just-” I stop again. “I’m not.”
The word hangs there.
He looks like he wishes desperately he could unsay it.
I don’t give him the chance.
“This conversation is over. The sessions continue because the team needs them and because I’m here to do a job.” The word lands deliberately. “But that’s it. That’s all this is.”
I pick up my notebook.
“Elida-”
“Goodbye, Russo.”
I walk out.
In the corridor I keep my pace even and my head up and I don’t stop until I’m through the exit door and the cold hits me and then I stand in it for a moment with my eyes closed.
Not a real coach.
I know he didn’t mean it. I know it came from frustration. Still, it hurt more than he could guess.
I’m not in the mood to go home so I end up on Main Street.
The coffee shop is one that Tara introduced me to weeks ago - the one with the good pastries and the barista who remembers your order after two visits. It’s steamy inside. I order a latte and wait near the pickup counter.
And then I see it.
The checkout stand near the door. Wire rack, crowded with magazines and gum and little bags of overpriced dried fruit. And tucked there, half-hidden behind a gardening magazine, is a tabloid.
I don’t need to see the front page to recognize the layout. The font and the way certain words are capitalized for maximum damage, the red borders they use when they want something to appear urgent and salacious at the same time.
I can’t see the headline clearly. Figure Skating… and then a word that’s obscured.
It’s not about me.
It’s probably not about me.
There are other figure skaters. Other scandals. Other women whose lives have become public property.
I put my coffee down.
My hands are shaking.
Because it was about me, once, and my body hasn’t forgotten.
The morning it happened.
I remember it in fragments. Waking up to my phone already hot with notifications. The photograph I’d never known existed - taken through a window, blurry at the edges but clear enough. Clear enough to identify me. Clear enough to identify him.
The comments online.
Attention seeker.
She knew what she was doing.
Age gap isn’t that big, what’s the problem?
The coffee shop returns. The hum of the espresso machine. The chatter at the big corner table.
I open my eyes.
The barista calls my name. I pick up my coffee. My hands are steady now.
But I drink my latte fast, and I don’t stay long.