Chapter 22
Epilogue
The dress is Iris’s idea.
I would have worn something sensible - something professional that says serious athlete, until Iris came to my apartment three hours before the ceremony.
She took one look at the sensible dress and went to my wardrobe.
She dug through and found the green one that I bought in a moment of optimism six months ago and have never worn.
“It’s too much.”
“No, it’s perfect.”
I’m wearing the green dress.
The Idrottsgalan, Sweden’s premier sports awards ceremony, is not somewhere I expected to be eighteen months ago.
But a lot has happened since then.
The first six months back were hard.
Pretending it was a triumphant return would be a lie.
Brita was extraordinary. The training was good and being back on the ice, daily, with proper structure and someone pushing me - that part was right.
It felt like coming home after a long time away.
But the body takes time. The competition nerves, which I thought I’d managed early in my career, came back with a vengeance.
Maybe something to do with the anxiety in performing again when I’d been publicly humiliated before.
The first qualifier I entered, I came fourth.
I sat in the dressing room afterward. Brita came in and sat beside me. “That’s one done,” she said, simply.
The second qualifier, I came second.
The third - six months ago, in Gothenburg, my home city, Iris in the stands - I won.
Not a major title. But a real competition, a legitimate result. It meant my name was on a ranking again, and standing on that podium in Gothenburg with Iris screaming at me from the sidelines - everything felt worth it.
Mateo arrived in Stockholm a few months after I did, immediately after his graduation.
The showcase had gone better than he expected.
He’d called me from outside the showcase venue, two hours before it started.
“Remember the stairwell in Ridgewood?” I said.
A pause.
“Dancing Queen?”
“Obviously”.
He laughed, and I heard him exhale, and then he went in and skated.
He called after.
“Well?” I asked.
“I think,” he said, very carefully, “that it went okay.”
It went significantly better than okay.
Djurg?rdens offered him a rookie contract three days later. Developmental, conditional, lower salary than he deserved, but it was a legitimate deal. He signed it on a Tuesday morning and called me from outside the office.
“It’s not the NHL…” he’d said.
“Not yet.”
The rookie season was hard in different ways from my hard.
A new city, new language, new teammates who had their own ways of doing things and weren’t particularly interested in adjusting them for a twenty-two-year-old from Minnesota who’d been a captain of a mediocre team.
He called me some nights frustrated in a way that reminded me of the first sessions in Blackwood.
He’s someone who is good and knows he’s good but sometimes can’t quite make the gap close between good and good enough for this level.
I told him what Brita told me.
“That’s another one done. Just keep going.”
He kept going.
Soon he was getting regular ice time. And then suddenly Djurg?rdens were talking about him in press releases. Reading how they talked about him made me smile.
By the end of the season a Swedish sports magazine had named him as a rising star to watch.
I left it open on my laptop and didn’t mention it.
He saw it and didn’t mention it either.
But then he showed up that evening with food from the Thai place on my street and sat on my sofa with an expression of someone trying very hard not to look overly pleased with themselves and failing.
“Rising star,” I said.
“Don’t.”
“One to watch.”
“Elida.”
I smiled at my food.
We live thirty minutes apart.
His apartment is near the Djurg?rdens training facility, mine is closer to the rink where I train with Brita. The thirty minutes between us is close enough for random evenings and Sunday mornings. Sometimes it turns into a few days without either of us planning it.
But then there are the times where it’s the opposite.
He travels for games and I travel for competitions, so there are weeks where our schedules don’t align.
There are mornings where I’m at the rink at six and he’s already on the ice at his facility, so we’re both in the dark in the same city doing the same thing in different buildings.
But there’s something about that I find privately, completely right.
We’re both still building something.
And we’re building it in the same city now. That’s actually more than enough.
The ballroom is full when we arrive.
Iris meets us at the door - she insisted on coming separately because she had dinner beforehand with a friend and also, I suspect, because she wanted the moment of seeing us arrive together, which she has been insufferably delighted about since the first time she met Mateo eight months ago.
She meets us at the door in a silver dress and she hugs me and then she turns to Mateo and says something in Swedish that makes him laugh - his Swedish is functional now, improving weekly, still occasionally disastrous in ways that have become their own running joke.
He says something back that makes her raise her eyebrows at me over his shoulder with an expression of complete approval.
“You look incredible,” Iris says to me. “I told you. Green dress.”
“You saved me,” I agree.
She squeezes my arm and we go in.
The ballroom has high ceilings and is elegantly decorated. There are tables set for dinner, a stage at the far end, and the names of Sweden’s sporting year laid out in the program I’m handed at the door.
I find my name.
Regional Champion, Figure Skating.
Mateo finds his.
Rising Star, Ice Hockey - SHL.
He looks at it for a moment and then he takes my hand.
We’re at our table - Brita and Iris on one side, Mateo on my other and a Swedish speed skater and her husband across from us who turn out to be excellent company - and then I see him.
Erik.
He’s three tables away so I have a good chance to examine him. I haven’t seen him since everything happened, but he looks older than he should - tired, somehow. He’s with a woman I don’t recognize.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
I pick up my wine glass.
Beside me, Mateo’s hand finds mine under the table.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t make it into a thing, just leaves his hand there, steadying and certain. He’s always been there for me without ever making a speech about it.
I watch the stage.
I’m okay. Genuinely. Erik is three tables away and I feel… nothing much. It’s faint and distant. Present but not painful. Not anymore.
He sees me.
I watch it happen - the recognition, something moving across his face that I can’t quite read and don’t particularly want to.
I look back at the stage.
Mateo squeezes my hand once.
The whispers about Erik have been building for months.
Iris told me first, carefully, and then Brita mentioned it, and then it appeared in the skating press in the oblique way these things appear before they become official.
Another athlete, the Russian one he’s been coaching.
The federation finally asking questions.
The fact that the issue was coming up again meant that people who hadn’t believed it the first time were starting to change their stance.
I don’t feel triumphant about it. It surprises me that I don’t. I thought I’d want this when it came. I thought I’d want the vindication and the record publicly corrected.
But instead I feel tired on behalf of whoever she is - the new one, the one going through it now. What happened to me was wrong and I’m now watching the world slowly, belatedly, agree. That’s enough.
The awards are fun and celebratory. The speed skater across from us wins a significant award and the whole table cheers. Iris orders another bottle of wine.
When my name is called I walk to the stage and I accept the award and I say something brief and genuine. I talk about Brita and what it means to come back after time away.
Mateo is watching me proudly and, beside him, Iris is dabbing at her eyes.
“Regional champion,” he says when I get back to the table, kissing my cheek.
The rest of the evening races past - more wine is poured, and someone makes a speech. Mateo’s hand finds my knee at regular intervals.
By the time dessert arrives, I feel fuzzy and happy. And I need to pee.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I say to no-one in particular.
Iris nods. Mateo’s hand squeezes my knee once and releases.
The restroom is down a corridor off the main ballroom, past the coat check and the silent bank of elevators. I go. I wash my hands and check myself in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed and I feel a rush of pride for my resilience in coming back to skating.
I walk back toward the ballroom.
And there he is.
Erik is standing in the corridor, phone in hand, scrolling. He’s alone - the woman he was with must still be at the table. He hasn’t seen me yet. I’m struck again by tired and ordinary he looks.
I could walk past him.
The corridor is wide enough. I could keep my eyes forward, my chin up, my pace even, and I could stride straight past him.
Or I could turn around.
Go back to the restroom. Wait five minutes. Come back when he’s gone.
That’s what the old me would have done. The one who flinched at unexpected touches. The one who read comment sections at 3am.
He looks up and our eyes meet.
“Elida,” he says.
My name in his mouth. I’ve heard it a thousand times. On the ice. In his bed.
“Erik.”
My voice doesn’t shake.
He takes a step toward me.
“You look well.”
“Thank you.”
“I saw your win. The qualifier. You were always exceptional.”
“I still am.”
“I didn’t mean-” he starts.
“I know what you meant.”
Somewhere behind me, music drifts from the ballroom. A laugh rises and falls.
“I’ve been meaning to reach out. The way things ended-”
“Don’t bother.”
He stops.
“I don’t need an explanation. I don’t need anything from you. I haven’t needed anything from you for a long time.”