Chapter 16
ELIDA
I sit on the sofa without taking my coat off.
That’s how I know I’m not okay - when I can’t even manage the basic mechanics of coming home. I think about Mercer’s words.
Special treatment from the skating princess.
This is what happens.
This is exactly what happens, and I knew it and I did it anyway.
She misunderstood the nature of our relationship.
And what would Calloway say? If Mercer said something officially? Or even Russo. He can confirm we slept together, and that’s it. Game over.
I was right to call it off. I was right from the beginning, and I got confused by the stairwell and the hotel. By him. But that punch…
The anger on my behalf.
No, I think. No, don’t do that. Don’t glorify it. He’s young and he reacts on instinct. It was insanely stupid but the stakes aren’t as high for him - his career will be fine and he’ll still get scouted.
I’ll still be here.
With whatever’s left of my reputation after the rumors have made their way around the locker room.
A knock at the door.
I cross the apartment and open the door.
Mateo is standing there in his jacket with a bruise coming up on his cheekbone and an open expression.
“I need to tell you something. And then I’ll go if you want me to.”
“Okay.”
“I went to Calloway,” he says. “Before I came here. I told him that I’d been pursuing you since January.
That you’d tried to maintain a professional boundary and I hadn’t made that easy.
That whatever the team thinks they saw - whatever Mercer was implying - it wasn’t you.
It was me. I made it difficult, and you handled it professionally, and if anyone’s position here should be in question, it’s mine, not yours. I’ll tell the guys, too.”
I stare at him. “But I was involved. It wasn’t only you.”
“I know. But you tried to stop it and I didn’t make that easy. That part is true.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to. I didn’t understand fully until today. And I’m sorry.”
I think about Erik on the phone. Low and careful and protecting himself.
And Mateo walking into Calloway’s office and doing the opposite.
Something cracks open in my chest.
“Come in,” I say.
He comes in.
Erik never walked toward anything that cost him. Mateo walked into his coach’s office and took the blame.
We sit down, me sitting across from him.
“I need to tell you something. About Sweden. About why I came here. All of it.”
He nods.
I take a breath.
“Actually, do you fancy going to the driving range?” I say suddenly, which is not what I’d planned to say. “I’m terrible at golf but I have this sudden urge to hit stuff.”
MATEO
The driving range is twenty minutes from campus and empty on a weekday evening, which is perfect.
Elida has never been here before - I can tell from the way she looks around at the bays and the artificial turf.
“It’s not glamorous,” I say.
“No,” she agrees. “It really isn’t.”
We get a bay near the end and I step back and watch her tackle the ball with the focused intensity she brings to skating.
She swings.
The ball goes approximately two meters, puttering gently off the edge of the platform.
I say nothing.
She tees up another one.
This time she misses the ball altogether, swinging wildly and only hitting the air.
I press my lips together.
“Laugh all you want,” she says.
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re trying so hard not to!”
“I genuinely don’t know what you mean,” I say, and she gives me a lopsided grin.
She tees up again.
I take the club from the next bay and we swing in a companionable silence for a few minutes, and the weird atmosphere that’s been sitting between us since the apartment starts to ease.
She’s swinging too hard. I can see it from here - too much shoulder, not enough rotation, compensating with force for what should be timing. I think about saying so but decide not to.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“You’re wincing.”
“I’m not wincing.”
“Mateo.”
“Your swing is fine.”
We swing in silence for a few more moments.
Then she starts talking, eyes straight ahead. “His name was Erik Lindqvist.”
I set my club down.
She keeps hitting balls - something to do with her hands while she talks.
“He started coaching me when I was thirteen,” she says. “Ten years. A decade of my life, every major competition, it was all with him.”
I say nothing. I just listen.
“It wasn’t - it didn’t start as anything other than coaching,” she says.
“I was a kid. He was good at his job. Really good. He saw things in my skating that no one else saw and he knew how to bring them out. I trusted him.” She stops swinging.
“And then somewhere along the way as I got older it became more. Gradually. So gradually that I couldn’t tell you when it crossed a line because by the time I noticed the line was already far behind us. ”
“How old were you?” I say carefully.
“When it changed?” She thinks about it. “Nineteen, maybe. Twenty.” She picks up her club again. “Old enough that people would say I should have known better.”
“You were his athlete,” I say. “For ten years. That’s not a level playing field regardless of age.”
She glances at me. “No, it wasn’t.”
She swings again. The ball takes a hard left, bouncing off a light fixture.
“And then it came out. Not because either of us said anything. A tabloid - someone had photos, and it was everywhere overnight. And Erik… Erik rushed to end our coaching arrangement and cover his own ass. He told the federation I’d misunderstood the nature of our relationship.
He protected himself and he let me drown and he did it so fast I didn’t even see it coming. ”
I watch as she takes another ball from the bucket.
“He’s coaching a Russian champion now. Competing at the highest level.
His career is completely intact.” She gives a bitter laugh.
“Men in positions of power tend to land on their feet. I tried to get another coach after. Briefly. But my reputation wasn’t…
I got a few rejections and I couldn’t-” She shakes her head.
“I couldn’t keep walking into rooms where people had already decided what I was. ”
“So, you came here,” I say.
“I saw the ad and answered it on impulse,” she says. “A women’s college-level skating program in Minnesota. It sounded like the opposite of everything I’d had before. Which was exactly what I needed.”
“Has it been? Good?”
She considers it honestly. “Yes. Mostly. The women’s program is genuinely great. I love those girls. Watching them get better, watching them figure out what they’re capable of. The guys’ team, too.” She stops.
“But?” I probe.
She shakes her head. “It’s good.”
She picks up her club and tees up another ball. I watch her and I think about her skating her routine when she didn’t know anyone was watching. The way it was obviously different from everything else she does here.
“Don’t you miss it? Skating? Actually skating?”
“Of course. But coaching is good, too. Watching other people do what you love and get better at it – that’s important, too.”
I look at her for a long moment. She doesn’t light up like she does when she’s talking about figure skating.
“That’s why I said what I said,” I say softly.
“The real coach thing. I said it wrong and I said it really fucking badly, and I’m sorry for that.
But-” I pause, finding the right words. “You’re not a coach, Elida.
Not at your core. You’re a figure skater.
Maybe you haven’t figured out how to take back what you want? ”
I say it tentatively. I don’t want to tell her what to do. I only want her to see what I see - to believe in herself.
“That’s not-” she starts.
“All I’m saying is you’re the best skater I’ve ever seen. And Erik Lindqvist is coaching a Russian champion while you’re teaching college kids. Which is fine. If that’s what you really love doing. But is it?”
Her eyes are very bright.
“You sound like Iris.”
“Iris?”
“My sister. She’d like you.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you should go back to Sweden. To skating. Not because of anything that’s happened here. Because it’s yours and he doesn’t get to keep it.”
She looks at the net for a moment.
Then she picks up her club. “Show me what I’m doing wrong with the swing.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Show me anyway.”
ELIDA
He’s a surprisingly good golfer.
I don’t know why this surprises me - he’s an elite athlete with exceptional spatial awareness and a body that does what he tells it - but watching him step up to the bay and send the ball straight and clean and exactly where he intends it to go is somehow irritating in a way I find quite enjoyable.
I’m an elite athlete as well, but somehow not even one percent of it seems to transfer to golf.
“Show off,” I say.
He grins. “That’s what I said to you before. On the ice. First session.”
“I was demonstrating.”
“And now I’m demonstrating,” he laughs.
He steps back and gestures at the tee with exaggerated courtesy. “Ok. Your go.”
I tee up.
I swing.
The ball goes left hard. I’m wondering if there’s a problem with the equipment, and I say so.
“Hm,” Mateo says.
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said hm.”
“Hm is not a word.”
“It is a word!” I tee up another one. “It’s the word people say when they’re being diplomatic.”
“The equipment is fine.”
“So, what’s going wrong? Is my swing that terrible?”
“No! It’s not terrible,” he says, but he’s smiling a little.
I try to hit the ball again and mostly miss it… but I clip the very top so it falls off the tee. I retrieve it and plop it firmly back in place for another attempt.
“It’s a little terrible,” he concedes.
I point the club at him. He holds up both hands, grinning, and I turn back to the tee and try to remember the last time I ever actually played golf or even went to a driving range. I was always too busy with skating.
We go back and forth like this for a while, him hitting clean and straight, me hitting creatively, and the banter is easy. Two people in an empty driving range being normal with each other.
“Okay,” he says, after my seventh consecutive attempt to take out the left barrier. “Can I-”
“No.”
“I just want to show you-”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re really not.”
“I’m expressing myself. Through the medium of golf.”
“You’re expressing yourself directly into the barrier.”
“That’s where I meant it to go.”
He laughs and steps into my bay anyway, and I turn to tell him I don’t need his help but he’s already behind me, close, one hand coming to rest lightly on my hip to adjust my position.
“Remember what you said to me?” he says, close to my ear. “You’re all shoulder. The power comes from here-” His hand guides the movement. “Turn through it. Don’t force it.”
His chest is solid against my back.
“You with me?”
“Yes,” I say. Impressively steady, all things considered.
“Okay. Try it.”
I try it and the ball goes straight. Not perfectly straight, but it makes it out into the middle of the range.
“Look!” I say, surprised at myself.
“Yeah,” he says. He hasn’t moved. “See?”
“Don’t be smug about it.”
“I’m not being smug.”
“You’re being extremely smug.”
He steps back and I immediately miss the warmth of him.
“You don’t like getting coached, huh?”
He’s got that expression - the grin that changes his whole face - and I think about the first skating session and his total refusal to be helped.
“Like you can talk!”
He laughs. “That’s fair.”
We stay for another half hour. My golf gets marginally better.
His gets no better because it was already excellent and there’s nowhere to go from excellent except showing off, which he does with far too much satisfaction at being better than me at something for once.
By the time we’re handing back the clubs and walking to the car I’m feeling relaxed and content.
The drive back to campus is quiet in a good way. He has music on low and I lean my head back against the seat.
Everything isn’t solved and wrapped up neatly. But it feels okay.
He pulls up outside my building and leaves the engine running while I gather my things. Then I sit there for a second, not quite ready to end it.
“Thank you. For tonight.”
“You’re thanking me for watching you assault a golf net for ninety minutes?”
“I’m thanking you for the other stuff.”
He gives a small nod.
I open the door and get out, and he gets out too, which I wasn’t expecting. He walks around to my side. We stand on the pavement, and he looks at me for a moment. Then he leans in and presses his lips to my forehead. I close my eyes.
“Goodnight, Elida.”
“Goodnight.”
I go inside.