Yep.
Do I regret it?
Not at all.
"So, Mollie." Anna touches my elbow, skating slowly, urging me to follow. "Tell me about skating. Why did you start?"
"My older brother is a pro hockey player," I say. I'm so focused on my words that I skate with muscle memory. It's smooth, unlike my words. "Uh, I was always at his games and practices. Tagging along, watching. It looked like fun! But the first time I saw a figure skater on the ice, I was done for. I decided right then, at like five years old, that I wanted to figure skate for a living." I roll my eyes. "I know that's ridiculous?—"
Anna shakes her head. "I'm living proof that it's not."
"Well, you're like... a goddess." I laugh. "Us lesser beings are all just trying to bathe in your light."
She smiles at that and we skate a slow loop together, falling into an easy rhythm. There'ssomething about being on the ice with another skater that bypasses all the small talk. You just move and you talk and somehow both things are easier.
"What was your best memory?" Anna asks. "On the ice? The moment you knew this was your thing."
Nobody has ever asked me that before. Not my parents, not Beck, not any of the coaches I had before Savard. I think about it for a second, really think, and the answer comes up immediately and easily.
"Regionals," I say. "I was fifteen. I had this program set to an old Edith Piaf song, which my coach at the time thought was too mature for me." I grin. "She was probably right. But about thirty seconds, in I stopped thinking about the judges and the score and whether my left edge was right, and I just skated. It felt like my body knew the whole thing by heart. I didn't need my brain anymore." I pause. "I came off the ice and I cried. Happy crying, which is weird for me."
Anna nods like she knows exactly what I mean. "That's the feeling. That's the one you chase your whole career."
"Did you have it at the Olympics?"
"Every single time." She does a small, effortless turn, backward now, facing me as we glide. "The fourth one? I skated that final program knowing it was probably my last competitive performance. I had that blissful feeling the whole way through." She tilts her head. "What happened with yours? Alex said you were injured."
The question is gentle but direct. I appreciate that she doesn't dance around it. I take a breath.
I’ve kept most of my medical details to myself. I guess I never felt like public scrutiny of such private information could possibly help. But telling it to Anna doesn’t feel the same as telling people in my life.
"Trimalleolar fracture," I say. "Three bones. It happened during Nationals, two years ago. I fell on a jump I'd landed a thousand times." I keep my voice steady. "The doctors said I was lucky to walk without a limp."
"But you're skating right now," she points out.
"Slowly." I look down at my feet. "Carefully. Nothing like before."
"That's not what I see," Anna says simply. "What I see is someone who got back on the ice after a fracture that ends most careers. That's not nothing, Mollie."
My throat tightens. "It doesn't feel like enough."
"It never does, at first." She's quiet for a moment. "Can I ask you something personal?"
"Sure."
"Was there something else? Something beyond the injury that made you stop?"
The ice hums under my skates. I think about saying no, about giving her the clean version, the one where it's just about the ankle and the recovery timeline and the doctor's assessment. But she flew here for me, on my birthday, because my boyfriend noticed things about me that nobody else bothers to notice.
And she's asking me a real question.
"My coach," I say carefully. "Things got complicated with my coach before the fall. He was..." I search for the right word and land on the honest one. "Inappropriate? I guess? I was so used to it that I almost didn't notice it was happening." I swallow. "The fall happened right after a fight with him. I've always wondered if I was distracted. If I wasn't being punished, somehow."
Anna stops skating. She puts her hand on my arm and waits until I meet her eyes.
"It was not your fault," she says. "Not any part of it."
"Sure. I mean, I know that intellectually."
