Chapter 15
ELIDA
The women’s team doesn’t know anything is wrong.
I love them for it - how enthusiastic they are.
The girls are already on the ice when I arrive, which has become their habit - they don’t wait to be told anymore, they show up and start moving, which is one of the best signs a coach can see.
Dani is running the combination from last week. Still rushed on the entry but noticeably closer, and I stand at the boards for a moment before they clock I’m there and just watch.
I love this part of the job. I do. I want to be clear about that, even to myself in the privacy of my own head.
Watching someone get better is its own particular satisfaction - the moment a technique stops being conscious effort and starts becoming instinct.
I’ve watched it happen with these girls and it’s made my time here special.
Dani lands the entry cleaner this time and I watch her face - the surprise of it, the delight - and I recognize that expression so precisely that it aches.
I know that feeling.
I know exactly what it feels like to be the one on the ice, to be the one incrementally getting better, to chase a technique through weeks of failed attempts until the morning it suddenly works. Your body doing something it couldn’t do yesterday.
I spent years chasing that feeling. Living off it.
And there are a few mornings where standing at the boards watching someone else get better feels like pressing your hand against a window.
Making a difference, yes. But not quite close enough.
“Elida?” One of the girls, pausing at the blue line. “Are we starting?”
Twelve faces, waiting, skates on and ready.
“Yes,” I say. “Sorry. From the top.”
I push off onto the ice and find my position. The session starts and I pour everything into it - corrections, demonstrations, and words of encouragement. But afterward, walking home in the cold, I let myself think it properly for the first time.
I miss it.
I miss it even more when it comes to the guy’s team skating session. I wish I could escape into my own routines and not think about other people. Especially him.
The team files in loudly but I keep my eyes on my notes.
Then he’s there.
I know without even looking. That’s the problem - I’ve developed some kind of involuntary awareness of exactly where Mateo Russo is in any given space and it hasn’t switched off just because I need it to.
“Alright,” I say to the group, to anyone except him. “Edge progressions. Full rink. Both directions. You know the drill.”
They push off.
I move through the session the way I always do. I know I’m good at this, and the professionalism holds because it has to.
I get to Chen. His outside edge is off. I tell him so and he fixes it immediately and nods his thanks. His expression is careful. He’s noticing more than he should.
I move on, going to other players.
When it gets to Russo, I call out corrections instead of going over. I find reasons to move in the other direction because the alternative is standing close to him and I can’t. I can’t right now.
Calloway runs the second half of the session, and I stand at the boards with my notebook and watch.
Russo is skating well - visibly better than he was when I first arrived. I did that.
Whatever else is complicated between us, that’s not complicated.
Calloway calls time.
The team disperses toward the gate and I gather my things. I’m already moving before the last of them have stepped off. I’m through the gate and into the corridor before anyone can catch up.
I walk fast.
My hand is shaking when I push through the door to the outside.
MATEO
Miles Chen makes pasta.
He doesn’t ask if I want to come over, just texts 7pm and a pasta emoji, which is Chen’s version of I’ve been watching you fall apart for days and we’re going to talk about it whether you like it or not.
I show up at seven.
We eat and watch the first period of a game that neither of us is really watching and Chen lets me not talk for a while. We sit in genuinely comfortable silence.
Then he puts his bowl down.
“You going to tell me what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Something happened at the away game. And then something happened after. And now the sessions feel like the first week she was here except worse because at least then it was just professional.”
I put my own bowl down.
“How long have you known?”
“About you and her? I’m not stupid.”
“I said something. She started pulling back. So, I told her she wasn’t a real coach and that I was leaving at the end of the season so I didn’t know what the problem was.”
Chen is quiet for a long moment.
“Mateo…”
“I know.”
“That’s-”
“I know, Miles.”
“No, I mean-” He stops. Starts again. “She came here from somewhere. We don’t know exactly what happened, but something happened – all the scandal stuff. She deserves the chance to start over without us making it more difficult.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t. But she doesn’t know that. And if stuff already happened to her and then you said that-” He shakes his head. “You need to apologize. Properly.”
The game is still going. Someone scores and the commentary gets loud. Neither of us reacts.
“What if she doesn’t want to hear it?”
“Say it anyway,” Chen says simply. “Because it needs to be said regardless of what she does with it.” He picks his bowl back up. “That’s what apologizing actually is.”
“When did you get so wise?” I laugh, nudging his shoulder with mine.
“I’ve always been wise. You’ve just been too busy being the captain to notice. And we have training tomorrow. You can do it then.”
“You’re right.”
“And Mateo. Lead with the sorry. Before anything else. Just the sorry.”
MATEO
I’ve been rehearsing my apology since seven this morning and if I don’t do it before the session starts I’ll lose my nerve. I can’t spend one more day in the same place.
She’s already there when I arrive.
I skate over.
“Eriksson.”
“Session starts in two minutes.” She’s still looking down.
“I know. Can I- Just hear me out. Please.”
The please works. She looks up, finally, and her expression is carefully constructed. I know her well enough now to see all the work going into it.
“Okay,” she says.
I take a breath.
“I’m sorry. For what I said. It was wrong and it was unfair and it was the opposite of what I actually believe.
I said it because I was frustrated and scared and I took it out on you and I’m sorry.
” I hold her gaze. “You are the most talented person I’ve shared ice with.
This team is better because you’re here.
I’m better because you’re here. And I’m sorry I made you feel like anything less than that. ”
Behind me I’m dimly aware of the team filtering in, skates on ice, the session assembling around us. I don’t care, I just need her to hear it.
“Okay. Thanks.”
She says it briskly and far more formally than I wanted.
I stand there for a second. Then I remember what Chen said about the point of apologizing - she gets to decide what she does with it.
She’s already writing again.
I nod once - apparently this is the version I have to accept - and I push off and skate back toward the group.
It’s fine.
I did the right thing.
It doesn’t have to feel good.
ELIDA
I watch him skate away.
I know he meant every word of what he said, but I couldn’t give him more than what I did.
I’m not ready to give him more than that.
The group are assembling on the ice. I pull myself back into work.
“Tango stop today,” I say, skating out to meet them. “Has anyone done one before?”
Blank faces. A few head shakes.
“It’s a single outside edge stop.” I demonstrate it slowly - the approach, the turn, the weight transfer onto one edge, the precise controlled stop.
“The ice either holds you or it doesn’t.
The only way it holds you is if you commit completely.
Half commitment gives you a fall. Full commitment gives you a stop. ”
A few of the guys look unsure.
“Don’t worry, we’ll build up to it. Start with the entry, nothing else. Full rink, your pace.”
They push off.
I move through the group. Every thirty seconds or so my peripheral vision finds Russo.
He’s working. Head down, focused, running the entry sequence with concentrated effort.
We build through the session - entry, then weight transfer, then the full sequence - and by forty minutes in Ward has got it, Chen is close, and even Barrett lands a passable version on his fourth attempt.
Russo lands it on his second.
Calloway appears at the gate.
“Good work – very impressive technique.”
“They’re picking it up well.”
He nods and skates out to add some tactical work at the end. Behind me, near the gate, I hear Russo rejoin the group.
And then I hear Mercer.
MATEO
I’m pulling up beside Chen when Mercer skates past.
His tone is casual.
“So, now you’re obviously done getting your special treatment from the skating princess, maybe the rest of us can get a go.” He grins. “Swedish women are HOT. Might need some private coaching myself.” He winks at me.
I hear exactly what he’s implying. But also the dismissiveness of reducing her and everything she’s done for this team to that - and that thought bypasses every other rational thought I have.
I don’t decide to do it.
My fist connects with Mercer’s jaw before I’ve caught up to my own thoughts.
He goes sideways.
Then everything happens at once.
Mercer comes back swinging and catches me on the cheekbone.
I barely feel it, I’m already grabbing his jersey, and someone is shouting and skates are everywhere.
Then Barrett is between us with both arms out, and Grant is grabbing Mercer from behind.
There are bodies everywhere and the ice is chaos.
“RUSSO.”
Calloway’s voice cuts through everything.
He has the kind of voice that has twenty years of authority behind it and has nothing to prove.
Everything stops.
I’m breathing hard, Mercer’s jersey still in my fist, Barrett’s arm across my chest. Mercer has blood on his lip. My cheekbone is throbbing.
The rink is silent.
Elida is at the boards.
And her expression is horrified.
I let go of Mercer’s jersey.
“Off the ice,” Calloway says. “Both of you. Now.”
ELIDA
I don’t move.
I stand at the boards and watch them go - Russo first, jaw tight, and then Mercer behind him, touching his lip. The gate closes behind them and the rink settles back into silence.
The team are looking anywhere but at me.
I heard what Mercer said.
I wasn’t supposed to hear it - I was at the boards and he’d pitched it low enough that it was meant for the group and not for me. But the rink has its own acoustics, and I heard every word. Before I’d processed it Russo had already…
“Alright,” Calloway says to the group. His voice gives nothing away. “We’re going to finish the session. Let’s do the tango stop sequence one more time before we finish. Full commitment, remember.”
He nods at me.
I finish the session on autopilot. I try not to think about Mercer’s words. But I can’t get the expression on Russo’s face out of my head - how furious he was and how he reacted in a split second.
MATEO
Calloway finds us later in the corridor outside the locker room. We’ve both been handed ice packs - mine is pressed against my cheekbone. Mercer is ten feet away, avoiding my eyes, doing the same with his lip.
Calloway stands between us.
I wait for the volume. It doesn’t come.
“If I hear you disrespecting staff ever again, we won’t be having this conversation in a corridor,” he says ominously.
Mercer nods. He has the grace to seem ashamed.
“You’re suspended for the next game. Now go,” Calloway says.
Calloway turns to me after he’s left.
I meet his eyes and wait.
“You’re the captain,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Which means?”
“Which means I should have handled it differently. I know.”
“How should you have handled it?”
“Without my fist.”
“You’re suspended from the next game as well. It’s non-negotiable.”
I nod. I was expecting worse.
“Mercer was out of line saying what he did. But you’re the captain. You don’t get to lose it like that. Ever. You want to fight someone? You do it on the ice, in the play, where it belongs. Not in practice because some idiot ran his mouth.”
I stare at the floor. “I know.”
“And Russo?”
I look up.
“Grow up. You have scouts asking about you. Do better.”
He turns and walks back toward the rink.
I go home. I sit on my bed with a pack of frozen peas against my cheekbone and think about what Mercer said.
Special treatment from the skating princess.
I’ve been thinking about it as an insult to what Elida and I are, or were. I’ve been thinking about it as something to be angry about, something to defend.
But sitting here in the quiet of my apartment, I can see it from the other side.
Special treatment.
That’s what it looked like to them. To the team.
My version of it was that we’re two people, practically the same age.
It happened naturally and grew slowly and genuinely from weeks of forced proximity.
That’s not what they saw. What they saw was the skating coach and the captain and, yeah, special treatment.
I put the ice pack down.
And why wouldn’t they? She’s coaching staff, functionally. She runs our sessions. She gives corrections. She has Calloway’s ear. And if they look at her and see someone whose position here is complicated by what happened between us…
What does that do to her authority?
What does that do to everything she’s trying to build here?
I think about what she said in the fight.
What about my job? Did you think about that?
I didn’t.
That’s the honest answer. I didn’t think about it. I wasn’t thinking about what it costs her to be here in the first place - a woman in a men’s hockey environment, brought in as a figure skater consultant, fighting to be taken seriously from day one.
I think about the first session. Mercer subtly challenging her. Barrett pushing. I feel a coil of shame when I remembered how I’d reacted. I’d already decided what she was and what she could offer.
I set the tone.
That’s what she told Calloway in the office that day. And she was right. They take their cues from me.
She came here to rebuild her life.
And I’ve been making it more difficult since she first arrived.
I grab my jacket.
I need to do what I can to make things right.