Chapter 13

Sandra finds you between your second and third run through with her coat already on and her keys in her hand and an apologetic expression that tells you everything before she says a word.

“Family thing,” she says. “I’m so sorry. You’re doing beautifully today — just run it once more on your own and call it. I’ll see you Friday.”

And then she’s gone, and the rink is quieter by one person, and you’re standing at the boards with your water bottle and a whole session’s worth of energy still humming in your legs.

You look at the ice.

The ice looks back.

You push off.

There’s something different about skating alone with no one watching.

Or almost no one.

You’re two laps in before you feel it — that particular quality of attention, the kind that has a direction. You don’t look. You know where it’s coming from. You’ve known for weeks exactly where on the ice she is at any given moment without having to check, the way you know the layout of a room in the dark.

You run your programme instead.

Not all of it — just the pieces you love, the parts that feel like flying when they’re right. The step sequence that Sandra has finally stopped pulling apart. The combination spin, tight and centred, the one Alysa called quiet and perfect that first week. The flip, clean on the first try, landing with your arms already opening.

You are not performing.

You are just skating.

But you know she’s watching and your body knows it too and maybe that’s the same thing right now.

At the far end of the rink Alysa makes a mistake.

Not a big one. Just a two-footed landing on something she could do in her sleep, a lapse in concentration so uncharacteristic that Massimo stops mid-sentence and looks at her, and then looks at what she was looking at, and then looks at Phillip.

Phillip already has his arms folded and an expression of great patience.

“Go,” Massimo says.

Alysa blinks. “What?”

“You’ve been watching that girl for twenty minutes.” Massimo says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, because it is. “Go.”

“We still have—”

“Alysa.” Phillip unfolds his arms. His voice is gentle in the way it only gets when he means something completely. “Go skate with her.”

She looks at them both.

Massimo makes a shooing motion with both hands.

She goes.

You’re coming out of a back spiral when you hear her blades behind you — that specific sound, that specific rhythm — and you come down and turn and there she is, gliding toward you with her hands in her hoodie pocket and an expression of exaggerated innocence.

“My coaches let me out early,” she says.

You look past her to the far end of the rink where Phillip and Massimo are very deliberately looking elsewhere with the energy of two people trying very hard not to be caught doing exactly what they’re doing.

“Did they,” you say.

“Mm.” She pulls up beside you and falls into stride easily, matching your pace. “So. Show me what you’ve got.”

What follows is not practice.

What follows is the two of you being completely ridiculous on a mostly empty rink on a Wednesday afternoon, and it is the most fun you have had on ice in as long as you can remember.

It starts with a race — her idea, obviously, from one end of the rink to the other, which she wins by half a blade length and is insufferable about. Then you challenge her back crossovers against yours, which she argues is not a real competition category and you argue absolutely is, and Sandra isn’t here to tell you otherwise so you’re going with it.

She does a camel spin in the middle of the rink for no reason except that she can, arms extended, perfectly centred, easy as breathing.

“Show off,” you call.

“Thank you,” she calls back.

You do a quick little jump combination just to have something to say with your body, two-footed and sharp, and she whoops from across the rink like you’ve done something extraordinary and you laugh so hard you nearly lose an edge.

You chase each other around the curve of the boards like you’re twelve years old and the rink is yours and nobody is watching and it doesn’t matter.

It matters. Everything about this matters. But right now it also feels like joy in its simplest form and you let yourself have it completely.

You come to a breathless stop near the centre of the ice, both of you laughing, your breath coming in small clouds in the cold air, the sound of your blades cutting out and leaving just the hush of the empty rink around you.

“Okay,” you manage, still catching your breath. “Your spins.”

She looks at you. “What about them.”

“I love them.” It comes out completely naturally, no hesitation, the kind of thing that’s true enough that it bypasses whatever filter you usually have. “They look so perfect and pretty. Every time.”

Something in her expression shifts — just slightly, just around the eyes, something warm moving through it.

“Thanks,” she says softly. A pause. “Show me yours.”

“Which one?”

She tilts her head. Just slightly. “Surprise me.”

You look at her for a moment.

Then you find your centre, settle into it, and go.

The layback opens slowly — entry clean, back arching, head tipping back until the rink above you becomes the ceiling and the ceiling becomes everything and the spin pulls you in tighter and the world narrows to a single rotating point and you are nothing but the motion, nothing but the cold air and the blade and the ice—

You come out of it and find your footing and look up.

Alysa is right there.

You don’t know when she got so close. You don’t know if she drifted or skated or moved without realising, but she is closer than she was, considerably closer, close enough that you can see every detail of her face and the cold pink in her cheeks and the way her chest is rising and falling from the exertion of everything before, and her eyes—

Her eyes are doing something you have no word for.

“Wow,” she breathes.

Just that. Just the one word, low and soft and completely unguarded, and she is looking at you — not at where your spin was, not at the ice, at you, directly at you, like you are the thing she is responding to and the spin was just the door that got her here.

“That was beautiful.”

The rink is so quiet.

Just your breathing and hers, uneven and close, and the distant hum of the building around you, and the ice, and the space between you which is barely any space at all.

You don’t move.

Neither does she.

And then she kisses you.

It happens the way things between you always happen — like gravity, like the most natural conclusion, like something that was always going to be true eventually and has simply finally decided that now is when. Her hand comes up to your face, cold fingers and careful, and her mouth is warm and certain and soft, and the world goes very quiet and very still and very yes.

She pulls back.

A fraction. Just enough.

And in the silence — the cold, humming, beautiful silence of an almost empty rink on a Wednesday afternoon — you breathe her name.

“Alysa.”

It comes out like something precious. Like something you’ve been keeping safe without knowing it.

She looks at you.

And then she kisses you again.

Softer this time. Slower. Like she has all the time in the world and she would like to spend it exactly here, exactly like this, with her hand at your face and her mouth against yours and the ice beneath you both holding you steady.

When she pulls back the second time she stays close, her forehead tipping toward yours, and you can feel her smiling before you open your eyes to see it.

“Hey,” she says quietly.

It is the smallest word.

It is everything.

“Hey,” you whisper back.

At the far end of the rink, two figures stand at the boards.

Massimo has both hands pressed to his mouth.

Phillip has his arms folded and his eyes are suspiciously bright and he is absolutely not going to acknowledge that under any circumstances.

Massimo grabs his arm.

Phillip pats his hand.

They stand there together in the quiet of the almost empty rink and watch the two girls in the centre of the ice stay close in the way of people who have just figured something out and aren’t in any hurry to move apart.

“I knew it,” Massimo whispers.

“We both knew it,” Phillip says.

“I knew it first.”

Phillip says nothing because this is not worth arguing about and also because Massimo is right and they both know that too.