Chapter 42

Gold.

Again.

The scores come up and Massimo makes the sound — the sound, the one that has no language, the one that contains everything he is feeling which is apparently too large for words — and beside him Phillip exhales once, slow and complete, the exhale of someone who has been holding something carefully for a long time and is now, finally, setting it down.

Alysa in the kiss and cry looks at the scores and then at Phillip and something passes between them that is so private and so theirs — coach and skater, years and years of early mornings and hard days and this, always building toward this — that you look away for a moment, not wanting to be inside it uninvited.

Massimo’s hand finds yours.

Squeezes once.

You squeeze back.

The podium.

You watch her stand on the top step for the second time in as many weeks and think about the first time — your competition, your silver, her in the third row with her digital camera and the sign Massimo made — and how far everything has come since then and how it feels, standing here in Paris watching her receive gold at the European Championships, like the most natural conclusion to something that began on a bench in a small rink with two people saying the same word at the same time.

Hey.

Hey.

She finds you in the crowd.

She always finds you.

You raise the sign — the raccoon, the croissant, WE LOVE ALYSA — and she sees it and the gold medal is at her chest and Paris is behind her and she smiles at you from the podium with that smile and you smile back and feel it all the way down to somewhere that doesn’t have a name.

The corridor afterward.

The same corridor as always, different city, same feeling — the particular post-competition energy of a venue emptying slowly, officials with clipboards, other skaters with their own results and their own feelings, and then—

Her.

Coming around the corner with Phillip and Massimo and the gold medal still around her neck and her hair coming down and her eyes finding you immediately the moment she turns the corner and she doesn’t slow down she just—

Walks straight to you.

Right into you.

Arms around you, your arms around her, her face in your hair and the medal cold between you where it pressed yesterday’s roses were warm, and she holds on with the particular completeness of someone who has done the thing and is now just — here. Done. Safe. Home.

“You were extraordinary,” you say into her shoulder.

“I felt it,” she says into your hair. “For the first time I actually felt it the whole way through.”

You pull back enough to look at her.

Her eyes are bright. Not quite spilling — held carefully, the way she holds things — but bright.

“Phillip told me,” she says quietly. “Before. He said skate for something real. And I thought about last night and this morning and—” she stops. Shakes her head slightly. “I skated it for you,” she says. “The whole thing. Every element. I skated it for you.”

You look at her.

At the gold.

At the girl who drew hearts under a bench and meant them.

“It showed,” you say softly.

She laughs — wet and warm and slightly undone — and pulls you back in and you stay there in the corridor while the venue empties around you and Massimo makes pointed comments nearby about giving people privacy that he is absolutely not giving you and Phillip says his name in that tone and Massimo says I’m just standing here and none of it matters even slightly.

Phillip finds you alone.

It happens naturally — Alysa pulled away by a brief media obligation, Massimo going with her because he always goes with her, and you’re standing near the boards looking out at the empty competition ice, the particular quality of an arena after everyone has left it, all that energy still somehow present in the air.

You hear him come to stand beside you.

You don’t need to look to know it’s him.

The particular quality of his stillness is its own signature by now.

You stand together for a moment looking at the ice.

“She skated differently today,” you say, not quite a question.

“Yes,” he says.

Another moment.

“She’s always had the technical ability,” he says. “Since she was a child. The jumps, the spins, the edges — those have never been the question.” A pause. “The question has always been whether she could trust herself enough to let it be felt. Not just seen.”

You look at the ice.

“She trusted it today,” you say.

“She did,” he says.

Quiet.

The arena breathes around you.

And then Phillip says, in the measured unhurried way of someone who has thought about this and decided to say it:

“She’s been skating for 16 years. I have watched her at her best and her worst and everything between. I know what she looks like when she’s holding something back and I know what she looks like when she isn’t.” He pauses. “Today she wasn’t holding anything back.”

You look at him.

He’s looking at the ice.

“That’s not the programme,” he says quietly. “That’s not the training. That’s not anything I can teach.” He turns to look at you then, directly, with the full weight of his attention which is considerable and rarely given. “That’s you,” he says simply. “Whatever you’ve given her — the way she is when she’s with you — she carried it onto that ice today and it was the best programme of her career.”

You feel your eyes fill.

Immediately. Completely.

He looks at you with that expression — the one he saves for the things that matter most — and he doesn’t say anything else because he doesn’t need to, because Phillip has never needed more words than the exact right ones and he has just used them.

“Thank you,” you say. Your voice comes out very soft.

He nods once.

Looks back at the ice.

“Take care of her,” he says.

“I will,” you say.

“I know,” he says.

And that’s all.

But it’s everything.

Dinner is Massimo’s choice.

Which means it is excellent and slightly chaotic and the restaurant is slightly too loud and slightly too warm and completely perfect for four people who have just experienced something together and need to come down from it in the company of each other.

A round table. All four of you. The gold medal hanging from Alysa’s chair because Massimo insisted it needed to be displayed and nobody argued with him.

Wine. Good food. The particular ease of people who have been through something together and are now on the other side of it.

Massimo toasts.

Of course he toasts.

He stands up with his glass and looks at Alysa and his expression does the thing — the luminous, slightly undone thing that he never tries to hide because that is simply not who Massimo is — and he says:

“To our girl. Who skated today like someone in love.”

Alysa covers her face with one hand.

Phillip raises his glass with the almost-smile.

You raise yours.

“To Alysa,” you say.

She looks at you from behind her hand.

“To Alysa,” Phillip says quietly.

Massimo sits back down with great satisfaction and drinks and says to Phillip in a tone of enormous contentment: “I knew from the very first Wednesday.”

“You did not,” Phillip says.

“I absolutely—”

“You said Phillip in a corridor. That’s not knowing.”

“It was knowing adjacent—”

“Massimo.”

“Fine.” A pause. “But I was right.”

Phillip looks at his wine.

“You were right,” he says quietly.

Massimo beams.

The dinner goes long.

The way good dinners do when nobody wants to be the one to end them — the food finished and the wine nearly done and the conversation wandering wherever it wants to go, which tonight goes everywhere. Skating stories from competitions you weren’t there for that make you feel like you were. Massimo doing an impression of a judge from a competition three years ago that makes Phillip close his eyes and shake his head and then laugh properly, actually laugh, which is apparently rare enough that Alysa and Massimo both pause and look at each other.

At some point Alysa’s hand finds yours under the table.

You turn yours over.

She links her fingers through yours and leaves them there for the rest of the evening.

Walking back to the hotel.

All four of them, the Paris streets quiet at this hour, the cold doing what the cold does and none of them minding. Massimo and Phillip slightly ahead, still talking — they are always still talking — and you and Alysa behind, her hand in yours, the gold medal finally in her bag, the city going on around you in its Paris way.

She looks at the streets.

At the buildings.

At the particular way Paris looks at this hour, late and cold and lit and ancient and entirely unbothered.

“Ready to go home?” you ask softly.

She considers it.

Looks at you.

“With you?” she says.

“With me,” you say.

She squeezes your hand.

“Yeah,” she says. “Ready.”