Chapter 55

The corridor.

You’re still in your competition dress when she finds you.

Medal at your chest. Hair coming loose from its pins. The particular post-skate state of someone who has given everything to the ice and is now standing in a corridor somewhere behind the arena being a person again, which takes a moment, which always takes a moment.

You hear her before you see her.

Her footsteps — that specific rhythm, the one you have known since before you knew her name — and then she comes around the corner and she sees you and you see her and—

You burst into tears.

Not gently.

Not the single quiet tear that slips and is held.

Properly. Completely. The kind of crying that has been waiting in your chest since the moment the scores came up and you stood on the top step and saw her face in the third row and felt the medal cold against your chest and the ring warm on your finger and all of it, all of it, arriving at once—

“Hey—” she starts, crossing to you immediately, hands reaching—

“Your first gold!” she says, and her voice breaks on the last word, and she is crying too now, already, before she’s even reached you, and then she has reached you and her arms are around you and you’re holding on with both hands and sobbing into her shoulder and she’s laughing slightly through her own tears and holding you so tight—

“I’m so proud of you,” she says. Into your hair. Fierce and warm and completely certain. “My beautiful, beautiful girl. I’m so proud of you.”

You hold on tighter.

She holds on tighter still.

First gold.

Your first gold.

In a competition that matters, at a level you weren’t skating at a year ago, with Phillip and Massimo on your team and Sandra’s four sentences in your corner and a girl who looked at you from across a rink and saw something you didn’t know was there and never stopped seeing it—

First gold.

“I can’t stop crying,” you say, muffled in her shoulder.

“You don’t have to stop,” she says.

“It’s embarrassing—”

“It’s not,” she says. Firmly. “It’s really not. Cry as much as you want.”

You cry as much as you want.

She holds you through all of it.

They arrive a minute behind her.

Phillip and Massimo, together as always, coming around the same corner, and Massimo sees you both and stops walking immediately and his face crumples — completely, entirely, with no attempt to prevent it — and he makes the sound, the soundless Massimo sound that contains everything, and then he is crying properly, hands pressed to his face, shoulders shaking.

Phillip.

Phillip stops beside him.

Looks at you.

At the medal.

At your face, tear-tracked and happy and completely undone.

And one tear — just one — slips quietly from the corner of his eye.

He doesn’t wipe it.

He just lets it go the way it needs to go and stands very straight and very still and looks at you with that expression, the one he saves for the things that matter most, and nods once.

Well done.

The nod says it.

His one tear says it.

Twenty years of coaching and watching and believing in people and knowing — knowing — says it.

You reach one arm out from where you’re still half held by Alysa.

Toward him.

He looks at the arm.

And then Phillip — composed, measured, four sentences, arms always folded — steps forward and puts his arms around you both.

Briefly.

Completely.

The hug of someone who does not do this often and means it completely when he does.

Massimo makes another sound.

“Massimo,” Phillip says, slightly muffled.

“I’m fine,” Massimo says, clearly not fine.

“Come here then,” Phillip says.

And Massimo comes and it is all four of them in a corridor behind a competition arena and none of them cares even slightly.

Sandra appears.

She comes around the corner with her clipboard — of course, always the clipboard — and takes in the scene. Four people. Tears. Medal. Ring. The general emotional situation of a corridor that has seen a lot today.

She looks at you.

At the medal.

At your face.

She opens her mouth.

Closes it.

Something moves through her expression — the same thing that moved through it this morning at the boards when she saw the ring and said I don’t understand it but I support it — something that is feeling its way toward somewhere it doesn’t entirely know how to go but is going anyway.

She looks at the medal for a long moment.

Then at you.

“First place,” she says.

Her voice.

Her voice — four sentences, always four sentences, measured and direct and entirely without performance — has something in it that is not usually there. Something that is very carefully, very privately, not quite steady.

“First place,” she says again, softer.

And then — Sandra, who has coached you for two years and said everything in as few words as possible and has never once in your knowledge of her allowed anything to show that she didn’t intend to show — her eyes go bright.

Just the eyes.

Just that.

One blink and one brightness and then she looks at her clipboard and makes a note and looks back up and she is composed again, entirely, as if it didn’t happen.

Except it did.

You saw it.

Alysa saw it.

Phillip, who has been in this world long enough to know Sandra professionally, saw it and his mouth does the almost-smile.

“Thank you Sandra,” you say softly.

“Monday,” she says. “We’ll review the programme. There are adjustments.”

“Okay,” you say.

“The Biellmann was too long,” she says.

“I know,” you say.

The ghost of something on her face.

“It was perfect,” she says quietly.

And she walks back the way she came with her clipboard and her four sentences and her one bright moment that she will never mention again and you look at Alysa and Alysa looks at you and something passes between you that is warm and private and completely yours.

Sandra.

Even Sandra.

Massimo is the last to fully recover.

This takes a while.

You stand in the corridor — all five of you, or four and a half given that Massimo is still in the process of composing himself — and someone produces tissues from somewhere, probably Phillip because of course Phillip has tissues, and you wipe your face and Alysa wipes hers and Massimo takes several tissues and uses them all.

“Okay,” Massimo says finally, with great dignity. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fine,” Phillip confirms.

“First gold,” Massimo says, looking at you.

“First gold,” you say.

He takes your face in both hands — the way he always does, the Massimo gesture, the one that says I see you completely — and looks at you.

“The first of many,” he says.

Not maybe. Not hopefully.

The first of many.

You think of Alysa on a podium in Paris.

You think of the medal shelf in her old flat, the one you touched softly on a Thursday morning in borrowed clothes thinking maybe.

You think of yet.

“The first of many,” you say.

He nods.

Lets go of your face.

Pats your cheek once, gently.

Turns to Phillip with a great show of composure.

“Well,” he says. “Dinner.”

“Dinner,” Phillip agrees.

“Somewhere good.”

“Obviously.”

“Somewhere that deserves a first gold and an engagement.”

“Massimo—” Alysa starts.

“Both things deserve celebrating,” he says firmly. “Both things are happening at dinner. I’ve already looked up restaurants on my phone, I found one, it has excellent reviews—”

“Massimo,” she says.

“—it’s not far, I’ve already made a reservation—”

“You made a reservation?” you say.

“I made it this morning,” he says. “In case.”

You look at him.

“You made a reservation this morning,” you say. “Before you even knew about the engagement.”

“I knew about the engagement,” he says, with complete serenity.

“We told you an hour ago—”

“I knew before that,” he says. He looks at Phillip. Phillip looks at the ceiling. “I’ve known for four months,” Massimo says.

You look at Alysa.

She looks at the floor.

“Four months,” you say.

“She showed us the ring,” Massimo says. “In the rink. On a Tuesday.”

“Massimo,” Alysa says weakly.

“She’s going to find out eventually—”

“I was going to tell her—”

“You’ve been engaged for less than twenty four hours she would have found out—”

“MASSIMO—”

“The reservation is for seven,” Massimo says, to you specifically, with great dignity. “I hope that works.”

You look at him.

At Alysa, who is covering her face with one hand.

At Phillip, who is looking at the wall with the almost-smile of someone who has made his peace with Massimo a long time ago and considers it one of the better decisions of his life.

At the medal on your chest.

At the ring on your finger.

At the corridor behind a competition arena where four people who love each other are standing in various states of composed and you have just won your first gold and you are engaged and Sandra almost cried and Massimo made a reservation four months ago and—

You start laughing.

Properly. Completely. The kind that comes from somewhere deep and real and helpless and has nowhere to go but out.

Alysa looks up from her hand.

Sees you laughing.

Starts laughing too.

And then Massimo, pleased with himself, and then even Phillip, quietly, his shoulders doing the thing—

All four of them in a corridor.

Laughing.

Gold medal. Engagement ring. Tuesday reservation for seven. Sandra’s almost-tear and the first of many and two hearts under a bench in permanent marker and a life that is so completely, overwhelmingly full—

This, you think.

This is everything.

This has always been everything.