Chapter 8
ISABELLA
The dinner ends up being louder and rowdier than I expected.
Maybe rowdy is not exactly the word… but it has everyone moving around, chatting with each other, being active.
The restaurant has pushed together four long tables near the back, each seating six, and no one seems inclined to stay in one place for very long.
People stand to greet each other, drift between tables, lean over chairs to finish a thought or join in on parallel conversations.
Wine glasses are moving freely and the food arrives in uneven waves.
It feels more social than the rink ever does, especially the closer it gets to competing.
I circulate at first out of habit, stopping to exchange a few words with a few coaches I haven’t seen in years, nodding through updates I’ll need to remember later.
I’m aware, in the background, of Cecilia’s presence before I actually see her.
A familiar alertness settles in my body, the same one I get when something matters more than I’m willing to admit.
She’s seated at the far table, half-turned towards a coach I don’t recognize, listening carefully.
She looks tired, though she’s doing a good job of disguising it.
Her shoulders are tight, and, somehow, her attention feels split, like she’s holding the day together piece by piece.
Her hair is loose today, and her blonde strands are shorter than they appear when she’s at the rink.
I wait a minute before joining her.
When I do approach, she looks up quickly, surprised.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi,” she answers, after a beat.
I pull out the chair across from her and sit. Around us, conversation swells and recedes. Someone laughs loudly two tables over as a server is trying to squeeze past them with a tray of glasses.
“You came,” I say, lightly.
“So did you,” she replies.
There’s something guarded in her tone, but not closed. I recognize the difference.
“It’s my job,” I say, lifting one shoulder and hoping to god it looks casual.
Cecilia studies me for a moment, like she’s deciding whether to call my bluff or not.
“Is it?” she asks.
I smile, because that’s easier than answering directly. “Depends who you ask, honestly. Nina keeps everything running. I’m just…”
She waits for me to finish my thought. For me to say that I’m just the pretty face behind it. She’s good at that—at letting silence do the work instead of rushing to fill it. Just like with her coaching.
“I float,” I say finally. “That’s the easiest way to explain it.”
She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.
“I mean it,” I add. “Sometimes I’m here, helping out at the rink in whatever way I can. Other weeks I’m in a booth, pretending I have something insightful to say about edge quality to people who already know what they’re looking at.”
“The commentating,” she says.
“Among other things.” I pause. “I’m mostly doing panels and appearances during the season. I go to way too many meetings where everyone uses the word legacy too many times.”
That earns the faintest curve of her mouth.
“And coaching?” she asks. I can’t quite interpret her expression. It’s almost as if she’s terrified of my answer.
“No.” I shake my head. “That part of my life is done.”
She glances down at her plate, then back up at me. In the dim light, her brown eyes look lighter. “Do you miss it?”
The question catches me off guard.
“I miss parts of it,” I say carefully. “The skating and the ice, definitely. I don’t miss feeling like the only thing people wanted from me was to stay who I’d already been.”
She nods once, like that makes sense.
“I thought I’d know what came next,” I continue, keeping my voice low. “That it would feel clearer by now. Instead it’s… a bunch of little things I’m good at.”
“And none of them feel like they’re yours,” she says.
The accuracy of her statement startles me.
I laugh, softly, more in surprise than humor. “Something like that.”
She looks at me then, and for the first time that evening, I feel the shift happen from her side. Her attention isn’t purely defensive anymore.
“That sounds exhausting,” she says.
“It can be,” I admit. “I don’t talk about it much.”
“You’re good at sounding like you have it figured out.”
I meet her gaze. “So are you.”
The conversation shifts around safer things, like logistics and training and the program. How fast the weeks are ticking by. How much improvement we can see in the skaters. Cecilia listens more than she speaks, nodding along, eyes tracking movement in the room even as she stays present with me.
In the corner of my eye, I see the Japanese delegation starting to head out. Goodbyes start overlapping, loose and disorganized, and the dinner simply dissolves.
I notice Cecilia checking her watch, then slipping her jacket on without ceremony.
“You heading back?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah, we have early ice time tomorrow.”
“I can walk with you,” I say, before I’ve fully decided to. I don’t give myself time to take it back. “I left my car at the rink.”
She hesitates for a moment, then shrugs. “Sure.”
Outside, the night hits clean and cold. The noise from the restaurant muffles behind us as the door closes. The street is dim and quiet ahead, then one of the streetlamps flickers in the distance.
We walk side by side at first. Our footsteps fall out of sync and then correct themselves without comment.
“How did you get into coaching?” I ask, filling the space. “Was it always your plan?”
She glances at me, waiting.
“I’ve been watching you this week,” I continue, but internally I’m wincing because I’m giving myself away and I immediately regret it. “With him, I mean.”
She stiffens slightly. It’s that defensiveness again.
“I definitely didn’t plan it,” she says. “At the tail end of my career, I started helping out at my rink a little more—I needed the money. And then…” She exhales. “I realized I was better at explaining things than I was at doing them.”
Cecilia’s voice is even, but there’s something in the way she keeps her eyes forward, fixed on the stretch of pavement ahead of us.
I nod, though she isn’t looking at me. I try to match her pace, but she walks just a fraction faster than I expect.
She stops abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk right as the streetlamp flickers again.
For a second, her face is half-lit, half-shadowed, and I’m struck by how contained she is even now, mid-conversation.
“What do you want, Isabella?”
It’s direct and sharp. Like she’s tired of me circling her all the time.
I take a breath, steadying myself before answering.
“I didn’t mean to sound like I was evaluating you earlier,” I say, because it’s true and because not saying it feels worse. “When I said I’d been watching.”
She doesn’t respond right away. She waits, arms folding loosely across her chest, giving me the space to finish the thought. I don’t.
“You’ve always done it,” she says instead, and her eyes are steady on mine. She tips her head back a little, and it almost looks like she’s being defiant.
“I—”
“You’ve done it since I met you fifteen years ago. You probably don’t even remember athletes like me.”
I frown, genuinely confused. “I do remember you. I don’t know what you mean.”
She lets out a short breath. Not a laugh. Something closer to disbelief.
“Exactly,” she says. “See? That’s exactly what I mean.”
I start to say something, then stop. I’m suddenly aware of how thin my footing feels.
“It’s not personal,” she adds, quieter now.
“I know that. You’re just used to something else.
” She gestures vaguely behind her, towards the rink and the dorms, the entire infrastructure humming along without pause.
“People like me fade into the background. We don’t have shiny things to show, so even our clean lines and our near-perfect technique don’t get noticed. ”
“That’s not true. Not for me,” I say carefully.
She studies my face, not accusing. I stay still, let her talk.
“You once said,” she continues, “that skating didn’t need embellishment. That clean lines mattered more than being shiny.”
Cecilia’s voice isn’t raised, but it sharpens.
I pause, trying to make sense of what she’s saying. “I did?”
She lets out another humorless breath. “Of course you don’t remember.”
“I’m not saying that to dismiss you, Cecilia.” My words come out in a rush. “I just—”
“It was confirmation of every questioning thought I already had about myself and my career.”
The street feels suddenly too open, too exposed. A cool breeze runs through us, lifting the edges of her hair. She pushes the strands back, annoyed at the interruption.
“People like you get to say things like that and walk away,” she adds. “People like me, like Rodrigo, have to live with the consequences.”
The words hit me like an unexpected fall on the ice. Hard, sharp, and painful. They are precise and calculated, and suddenly everything makes sense. Her distrust of me, the system, and the sport. How guarded she is and how protective she feels about her skater.
“I didn’t know,” I say finally.
“I know,” she replies. “That’s the problem.”
Silence stretches between us, filled only by the distant hum of an airplane overhead and the opening and closing of a car door somewhere down the street.
“I’m not asking you to fix it. I just needed you to know why this—” She gestures vaguely between us, “—is complicated.”
She nods once, like that’s enough. Like staying any longer would undo the work it took to say it.
“I need to go,” she says.
Cecilia turns before I can respond and starts walking again, faster this time, in the direction of the rink instead of the dorms.
I hesitate—then follow anyway.