Chapter 36

It happens naturally.

The way most things with Alysa happen — without announcement, without a moment you could point to. One minute you’re standing together in the corridor outside the main arena, her gold medal still around her neck, her hair half down from its competition pins, mid-sentence about something Massimo said in the kiss and cry that made Phillip actually laugh out loud which is apparently a rare and significant event—

And then:

“Alysa?”

A voice. Young. Slightly uncertain in the way of someone who has decided to do something brave and is committed to it now.

You both turn.

Three girls.

Teenagers, maybe fifteen or sixteen, in the particular configuration of people who came to this together and have been debating for the last ten minutes whether to approach and have finally decided yes. The one who spoke has her phone already in her hand — not held out yet, just held, like she’s not sure how this goes. The other two are slightly behind her, a combination of excited and trying to look like they’re not.

Alysa’s whole face changes.

Not dramatically. Just — opens. The competition focus setting down somewhere, the gold medal and the scores and the elements, all of it stepping back, and just her stepping forward. Just Alysa, warm and present and completely in this moment now.

“Hi,” she says, and her voice is so easy, so genuinely pleased to see them, that you watch the slight tension in the girl’s shoulders release immediately.

You take a small step back.

Not away — just enough. Just to give the space its right shape, to let it be what it is without you in the middle of it.

And you watch.

“Your programme was so beautiful,” the girl says. “We’ve been watching you since — I mean I’ve been watching you since the Olympics. Both Olympics. My mum showed me the first one when I was like nine.”

Something in Alysa’s expression goes soft at that.

“That’s really kind,” she says. “Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Hana,” the girl says.

“Hana.” She says it like it matters. Like she’s keeping it. “Do you skate?”

Hana’s eyes go wide slightly — surprised to be asked, surprised to be seen in return. “I’m trying to learn. I’m not very good yet.”

“Yet,” Alysa says, and the word is so pointed and so warm that you see Hana register it, actually register it, file it away somewhere it’ll be kept for a long time.

The other two have come forward now — introduced as Soo and Bea, both of whom have the energy of people who are trying very hard to be calm and are not entirely succeeding — and Alysa turns to each of them with the same quality of attention, the same genuine interest, like they are the only people in the corridor and there is nowhere else she’d rather be.

You lean against the wall with your arms loosely folded and your sign still in your hand — you’ve been carrying it since the stands, slightly self-consciously, but you’ve stopped thinking about it — and you just watch.

Watch her crouch down slightly so she’s at eye level with Hana’s phone when she holds it up for a photo.

Watch her ask Soo where she’s from and actually listen to the answer and make a connection between it and something she says next that makes Soo beam.

Watch her sign Bea’s programme booklet — the official one they sell at the venue — and ask if she wants anything specific written, and when Bea says whatever you want watch Alysa think for just a second and then write something that makes Bea read it and immediately show it to the others.

You don’t see what it says from here.

You don’t need to.

You can tell from Bea’s face.

She is like this with everyone, you think.

Not a performance. Not something she turns on for fans and turns off for other people. Just — her. The same quality of presence she brings to a bench in a rink and a thrift store rack and a small café table and a sofa on a Thursday afternoon, brought here too, brought everywhere, because it isn’t something she does it’s simply something she is.

You think about the first time she said hey to you.

How it was just a word and somehow wasn’t.

How even then, before you knew anything, there was something in it that felt like being seen.

Of course, you think. Of course she was like that even then. Of course she’s been like this the whole time.

Your chest does something large and quiet and completely helpless.

The girls are getting ready to go — you can tell, the particular energy of people wrapping something up, getting what they came for and now trying to leave gracefully — and Hana turns back one more time.

“I hope I can skate like you one day,” she says. Slightly shy about it. Meaning it completely.

Alysa looks at her.

“You will,” she says simply. Not maybe or keep trying or any of the softer versions. Just — you will. Certain and clean and given like a fact.

Hana nods.

Like she’s received something.

Like she’s going to carry that you will for a long time and take it out when she needs it.

They go.

Alysa watches them for a moment.

Then she turns back to you.

And she finds you — immediately, the way she always finds you — leaning against the wall with your arms folded and your sign and an expression you have completely lost control of.

She tilts her head slightly.

“What?” she says.

“Nothing,” you say.

“You’re doing the thing.”

“I’m just standing here.”

“[y/n].”

You look at her.

At this person who just crouched down to be at eye level in a photo and remembered a name and said you will to a fifteen year old who needed to hear it and means every single thing she says and does and is, always, in every room, in every corridor, in every moment—

“I love you,” you say.

Right there in the corridor.

Not for the first time. Not for the last time.

Just because it’s true and she’s right in front of you and it wanted saying.

Her expression does the thing — the open luminous thing — and she crosses to you in a few easy strides and takes your face in her hands and kisses you softly and when she pulls back she’s smiling.

“I love you too,” she says. “What brought that on?”

“You,” you say simply. “Just you.”

She looks at you for a moment.

Then she takes your hand — the one not holding the sign — and starts walking and you walk with her and she says, casually, like it’s nothing:

“She’s going to be a good skater, that girl.”

“You will,” you say, echoing her exact tone from thirty seconds ago.

She glances at you sideways.

“You heard that.”

“I hear everything,” you say.

She shakes her head.

But she’s smiling at the corridor floor and squeezing your hand and you swing them once between you and think about you will and wonder if she knows that she says it to you too, in a hundred different ways, without ever using the words.

You think she might.

You think she absolutely does.