Notes

Chapter 1
 
 
 
PART I
 
 
 
 
 
 
-
 
 
prologue
 
 
 
-
 
 
She was seven and he was nine.
 
That’s the only thing she remembers about the day they met. Her mom colors in the rest of the story, vividly, spectacularly - she really likes telling it. Tessa thinks faintly that no one else really wants to hear it for the fifth time anymore - not her distant relatives visiting for Thanksgiving, not the lady at the deli counter at the supermarket, not the bewildered-looking Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on their doorstep.
 
It was one of those days in August, her mom would say, eyes bright. Tessa would sigh and catch his gaze from across the dinner table. They’d roll their eyes, in unison, like everything else they did together. They’d both heard it a million times before.
 
It was one of those days in August, unbearably hot, the mercury slipping over a hundred and ten. The rink was clearly the place to be on a day like this, full of kids practicing their jumps and spins, eager to outdo each other. Young parents were coaxing small children along the ice, trying to stay upright themselves. Some high school students had staged an impromptu hockey match in the corner with someone’s left running shoe and the janitor’s mop bucket.
 
She doesn’t remember him coming up to her that afternoon. She doesn’t remember feeling shy, heart pounding double-time in her chest, and she doesn’t remember him peering curiously at her from behind his mother’s back. She doesn’t remember saying ‘hi, I’m Tessa’. She doesn’t remember his hesitant wave back or that his hair was so long and floppy it kept falling into eyes when he looked at her. She doesn’t remember his red hockey jersey or her frilly ballerina pinks. She doesn’t remember taking his hand for the first time, that it was sweaty and she had to keep wiping it on her skirt.
 
Do you remember anything at all? her mother would ask exasperatedly.
 
Yeah.
 
She was seven and he was nine and she remembers the sound of his voice, dry and nervous, when he said, “Hi, I’m Charlie.”

 
 
-

i.
 
 
-
 
 
Marina has to remind Charlie to look at her.
 
The music cuts abruptly and Tessa tries to stifle yet another yawn from behind her scarf. It’s way too early in the morning for this - the sun isn’t even up yet, the sky still dark, birds silent and songless in their nests.
 
"Look at her!" Marina huffs, blowing out her breath. She skates toward them forcefully, looking something like an avalanche. "What is wrong with you? It is not so hard."
 
Charlie blinks sleepily. “I dunno,” he drawls slowly. “She’s pretty hideous.”
 
Marina’s not in the mood for jokes. “You are a funny boy,” she glares at him stormily, looking not at all amused. “We’ll see how funny you are when I…” she trails off into a string of rapid, guttural-sounding Russian and Tessa’s not sure but she thinks she’s picked up enough of the language over the years to pick out the words ‘testicle’ and ‘meat pulverizer’.
 
She thinks another girl might be more offended by her partner’s aversion to looking her in the eye when they skate, but she’s known Charlie for more than a decade and he’s been her best friend almost as long. They held hands the first time they ever won a competition, still so small and young that the boy in second place could see over the top of their heads on the podium. They held hands that one disaster in Nice when she was fourteen - he fell, and then she fell, and then he fell again, making her fall, and they placed last. He held her hand when they first moved to Detroit and they stood outside their new rink for half an hour before going in. She held his hand at his grandfather’s funeral.
 
They’ve spent their entire lives holding onto each other. Sometimes she thinks she could tell a palm reader about all the lines and veins in his hand without even thinking about it. It’s why she doesn’t take it personally, his eyes that gaze at some mystical point past her head instead of her face. She knows it’s not because her breath smells or because of her big nose. Dance and music just don’t come as naturally to him as they do to her. She can always see him thinking, thinking, thinking - meticulously counting out beats in his head, agonizing over his edges, his brow furrowing as he worries about the next element.
 
"Pretend I’m Tanith," she whispers as Marina skates away, grumbling. Her lips twitch imperceptibly.
 
"Oh, hardy fucking har," he mumbles back sarcastically. "Someone thinks they’re funny." The music starts up again.
 
-
 
 
“Heard Marina kicked your ass this morning.”
 
Scott materializes behind her, standing too close. He always stands too close. She can smell him, the sweat on his skin, the banana he ate five minutes ago on his breath, the way he just

smells like such a boy - earthy and raw.
 
She turns around to face him and he presses up even closer against her, grinning. “Hi,” he says.
 
"Hi," she says back, a little breathless.
 
He does this every morning. Sometimes it’s on the ice, when she’s flipping through protocols from last week’s competition, frowning and chewing on the bottom of her lip. Sometimes it’s in the dressing room when she’s putting her bag away in her locker or during break, when she’s in the kitchenette, peeling her orange. He’ll come up behind her, too close, shoulder blades pressing up against his chest, his nose skimming her temple. Sometimes he’ll tickle her ribs and make her jump half out of her skin - sometimes, he brushes a single finger, feather-light, down her bare arm, making her shiver. He’ll make some flip comment, paired with a devilish grin, mischief in his mouth. Sometimes it’s, ‘sorry we beat you last week’, sounding not even a little bit sorry. Sometimes it’s, ‘nice twizzles’ or ‘killer finnstep’, halfway between sarcastic and sincere. Sometimes it’s, ‘you look really nice today’.
 
She doesn’t know why he does it. She doesn’t know why she likes it.
 
"Marina’s on the warpath," she hears Charlie mumble from across the table. He has his head buried in his arms on the table, dejected, and all she can see of him is his floppy, blond head. She feels bad for him - the tongue lashing he’d been given this morning was brutal. "Someone’s gonna die today." He groans. "Probably me."
 
"She’s just stressed," Tessa says evenly. "Worlds are in a few weeks and there’s a lot we need to work on."
 
"You mean, there’s a lot I need to work on," Charlie says pointedly. "Marina didn’t tear you a new one this morning." He pauses for a moment, thoughtfully. "Maybe we could cheer her up, you know. Buy her a new purse. Get her laid."
 
Tessa is mildly horrified by the idea and she says, “This isn’t 'Emma', Charlie,” at the exact same time Scott says, “This isn’t 'Clueless', Charlie.”
 
Charlie still doesn’t look convinced.
 
"Charlie, listen to me," she says as firmly as she can muster. "We’re not getting Marina a boyfriend just so she’ll be nicer to us."
 
“What exactly are you two having trouble with?” Scott’s gaze flickers between them. “Lifts? Footwork?”
 
Tessa pauses for a long moment. It was strange talking to Scott sometimes. They’d be laughing and having a perfectly normal conversation and then one of them would say something, and she’ll suddenly remember that he wasn’t just her friend, wasn’t just a guy who stood too close to her, flirted too much with her - he was also her fiercest rival.
 
There was a part of her that wanted to open up to him, all the way, to her heart. He had these intense, dark eyes that looked like they wanted to discover every part of her. He was a good listener. There was her second day in Detroit when he walked in on her crying in the dressing room. She was homesick - she missed her own bed and her mom’s waffles in the morning and shooting hoops with her dad in their backyard. She missed the California sunshine - she hated Detroit and its gray roads and gray air. She was tired of sleeping in a strange bed with sheets that smelled of starch and cardboard and she hated the ten seconds of

absolute panic she had in the morning before she remembered where she was. Her sister had handwritten her a twenty-page goodbye letter, front and back, and she cried so hard reading it on the flight over that a stewardess handed her a paper bag to hyperventilate into. She told him about how her brothers took her down to the batting cages on the weekend, about how they were teaching her to drive and how she wasn’t very good, how she kept backing over their trash cans at the end of the driveway. He listened to her babble about her dumb life, about her family and her friends, about how her dad didn’t want to let go of her when it was time for her to leave, about the way her mom cried into her shoulder, and how her dog had whimpered sadly into her tummy, sensing something awry. And then, when she’d talked for so long she felt her voice getting hoarse, he told her about Canada, about how how much he missed home too. He missed his brothers and his buddies, he missed the crisp, clean country air and the way you could see the stars at night, a million fireflies in the inky black sky.
 
It sounds nice, she’d said, wiping tears from her eyes.
 
It is, he said. I’ll take you there someday.
 
That was the first time he held her hand.
 
There was that time after practice once, when all her limbs were so sore it felt like they were on fire and she thought she was going to fucking scream if she heard the tango romantica again. There was that time in Japan after Worlds last year, when she messed up a twizzle and couldn’t stop replaying the moment in her head, over and over again in an endless loop. There was that time on someone’s doorstep on Halloween, when she saw her maybe-sort-of-boyfriend making out with another girl in the corner. She remembers his arm wrapped tight around her, the way his voice sounded when he told her he wasn’t worth it and she shouldn’t be crying over some jackass who thought putting on sunglasses and telling people he was a blind person was a good Halloween costume anyway. Did she want him to kick his ass? Because he totally would. (She found out later that he and Charlie had snuck by his house and unloaded ten dozen eggs onto his car - that it took him five hundred dollars and twelve hours to clean up. She tried to look disapproving when they told her, giddy and hysterical, but in truth, it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.)
 
The part of her that remembers how soft his eyes were when he held her hand and talked about home, the part that remembers the way his thumb rubbed slow circles into her skin when she cried into his shirt - that part of her wants to tell him all the things she’s thinking, all her hopes and dreams, all her fears, all the silly things that don’t really mean anything at all. Not many people in the world knew the kind of stress she was under. She knew he would listen and she knew he would understand. But the more sensible part of her - the part that never forgets to floss, that always keeps an umbrella in her bag, that pulls away a little when she can feel him linger too close - that part of her balks at the idea. He would understand and he would listen - and he would use it to his advantage. They were rivals first, friends second. She had to remember that, get it engraved into her skull or something.
 
"Yea-a-ah," she says slowly, carefully. She offers him a smile, coy and kittenish. "I don’t think we’re telling you anything."
 
He looks far too offended than the situation calls for. “Okay, that hurts my feelings.” He takes her hand and holds it against his heart, pouting a little. “Right here.”
 
She rolls her eyes, slipping her hand out of his grasp. “Nice try,” she snorts, as lady-like as she can manage.
 
"We can tell him, I think. Right?" Charlie says after a moment. She shrugs in reply - if you want. "I mean, it’s dumb." He sighs, shaking out his hair like a giant puppy dog just caught

in a rainstorm. "I keep not looking at her," he explains.
 
Scott looks like he was expecting another answer, that their posture is bad or their footwork is sloppy or something, and his brow crinkles in confusion. “I…don’t get it.”
 
"When we skate, apparently I keep staring past her head instead of in her eyes." Charlie makes a face, unimpressed. "Like I said, it’s dumb. Marina says I’m ruining everything. But it’s not like I can help it. Sometimes my asthma is acting the hell up and I’m trying to remember all the steps and all the shit we have to do and…it just happens."
 
Tessa smiles wryly. “So it’s not my hideous face?” "Well, that too."
 
Scott still looks kind of confused, his eyes darting between them, bewildered. “Why don’t you just, I don’t know, pretend she’s Tanith or something?”
 
Charlie’s eyes darken and he throws a handful of raisins at Scott’s head. “You two think you’re so fucking funny,” he grumbles, getting up huffily from his seat. “I’m going to the bathroom. Or to drown myself. Whatever. Don’t eat my yogurt, Scott, you dick.”
 
The second Charlie disappears from view, Scott’s hand reaches out to snatch Charlie’s yogurt from across the table. He peels open the lid with an ‘ooh, blueberry’ and Tessa looks down at her lap, trying to hide her smile.
 
"You’re a thief," she tells him.
 
"Yeah."
 
"A dirty, dairy thief."
 
"Well, I’d never steal your yogurt. In fact, I’d steal yogurt for you." He pauses and sticks the small tub of yogurt under her nose, a grin pulling at his lips. "For you, my lady."
 
She can’t help but laugh. “No thanks, I’m good.”
 
They sit in brief silence for a moment and she watches him dig his spoon into his stolen snack. “So,” he says finally, licking his spoon clean. “I don’t get it.”
 
He has a purple and blue splotch of yogurt on the corner of his mouth. She wonders if it’d be weird if she reached out and wiped it from his lips. She shakes that thought, fast - of course it’d be weird. “What?”
 
"I don’t get the whole not looking at you thing."
 
She has something like war flashbacks to earlier in the morning, Marina shrieking at them from the boards, Igor strolling past with an ‘ooh, you’ve done it now’ look on his face. “It’s dragging down our performance marks,” she explains, a solemn sigh escaping from her lips. “Marina says it doesn’t look like we’re connecting, like we’re off in our own little worlds and just going through the motions.”
 
He shakes his head. The splotch of yogurt is still there and she can’t stop looking at it, violet against the red of his mouth. She thinks it might be taunting her. “No, I mean, I don’t get why he doesn’t just look at you,” he clarifies.
 
"I don’t know," she shrugs, brushing some non-existent lint off her leggings. "I think it’s

hard for him, remembering all the steps and the counts of music. It doesn’t come naturally to him."
 
He’s staring at her. He has these eyes that always look like they’re laughing at something, but they’re deadly serious now, dark and liquid. For a moment, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, fingers clasping and unclasping under the table. He makes her so nervous sometimes, a fever rising in her cheeks and the back of her neck. A shivery, fluttery feeling lands in the middle of her chest and she doesn’t quite know how to get rid of it.
 
"What?" she says, eyes flitting anxiously. She tries not to sound too self-conscious, but even as she says it, her hands move to run through her hair and smooth the creases in her shirt.
 
"Nothing," he says slowly. He’s still staring at her. "It’s just…I don’t get it. If we skated together, I would always look at you. Even if I had to remember like a million steps or whatever, I would always…" His eyes crinkle into a smile, soft and sweet, and she feels the fluttery feeling in her heart become positively hurricane-like. "I don’t think I could…not."
 
She swallows a little, her mouth feeling very dry. “Thanks,” she says finally, her voice sounding small and squeaky to her own ears.
 
He laughs quietly at that for some reason, his head dropping toward the table. She wonders if he’s laughing at her, whether or not she should be offended. “You’re welcome,” he says and he gets up out of his seat, still laughing a little. “I should go, Meryl’s probably looking for me. I’ll see you later.” He taps her bare shoulder, once, twice. His hand is warm but it prickles the hair on her skin anyway, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
 
She watches him walk away, bouncing up and down on the heels of his shoes, too much energy as usual and she doesn’t mean to call out his name, but it slips out before she can stop herself. He turns around questioningly, already halfway across the room. “You’ve got yogurt…” she says and she brushes the corner of her mouth with the pad of her thumb.
 
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then the back of his hand on the leg of his pants. She makes a small face - he’s such a boy. “Thanks,” he calls out, grinning.
 
She can’t help the smile that catches itself on her mouth. “You’re welcome.”
 
 
-
 
 
Here is a list of things she likes about skating with Charlie:
 
The make-up. She likes being painted a million different colors with eyeshadow, her hair being curled and pinned into ornate flowers, the feeling of lip gloss on her mouth, sticky and shimmery. She likes looking into the mirror and feeling different, feeling more.
 
The dresses. She’s always been a girl in every sense of the word. She likes touching the jagged edges of the rhinestones on her costumes, feeling the cool slip and slide of silk against her skin. She likes all the colors - the blushing pastels, the deep blues that remind her of swimming, the hunter greens the same shade as her eyes.
 
Not being alone. She competed in singles all the way up until she was twelve and the feeling of complete isolation was hard to let go of. Sometimes she thought she was going to be sick, the weight of a hundred eyes on her and nowhere to hide. She doesn’t have to feel that now - she likes having a partner, she likes knowing that if they mess up, they mess up together. She

likes feeling Charlie’s hand in hers, heavy and soothing, and she likes the small smile he gives her as they take the ice. We can do this, right? She likes smiling back. Right.
 
Winning. She likes the weight of a medal pressing heavy against her ribcage. She likes feeling the springy soft padding of the podium beneath her skates, the stars and stripes being raised to the rafters, some shitty muzak version of the Star-Spangled Banner being played over the loudspeaker. She likes seeing the number one flash up beside her and Charlie’s names, the pride in her parents’ eyes when they hug her afterwards.
 
Possibilities. She likes watching the Olympics and thinking, ‘that could be me’. She likes the taste of maybe and one day in her mouth. She thinks about it a lot, about skating onto center ice under the Olympic rings. She thinks about it everywhere - jogging in the park, standing in line at the coffee shop, lying in bed at night. Sometimes she thinks she’s so full of dreams, she could burst at the seams.
 
She tries to remember this list when things get hard. When they first moved to Detroit, she recited it to herself the whole flight over, like she was trying to learn a new language. After a grueling training session, when she can’t seem to do anything right and her knees knock together uselessly like jelly, when she doesn’t think she can stand another second of Igor yelling Russian obscenities at her over the boards, when she can feel Scott’s gaze follow her as she skates past, like burning, she tries to remind herself of all the reasons she’s doing this.
 
She likes skating with Charlie; absolutely, resolutely, does not think about skating with anyone else.
 
 
-
 
 
It’s raining in London.
 
She presses her forehead against the window and tries to peer out into the blackness. She’s never been to London before - somehow, she doesn’t think this counts. A fourteen-hour flight delay on their way to Worlds and sitting cross-legged on the floor of Heathrow Airport eating celery sticks isn’t much of a vacation. Charlie is fast asleep on the floor beside her, snoring lightly. He shivers a little in his sleep and she takes his jacket from his backpack, drapes it carefully over him.
 
"You should get some sleep too."
 
She smiles a little as Scott sits down beside her, a coffee cup dangling loosely from his hands. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
 
"Please," he snorts. "I just need you at your fighting weight when we kick your ass at Worlds. Can’t have you pulling out because of exhaustion."
 
"Okay, we’re not doing this again," she says firmly, rolling her eyes. Scott and Meryl had sat behind them the whole flight over and what had started as harmless trash talk eventually devolved into an all-out war, complete with seat kicking, orange-juice throwing and comments about each other’s mothers. At one point, Scott actually started pulling on her braids and Meryl was lobbing peas into Charlie’s hair, sounding like the world’s most passive-aggressive woodland creature when she asked if he would like any sides with that, before chucking a handful of baby carrots in his eye.
 
Igor had stormed up the aisle and glowered at them all. “I can’t take you anywhere!” he

bellowed as the four of them looked at their laps and tried not to laugh.
 
"Yeah, you’re right. The plane ride got way out of hand." Scott pauses for a moment, looking thoughtful. "Sorry for what I said about your mom. She’s probably a really nice lady."
 
She nods regretfully. “Sorry for what I said about your penis. It’s probably huge.”
 
He almost looks taken aback for a split second and then he doubles over in loud laughter, the sound echoing and bouncing off the walls in the silent terminal. There’s a posh-looking man in a three-piece suit nearby and he looks over at them disapprovingly, hmph-ing under his breath. She doesn’t know why that sets her off but it does, and she starts laughing too, even as she’s poking him in the ribs to get him to shut up. He’s still wheezing a little when he says, “That wasn’t a very virtuous thing to say,” before cracking up all over again at his own lame joke.
 
"Shh," she whispers urgently, trying to swallow her giggles. She can see Igor’s head from across the room, shooting daggers at them. "Igor’s looking this way."
 
"We’re in so much trouble when we get home," Scott muses briefly, ducking his head from Igor’s sightline. He doesn’t sound all that concerned by the prospect.
 
"You mean, you’re in so much trouble," she corrects primly. "I’ll have a medal to soften the blow."
 
"In your goddamn dreams."
 
"You are so…"
 
Scott cuts her off, “Okay, we’re doing it again.”
 
"Sorry."
 
"You’re not now but you will be when we whoop your ass at Worlds."
 
"Scott!"
 
"Okay, that was low," he concedes, looking appropriately shamefaced. "Couldn’t help myself, sorry."
 
She presses her lips together to keep from laughing out loud. “You think we’ll ever be able to have a conversation without thinking about competing against each other?” she asks him. She wonders - not thinking about Scott as a rival seems an entirely alien concept to her.
 
He blinks at her, surprised. “I don’t always think of you as someone I need to beat.” "Really?"
 
"Yeah." She thinks she almost sees hurt flash through his eyes for a second. "Is that how you always think of me?"
 
She doesn’t quite know how to answer him - if she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t really even know what the answer is. “I don’t know,” she says, carefully. “I guess, lately, with Worlds so close, even if we have fun with the trash talk, it’s hard not to get caught up in the rivalry. We’re all so…” she trails off, her words dying in midair. She doesn’t even know what she was going to say.

He’s quiet for a long time and it unnerves her a little bit. He’s rarely quiet - as long she’s known him he’s almost always had something to say, always a wisecrack at the tip of his tongue, always humming with unending energy.
 
"I’m sorry," she says finally. She doesn’t really know what she’s apologizing for.
 
He looks at her, quizzically. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything,” he says. “It’s just weird sometimes. Sometimes we’ll talk and it’s like we’re not even…it’s like I don’t even remember I’m a skater. There’s no Meryl and Charlie, there’s no Worlds, there’s no Marina and Igor on our asses. It’s like you’re just a girl and I’m just a guy and we just met at some shitty dive bar somewhere and…”
 
His eyes are so wide and earnest and she can see them glint every shade of hazel and copper in the early morning light. He has a small dent on his lower lip, she realizes faintly. She doesn’t know why she never noticed it before. “And what?” she asks softly.
 
He shrugs, a little shake of his shoulders, looking kind of sheepish all of a sudden. “Nothing,” he says and he clears his throat, loudly. She doesn’t realize he’s holding her hand until he lets go of it. He gets up on his feet and his voice is too low and gruff when he talks - he doesn’t sound at all like himself. “You should get some sleep.”
 
"You don’t have to worry about me," she says quietly.
 
His smile is almost sad, almost wistful, almost a lot of things when he says, “I always worry about you.”
 
She doesn’t sleep that night.
 
 
-
 
 
Charlie is pounding on her door.
 
It’s the night before their free dance and he sounds so panicked, hollering at her to let him in, it’s a fucking emergency, Tess. A thick rope of terror twines itself around her stomach. He forgot to pack his costume. Someone’s stolen his skates. He’s injured himself. He’s gone postal and injured someone else. Oh God, she doesn’t think she can handle a Tonya Harding-esque trial.
 
"What is it?" she demands, throwing open her door. "What’s the emergency?"
 
He looks like he’s going to answer but then he squints at her, his floppy blond head tipping to the side. “What the hell is on your face?” he asks, looking half-curious, half-disgusted.
 
If it was anyone else but Charlie, she might have felt self conscious. “It’s an exfoliating mud mask,” she tells him instead, frowning.
 
Charlie still looks blank.
 
She sighs, “For my pores.” At his vacant stare, she stamps her foot somewhat petulantly on the floor. “Charlie! What’s the emergency?”
 
"Oh, right." Charlie shakes himself a little and then barrels right past her into her hotel room. She watches him collapse dramatically onto her bed, his eyes squeezing shut. "I went to dinner." He says it with just about the same tone of voice he might tell her he accidentally

backed over his grandmother with his car.
 
She doesn’t know if this is a joke or not. “That’s your emergency?” she asks skeptically, her eyes narrowing. “You went to dinner? Did you eat fish? Do you think you might be coming down with food poisoning?”
 
"No," Charlie sits up, looking miserable. "I went to dinner with Tanith."
 
She sits down beside him. “Oh,” she says dumbly.
 
"Yeah." He flops back onto the bed gloomily and she follows suit, both of them staring blankly at the ceiling, in silence. She can see a spindly spider web in the corner, count two cracks in the faux chandelier above their heads.
 
Finally she says, her voice soft, “You really like her, huh?”
 
She doesn’t know why she asks - she already knows the answer. She was there the first time he saw her. He actually stopped dead in his tracks like a scene from a cheesy 80’s movie, mouth falling open, gaping like an idiot. She remembers tripping into him, orange juice splashing down the front of her shirt, into her bra, and she remembers snapping at him, annoyed, before realizing that he wasn’t even listening. She remembers the day Scott found out, his uproarious laughter before flatly informing him that there was no way he could date someone he competed against.
 
"If it makes you feel any better, she’s way out of your league anyway," Scott had said and Charlie had tossed his water bottle at his head.
 
She remembers stumbling in on what looked like intensely private conversations in the dressing room, stammering her apologies and bolting away. She remembers all the times in training she’s had to wave her hand in front of Charlie’s face, more times than she thinks she can even count, trying to get him to stop staring at her for five seconds to focus. She remembers accompanying him to the jewelry store the week before Christmas last year. He’d picked out a necklace and she remembers assuring him repeatedly that of course she would like it and if he didn’t stop stressing out soon he was going to give himself a hernia.
 
His face still lights up every time she wears it.
 
Charlie turns his head to look at her. “It’s just a crush,” he says, but he can’t quite manage a smile. “It’s stupid.”
 
She hates the sad, melancholy look in his eye - he’s always been so full of optimism, so positive, the only thing keeping her afloat when she thinks she might drown in a pool of her own self-doubt. She takes his hand quietly, feels his fingers squeeze around hers. “You know you can’t, right?” she says hesitantly. “At least not right now.”
 
"Yeah, I know. It’s messy, it’s complicated, Igor and Marina would lose their shit," he rattles off the list of reasons they made a long time ago. He sighs, deep, from the bottom of his chest, blinking rapidly at the ceiling. "I know." He waits a beat and then he looks over at her, pensively. "You know you can’t either, right?"
 
She tries not to squirm under his gaze. “Excuse me?”
 
She doesn’t think his eyes could roll any further into the back of his head. “I’m not an idiot, Tess.”
 
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," she sniffs.

Charlie looks supremely unconvinced. “Yeah, okay,” he says, snorting gracelessly. She can feel him watch her, solemn and heavy. “You know he’s got a girlfriend, right?”
 
Yeah, she knows - of course she knows. How could she not? She was the one who had to listen to him complain about her on Monday mornings, listen to him gripe about how much she just didn’t understand him, listen to him wonder why ‘all girls can’t just be like you, Tess’. “I don’t care,” she says instead, defiantly. “Can you drop it now?”
 
Charlie blinks at her for a moment, considering her through clear, blue eyes. “He likes you, you know,” he says after a moment, and Tessa lets her eyes flutter shut briefly. She doesn’t know why he’s telling her this. “He really, really likes you. He’s always talking about you and asking about you and bringing you up in conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with you. I can’t even talk to him when you’re around anymore because he gets so distracted and forgets what we’re talking about. It’s the dumbest thing.”
 
"Charlie?" Her voice becomes strangled in her throat. "Let’s just…not, okay?"
 
He looks a little startled by the sound of her voice, thick and watery. “I’m not trying to be mean,” he says insistently. “We just need to stop fooling ourselves, you know? I need to stop doing dumb shit like going to dinner alone with Tanith and you need to stop flirting with Scott because none of this is heading anywhere and people are just going to end up hurt.”
 
She doesn’t really know why she feels like crying, tears stinging the back of her throat. “I don’t…I don’t like him like that. He’s just…” she trails off feebly and she can hear a small, cruel voice in the back of her head, sneering at her: he’s just what exactly?
 
He falls silent, his head swiveling back to gaze up at the ceiling. “We just need to remember why we’re doing this, that’s all,” he says finally, his voice quiet. His voice sounds a little faraway, like he’s not really even talking to her anymore. “I know it’s tough and I know it gets lonely sometimes but we’ve worked too hard for too long to mess it up now.”
 
She rubs at the phantom tears in her eyes. “The Olympics are in two years,” she muses quietly.
 
"We’re gonna win," Charlie says, stubbornly, like he’s refusing to even contemplate an alternative. "Right?"
 
"Right," she says softly. She tries to sound as confident as he does, but her voice still trembles around the edges, wavering and unsure.
 
"We don’t need anyone else," he tells her, his jaw setting, resolute. "It’s just you and me."
 
She gives him a small smile. “You and me," she echoes, holds onto his hand for dear life.
 
 
 
 
-
 
 
 
 
Here is a list of things she does not like about skating with Charlie:
 
The make-up. She hates the way powder cakes on her skin, chalky and dry. She hates being painted like a clown, looking into a mirror and feeling not at all like herself. She feels like she can't breathe.

The dresses. She hates the itchy fabric, the too-tight straps eating into her flesh. She hates the way she looks in them, like a child playing dress up, too gaudy, too garish under the lights. She hates sucking in her stomach as she gets zipped up - she'll have to skip ‪dinner tonight‬.
 
Feeling alone. She hates the pit in the bottom of her stomach right before their music starts, her knees trembling in her skates. She hates the way she can see Charlie thinking, always thinking, eyes fixed somewhere past her head - she wants to grab his face and force him to look at her.
 
Losing. She hates the number four that flashes up next to their names. She hates the way she can feel Charlie deflate beside her, his breath blowing out - exhausted, frustrated, disappointed, all at once. She hates the way bitterness tastes on her tongue, like arsenic. She hates Scott's smug face on the podium.
 
Impossibilities. She hates the doubt that snakes into her mind, persistent, poisoning every single thought she has. She hates feeling like her dreams are going to remain exactly that - dreams. She hates thinking about everything she's giving up, every desire she doesn't act on, every impulse she ignores. She hates the way he comes up behind her after the medal ceremony, standing too close, his palm too low on the curve of her hip. She hates his voice, husky and deep, when he whispers in her ear, 'better luck next time, Virtue'. She hates the way he can hear how shallow her breathing is, the way his hands linger on the flat of her stomach. She wants to elbow him in the groin.
 
She's not going to lose again.
 
 
-
 
 
Nobody parties harder than elite athletes.
 
After some forty-odd weeks of no alcohol and too much kale, no fun and too much getting up ‪at 5 am‬, the post-Worlds party is currently spanning the whole floor of the hotel and at least a dozen different rooms. It's chaos - people are doing body shots and playing beer pong in their underwear, passing around joints and red plastic cups, streaking down the hallway with duvet covers on their heads. She can hear at least six different songs thumping full-blast at the same time, people doing very enthusiastic and very off-key karaoke to each one. She thinks for a moment that it's like the college experience she never got to actually have.
 
She doesn't mean to sit in the corner silently, nursing a can of cheap beer she doesn't actually intend to drink, but it happens anyway. She's not in the mood to celebrate - she's not sure she really even has anything to celebrate. Fourth. The number cuts her insides like a dull blade.
 
That wasn't how this was supposed to go. They were supposed to make the podium this year, win next year and then win the Olympics the year after that. She'd planned it so meticulously, so carefully, and nothing is happening like she thought it would, control slipping from her fingertips like quicksand. There's a game of naked Twister happening nearby and she listens to the loud drunken laughter, wonders how easy it is for some of these skaters to forget - how they can just tuck their disappointment away like it weighs absolutely nothing at all and continue living their lives looking so utterly untroubled.
 
Her own disappointment burns inside her, an iron stone in her gut. She feels everything too acutely, too deeply and she hates it. She can't stop replaying the competition in her mind, on the edges she missed, on the slight stumble in her twizzles, on the lift that went half a second too long. She can still see Scott and Meryl on the podium, smiling so wide she thought their

faces were going to crack open. She can still taste defeat in her mouth, like battery acid.
 
She doesn't think she can handle losing to him again.
 
Sometime after midnight, she lets Charlie drag her to the spin -the-bottle game happening next door. She sits down beside him on the floor, folding her legs under her, praying to God the bottle doesn't land on her. She doesn't really feel like kissing anyone tonight.
 
She can see Scott sitting across from her, his arm slung loosely over his girlfriend's shoulder. She thought he was hammered earlier, yelling incoherently at the top of his lungs about the Leafs, but he seems dead sober now, eyes focused on her so intently it's making her fidget, the hairs on the back of her neck pricking up. She feels like a gazelle being targeted by a lion, hungry for its prey.
 
She looks away.
 
She's not even paying attention when the bottle lands on her. She was looking down at her hands, thinking about Worlds still, about all her useless lists and broken plans, trying to ignore Scott staring at her from across the table with almost religious-like devotion. She'd thought briefly about just getting up and leaving, and now, finding herself staring down the barrel of the empty beer bottle, she wishes she'd made her escape when she had the chance. People are chanting 'kiss kiss kiss', like they're all in the fifth grade.
 
She rolls her eyes. "Charlie-e-e," she almost whines. She feels like stamping her foot.
 
Charlie can't stop laughing at her. "I didn't do it on purpose," he says, his hand looping around her wrist. "C'mon, let's do this."
 
The kiss barely lasts a few seconds, a soft press of her lips against Charlie's, teeth knocking together awkwardly. It's over quickly and she watches as Charlie wipes her sticky pink lip gloss off his mouth with the back of his hand, still giggling, drunk. There are people whooping and hollering all around them and she feels herself flush, pink flooding her pale skin. She elbows Charlie in the ribs. "I hope you're happy," she mumbles.
 
He just laughs at her.
 
 
-
 
 
Standing at her locker in the dressing room, she has a list of things she needs to remember written on a piece of lavender-colored notebook paper.
 
She's flying home tomorrow, her first trip back since Christmas and she's looking forward to spending four weeks in the sunshine - fill her days with swimming and marathoning bad TV shows and playing with her dog. She doesn't want to look at her skates for at least a month.
 
She needs a break, needs some time to recharge and recalibrate. So they didn't place at Worlds and things aren't going necessarily like she planned. She'd decided this week, her jaw setting stubbornly, that it just meant she needed a new plan. She's still going to get that gold medal in Vancouver if it kills her.
 
"Going home soon?"
 
She jumps at Scott's voice, right above the shell of her ear, a shiver running down her spine.
 
She curses inwardly - he had the footsteps of a cat.

She steps away from him, takes his hand off her waist. "One day I'm going to think you're a serial killer and stab you in the eye with my car keys," she informs him flatly.
 
He's still standing too close, pressing her against her locker, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "It'd be worth it," he says and she doesn't like how feather-soft his voice is, how his forehead bumps accidentally-on-purpose against hers. She doesn't know why he does this, why he still stands so close, why he keeps touching her skin, always lingering. She doesn't know why she lets him. The air around them is suffocating, too electric, too hot. He puts his hand back on her waist again and she doesn't feel like taking it off, his thumb arcing slow circles into her flesh.
 
"Excited for the summer?" he asks.
 
Her mouth feels dry. "Yeah, I need a break from this place. I get to see my family, see my dog, go swimming. It'll be nice."
 
He nods wordlessly and for a moment, his gaze drops from hers, landing on their shoes.
 
"You gonna see Charlie?" he asks casually.
 
"No, he's visiting his cousins in Florida," she tells him curiously. "Why?"
 
"Nothing."
 
"Okay."
 
They stand in silence for a few moments and then she turns back to her locker. She tries to ignore him standing there, moodily, as she packs away her things. "What's going on with you two anyway?" His voice is a little hoarse, sounding strange.
 
"What do you mean?"
 
"You know, the kiss after Worlds..." he trails off, words dying in his throat. She turns to face him but he's not looking at her, his gaze trained somewhere on the floor. He looks like he wants to say something else but his lips press shut, resolutely, and he falls silent instead.
 
Her eyes narrow a little. "That was a game, Scott."
 
"Right. I know." He runs his hands through his hair and it sticks in at least eighty-nine different directions. "I just thought you two were...you know..."
 
"We're not," she says shortly, as evenly as she can. "But it wouldn't be any of your business if we were."
 
She watches him stand up straight, startled. "I know it's not," he insists. "I'm just..." He doesn't finish that sentence either - he just stares at her. He stares at her for the longest time, his eyes dark and heavy with something she can't quite decipher. She can feel the blood crashing in her veins, rushing to her temples, making her light-headed. He reaches out between them to clasp her hand in his and she has to bite her lip to keep it from quivering. His hand is bigger than Charlie's, but gentler somehow, softer. She doesn't know why he feels so familiar, why his hand in hers feels like something she knows so intimately, so intuitively. She feels faintly like she's lived all this before, in another lifetime, a misty, fading memory she can't quite place.
 
He smiles at her, so softly she can feel her breath catch in her throat.

"I hope you have a good summer, Tess."
 
 
-
 
 
ii.
 
 
-
 
 
Marina is making them stare at each other.
 
She's in one of her moods today, her words more Russian than English, more abusive than instructive.
 
"It is called acting," she bemoans dramatically, sounding distressed. "Look at each other. Relate to each other. You love him like a woman loves a man. You - you love her like a man loves a woman."
 
He and Meryl turn back to each other, as seriously as they can muster. He looks at her for about three seconds and then he can literally pinpoint the millisecond she starts to crack and they both start laughing at the exact same time, uncontrollably. He thinks that three seconds is a pretty noble effort on both their parts. Twice as long as last time at least.
 
Marina whacks him upside the head. "What is the matter with you two?" she implores, ignoring his little yelp of protest.
 
He frowns, rubbing his head, pouting a little. "Marina, we just don't think of each other that way," he says, in a half-whine.
 
Marina's hand is on her hip, glowering at him. "Well, how do you think of each other?"
 
Here's the truth:
 
Sometimes he thinks he loves Meryl like he loves his mom. He told Meryl this once, late at her house one night, plotting the rest of their season together like generals at war. She burst out laughing and couldn't stop for at least five whole minutes.
 
"Okay," she said, still giggling. "Don't you dare say that in interviews though, good lord."
 
She just reminds him of his mother - the way she tells him to do his laundry and take his allergy medication, the way she can't help tidying his apartment when she visits, the way she hands him a grocery bag full of broccoli at the rink, shrugging and telling him there was a special at the supermarket.
 
He doesn't know what possesses him to tell Marina this because she looks utterly horrified by the words coming out of his mouth. He thinks she'd look less mortified if he told her he'd killed her yappy little dog and ate it for breakfast with his toast.
 
"This is wonderful," she says, rolling her eyes. "I have one team that doesn't look at each other and one team that thinks his partner is his mother."
 
Personally, he thinks she could do a lot worse.

-
 
 
"Heard Marina kicked your ass this morning."
 
Tessa finds him at the barre upstairs, leaning aginst the door frame with her arms crossed, a small smile pulling on her lips. She's wearing pink - a pale pink leotard over a floaty pink ballet skirt, pink legwarmers and pink toe shoes. She reminds him of cotton candy.
 
"She's definitely gonna kill someone today. Don't say I didn't warn you."
 
He watches in the mirror as she walks towards him, delicately, ever the graceful ballerina. She circles him, looking him up and down critically, at his feet in first position, his arm raised skyward. He hopes he looks at least vaguely masculine but he seriously doubts it.
 
"Not bad," she murmurs approvingly.
 
He tries not to look down her shirt. "That's high praise coming from you."
 
She disappears behind him and her hands are on his back all of a sudden, pressing into his shoulder blades and he can't help the way his muscles go tense at her touch, stiff under her fingertips. He can hear her laugh, a soft, girlish giggle. "Relax," she says, just a breath in his ear.
 
"I was super relaxed before you came in," he says, defensively.
 
She ignores him. "Shoulders back, neck long." She circles back around to face him, and her hands are hot on his skin, her fingers feeling like silk as they sweep across his arms, across his clavicle, across his chest. She doesn't take her eyes off him for a single second. They're so clear and green, like the surface of a lake on a balmy summer night. Her mouth looks like a shiny red bow, lustrous under the lights. He wants to kiss her.
 
"Breathe," she says, and her palm settles right over the top of his heart. He inhales and exhales, wonders fleetingly if she can feel his heart underneath her fingertips like this, feel it slam against his ribcage, pounding like a jackhammer. You do that to me, he wants to tell her.
 
"And ...up." They rise on their toes together, and he looks into her eyes the whole time, can't bring himself to look away. They hold for a few seconds and then drop back down, carefully. Tessa's grin is unstoppable. "See? Better already."
 
His laugh is a little breathless - she does that to him too. "Thanks."
 
"You're welcome."
 
He's only half-joking when he asks, "You sure you won't regret helping me?" She freezes for half a second, looking at him quizzically. "What if we end up beating you by half a point at the Olympics and it all came down to you helping me in this very moment?"
 
"You're right," she says, playfully, rolling her eyes. "Forget everything I said - slouching is super attractive."
 
"Too late. I'm taking this lesson to my grave."
 
"I'm an excellent teacher," she beams at him.

His gaze falls to her mouth again and he can't help it, the way he licks his lips. "Modest too," he murmurs softly. He knows he shouldn't, but he touches the bottom of her jaw anyway, tips her chin toward him with a single finger. He's like a little kid in a candy store around her - he can't control himself, wants to touch everything, wants to have everything.
 
She looks up at him, dark through her eyelashes, and it's moments like these that he thinks - no, he knows - that it's not just him, that it's not all in his head, that she feels it too, this confusing, mystifying thing between them he doesn't understand. He thinks that if he kisses her right now, she wouldn't stop him and they'd throw it all away, all their dreams, just for the chance to fuck once, hard, up against the barre.
 
The moment extends too long, crackling in his ears. "Look me up in twenty years," she says softly and she pulls away slightly, his hand dropping from her chin. "I'll have a little dance studio somewhere. You can bring your daughters there."
 
She's still pressed up against him, leaning shoulder to shoulder, too close. "Is that the plan?" he asks quietly.
 
She shrugs a little, "It's one of them."
 
"Yeah?" He watches her tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, smoothe out the non-existent crinkles in her skirt.
 
"Yeah. I wanted to be a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet when I was a little girl. I remember my heart was so set on it. I was going to play Odette and Juliet and Clara at the Lincoln Center and my family would be in the front row and I'd get to see their faces while they watched me dance." She lets out a small wry laugh, sounding more like a sigh. "I held onto that one for way too long. Even after we moved to Detroit, even after skating became my whole life, there was still this small, stupid part of me that kept thinking maybe, one day."
 
"Plans don't always work out the way we want them to," he tells her. He should know.
 
He doesn't know how she manages to make a snort sound so elegant, but she does. "Tell me
 
about it." She plays with her hands, looking unsettled. "I think it's harder for me to let go,
 
sometimes. I have all these ideas in my head about how my life should be and I make so
 
many plans and I always end up heartbroken when they don't work out.
 
Sometimes...sometimes I don't think I'll be able to stand it if we lose in Vancouver, that I'll
 
just be so disappointed and end up sticking my head in the oven or something."
 
He doesn't know why he feels guilty all of a sudden - the thought that he could be the one to deny her the Olympics and break her heart makes him feel a little dizzy inside. "Please don't," he says, dryly. "That would make me and my gold medal feel bad."
 
"Someone's cocky." She raises an eyebrow at him. "Aren't you ever worried you'll jinx it?"
 
He thinks of Tessa at the boards, religiously arranging and re-arranging her guards. "Nope," he says with a firm shake of his head. "I throw away pennies. I look black cats in the eye. I walk under ladders."
 
"Yeah, you're a regular superhero," she tells him wryly.
 
He shrugs. "I just think whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen, you know? There's no use trying to control life - it always ends up busting your balls anyway." He pauses for a moment, eyeing her curiously. "I know you're not like that. You're probably one of those

people who needs to be married by the time you're twenty -five and have kids before you turn thirty. You probably have their names all picked out from your favorite old book from the 1800s already. Elizabeth from 'Pride and Prejudice' or something."
 
Her eyes narrow at him. "Have I told you that before?"
 
He laughs a little, "Just a lucky guess. You're not as hard to read as you think."
 
"I don't think I'm hard to read," she says and her voice is quiet. "People just...keep reading the wrong parts. And they always get bored and never finish reading."
 
He wants to hold her hand. If this was a movie, he'd tell her all the ridiculous lovelorn things he's feeling, tell her, if you were book, I'd read every page, or some cloying, sentimental shit like that. But it's not a movie and he's no poet, so he keeps his hands to himself and says instead, "Tell me about your plans."
 
She turns to him, smiling. "Well, after we win gold in Vancouver..."
 
He scoffs, "Not happening, but okay."
 
"I'm going to go to law school, maybe work for a non-profit. I want to help people and make a difference somewhere, you know? I think I have more to offer the world than seven minutes of figure skating every year. I'll go to art school, maybe study fashion or interior design. I've always wanted to buy some crumbling brownstone somewhere and just knock all the walls down and create an entirely new space. And I'll study ballet, for real. I'll have my own studio and just dance all day long." She pauses for a moment, her gaze dropping, demure all of a sudden. "And maybe one day, I'll meet some man. Maybe he's older, I don't know. He'll be distinguished and brilliant, maybe a writer or a university professor or something, and he'll...he'll speak French and be well-traveled and read Proust."
 
Briefly, he wonders: who the fuck is Proust? "That sounds weirdly specific," he tilts his head, observing her.
 
She shrugs, more to herself than to him. The tiny crinkle in her forehead is smoothing into a smile and she stands up quickly, as if to shake herself from a reverie. "But that's all a long way away," she says, her throat clearing. "The rest of my life can wait until after the Olympics."
 
"After the Olympics," he echoes and her eyes meet his again, carefully. He watches her mouth curve around a sweet smile - sometimes he doesn't think he can wait that long.
 
"Right," she says softly. Her words sound heavy in the air and she blinks at him for a long, slow second, eyelashes fluttering. "I should...I should get back downstairs. Maybe get a bulletproof vest before our lesson with Marina."
 
He watches her walk toward the door, her footsteps light and dainty across the hardwood floor, graceful as always, and he doesn't mean to call out her name, but it slips out before he can stop himself. "Tessa."
 
She turns around questioningly, already halfway across the room.
 
"I hope you get to do everything you want to do."
 
Her smile is something he wants a photograph of. "Thanks," she says softly.
 
He can't help the smile that catches itself on his mouth. "You're welcome."

-
 
 
Meryl thinks it's just physical.
 
Meryl tells him he's twenty-one years old, his girlfriend lives a thousand miles away and he's just really horny. "She's pretty," she tells him, matter-of-fact, like she's telling him the nutritional information on a cereal box. "It's only natural."
 
For the first few weeks, he thought she was right. He thought he just had a dumb crush - he and every other asshole at the rink suddenly enchanted by the hot new girl with the porcelain doll face and pensive green eyes. It was purely physical, carnal, the way he'd think about her in all manner of compromising positions - riding him in the backseat of his car, naked and sweaty in his sheets, on her knees in front of him, her lovely mouth wrapped around his cock.
 
The mysterious new girl eventually just becomes Tessa - Tessa who brought in a homemade card for the janitor in the hospital with a broken rib and made everyone sign it, Tessa who made you cupcakes on your birthday and led everyone in an embarassing singalong, Tessa who chided you gently if she saw you wasting water in the bathroom. Sweet, boring, not-so-mysterious Tessa. All the other guys at the rink eventually moved on but he just becomes more fascinated by her, utterly captivated. He feels so drawn to her, connected somehow, by something invisible, inexplicable. He knows she feels it too, tries not to think about the possibility that she doesn't, that she's just being polite, humoring him, all while complaining to Charlie about what a creep he's being.
 
He wants her. He wants her in all the base, red-blooded ways Meryl thinks he wants her. He wants her underneath him, he wants her against him, he wants her naked at his mercy.
 
But that's where she's only half-right because he wants more. It's not just physical - he wants every part of her, all of her, to her heart. He wants to know the name of her fifth grade teacher, he wants to know what her childhood bedroom looks like, he wants to know her favorite songs. He wants to know all of her smiles - the grin that makes her look like a little girl, the shy one with fluttering eyelashes, the sleepy one when she wakes up in the morning, dreams still in her eyelids. He wants to know how her skin smells under her perfume, what her mouth tastes like when she laughs. He wants to have a story with her, to know what she's thinking without speaking, to hold her hand and feel like coming home.
 
He wants her in all the ways Charlie has her.
 
 
-
 
 
"Dude, what the fuck."
 
Charlie, he discovers, has all the reflexes of a very sleepy sloth. He never even saw it coming, the snowball hitting him square in the middle of his face, knocking his glasses clean off. A splotchy bruise is swelling right on the bridge of his nose, angry and red. "Merry Christmas," Scott crows triumphantly. He supposes he should sound even a little bit sorry, but hysterical laughter didn't tend to make apologies seem all that sincere.
 
"It's December first, you suss little fuck."

He pushes past Charlie into his house, shaking the snow off his coat. "Whatever. C'mon, the game's almost starting."
 
He wasn't about to admit it any time soon, but hockey night with Charlie was often one of the best parts of his week. Sometimes it was a whole group of guys from the rink, sometimes Meryl would tag along with carrot sticks and artichoke hummus - but usually, it was just the two of them in Charlie's living room, yelling at the TV. It was nice to just forget about skating for three hours - forget Igor on the warpath this morning, forget the fact he almost dropped Meryl flat on her face twice today, forget that Tessa and Charlie's score in Japan last month had beaten theirs by four points. It was easy, freeing, to become wrapped up in someone else's athletic enterprises for once - defeat tasted a lot less bitter when it wasn't his neck in the firing line.
 
After the game's over, he and Charlie lie flat on their backs on the floor, drinking water and pretending it's beer. They talk about everything and nothing - about the new Grand Theft Auto, about how Scott thinks he's finally found the best burger in town, about how Charlie thinks his neighbor's growing pot in his backyard.
 
Sometime after a heated discussion about the merits of the banana nut muffin at Starbucks versus Tim Hortons, Charlie turns to him, asking casually, "So, you guys ready for the Final?"
 
Scott drags a hand down his face, groaning. "Dude, let's not."
 
Charlie looks back up at the ceiling. "Yeah, you're right, sorry." After a beat: "So what's going on between you and Tessa?"
 
"Nothing's going between with me and Tessa," he says and he can hear a skeptical scoff beside him. He eyes Charlie carefully for a moment. "What's going on with you and Tessa?" he asks and he cringes a little at the sound of his voice, too accusing.
 
Charlie turns to look at him, confusion creasing his brow. "What do you mean?"
 
"I don't know." He tries not to sound so tense and wound up, tries to sound like he really doesn't give a shit at all, but his voice comes out kind of thin anyway. "I thought there was something there after you guys kissed after Worlds..."
 
"I don't even remember that. I was so drunk."
 
"Yeah, well."
 
He can feel Charlie shrug beside him. "Nothing would ever happen. We're not...into each other like that."
 
He wonders what he's seeing that Charlie can't - it seems inconceivable to him that not everyone in the world wants her as much as he does.
 
"She's just not my type," Charlie continues, shifting on his back. "And I'm not hers."
 
"What's her type?"
 
"I don't know. Jackasses who chuck snowballs in your face when you're kind enough to let them into your house, maybe."
 
"So you and her aren't...?"

"No." Charlie frowns. "Are you jealous?"
 
He doesn't really feel like answering Charlie's question. "Don't be a dick," he says instead.
 
"Well, you can quit it because we're not together."
 
His breath comes out in a long, cold sigh. It doesn't really matter whether they're dating or not - he thinks he'll always be jealous of Charlie. He wants to be the one who knows her better than anyone else, who has 'back when I was seven and he was nine' history with her. Instead, he's just a friend - just some guy who stands too close and can't stop staring, just the guy trying to steal her gold medal away from her. He thinks, wistfully, achingly: it should've been me.
 
"Not that it makes a difference," Charlie says finally. "You two can't be together. You just can't. You need to quit whatever it is you're doing before you fuck things up for all four of us. I don't even..." He inhales sharply, eyes flickering skyward. "I don't even talk to Tanith anymore. And it sucked at first and it still sucks, but it's just easier this way." He pauses for a beat, and then he rolls his eyes, looking vaguely aggravated. "Why am I even telling you this? I know you're not going to listen to me. I've told her the same thing a thousand times and she still can't stay away from you."
 
"I try not to flirt with her," he says and the words don't sound even remotely convincing coming out of his mouth.
 
"Well, you're failing," Charlie says flatly. "Spectacularly so."
 
"We're allowed to be friends." He feels kind of defensive all of a sudden, annoyance creeping into the edge of his voice. "This rivalry bullshit is so ridiculous. Are you saying you and me can't hang out and watch hockey and shoot the shit anymore?"
 
Charlie shrugs, "Maybe one day we'll find out we can't."
 
He blinks up at the ceiling and almost feels sad for a moment. "That doesn't sound like much fun."
 
"Nope. Who else is going to come to my door and try to blind me with snow."
 
"I don't know, that kid Mikey down the street."
 
"Yeah, he's a little shit."
 
Scott holds up his water bottle and Charlie taps it with his, plastic crinkling together. "To the Olympics," he toasts. "And to being bitter rivals and not hanging out."
 
"To the Olympics," Charlie echoes and they each take a swig of water.
 
 
 
-
 
 
 
There isn’t a single second Meryl doesn’t look like she regrets this whole thing entirely.
 
"Charlie!" Scott can hear her protest over the thumping music, her voice squeaking with indignation. "Use a coaster!"

"What are you gonna do if I don’t? Ooh, I'm gonna leave a water ring right here. Ooh, water ring, ooh, water ring, ooh, water - oh, shit." There’s a very expensive sounding crash. "That didn’t cost a lot of money, did it?"
 
"…oh, I am going to fricking kill you."
 
Hosting a Super Bowl party was Meryl’s idea in the first place. He’d warned her against it, knew her too well to know that she would not enjoy people’s muddy shoes on her white furniture or alcohol spilling all over her grandmother’s handwoven prayer rug. “You know you’ll be picking popcorn out of your couch for the next, oh, ten years, right?”
 
She’d given him a perky ‘it’ll be fun!’ and he told her they were Canadian and they shouldn’t be having Super Bowl parties and assimilating with the dirty Americans anyway.
 
He can see her now, trying to put Charlie into a headlock and he tries to think about the best way he can tell her ‘I told you so’. He could write it in permanent marker all over her locker at the rink. He could hire a gospel choir to sing it to her to the tune of ‘Oh Happy Day’. The possibilities were endless.
 
He’s usually the first one drunk at these things, but he’s surprisingly, remarkably sober tonight. They have the day off tomorrow but he wants to get to the rink anyway, do some run-throughs by himself. Worlds is in a month and there’s a persistent, annoying voice in the back of his head sounding strangely like Marina, telling him how well they do at the Olympics majorly depends on how well they do at Worlds. Time to knuckle down.
 
For now though, there’s Meryl’s party. He finds his gaze flickering to the corner of the room, almost unconsciously, catching sight of Tessa amongst the throng of people. If he is surprisingly, remarkably sober, then she is surprisingly, remarkably drunk, dancing by herself, eyes squeezed shut. She almost looks like she’s in a trance, the way her limbs move like liquid, her apple-red mouth parted slightly as she runs her hands up and down her own body.
 
She looks so fucking good.
 
Even as he’s walking toward her, he’s annoyed at himself. Since his conversation with Charlie, he’d been trying harder than usual to stay away, trying valiantly to draw some lines, put up some walls. Keeping his distance was a struggle - she tugged at him like rope, every single time, drew him to her like a moth to a flame. Looking at her now, in her skin-tight jeans, her shirt cut way too low, he realizes that it was all for nothing. It was futile, all of it - when it came to her, he was still as weak as ever. You can still walk away, he tries to tell himself, disgruntled. You can still walk away, you can still walk away…
 
Someone knocks him from behind and he crashes into her, fingers gripping the inside of her wrist, the curve of her waist. Her eyes fly open and she stares at him, her pupils blown open, wide and unblinking.
 
Nope. Can’t walk away now.
 
"Hi," she whispers, her breath tickling his nose.
 
"Hi."
 
Her eyes are dark and cloudy, like the sky right before a storm. “You wanna dance with me?” she says and he watches her tongue dart out to lick her lips, pink against red. Her hands are everwhere, all over his back, around his neck, in his hair.

"I always wanna dance with you."
 
He has his hand on her waist, holding her so close he can feel all the muscles in her stomach tense against his. He wants her closer still, somehow. His other hand creeps under her shirt, up her spine, touches her warm skin there. He realizes, hazily, that she’s not wearing a bra.
 
"Where’ve you been?" she murmurs, softly. She runs her thumb over his lip and he can feel it dip inside his mouth, against his teeth. "I missed you."
 
"I…" He can feel her grind against him, slow, and his tongue feels woolly, suddenly too big for his mouth. "I’ve…I’ve been trying to give you space."
 
She sighs against his mouth, her upper lip brushing against his, not quite a kiss. He can smell the alcohol on her breath, fruity and tart. “Well, don’t,” she breathes. “I don’t want space.”
 
She has him pushed up against the wall and she rocks against him, rhythmically, to the beat of whatever Eurotrash song is playing over the speakers. She starts moving faster and faster, hot and reckless, gasping into his mouth, and it’s embarrassing how hard he gets, the way he can’t help but thrust back. It’s so eighth grade, he thinks faintly, dry humping in the middle of a dancefloor at a party, but he can’t bring himself to care. Her forehead is pressed up against his, her face so close he can see the soft dusting of freckles across her nose, all the tiny flecks of glitter in her eyeshadow.
 
"Tessa," he whispers her name, but he doesn’t know what he even wants to say.
 
"No," she says and her voice sounds like a whimper in her throat. She’s still moving against him, her fingers clinging to the back of his hair. "No, don’t stop. Let’s not stop."
 
"Tessa."
 
"We’re not kissing, we’re not fucking…we’re not…we’re not doing anything. We’re allowed to do this." Her lips bump against his again, too soft and not enough.
 
He can’t say no to her, could never say no to her, so he keeps his mouth shut, lets them both pretend a little while longer. He can feel her lips on his face, the soft, chaste kisses she leaves on his nose, his cheek, his jaw. And then he can feel her kisses becoming wet and not-so-chaste, licking into the dip in his collarbone, her tongue against his Adam’s apple, against the skin along his neck. He can feel her start to suck.
 
She’s going to give him a fucking hickey.
 
"Tessa," he says. He feels drunk. He feels light-headed. He feels her nipples, hard, through her shirt.
 
Her hand wanders down his chest, past his stomach, dipping lower and lower, slipping into his jeans. He feels like he’s burning, the feeling of her cupping him through his underwear setting all his nerves on fire. “I’m not touching anything,” she whispers into his mouth. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
 
He thinks that this distinction is important to her - he imagines her sitting in a courtroom, on trial. Did you kiss? No. Did you fuck? No. Did you touch his cock? Not technically.
 
She looks up at him with her perfect, lovely face and for a brief moment, as she stands there palming his dick, he thinks that she almost looks innocent, virginal.
 
She won’t let him close his eyes. Every time he does, losing himself in the feeling of her, she

stops touching him. “I want you to look at me,” she whispers, and so he does, stares into her eyes as she rubs him off. He tries not to breathe too hard - he wants to ask her how she got so fucking good at this, how many hand jobs she’s given to how many lucky assholes.
 
He comes with nothing more than a quiet grunt and he can feel her smile softly against him, nose pressing into his. He doesn’t know what to say - ‘thank you’ doesn’t seem to suffice, ‘would you like me to reciprocate?’ doesn’t seem quite appropriate. So he just says her name, his mouth curling around the word like a sigh. “Tessa.”
 
She pulls away from him, her face flushed pink, all the way down to her neck.
 
"See you at the rink," she says and she walks away, leaves him standing there in his ruined underwear, like an idiot.
 
 
-
 
 
Tessa’s sharing her spoon with someone.
 
He watches through narrowed eyes as she trades the piece of white plastic with some douchebag he doesn’t recognize - probably another one of Marina’s pet projects from Moscow. He has a cup of yogurt and she has two perfectly sliced halves of kiwi fruit and she’s giggling like crazy, like she isn’t swapping germs with a total stranger, like she isn’t in danger of contracting some kind of gross mouth STD.
 
It’s driving him nuts.
 
They haven’t talked about it, the incident at the party. She arrived at the rink on Tuesday, said good morning to him like she did every morning, like she didn’t just put her hand down his pants and make him orgasm on top of Meryl’s grandmother’s handwoven prayer rug. She asked him how his family was (fine), if he’d seen her purple jacket around the rink anywhere (no, sorry) and then offered him half her power bar (thanks).
 
He wonders if he imagined it, if he fell asleep during a Cinemax movie and just dreamed it all up in his stupid head.
 
"Stop it," Meryl slides into the seat in front of him, blocking his gaze. She’s eating a carrot, nibbling at it daintily, looking straight out of an animated movie.
 
He blinks at her. “Stop what?”
 
"Stop looking at her. Unless you’re thinking about how to beat her at Worlds." She pauses, observes him through slitted eyes. "Which you’re not. So stop looking at her."
 
"It’s just gross," he says, somewhat childishly. "What they’re doing."
 
Meryl glances at Tessa and the douchebag over her shoulder. “Eating yogurt?” she asks, an imperious eyebrow lifting toward her hairline.
 
"No."
 
"Eating kiwi fruit?"
 
"Sharing a spoon. She doesn’t even know him. He could be a convicted criminal. He could be a cannibal. He could be one of those dudes who says ‘yo’ unironically after every

sentence." He frowns, feeling more distressed by the second. "It’s like, super unhygienic."
 
She snorts. "Says the boy who used to eat dirt."
 
“Says the girl who used to eat paste.”
 
"I told you, I thought it was ice cream."
 
"Ice cream in a container that says ‘PASTE’ on it?"
 
"I’m dyslexic, you jerk."
 
"Yeah, okay. I think you just like eating paste."
 
She wrinkles her nose at him, looking kind of like she wants to throw her carrot at his head. “I know what you’re doing. Stop trying to change the subject.”
 
"I thought the subject was your paste addiction."
 
Meryl clicks her tongue impatiently. “Just stop looking at her, okay? This crush of yours is getting out of hand.”
 
"I don’t have a crush," he says, stubbornly, and it’s not technically a lie. He blew right past crush a long time ago.
 
She scoffs at him, disbelieving. “You had your hand in her mouth yesterday!” "She had lipstick on her teeth," he protests.
 
She doesn’t sound all that impressed by this excuse, her lips in a thin, straight line. “What are you doing, Scott?” she asks. He thinks for a second that she really does sound eerily like his mom, the same tired, long-suffering disappointment in her voice. “I thought it was just innocent flirting...”
 
He blanches a little - he doesn’t really feel like telling Meryl about how she jerked him off in her living room with the Davis family Christmas portrait beaming wholesomely above their heads.
 
"But this is getting…not okay. You have a girlfriend." Meryl pauses for a moment. "We have a career."
 
His eyes flicker past Meryl’s head to Tessa and the douchebag across the room. There’s no spoon in sight anymore - instead, she’s laughing at something he’s saying, her head thrown back, delighted. She’s wearing this tight green leotard thing the same color as her eyes. It exposes most of her back and he can see it from here, pale and white, freckles scattered across her spine like stardust.
 
"I know," he says finally and he drags his eyes away from her. "Meryl, I know."
 
"Then what are you doing?" She doesn’t sound the least bit accusatory even though she has every right to be - her voice is just soft, worried.
 
"I don’t know," he says, sighing. He rubs at his eyes, tiredly, a headache building in his temples. "I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to…" he trails off, his stomach churning a bit, feeling sick. "God, I’m the world’s worst boyfriend."
 
Meryl sighs. "You’re not a bad person, Scott."

He doesn’t know if that’s true. “Yeah, okay.”
 
"You’re not," she says firmly and she sounds so sure of herself, he almost believes it too. "You’re just lonely and doing what we do is hard and…and sometimes you just meet people you click with. I get it."
 
He looks at his hands, feeling miserable all of a sudden. “I just…I don’t know what it is about her.” His voice is smoky and scratchy and he feels like he’s unraveling, coming undone, words spilling out like he’s hit a vein somewhere. “I don’t know…I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about her. I don’t know why I can’t stay away from her. I don’t know why she drives me so crazy. She makes me forget everything - forget I have a girlfriend, forget about the Olympics and everything we’ve worked for. Sometimes, I think, god, I’d retire right now if it means I could take her out on a date and kiss her and be with her and…and…and I just don’t know.”
 
Meryl’s face is pale under her make-up and she’s silent for a long time. He can’t look at her - doesn’t want to see any number of emotions cross her face: anger, disappointment, resentment. Finally, her voice quiet, she says, “I thought you just wanted to sleep with her.”
 
"What?"
 
"All the touching, all the flirting," she says, sounding plaintive. "I didn’t say anything because I thought it was just physical and I thought you just needed to blow off steam and it was none of my business. I didn’t know you actually…" She doesn’t finish her sentence.
 
His throat catches a little when he says, “I can’t help it.”
 
"Would you give it all up for her?" She’s looking at him carefully from across the table, warily, like she doesn’t recognize him at all. He thinks he hears a small tremor in her voice. "I need to know right now because…"
 
"I’m not retiring," he cuts her off swiftly, flatly. "I wouldn’t do that to you."
 
"I just needed to know."
 
"I wouldn’t do it to me. I want that gold medal as much as you do."
 
Meryl only looks faintly allayed by his answer. “You have to be in this 100%,” she says insistently. It almost sounds like a pep talk, only without much of the pep. “It’s the only way we can win. You can’t throw a tantrum every time Tessa sits with some guy. We need to focus and we don’t need any distractions.”
 
He looks down at his hands. He hates it when Meryl’s right.
 
Her eyebrow arches once more. “You think she drives you crazy now? I guarantee she’ll drive you even crazier when she’s standing one step higher than us on the podium in Vancouver.”
 
 
-
 
 
It’s a photo finish at Worlds.
 
Less than a tenth of a point separates all the teams on the podium. They don’t come first, or

even second, but third doesn’t feel so bad when it’s this close.
 
Third isn't so bad. That's actually what he thinks - at least it is until he catches sight of Tessa and Charlie on the other side of the podium, silver medals glinting like coins around their necks.
 
He feels his jaw set. Meryl’s right - she’s just driving him crazier and crazier.
 
He’s not going to lose again.
 
 
-
 
 
“Congrats on the silver.”
 
He skates up behind her, fingers tap-dancing lightly across her stomach and he feels her jump a little, tripping on her toepick. She immediately slams the thick binder she was reading shut, like she’s preserving state secrets or something.
 
He knows what’s in there. They all got one earlier today - details of their Olympic programs, meticulously mapped out by Igor and Marina. It’s barely three days after Worlds, but the Olympic season has already begun. He’s already read his binder cover to cover twice and Meryl’s is full of so many multi-colored tabs and markers he thinks it’s at least a whole pound heavier than his. “We play to your strength this year, yes?” Marina had said. “Fast, fast, fast. Crazy lifts, crazy twizzles. We go big for the Olympics.”
 
He watches her shove the binder into her bag, zip it closed all the way. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me,” he says, clutching his hand to his heart.
 
"Oh yeah?" She puts a hand on her hip, her eyebrows rising. "Show me yours."
 
He snorts, “In your goddamn dreams.”
 
"Yeah, I thought so."
 
Silence settles over them and she can’t meet his gaze, eyes flickering away, uneasy. He feels as unnerved as she looks, words crumpling like paper in his throat. He thinks he can see her flush, a rose blush climbing in her cheeks. He knows what she’s thinking about. The last time they were this close she was making him come in Meryl’s living room.
 
She looks nervous, jittery, and he finally finds his voice. “C’mon,” he says and he takes her hand in his, leads her out onto the ice. It’s mostly empty, just a few other scattered skaters stroking around leisurely.
 
"What are you doing?" she asks warily, her hand limp in his.
 
They stop right in the middle of the rink. He’s quiet as he takes her left hand and puts it on his shoulder, his own hand settling on the curve of her back. He grips her right hand, leans in close to her, nose nudging against hers. “Let’s dance,” he says softly.
 
She looks like she doesn’t know whether she should laugh or whack him over the head. “Should we be doing this?”
 
"What is this, the town from 'Footloose'?" A grin pulls at his mouth, playful. "We’re allowed to dance."

She makes a face at him. “You know what I mean.”
 
"No, I don’t," he says, and then he doesn’t care what she has to say anymore, his feet leading them both off into a waltz. It surprises him, how quickly she falls into step with him - she doesn’t miss a single beat.
 
She feels different to Meryl. Meryl was so small and stiff sometimes, just a tiny slip of a thing he thought might break if he spun her too fast. Tessa is taller, but she feels lighter somehow, like her blades are floating across frothy white clouds. He used to think it would feel weird dancing with anyone but Meryl, that it would feel wrong, but it…doesn’t. It just doesn’t. Tessa doesn’t blink as she looks at him, and he thinks faintly that he doesn’t even remember what skating with Meryl feels like anymore. Her eyes are so brilliantly green, like the ocean after a rainstorm and he can’t look away, doesn’t ever want to look away. Their lips are dangerously, treacherously close - always brushing, always grazing, never kissing.
 
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears music playing over the speakers. He thinks he might recognize it, a slow piece with sweeping strings, sounding somehow mournful and joyous all at once.
 
They waltz around the rink to the music - sometimes he’ll dip her, sometimes she’ll twirl around him, but they always come back to each other at the same time, perfectly in sync, like they’ve been doing it their whole lives. He doesn’t know why she feels so familiar, why the feeling of her in his arms is something he feels like he knows so intimately, so intuitively. He thinks he must have lived it before, in another world, another universe, another version of him and her, slotting together like two halves of the same heart.
 
The song starts to fade and they slow to a stop, still clinging to one another. Her breath is hot against his face, her eyes hooded and heavy. “So,” she says, a little breathless.
 
He swallows, hard. “So.”
 
Her fingers reach up to touch the curve of his jaw, lingering there, electric on his skin. “Thanks for the dance,” she whispers, finally. She presses a soft kiss onto his cheek and then she starts to pull away and the loss of closeness, of her body heat, hits him instantly, a jet of cool air swiping his face.
 
He watches her skate away, watches her put on her skate guards and collect her things - doesn’t take his eyes off her until she slips out the door. It’s not until she’s gone that he finally spots Marina by the boards, eyes fixed on him, stony-faced.
 
"Jesus," he says, startled. "Were you watching us the whole time?"
 
"Yes," she says shortly, her lips pursing.
 
"We were just messing around. Don’t be mad."
 
She looks at him, a flicker of surprise in her gray eyes. “Why would I be mad? I was the one who played the music.”
 
"Oh," he says, digging his skate into the ice. "Well, if you’re not angry, I’m just gonna go. See ya tomorrow."
 
Marina just nods at him, arms folded across her chest. “Tomorrow,” she says curtly. “Don’t be late.”

He’s halfway toward the door when he remembers something, turns back to find Marina staring distantly across the ice, her eyes seeming very murky and faraway. “Hey, what was that song you played?”
 
Her face is blank and inscrutable when she says, “It was a symphony by Mahler.”
 
The name sounds completely alien to him. “Oh,” he says, shrugging a little. “Well, I liked it. Maybe Meryl and I could use it for a program someday.”
 <
She turns back toward the ice. “No,” she says, so softly he has to strain to hear her. “No, I don’t think so.”