Chapter 32 #2
Bodies filter toward showers and changing rooms, the echoes of exhausted conversation fading as doors swing shut and the cavernous space settles into the hollow quiet of a venue between events.
The ice sits beyond the glass partition, freshly resurfaced for the figure skating session that will begin in the next hour, its surface gleaming under the overhead lights like a mirror waiting for a reflection.
I walk toward Raphael.
He is standing by the equipment rack, organizing a set of training cones with the methodical attention of a coach who treats his gear with the same respect he expects from his players. I stop in front of him and punch his arm.
Hard. As hard as my exhausted muscles can manage, which, given the circumstances, is approximately the force of a kitten batting at a dangling string.
"Ow." The pain registers in my knuckles before it registers in his bicep, which is the approximate density of a concrete pillar wrapped in athletic fabric. I wince, shaking my hand. "Ow. That hurt me. That hurt me and not you. This is the worst revenge I have ever attempted."
He smirks, catching my stinging hand in his and rubbing his thumb across my knuckles with a gentleness that has no business coexisting with the sadistic training regimen he just administered.
"Your technique needs work," he says. "Rotate from the shoulder next time. You are punching with your wrist and your wrist is going to lose that argument every time against a deltoid."
"I hate you."
"You do not."
"I hate you so much."
"Also untrue. Are you going to shower?"
I wrinkle my nose.
"I have to unless you enjoy the smell of elephant. Because that is what I currently resemble. An elephant who ran a marathon through a sauna and then fell into a vat of gym socks."
He chuckles, his vanilla ice cream and dark sandalwood scent curling through the air between us with an unfair attractiveness given that I smell like the inside of a hockey glove.
"You smell divine when you are sweaty," he says. "But I can think of other activities that would produce a more enjoyable version of that particular fragrance."
"SHH!" I hiss, my cheeks igniting with a heat that has nothing to do with seven hours of cardio.
I glance around the training facility, confirming that the last stragglers are disappearing through the locker room doors.
"We are around people! You cannot just say things like that with your whole chest in a public facility!
There are acoustics in here! Sound carries! "
He is entirely unbothered by my distress. The man possesses an immunity to embarrassment that I am beginning to suspect is a French cultural trait rather than an individual personality quirk.
"Did you bring your skates?" he asks, pivoting topics with the smooth redirect of a man who knows exactly when to escalate and when to retreat.
I pout, the expression automatic and involuntary, a reflex that activates whenever Raphael asks me a question that I suspect is leading somewhere I did not anticipate.
"Yes," I admit.
"Good. Can we try a few things before you shower? The ice is open for the next forty minutes before the figure skating team arrives, and I want to see how you move with a partner."
The request is casual. Professional, even. The tone of a coach proposing a brief assessment, nothing more, nothing less. But beneath the professional veneer, I catch the faintest shift in his scent, a warming of the sandalwood notes that tells me this is not purely clinical.
"Sure," I say.
I retrieve my skates from my bag in the changing area, lacing them with a practiced efficiency that my exhausted fingers protest but execute on muscle memory alone.
The blades feel familiar beneath my feet, the extension of my body that has been missing for years and has only recently been reintroduced to my daily vocabulary.
I step onto the ice, and the surface greets me with the whispered hiss of steel on frozen water that makes my chest expand with a breath I did not know I was holding.
Raphael follows.
He has removed his jacket, revealing the fitted long-sleeve black shirt beneath that clings to his torso with the fidelity of a garment that knows exactly what it is covering and is proud of it.
His black training leggings follow the line of his legs with a precision that makes me blink twice and look away before my brain starts cataloguing details that will distract me from whatever he is about to propose.
I am wearing brighter attire. The neon pink leggings he ordered for me, which arrived last night in a package alongside a collection of workout clothes that made me cry in my room for six minutes because no one has ever purchased an entire wardrobe of athletic wear specifically for my body and my preferences without being asked.
The matching sports bra sits beneath a cropped training top, the vivid pink a stark contrast to his all-black ensemble, the two of us looking like a visual argument between midnight and sunrise sharing the same ice.
"I want to see what you can do with a partner," he says, skating to center ice with the fluid ease of someone whose relationship with the surface extends far beyond hockey. "I am going to observe posture, timing, and synchronization. Perform properly. No shortcuts."
I nod.
He pulls a small remote from his pocket and points it at the speaker system mounted in the corner of the rink. Music fills the arena.
The opening notes cascade through the empty space with a resonance that makes my spine straighten before my brain identifies the piece.
A piano melody, delicate and insistent, building with the gradual intensity of a sunrise, the kind of composition that figure skaters dream about because it provides the emotional architecture for every element in the routine.
I am not nervous about being watched. The facility is emptying.
The team is in the showers. The figure skating squad will not arrive for another thirty minutes.
It is just me and Raphael and the ice and the music, and the privacy of the moment allows me to release the tension that typically accompanies performance and settle into the pure, unwitnessed joy of movement.
We begin.
The first chorus is rough.
I will not pretend otherwise. I have not danced with a partner in over two years, and the muscle memory that governs solo performance operates on a different frequency than the trust required for paired skating.
My timing is a fraction late on the first sequence, my body anticipating the movement but hesitating at the point where I need to release control to the person beside me.
A crossover that should flow into a synchronized glide stutters as I overcorrect my edge, my blade catching the ice with a scrape that makes me wince.
But Raphael adjusts.
Seamlessly. Without instruction or complaint, he modifies his pace to match mine, slowing the sequence by a half-beat that allows me to find the rhythm without feeling rushed.
His hand finds my waist during the first lift preparation, his grip steady and warm, his body providing the counterbalance that my solo instincts keep trying to provide for themselves.
And I realize, with a clarity that builds like the music itself, that syncing with Raphael is easy.
Not forced. Not mechanical. Not the labored coordination of two athletes who have rehearsed a routine until compliance replaces chemistry.
This is organic. His movements are smooth and flexible, carrying a liquidity that his height and build should theoretically prohibit but instead enhance, his frame gliding through transitions with a grace that makes me admire him in a capacity that extends beyond coaching and into artistry.
By the second chorus, we are synchronized.
The rough edges dissolve. My body stops fighting its own instincts and starts trusting the man beside me, accepting his leads without second-guessing, matching his tempo without recalculating.
The moves become fluid, each element flowing into the next with the continuity of a conversation conducted in motion rather than language.
Spins. Glides. A throw sequence that requires me to release my grip and trust that his hands will be exactly where they need to be when gravity reclaims me.
They are. Every time.
I begin to trust him enough for the flips.
A single rotation, his hands launching me with a controlled power that sends me spinning through the air while the music swells beneath us.
I land clean. He catches my momentum with a grip that absorbs the impact and redirects it into the next sequence without breaking the rhythm of either the routine or the song.
I allow myself to feel the lyrics.
The music rises toward its dramatic final chorus, and the emotion in the composition unlocks a door I have been keeping bolted since the day I put my skates away and told myself the ice was no longer mine.
The feelings pour through, rushing into the movements, filling each gesture with a weight that transforms technique into expression.
I remember.
I remember perfecting this routine in a rink that smelled like rubber and recycled air, practicing the same sequence until my legs gave out, falling and rising and falling again because the choreography demanded a precision that my fifteen-year-old body was still learning to provide.
I remember the frustration. The tears I hid in locker rooms. The feeling that my life was crumbling around me while I clung to the ice like a raft in a storm that would not stop.
But everything was not crumbling. Everything was changing.