"They're categorically different."
She gives me a look I can't fully decode, the same one she had in the car. The tension is right there between us the way it always is lately, thick enough to choke on. I don't do anything about it because I told her I'd stop being weird, and I intend to keep that promise for at least the next forty-eight hours.
"Think about it," I say.
"I'll think about it," she says, which is not a no.
We're quiet for a bit. Gordie relocates from her lap to the floor, and sprawls out like a small horse. The late afternoon light comes through the windows at a long angle.
"When are you going to skate again?" I ask. "Actually skate. Not just for content."
Her expression closes down a little, subtle, but there. "I skated today."
"Hey, that’s big. I’ve been wondering when you were going to make the leap."
“Oh?” She looks at the middle distance. "And here I thought you were going to try to force me to walk on the ice again."
I pull a face. “I’m sorry that you fell. But I’m not sorry for getting you back on the ice.”
"It's not as simple as that." She picks at the seam of a throw pillow. "My head is broken. When your body fails you like that, you stop trusting it. You stop trusting yourself. Skating stopped beingmineat some point. It went from something I loved to something that happened to me."
She says it matter-of-factly, smoothed over and practiced, and I know she's told this version before. Thecleaned-up version, where the ending is about her injury and her own head, and nothing else.
"When did that happen?" I ask. "After the fall?"
She doesn't answer right away. "After things got weird with Coach Savard, actually." She says it like it's an afterthought, already reaching for her phone on the cushion beside her. "The fall just made it easier to stop. Anyway, I was thinking we could?—"
"Wait, wait. Who's Savard?"
"My old coach." She's scrolling now, eyes on the screen. "It doesn't matter. Ancient history." She looks up. "Do you want to order food? I could eat a wall."
I look at her. She looks back at me, her expression set, her thumb hovering over a delivery app.
"Yeah," I say. "Order whatever you want."
Things got weird with her coach.
She said it like it was nothing, a footnote.
People don't quit the thing they love most because something got weird. They definitely don't say they did in that flat, practiced voice and then immediately change the subject if it was just weird.Weirddoesn't hollow a person out. And it doesn't make someone say skating stopped feeling likemine.
I order pizza, and keep my mouth shut, and I file the name Savard away somewhere deep and specific. I’m going to look him up when I’m alone.
Why don’t I know anything about the guy?
Whatever the reason is, that fact is about to change.
Chapter Eleven
Mollie
I'm sitting on the sidelines watching as Beck and Thorne race from one end of the practice rink to the other. Beck is back to training full time, as Rosie is feeling better. It’s comforting to have my brother back.
When Thorne beats Beck by a half a second, he fist-pumps. "Yessssss. I told you that you were getting old."
Beck knocks Thorne's shoulder with his own. "You had an advantage."
"What, being cooler than you?"
