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This is what a routine looks like when you build it out of stolen hours and shared exhaustion. I didn’t know I wanted this specific kind of ordinary until I had it. Nobody warns you that the good version of a relationship is mostly just logistics — whose night is whose, who’s tired from what, who needs to talk and who just needs quiet. Nobody tells you that’s the romantic part.

Friday practice goes badly.

Not catastrophically. Nobody gets hurt. Nothing’s actually wrong. But the extension into full extension off the cradle catch keeps landing a half-second late, and Coach Torres calls it three times in a row with the specific patience of a woman who is rapidly running out of patience.

“Again,” she says. “Full extension means full extension, Margo. You’re bailing early.”

“I’m not bailing early.”

“You’re bailing early.” She claps twice. “From the top.”

We run it again. I bail early again. My knees don’t fully lock. My arms come back toward my body a fraction of a second before they should. The exact fraction that turns a clean line into a sloppy one. I know I’m doing it. I can’t stop doing it. That’s its own specific kind of infuriating. The gap between knowing exactly what’s wrong and being physically unable to fix it in the moment.

“Fuck,” I mutter, under my breath, landing the dismount rougher than I mean to. My ankle catches wrong on the mat. Nothing serious. Just enough to sting.

Wren, spotting nearby for the hockey team’s off-ice conditioning, glances over with a raised eyebrow. I wave her off before she can say anything.

We run it four more times. My legs are shaking by the third. By the fifth, it’s close. Not perfect. Close.

“Better,” Coach Torres says, which from her is basically a standing ovation. “Go home. Ice your ankles. We do this again Sunday.”

I don’t go home. I go to Raven House instead, still in my practice gear, hair still damp with sweat, because the specific loop running in my head needs someone else in the room to interrupt it.

Theo takes one look at me in the doorway and doesn’t ask if I’m okay, because he already knows the answer and asking would just make me perform the lie.

“Bad practice,” he says. Not a question.

“The extension’s off.” I drop onto his bed, face-first, and speak into his comforter. “I know exactly what’s wrong. I know exactly what I’m doing wrong. I cannot stop doing it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m bailing early off the cradle catch. Rushing the extension because I’m scared of the drop.” I turn my head sideways to look at him. “Which is insane, because I’ve done this stunt two hundred times. I know Kara and Elena catch me. I’ve never once actually fallen. But my body’s decided this is the week to develop a fear response.”

He sits down beside me. Doesn’t touch me yet. Lets me have the space to finish being frustrated first.

“Nationals is in five weeks,” I say. “Five weeks, and I’m out here bailing on a stunt I could do in my sleep in September.”

“You’re not out here bailing on it in September.” He says it evenly. “You’re bailing on it now, this week, under pressure that didn’t exist in September. That’s not the same thing as losing the skill.”

“It feels like the same thing.”

“It’s not.” He shifts, finally puts a hand on my back, low and warm. “You want to know what I do when a read starts going wrong mid-season? When I’m suddenly missing gaps I’ve been closing clean since October?”

“What?”

“I go back to the fundamentals. Not the fancy stuff. The boring stuff. Foot position. Stick on the ice. The things I learned when I was nine years old, before any of it mattered.” He rubs slow circles against my spine. “The pressure doesn’t break the skill. It breaks the trust in the skill. Different problem. Different fix.”

I consider this. It’s annoyingly good advice, delivered in four sentences, which is very him — economical even in comfort.

“When did you get so wise?” I say, into the comforter.

“I’m not wise. I’ve just made every possible version of this mistake already.” He keeps rubbing my back. “You’ll land it Sunday.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” He says it simply, like it’s just a fact and not the single most reassuring thing anyone’s said to me all week. “You’ve never once quit on something you actually cared about. You’re not going to start with a stunt.”

I don’t say anything for a while. I just let him rub my back and let the tightness in my shoulders unwind by degrees, and somewhere in there the specific panic of the day loosens its grip enough that I can breathe normally again.