Chapter 1

Before I Even Knew Your Name

a note before we begin

This is a quiet story.

It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive loudly or ask very much of you — just your time, and maybe a soft place to sit, and perhaps a warm drink if you have one nearby.

It takes place mostly in a small rink that smells like cold air and old rubber matting, on a bench that has heard more than it lets on, and on ice that keeps the memory of every blade that has ever crossed it. It takes place in cafés and thrift stores and car parks in the afternoon light and once, memorably, in the dark of a living room with fairy lights on the bookshelf and a film nobody was really watching.

It is about two girls.

One of them is you — soft and pretty and quieter than people expect, with pink laces on white skates and pins on your bag that say things you don’t always say out loud. You are braver than you know. This story knows that even when you don’t.

The other is Alysa — striped haired and bright eyed and so entirely herself that rooms reorganise around her without her trying. She will give you things without explanation and mean everything by them. She will find you across a rink without looking and hold your hand like it was always going to end up in hers.

They said hey to each other for months before they said anything else.

Maybe you know how that feels. That particular kind of almost — someone who exists at the edge of your days, familiar enough to be a comfort, unknown enough to be a wondering. Someone whose name you didn’t know and somehow didn’t need to, not yet, because what you had was its own small tender thing.

This is the story of what happens when almost becomes something.

It is gentle. It is warm. It moves the way skating moves when it’s going right — not rushed, not forced, just finding its edges and trusting them.

There is a rink. There is a bench. There are pins and coffee and a girl in red song playing softly in a café on an afternoon that changes everything.

And there is a hey that became, eventually, so much more than hey.

Come in from the cold.

We’re just getting started.