Chapter 9

The new pin is on your bag.

You put it there the morning after the café, right next to the rainbow one, exactly where Alysa said it would look good. And it does — they sit together like they were always meant to, the little vintage camera and the small flag of colour, and every time you see them on your way out the door something in your chest does a quiet, helpless thing.

You’ve stopped pretending you don’t know what that thing is.

You just haven’t done anything about it yet.

Wednesday again.

Your Wednesday has become, without any formal discussion, the Wednesday. The one you think about on Monday when practice is ordinary and the rink is just a rink. The one that makes Tuesday feel like something to get through. You haven’t told anyone this because you have some dignity left and you’d like to keep it.

You’re on the bench lacing up when the door opens and Alysa comes in and your traitorous heart does the thing it always does now, that small involuntary lift, like it’s been waiting.

She’s wearing a dark pleated skirt today over black tights, a cropped hoodie with something printed on it you can’t quite read from here, her hair loose and her bag slung over one shoulder, and she moves through the cold air of the rink like she owns every degree of it.

She drops onto the bench beside you.

“Hey,” you both say.

You look at each other.

You both laugh — soft and quiet and a little helpless — because it’s been weeks now and you still do this, still land on the same word at the same moment, and by now it feels less like coincidence and more like something you do on purpose even though you don’t.

“Hi,” she says, after, just to say something different, and the way she’s smiling when she says it makes it feel like it means considerably more than hi.

Stop it, you tell yourself.

You don’t stop it.

The warm up laps have become yours.

Not officially. Not in any way either of you has named. But Sandra has stopped raising an eyebrow when you push off from the gate alongside Alysa instead of alone, and Phillip and Massimo have started arriving slightly later than they used to, which you suspect is not a coincidence and which Alysa either hasn’t noticed or is pretending not to.

Today you fall into stride together easily, naturally, the way you do everything now. The rink is quiet around you, the ice freshly surfaced and pale, your blades cutting clean lines into it as you move through the first bend.

“How are you feeling about competition?” Alysa asks. She asks about your skating the way she asks about everything — like she actually wants to know, like your answer matters.

“Nervous,” you admit. “The combination spin is good now but the flip still feels inconsistent.”

“It looked consistent from where I was last week.”

“You were watching again,” you say, before you can stop yourself.

A beat.

“I watch everyone,” she says, easy and unbothered, but there’s something in the line of her mouth that might be a smile she’s keeping to herself. “Professional curiosity.”

Professional curiosity.

You store that away to think about later when you are home and safe and not currently on ice next to her.

You come around the second bend and you’re moving into a gentle back crossover when she says, quietly — “can I—” and then she’s there, just slightly behind you and to your side, and her hand comes to rest at your waist.

Light. Steady. Sure of itself.

“Your hip,” she says, and her voice is calm and even, coaching-tone, entirely normal. “You’re dropping it slightly on the crossover. Here—” and she guides, just gently, just the smallest adjustment, her hand at your waist repositioning you by barely anything at all.

You are going to need a moment.

You don’t have a moment. You are on ice. You are moving. You have to keep moving.

“Like that,” she says, and her hand stays for one more stroke, two, just long enough to feel the correction settle into your body, and you focus extremely hard on your edges and your hip placement and absolutely nothing else because if you think about her hand at your waist right now you will simply cease to function as a person.

Then she glides back to your side, easy as anything, like nothing happened.

“Better,” she says, satisfied.

“Thanks,” you say.

Your voice comes out completely normal. You are genuinely impressed with yourself.

You skate the next bend in silence, and the cold air is sharp in your lungs and your hip is placed correctly and her hand was at your waist for approximately six seconds and you are so completely fine about it.

You are so completely fine about it.

She glances over at you.

“Your crossovers are really pretty by the way,” she says. “Even with the hip thing. They’re just — floaty.”

“Floaty,” you repeat.

“That’s a compliment.”

“I know,” you say softly. “Thank you.”

She looks at you for a second longer than the skating requires.

You look back.

The ice carries you forward and neither of you says anything else for a while and the silence is the same silence it’s always been between you — easy, warm, full of things neither of you has found the words for yet.

At the far end of the rink the gate opens and Phillip and Massimo arrive, voices preceding them as always, and the session begins properly, and you peel off toward Sandra at your end of the ice.

You don’t look back.

You don’t need to.

You already know she’s watching.