Notes

You can count the times it happened on one of your hands.


It’s summer, the first time; humid and sticky, and according to the static-y radio playing in the background, the hottest in Canada since 1952. It somehow feels right to lose your virginity to him in the back of his brother’s pick-up truck, under the stars and a full moon, not a cloud in sight, just like all the naive girls in those coming of age novels your sister used to read, do. You are 17 and he’s 18 going on 19.

You think your heart could burst out of your body because of how fast and loud it’s beating, and you feel weirdly self conscious, wondering if he can feel the loud thumps coming from the middle of your chest. As soon as he lies down next to you, you don’t have to wonder anymore, because you surely can feel his, loud and clear, beating just as fast as yours. You shiver when his lips graze your neck and leave a warm trail on every inch of your skin they touch as he kisses his way down your body, sweetly and hungrily all at the same time, while his eager yet inexperienced hands try to memorise every single one of your curves and edges, and every spot that makes you whimper with anticipation. His gaze is serious, focused, and full of something you are too young to understand. Your breath catches in your throat as naked underneath him, your pale skin looking even paler under the moonlight, you nod, and that’s all the encouragement he needs.

It’s a wonder how perfect it feels and how in sync you are considering it’s your first time. You love how his voice, low and full of emotion whispers your name over and over again in your ear, until you are both too spent to move. It’s then, as he envelops you in his arms, that he looks you in the eyes, his breath warm on your cheek.

“Tessa, I…”

You interrupt him, letting the tip of your thumb gently run on his lower lip.

“Scott, don’t.”

And he doesn’t.

Whenever the topic of ‘first time’ comes up with your friends after that night, and you let your memory go back to that moment, you always find you can just never relate to any of the horrific stories the other girls are so willing to share over fruit-flavoured wine coolers, and cheap apple ciders. You just sit there, thinking about how perfect everything had felt, how right, how well your bodies had fit together...

Even now whenever you find yourself thinking about those events, you remember them fondly. After all, that’s when it all started, really; the night when every line your parents, and your coaches, and your therapists had carefully set for you and your partnership had become blurry. You had felt a little guilty after it happened, that first time; not because of what you had done, but because at the wise age of seventeen, you really thought sex could be ‘just sex.’





The second time it happens, you know you caught him off guard. You’re barely off your stupid and inconvenient crutches, feeling alone and betrayed, and fragile, and broken, and you hate feeling every single one of these things. You show up unannounced to his small one story house in Canton, after an abnormally long bus ride from London to Michigan. You want to yell at him as he opens his door wearing his stupid Knights jersey, but you just push him inside instead, slamming the heavy wooden door behind you, your hands fisting in his hair, your mouth on his, biting his lip, drawing blood. There’s nothing gentle in the way you kiss him that second time nor in the way he reciprocates, with such desperation and rawness. Every single one of your moves reeks of anger and resentment, and for the first time since your surgery you feel alive again, even without a sheet of fresh ice underneath your feet.

You fuck him on his couch, hard, straddling him with your dress still on, only the top three buttons opened, your breasts bare in his hands, and his sweatpants and underwear rolled down his ankles, a smiling photo of him and his current girlfriend quietly witnessing the scene from the small coffee table in the middle of his living room. He doesn’t last long, and neither do you. You’re still straddling him, his cock still buried inside you, your breaths short and laboured, when he gently pushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a softness that makes your heart ache.

You stand up, realisation of what you have just done finally downing on you.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t,” he says, and you can see his hazel eyes are trying to conceal a sadness that is so uncharacteristically Scott.

So you don’t.

You reckon you should feel guiltier, the second time, but truth is you don’t. Not really. You never ask about how he feels; you are afraid he might say it was a mistake. The drive back from Canton to London is quiet. Scott keeps under the speed limit, as if he is carrying a precious cargo, his fingers intertwined with yours in the middle of the two seats, his thumb tracing distracted patterns on the palm of your hand. When he stops a block away from your parents’ house, the kiss you give him bears no trace of anger or resentment. That’s when you starts feeling like yourself again.

You think karma has punished you through the years for that second indiscretion; all the galas and the banquets, and the after parties in those shared hotel rooms where you had to look at his girlfriend in the eyes, make small talk, and smile through gritted teeth. All you could picture then was her smiling face next to Scott’s in that cheap, blue glossy frame on his oval coffee table. Every time the two of you had crossed paths and found yourself alone with each other in a hotel hallway, or in the ladies' room, you had always half expected her to corner you and tell you she knew what you had done, and what an awful person that made you, but she never did. Still, you’re kinda glad when she’s finally out of the picture.





It’s a late Saturday night when the third time happens. You had a good week of training, and you are celebrating in typical Tessa Virtue fashion; a glass of wine rests on an orange lacquer coaster on your pristine kitchen counter, and ‘Roman Holiday’ is playing on your brand new flat-screen TV. The faint knocking takes you by surprise at first, but as you walk from the kitchen to the living room, you quickly figure out who is waiting for you on the other side of your front door, and already know exactly what he wants.

It’s never been a ceremonious ritual between the two of you. No sexy lingerie, or preludes made of candle lit dinners and expensive bottles of champagne. His lips are on yours are soon as you let him in and close the door behind him. You quickly lose yourself in the familiar touch of his hands and his tongue. There’s no anger this time, no resentment, but you can tell from the hurried way he unbuttons your silky blue pajama top that this is something he’s been wanting to do for a while. You lead him to your bedroom, feeling oddly like a grown up. He takes his time, his tongue hot on your breasts, your pink nipples pebbling at the touch, his fingers expertly teasing you between your legs, his mouth sucking on your swollen clit bringing you closer and closer to the edge.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he says right before he buries himself deep inside of you, in one swift move, making you gasp.

Your fingernails scratch his back, your legs wrap around him as he goes deeper, making you moan, and sigh, and it feels so damn good, you have to bite your own shallow gasps down. He’s somehow always known how you want to be fucked, as if he’s owned a detailed map of your body since he was a teenager. He’s always been able to read it so perfectly, on and off the ice. You’re relieved his knowledge doesn’t extend to mind reading, because sometimes your own thoughts are a scary place even to you. As you both climax, he holds you close, kissing your neck, your jaw, and finally your lips. The emotions you see in his eyes as he runs his hands through your hair, caressing the sides of your face with his thumbs scare you in a way very few things have scared you before in your life. You think you’re not equipped to deal with what you feel his eyes are asking of you, and quickly disentangle yourself from his strong and familiar grasp, sitting straight on the edge of your double bed, your naked back to him. His hand traces the length of your spine, and you whimper under his touch, craving more, but at the same time not wanting to surrender to it.

“Scott,” your tone is flat.

You feel the bed moving under you as he sits up and his arms sneak around your naked body, one of his warm, strong hands landing on your breast.

“T,” he whispers in the shell of your ear as he lazily let his thumb and index play with your hardening nipple, “please, just come back to bed.”

You don’t reply; you just stand up, and look for your pajama top in the pile of discarded clothes sitting on the floor by the feet of your bed. You quickly cover yourself as you find it, and only then turn to Scott. You notice the hurt in his eyes, and it takes all of your strength not to run back into the warmth of his arms, and not to let yourself say these three words he’s so desperate to hear coming from you.

“Tessa, you don’t understand, I lo…”

“Stop, Scott!” you yell at him.

He swallows hard, and you just can’t bring yourself to watch him get out of your bed and slowly get dressed. You lock yourself in the bathroom and only get back out when you hear your front door closing behind him.

If you had a time machine, you know this is the one moment in the past you’d go back to. You wouldn’t use it to fix any of your poorly executed programs during competitions, nor to make better coaching decisions, nor to tell your past self to stop overworking those leg muscles and take it a little easier... No. You know with absolute certainty that you’d go back to that very moment, when you were 22 and still too young to understand how rare it was to share that kind of intimacy and connection with someone, and you would not get out of that bed. You would lie on it with him, run your hands through his soft dark hair, kiss him like your life depends on it, and spend the whole night making love to him...





The fourth time it happens, it’s a late afternoon. It’s already getting dark, because you know, Canadian winter, and you both had a long morning of post Olympic press. You sneak into his parent’s house, climbing up the precarious ice covered drainpipe, opening the window to his childhood bedroom, and landing on the carpeted floor with an unceremonious thud. He laughs at the scene you put up, and gets out of his bed to help you back up to your feet. You’re still wearing your silver medal around your neck from the latest solo photo shoot you had to do. You hug him, burying your face in the crook of his neck. He runs his hands up and down your sides. This familiarity scares you shitless, but you can’t stay away. Your hands cup his face, and you kiss him softly.

Kissing Scott consumes you like a fire you have no interest in extinguishing, and you just want more. You grip the hem of his sweatshirt and he lifts his arms so you can take it off. You run your hands on his naked torso, your fingertips tracing the outline of his well-defined muscles as he unzips your team Canada sweatshirt. You start lifting the ribbon around your neck that's holding the disappointing piece of silver that keeps reminding you of your shortcomings, but his hands stop you.

“Keep it on.”

He removes your t-shirt, unhooks your bra, unbuttons your pants and peels them down your legs along with your lacy black thong helping you to get out of them. You just stand there in front of him, fully naked except for the cold piece of metal resting in the middle of your chest. He drops to his knees and spreads your legs, and just like that his mouth is on you, hot, experienced, hungry. You gasp as he sucks on your clit, and try to balance yourself better by resting your hands on his head, grabbing onto his soft hair. It doesn’t take him long before he has you shaking under his touch, waves of pleasure running through your body, and he has to hold on to your wobbly legs so you won’t just fall on the floor. He kisses you and you can taste yourself in his mouth. He effortlessly lifts you and gently lays you on the soft mattress, turning you around. He gets rid off his sweatpants and his boxer briefs, and you can feel his erection pressing against your back. He brings you closer to the black wooden frame of his bed and your hands hold on to the edge of it. He pushes into you slowly, and you sigh at the warming feeling of fullness you get from that angle. He pulls out excruciatingly slowly and you sigh at the loss, until he pushes back into you hard, taking you by surprise. Your medal dangles, hitting the headboard. You turn around to look at him with a playful look, eyebrows raised, and you see him grinning like a satisfied child. He fucks you from behind, the sound of the medal repeatedly hitting the headboard of his bed as a background crescendo soundtrack of your coupling.

A part of you wishes Alma or Joe would just burst in, worried about the unpleasant noise the piece of metal around your neck is producing whenever it comes in contact with the wooden board, just so you’d be forced to talk about this… this what? You have trouble defining whatever it is that you’re doing. When it comes to you and Scott, and your partnership, definitions have never been easy and you know you’re partially to blame for it. For the first time since this all began, you realise you want to talk about it; you need to. But nobody bursts through the door, so when you’re done, you just quickly get cleaned up and dressed, forcing a smile past your lips. You plant a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth before opening his window again, sliding down the drainpipe and leaving cowardly. You find it somehow ironic, how accurate that quick, unceremonious exit is when it comes to representing this unspoken dynamic between the two of you. You, getting out of Scott’s window, like a thief, after stealing another piece of him. You feel like you've stolen so many tiny pieces of him over the years, but have never given him anything in return.

That fourth encounter doesn't bring any new development or miraculous clarity to your complicated situation, but from that day on, you start looking at your silver medal with a new found fondness.





The fifth time it happens it takes you by surprise. It’s been over four years since the last time, and you really thought you had left that part of your life in the past along with questionable dye jobs and bright pink halter tops.

He knocks on your hotel room door, a bottle of red wine under his arm, and a smile on his face. You pour him a glass, and then pour one for yourself. You cheer, clinking your glass to his, celebrating the end of the tour, and suddenly you fall quiet. You know you are expected to make a formal announcement regarding your retirement once you get back to Canada to confirm what people have been speculating about since you’ve won gold in Pyeongchang. Your eyes unexpectedly fill with hot tears; you think maybe this is the way your body deals when it just can’t contain all of those emotions you always feel so deeply and can't keep bottled up inside for one second longer. All your feelings and all of your fears come pouring out of your green eyes, like wild rivers of water through a broken dam. In a second he's holding you in his arms, full of concern. You let him, his hands running up and down your back, his voice whispering comforting words in your ear. You touch your forehead to his, your hands resting on the back of his neck. He dries your tears with his thumbs, and you can’t help yourself. Your lips find his, and the salty taste of your tears make that kiss feel even more desperate than it already is.

You know his body; you’ve spent most of your life latching onto it on the ice, but undressing him in the dim light of your hotel room in the middle of Tokyo somehow feels like the first time. Your fingers tremble, and when your eyes meets his, you see all of your fears and emotions reflected in those hazel pools. He takes his time, driving you crazy, and when he finally gives in to your pleads, and slides into you, you feel your heart skipping a beat. His hands find yours, and your fingers intertwine. He makes love to you, slowly, gently, in a way that makes your heart ache, and when you both climax together, you know you have never felt more whole. You’re almost overwhelmed by everything you’re feeling and you finally get it.

“Scott, I love you,” you say cupping his face in your hands, the tip of your nose touching his.

It’s easy, it’s simple, and for the first time it doesn’t feel like a victory you’re conceding to someone else.

He looks at you, his eyes wide and mouth agape. Tears pool at the corner of his eyes and he smiles.

“I love you, Tessa. I always have.”

You feel silly for being so afraid of something so simple, so fulfilling, so perfect. You've been striving for perfection your whole life, and you never noticed this perfect thing that was right under your nose, just waiting for you to open your eyes, and your heart and let it in.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He laughs. You don’t think you’ll ever get sick of saying those simple three words to him.

“I don’t know why it took me so long,” you say, your lips hovering over his, your hands running through his now long hair.

You can count the times it happened on one of your hands. Five times. It took you five times (and 20 years, but that’s just a small detail) to realise you didn’t have to give him your love. He already had that. You just had to learn how to accept his.



FIN