Chapter 27

The corridor outside the dressing rooms is busy in the way competition corridors always are after — coaches with clipboards, skaters with medals and parents and flowers, the particular buzz of a day that has finished doing what it came to do and is now just being.

You emerge with your bag and your silver medal and your hair half escaped from its competition style and Sandra says everything she needs to say in about four sentences which is her version of a standing ovation and then releases you into the afternoon.

Phillip and Massimo are waiting.

Massimo still has the sign.

He is not going to put the sign away for some time. You have accepted this.

“Second place,” Phillip says, when he sees you. His voice has that quality — measured and warm, the particular warmth of someone who does not give it easily and means it completely when he does. “Well skated.”

“The Biellmann,” Massimo says, immediately and with great feeling. He puts one hand over his heart. “The Biellmann [y/n]—”

“Was too long,” you say.

“Was perfect,” he says, at exactly the same moment as Alysa says the same word from beside you, and they point at each other in vindication while you shake your head and feel warm all the way through.

Phillip looks at Alysa.

Alysa looks at Phillip.

Something passes between them — coach and skater, the shorthand of people who have known each other a long time — and Phillip’s mouth does the almost-smile thing and he turns back to you.

“She’s right,” he says simply. “It was perfect.”

You look at your silver medal.

“Thank you,” you say quietly. “For being here. All of you.”

Massimo makes a sound.

Phillip puts a hand briefly on his arm.

You’re gathering your things, the four of you standing in the corridor in that comfortable loose way of people who have nowhere urgent to be, when your bag slips.

Just — the strap, sliding off your shoulder, the whole thing lurching sideways. Nothing dramatic. You catch it immediately, grab the strap before it goes anywhere, hitch it back up with the practiced ease of someone who has been carrying a heavy skate bag since they were eight years old.

Completely ordinary. Completely unremarkable.

Except Alysa’s hand is already there.

Already at the strap, steadying it, steadying you, because she was watching — she is always watching — and she caught the movement before you’d fully registered it yourself. Her hand covers yours on the strap for just a second and she says, completely without thinking, in the most natural voice in the world:

“Careful, baby.”

The word lands.

Small and warm and entirely unrehearsed, slipped out of her like it lives there, like it has always lived there and has simply been waiting for the right moment to come out and apparently this is the moment, apparently a sliding bag in a competition corridor is when baby decides to make its first appearance, and you feel it in your chest like a struck note, like something that resonates long after the sound has gone.

You look at her.

She looks at you.

And then she looks at her own hand on your strap and processes what she just said and something moves across her face — not embarrassment exactly, more like someone hearing their own voice on a recording and finding it more honest than they expected.

“Sorry—” she starts.

“Don’t,” you say softly.

She looks at you.

You look back.

Don’t apologise for that. Don’t take it back. Don’t make it smaller than it is.

She holds your gaze for a moment.

Nods once. Lets it be.

The silence lasts approximately one and a half seconds before it is comprehensively destroyed.

Massimo makes a sound that is not a word in any language but communicates everything perfectly. He turns to Phillip with the energy of a man who has witnessed something he will be talking about for years and needs to share this immediately with the nearest available person.

Phillip has his arms folded.

His expression is doing the dignified composed thing.

His ears are slightly pink.

“Phillip,” Massimo says.

“I heard,” Phillip says.

“Did you—”

“I heard, Massimo.”

“Because she just—”

“I heard.”

Alysa points at both of them without looking at them. “We’re leaving,” she says, with great dignity, taking your hand. “We’re leaving right now.”

“You don’t have to leave—” Massimo starts.

“We’re leaving,” Alysa says.

“I just want to say—”

“Goodbye Massimo.”

“Congratulations is what I want to say—”

But you’re already moving, Alysa steering you gently but with great purpose toward the exit, her hand warm in yours, and behind you Massimo is saying something to Phillip that you can’t quite hear and Phillip is responding in a tone that suggests he is trying very hard to be the sensible one and not entirely succeeding.

You’re almost at the door when you hear it — Massimo, undeterred, calling after you:

“BABY!”

Just the word. Delighted. Triumphant.

Alysa pushes the door open with her shoulder and marches you through it and lets it close behind you and then she stops on the pavement and drops her head forward and makes a sound into her chest that is equal parts laughter and despair.

“I’m so sorry about them,” she says.

You look at her — at the pink in her ears, at the smile she’s trying to contain, at this girl who just called you baby in front of her coaches without meaning to and is now standing on a pavement outside a competition venue being embarrassed about it in the most endearing way possible.

“Alysa,” you say.

She looks up.

“I liked it,” you say simply.

Something settles in her face. That warm thing, the open thing.

“Yeah?” she says.

“Yeah,” you say. “Don’t stop.”

She looks at you for a moment longer.

Then she smiles — slow and real and all the way to her eyes — and squeezes your hand and turns toward the car park and says, very quietly, just for you:

“Come on then, baby.”

And you follow her into the afternoon with your silver medal and your skate bag and your whole heart completely, helplessly full.