Page 127 of Ice Princesses
He doesn’t right away, but when he does, his eyes are glassy and the edges of his eyelashes are damp.
“You’re ready,” I say. “Not because you’re not scared. Because you are—your body knows how to run this program, and you are here, competing with the top athletes in your sport. That’s pretty fucking amazing, isn’t it?”
“Ceci,” he huffs again and swallows hard. I track the movement down his throat, but then focus back on his face. “What if I mess it up?”
“Then you mess it up,” I say simply. “And you skate through it. Like you’ve been doing all week.”
The Zamboni finally clears the ice and the doors open. The cold rushes in, sharp and familiar, and the noise swells—music cues, blades biting into fresh ice, the low hum of a crowd that doesn’t know yet somethingmonumentalis about to happen.
Rodrigo stands. He towers over me now, all long limbs and nerves, but he waits like he always does. For permission but also for anchoring.
I tap his shin once. “Andá.”
He nods and pushes towards the boards, and I take a few steps slowly, stopping where I always stop. The same place I’ve stood since he was twelve and could barely land a double without lifting his head up and grinning in celebration.
The announcer’s voice echoes through the arena after a while, reciting the order in the program and other formalities. Names, countries, and the formal language of judgment.
Rodrigo takes the ice after two skaters from France, and for a brief second I can see it—the flicker where fear threatens to take over his body. Then the music starts, and his muscles remember before his mind can run interference.
He opens strong and doesn’t rush, and that alone feels like a victory.
The first jump snaps clean. The second one is a little tighter, a touch short, but he saves it without any panic and keeps going, almost intentional. I know the judges will see it, but I doubt he will lose many points with that correction. My hands curl into fists inside my jacket, not because I’m nervous, but because I refuse to celebrate too early.
Halfway through his program, I realize something is different in him.
He’s not skating for me or for the judges or for the crowds.
He’s skating because he really wants this, and that is so, so evident in how he is moving on the ice.
The step sequence is alive, not perfect but honest, and when he commits to the final jump, he does it with everything he has left in him. He lands a quadruple Lutz slightly forward but is still upright and moving, and his eyes shine with pride.
By the time the music ends, my throat is tight enough that it hurts.
Rodrigo skids to a stop, chest heaving, eyes searching the boards. When they find me, I don’t nod right away. I wait until his breathing slows and he’s back inside his body.
Then I nod.
That’s when he breaks. It’s not dramatic. Just a sharp inhale and a hand to his mouth like he can’t believe what just happened.
The kiss-and-cry feels like purgatory. We sit side by side while they replay runs on the screen, every mistake magnified, and every recovery dissected. Rodrigo is not watching, but I can see when they replay that Lutz over and over again, because he just accomplished something incredible at the Olympics, something about never being done before by a male skater.
I keep my face neutral and my posture relaxed. Inside, I’m counting. Elements. Base value. Grade of execution. Doing math that I never wanted to learn but had to, because no one else was going to do it for us.
The score comes up.
It’s enough. Not perfect and not gold but very solid.
Second overall.
For a moment, the world goes completely quiet.
Then Rodrigo turns to me with a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “Ceci.”
I pull him into my shoulder before he can say anything else, before the cameras zoom in close enough to catch the way his hands are shaking and tears fill his eyes.
“You did it,” I murmur into his hair. “You did it.”
He nods against me, overwhelmed, and when we stand, the reality settles in all at once. Argentina has an Olympic medalist. Not someday.
