Chapter 51

Monday.

She checks the ring is still there in the morning before you wake up.

It is.

Obviously it is.

It has been there for four months and it will be there Thursday and she knows this but she checks anyway, just briefly, the velvet box in her hand for thirty seconds before she puts it back and goes to make coffee and tries to be a normal person.

She is not entirely a normal person this week.

Monday practice.

She lands every jump.

She also two-foots one she never two-foots, which doesn’t happen, which Phillip notices and says nothing about because Phillip notices everything and says only what needs saying and apparently this doesn’t need saying yet.

She runs the programme again.

Clean.

She is fine.

She is completely fine.

Monday evening.

You’re on the sofa with Luna on your lap going through your programme music on your phone, eyes closed, listening, the focused quiet of someone in competition week who is using every available moment. Your head is tilted back slightly. The crescent moon at your throat catches the fairy light.

She sits in the armchair across from you and watches you and thinks—

Thursday.

Two more days after today.

You have no idea.

Luna opens one yellow eye from your lap and looks at Alysa.

Closes it again.

Even the cat knows, Alysa thinks.

Tuesday.

The group chat.

She has not told the group chat. She has made a decision, firm and final, that the group chat cannot know until after because the group chat — specifically one member of the group chat whose name begins with J — is a vault in theory and a colander in practice and she loves her completely and cannot risk it.

The group chat is currently discussing whether Luna needs a sibling.

She doesn’t, Alysa types. We said one starter child.

But imagine TWO starter children, Jade replies.

No.

Alysa.

No Jade.

What if—

Jade.

She puts her phone down.

Picks it up.

Puts it down again.

Tuesday evening.

She takes the ring out again.

Sits on the edge of the bed with it in her palm in the lamplight and looks at it and thinks about Thursday. About the plan. About the rink after dinner — she’s arranged it, called in a favor, the rink will be empty Thursday evening and she’ll have an hour and she’s thought about the candles and the blanket and the petals and the croissants — their croissants, the ones from the bakery that started everything — and she’s thought about what she wants to say and how she wants to say it and every time she thinks about your face when you understand what’s happening she has to put the ring down and breathe for a moment.

You come into the bedroom.

She closes the box.

Puts it in the drawer.

Turns around.

“Hey there beautiful,” you say, already pulling your hair up, competition weak energy, focused and slightly internal.

“Hey my pretty girl,” she says.

“Luna ate my hairband,” you say.

“She’s going through a phase,” Alysa says.

“It’s not a phase it’s a personality trait—”

“She’s young. She’ll grow out of it.”

“She ate three,” you say.

“I’ll get more hairbands,” she says.

You look at her for a moment.

Something in your expression does a small thing — a flicker, a half second of something is different — and she holds very still.

And then Luna appears in the doorway and sits down and looks at Alysa with those yellow eyes and the expression of a cat who knows things.

You follow her eyeline to Luna.

“She’s been weird today,” you say, about the cat.

“Has she,” Alysa says.

“Keeps sitting near me and staring.”

“She loves you.”

“She’s staring though. Like she knows something.”

“Cats stare,” Alysa says. “It’s their thing.”

You look at Luna.

Luna looks at Alysa.

“Weird,” you say, and go to brush your teeth.

Alysa looks at Luna.

“Stop it,” she says quietly.

Luna blinks slowly.

Wednesday.

The last practice before regionals.

Phillip and Massimo run you through the programme with the focused thoroughness of people who have put real work into this and want it to show, and it does show — you skate with the particular quality of someone who has been trained well and knows it and trusts it, and by the end Massimo is doing the hand-to-chest thing and Phillip has made his clipboard note and Sandra is satisfied in her four-sentence way.

Alysa watches from the far end of the rink.

She is supposed to be working on her own programme.

She watches you instead.

Phillip appears beside her.

Says nothing.

They stand together watching you land the flip — clean, certain, exactly right — and Alysa thinks about that’s you and she skated it for you and the ring in the drawer and Thursday and—

“Focus,” Phillip says quietly.

Not unkindly.

She focuses.

Wednesday evening.

You’re in bed early — competition eve eve, the particular discipline of someone who takes this seriously — and she lies beside you in the dark and listens to you breathe and thinks about tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

The dinner. The rink. The bench. The candles she’s dropping off in the morning before you wake up, her arrangement with the rink manager already confirmed. The blanket in the car. The croissants she’s ordered from the bakery — two, wrapped carefully, the same ones from the same place where she once said they really suit you about your pink laces and everything quietly began.

The ring.

Still in the drawer.

Tomorrow it won’t be in the drawer.

Tomorrow she’ll put it in her jacket pocket and take you to dinner and then bring you to the rink and sit you down on the bench where you first really talked and she will ask you the question that has been true since somewhere around the bench hearts and possibly before that and she will say—

She doesn’t know exactly what she’ll say.

She knows what she means.

She thinks you’ll understand.

You’ve always understood.

Luna jumps onto the bed.

Walks across Alysa’s legs with complete disregard.

Settles between you both.

Purrs.

You make a small unconscious sound and pull the duvet slightly and don’t wake up.

Alysa looks at the ceiling.

Tomorrow, she thinks.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.

Luna purrs.

The ring waits in the drawer.

The rink waits across the city.

The bench waits where it has always waited — where it will always wait — holding every version of them that has ever sat on it, making room for one more.

Tomorrow.