Page 3 of About to Fall

But here I was, lying in that childhood bedroom at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling. Just like I did every night in my apartment in Toronto. The same thoughts circling. The same failures replaying.

The botched spin sequence at practice on Thursday. The way Coach Renaud had looked at me afterward—not angry, just disappointed, which was worse. The interview I had fumbled last week, saying something awkward that the skating forums were probably still dissecting. The text from Kat I hadn’t answered.

My chest felt tight. Like someone had wrapped a band around my ribs and was slowly cranking it tighter. My breathing had gone shallow—quick, insufficient little gulps that weren't getting enough air where it needed to go.

I got out of bed and dug through my overnight bag until I found the bottle of pills my doctor had prescribed. They were supposed to help me sleep. I probably needed to get the dosage adjusted because they weren’t working. I had taken two earlier and still my mind wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t slow down. Wouldn’t let me rest.

My hands were shaking when I unscrewed the cap. The tremor was getting worse—fine motor control going to shit the way it always did when the panic started creeping in. My heart was beating too fast, a frantic rhythm against my sternum that made my whole body feel like it was vibrating.

I went to the bathroom down the hall to fill a water glass. Had to grip the sink for a moment because my vision had started doing that thing where the edges went fuzzy and dark. My skin felt cold and clammy, sweat breaking out along my hairline even though I was shivering.

I was just so tired. If I could only sleep. If I could only turn my brain off for a few hours, maybe I could face tomorrow. Maybe I could be the person everyone needed me to be. Maybe I could stop feeling like I was held together with fragile thread.

I looked at the bottle in my hand.

Two hadn’t worked. Maybe three would help.

I swallowed a third pill. Then a fourth. The tightness in my chest didn't ease. My hands kept shaking. My heart kept racing.

I don't remember how many I took after that.

Please let me sleep.

I'm so tired.

I just want my brain to be quiet.

Time passed strangely after that. The bathroom tile was cold against my cheek, which was odd, because I didn't remember deciding to lie down. The light overhead was too bright and then very far away, like I was looking at it from the bottom of a pool.

Somewhere, a door. Footsteps.

Then my mother's voice—calling my name, once, twice, the pitch climbing into something I'd never heard from her before. I wanted to tell her I was fine. That I just needed to sleep. But the words wouldn't come out and her face wouldn't come into focus, hovering above me, terrified, her hands on my cheeks.

The lights seemed to dim—

6 Weeks Later…

3. Nico

I was hallucinating.

Or maybe I needed to get eyes checked. I blinked rapidly. Rubbed my eyes. Shook the hair out of my face.

Nope.

He was still there.

I stood in the tunnel that led from the locker rooms to the ice, my skate bag hanging off one shoulder, and stared through the plexiglass like an idiot. Like if I looked long enough the image would correct itself. Resolve into someone else. Anyone else.

He looked different than the last time I'd seen him. To be fair, he looked different every time I saw him—Adrian Zhao treated his appearance the way other skaters treated their programs, constantly tweaked, never quite the same twice. I only saw his side profile from here but even so I recognized him immediately. It seemed like I couldn’t avoid chaos in my life these days.

His hair was pale pink now, soft and overgrown, curling against the nape of his neck. I could see the silver ring that circled the corner of his lower lip and knew without having to look that there was a matching one on the other side. The rink lights caught on the tiny pink gemstone in his nose—chosen to match the hair, obviously—and his ears were stacked with silver. His fingers were covered in rings and delicate tattoos, and I knew there were more beneath the long sleeved compression shirt he had on. They peeked out from under the sheer competition shirts he favoured. Floaty, barely there things that somehow read as high fashion rather than underdressed. The fans ate it up. Everything that should have worked against him had a way of working for him instead.

I hated that about him.

He was on the ice now, moving through what looked like a warm up lap, unhurried and loose limbed, and even at half effort there was something in the way he moved that made it hard to look away. I forced myself to anyway.

What was he doing in my home territory? At my rink? On my ice?