She laughs softly. “Hi.”
There is no universe in which he doesn’t clock this.
“I was wondering if you could watch a run,” I say, forcing my voice to stay neutral. “Tell me if you’re seeing the same thing I am.”
Her brows lift. “You want my opinion?”
I meet her gaze. “Of course.”
“Sure,” she says after a beat. “Show me.”
Rodrigo pushes off immediately, energized by the audience, and takes his starting position.
Isabella leans in closer beside me. She’s not touching me, but I can feel the warmth from her body.
He runs the sequence and she watches in silence, eyes tracking every turn, every shoulder check, every micro-adjustment in speed. She doesn’t nod or react outwardly at all, and it’s quieter than I would expect from someone whose job is to speak about this exact thing for a living.
When he finishes and skates back over, she doesn’t look at him right away.
She looks at me and squints. “He’s generating speed too early. It makes the bracket look flashier but destabilizes the exit.”
“I like flashy,” he says, and it sounds a little like a whine. Moments like this are when I’m reminded that he is practically still a child.
“I know,” she replies without missing a beat. “That’s why you’re so good. But clean first. Then we can work on flashy.”
I blink, because that phrase is so close to whatshe had said about me a decade ago. But those words once felt like a death sentence, and I now understand her meaning exactly.
Rodrigo nods slowly. “Okay, yeah. That makes sense.”
“I’d also play with the arm position through the counter,” she adds. “You’re opening before your hip finishes rotating.”
He stares at her. “How did you see that?”
She shrugs. “I used to get yelled at for it.”
He grins again. “By who?”
“My parents,” she says, and there’s no edge to it, no hesitation but rather a statement delivered with the same matter-of-fact tone she’s used all morning, as if this were simply another technical explanation and not something that shaped the better part of her life.
Rodrigo’s face brightens immediately. “Were they intense?”
Isabella laughs, quick and unguarded, the sound cutting easily through the ambient noise of the rink. “Very.”
“That explains a lot,” he says, satisfied. Nina scoffs from a distance, even with her eyes on her phone screen as she scrolls slowly.
“They were invested,” she adds, still watching him with that same careful attention, as though the conversation is totally secondary to the work unfolding in front of her. “There was always a right way to do things. If you did them well enough, you got space.”
I register the phrasing before I register the meaning, the way she frames excellence not as praise but as access, as a kind of permission that had to be earned repeatedly, andsomething in my chest tightens in response, not with resentment this time but with recognition.
Rodrigo nods slowly. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It was efficient,” she says, turning her head in the direction of her sister. Then, almost as an afterthought, “I learned a lot.”
She glances at me briefly, like she’s only just remembered I’m there, and I realize she hasn’t offered this as explanation or justification so much as context, something she assumes can sit on the table without needing to be handled carefully.
“Anyway,” she continues, already shifting back to the present. Her smile is still on as she addresses me. “He’s doing really well. You’ve built something solid with him.”
The praise, again, is quiet and subdued, without emphasis, and it’s very hard to dismiss. I don’t answer right away, not being used to hearing it said like that outside of Sandra and other regulars at our home rink.
