Epilogue
CECILIA
The week has flown by so fast, I have hardly had any time to catch up on emails and text messages.
Sandra has texted me no less than eighty-one times, demanding updates every twenty minutes, even though the entire country is apparently getting ready to watch Rodrigo skate live at three in the morning and she can see what’s happening on the broadcast.
“Ceci,” Rodrigo says from his spot on the bench.
He’s tied and untied his skates a few times already.
Although he claims he’s not a superstitious person, for a freshly eighteen-year-old he seems to be very much set in his ways.
“Can you please help me with this one? I can’t seem to tie it strong enough. ”
“Yep,” I reply quickly. He is drumming his fingers on his right leg, and I can now see how nervous he is. Third after the short program and barely two points off silver. If he skates clean tonight, there’s a real possibility Argentina leaves these Olympics with its first figure skating medal.
“What’s going on?”
His gaze is to the floor. He’s been avoiding looking me in the eyes for a few days. Warm-ups and our practice runs have been incredible, but finally the mental games of this sport have caught up to him.
“Nothing.”
“Rodri,” I say as I sit next to him. The Zamboni is almost done with its first lap, and there’s a gaggle of skaters ready to go out for a quick loop right before the next program starts.
The stands are slowly filling up with groups of people wearing different colored jackets. “It’s okay to be nervous, you know?”
“I’m not nervous,” he says, but he bites his lower lip so hard, I’m scared he will draw blood.
“Okay.”
“Just please do my skate tighter.”
Isabella texted me three times this morning reminding me to breathe, which is deeply hypocritical coming from a woman who cried during practice yesterday because Rodrigo landed all his jumps clean in his first run-through.
I crouch in front of him and take his skate in my hands. The leather is warm from his foot, the laces slightly damp, already loosened from the way he’s been pulling at them without realizing it. I retie it slowly, deliberately, grounding myself in the familiar sequence. Cross. Pull. Lock. Breathe.
He watches my hands almost obsessively, and I can see his lips moving along with my fingers. It feels like he’s about to unravel right in front of my eyes, and if one more thing gets out of control, he will pass out.
“You’ve done this a thousand times,” I say, low and sure. It sounds a little terse, but not unkind. Never unkind. “Your boots aren’t going to betray you today. I can feel it.”
“You and your fucking woo-woo.”
“Language.”
He huffs out something that might be a laugh, but I see his fingers again, drumming against the slats, away from where my eye could catch. “Everything betrays me eventually.”
I glance up at him then. Eighteen years old, sitting on a hard bench in a Japanese rink, carrying the weight of history on his shoulders like he volunteered for it instead of stumbling into it by being talented enough to force the entire sport to pay attention.
His knee is bouncing and his shoulders are tight, one of them creeping up higher than the other, just like when he skates.
I finish the knot and press my thumb against it, firm. “Mirame.”
He doesn’t right away, but when he does, his eyes are glassy and the edges of his eyelashes are damp.
“You’re ready,” I say. “Not because you’re not scared. Because you are—your body knows how to run this program, and you are here, competing with the top athletes in your sport. That’s pretty fucking amazing, isn’t it?”
“Ceci,” he huffs again and swallows hard. I track the movement down his throat, but then focus back on his face. “What if I mess it up?”
“Then you mess it up,” I say simply. “And you skate through it. Like you’ve been doing all week.”
The Zamboni finally clears the ice and the doors open. The cold rushes in, sharp and familiar, and the noise swells—music cues, blades biting into fresh ice, the low hum of a crowd that doesn’t know yet something monumental is about to happen.
Rodrigo stands. He towers over me now, all long limbs and nerves, but he waits like he always does. For permission but also for anchoring.
I tap his shin once. “Andá.”
He nods and pushes towards the boards, and I take a few steps slowly, stopping where I always stop. The same place I’ve stood since he was twelve and could barely land a double without lifting his head up and grinning in celebration.
The announcer’s voice echoes through the arena after a while, reciting the order in the program and other formalities. Names, countries, and the formal language of judgment.
Rodrigo takes the ice after two skaters from France, and for a brief second I can see it—the flicker where fear threatens to take over his body. Then the music starts, and his muscles remember before his mind can run interference.
He opens strong and doesn’t rush, and that alone feels like a victory.
The first jump snaps clean. The second one is a little tighter, a touch short, but he saves it without any panic and keeps going, almost intentional.
I know the judges will see it, but I doubt he will lose many points with that correction.
My hands curl into fists inside my jacket, not because I’m nervous, but because I refuse to celebrate too early.
Halfway through his program, I realize something is different in him.
He’s not skating for me or for the judges or for the crowds.
He’s skating because he really wants this, and that is so, so evident in how he is moving on the ice.
The step sequence is alive, not perfect but honest, and when he commits to the final jump, he does it with everything he has left in him. He lands a quadruple Lutz slightly forward but is still upright and moving, and his eyes shine with pride.
By the time the music ends, my throat is tight enough that it hurts.
Rodrigo skids to a stop, chest heaving, eyes searching the boards. When they find me, I don’t nod right away. I wait until his breathing slows and he’s back inside his body.
Then I nod.
That’s when he breaks. It’s not dramatic. Just a sharp inhale and a hand to his mouth like he can’t believe what just happened.
The kiss-and-cry feels like purgatory. We sit side by side while they replay runs on the screen, every mistake magnified, and every recovery dissected.
Rodrigo is not watching, but I can see when they replay that Lutz over and over again, because he just accomplished something incredible at the Olympics, something about never being done before by a male skater.
I keep my face neutral and my posture relaxed. Inside, I’m counting. Elements. Base value. Grade of execution. Doing math that I never wanted to learn but had to, because no one else was going to do it for us.
The score comes up.
It’s enough. Not perfect and not gold but very solid.
Second overall.
For a moment, the world goes completely quiet.
Then Rodrigo turns to me with a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “Ceci.”
I pull him into my shoulder before he can say anything else, before the cameras zoom in close enough to catch the way his hands are shaking and tears fill his eyes.
“You did it,” I murmur into his hair. “You did it.”
He nods against me, overwhelmed, and when we stand, the reality settles in all at once. Argentina has an Olympic medalist. Not someday.
Now.
We walk back through the corridor, past the noise and the lights and the sudden attention from everywhere, my hand steady at his back. My phone is buzzing in my pocket, but I ignore it. I know it’s Sandra texting me with the prepared talking points, once we speak to the cameras.
Coaches clap him on the shoulder. Officials smile like they’ve always believed in him.
He belongs to them now, a little bit.
In the hallway, away from the ice, he finally lets go of my sleeve. He’s grinning so wide it almost hurts to look at him.
“What now?” he asks, breathless.
I open my mouth, then close it again.
One year ago, we were begging for ice time and stitching together training schedules with whatever scraps we could manage.
Now reporters are shouting his name in three different languages while Olympic officials escort him towards the medal ceremony.
“Coach!”
I look up just in time to see Katia barreling down the hallway towards us in her Team USA outfit, credential swinging wildly against her chest. She launches herself at Rodrigo first, nearly knocking him back into the wall as she wraps both arms around his neck.
“Silver medal, baby!” she yells directly into his face.
“I know!”
“No, literally, what the fuck!”
Rodrigo laughs so hard he folds in half, still crying a little despite himself, and for one brief second he looks like the twelve-year-old boy instead of the athlete the entire world has been watching for the last thirty minutes.
Everything feels loud and bright and strangely unreal.
Then I hear someone shout my name.
“Cecilia!”
I know that voice instantly.
I turn just in time to see Isabella running in my direction from the far end of the corridor. Actually running. No composure or measured professionalism. None of that careful awareness of cameras or officials or the fact that she is technically supposed to be working right now.
Her accreditation badge is bounding wildly against her chest and her hair is half out of whatever style it started the evening in.
And she’s smiling. Beaming.
I barely have time to react before she collides into me hard enough that I stumble backward from the force of it.
“Oh my god,” she laughs breathlessly, arms wrapping around my shoulders as she practically climbs onto me. “Oh my god.”
I catch her automatically, laughing too now because there’s no other possible reaction to the sheer force of emotion radiating out of this woman.
“You’re supposed to be commentating,” I manage.
“I don’t give a shit.”
“Princess—”
“Cecilia,” she interrupts immediately, pulling back just enough to hold my face in both hands. Her eyes are bright and wet and completely overwhelmed. “He won a fucking medal.”
Like I don’t know.
Like saying it out loud is the only way to make it real.
Behind us, Rodrigo lets out another disbelieving laugh as Katia continues yelling at him about blades and fire.
Silver.
The first Olympic figure skating medal Argentina has ever won.
I press my forehead briefly against Isabella’s shoulder because for one dangerous second, I genuinely think I might cry right there in the middle of the hallway.
She immediately tightens her legs around me.
“I know,” she whispers.
Then Rodrigo points at us accusingly.
“Hey!” he shouts. “Why are you hugging without me? I’m the one who won the medal.”
I laugh helplessly and wipe quickly at my face before he can see too much.
“Get over here, then.”
He does.
The four of us collide together in the middle of the corridor while people move around us, laughing and shouting and taking photos and trying unsuccessfully to maintain Olympic-level professionalism nearby.
Isabella is still hanging off me, laughing into my shoulder every few seconds like she can’t physically contain herself.
“You know,” she says after the chaos finally starts to die down around us, her arms still looped around my neck, “this is probably the closest I’m ever getting to proposing at the Olympics.”
I stare at her.
Then laugh so suddenly I almost choke on it.
“Princess.”
“I’m serious.”
“You are absolutely not serious.”
“When have I been unserious about you, babe?” Her mouth twitches, but there’s something intimate underneath it now, steady enough that it slowly pulls the laughter out of me.
I look at her for a second longer, at the flushed cheeks and the bright eyes and the woman who crossed an entire rink without caring who saw because she needed to get to me first.
“Well,” I say quietly, my hands tightening at her waist, “wanna get married?”
Her eyes widen slightly, and for maybe the first time since I met her, the Ice Princess genuinely looks caught off guard.
“Ceci,” she breathes.
And god, I love the way she says my name.
I shrug a little helplessly, suddenly emotional enough that I can feel it climbing into my throat.
“I mean,” I offer, “obviously not today. I’m a little busy.”
She laughs through something dangerously close to tears and presses her forehead hard against mine.
“Yes,” she whispers immediately. “Obviously yes.”
And for the first time in years, maybe ever, the future doesn’t feel terrifying.