Page 31 of About to Fall

He wasn't wrong. Adrian's Instagram was not exactly modest. I'd looked at it. Purely out of idle curiosity. I also checked the feeds of other prominent skaters—Larsson from Sweden, Shimizu from Japan. Keeping tabs on the competition. Normal reconnaissance.

Adrian's feed was a chaotic collection of competition shots, candid moments with friends, and a quantity of shirtless photographs that suggested his torso was allergic to fabric.

He looked good but unfortunately he knew it.

The room was a disaster.

Both beds had been claimed in different ways—clothes across one, sheets already pulled back on the other, his suitcase open on the floor with its contents escaping onto the carpet. His toiletry bag was visible through the half-open bathroom door. His jacket was on the desk chair. His charger was in the only outlet near the beds.

“Which bed are you taking?” I asked flatly.

Another shrug and then he dropped backwards onto the bed with the pulled back sheets, one arm going behind his head, the picture of ease. The towel shifted with the movement, sliding to a genuinely dangerous angle, and an entirely unreasonable amount of thigh came into view. There was a tattoo there, I couldn't see what from this angle and I was not going to look harder to find out.

I looked away.

I picked up the clothes on the other bed one item at a time—a henley, a pair of joggers, a hoodie that smelled faintly of whatever he vaped—and deposited them on top of the open suitcase with more precision than was strictly necessary.

Adrian watched me do it. Made no move to help or apologize or acknowledge that the clothes had been on my bed in the first place. Just tracked me with those dark eyes from his horizontal position like I was a mildly entertaining TV show.

“Rough flight?” he asked when he finally spoke.

“It was fine.”

“You look tense.”

“I'm fine.”

“You're folding my clothes.”

I looked down. I was, in fact, refolding his henley with the automatic precision of someone who had been trained since adolescence to be neat in shared spaces. I dropped it down on the suitcase like it was on fire and stepped back.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I said and took my bag into the bathroom and locked the door. Adrian was not going to get under my skin this trip. I had made a promise to myself on the flight—keep it professional, keep it distant, keep the wall up. He was a training partner and a competitor and nothing else.

15. Nico

I splashed cold water on my face while I waited for the shower to heat up. Steam was beginning to cloud the top part of the mirror. I was going to take the world's longest shower to avoid Adrian. Cowardly? Yes. Did I care? No.

I unbuttoned my dress shirt slowly, working down from the collar, and let the last hour wash through me the way Dr. Priya had suggested—not pushing it away, not swallowing it whole, just letting it move.

The interview. My mind kept circling back to it, picking at the edges the way I always did—replaying every answer, cataloguing every pause, wondering if Claire had noticed the tightness in my smile or the careful way I'd said more honesty like it was a teaser for the new season rather than a confession I hadn't meant to make.

Renaud had arranged it before I'd landed. I'd stepped off the plane in travel clothes and been handed a note from the federation liaison—SkateWorld wanted fifteen minutes. SkateWorld was not a small outlet. It was the kind of platform where an interview lived permanently, screenshotted and referenced for years. It would have been incredibly awkward to decline after my uncle had already agreed on my behalf.

So I'd changed in a public bathroom and spent half an hour—not fifteen minutes—with a journalist named Claire who had kind eyes and precise questions.

Why was I absent from the Maple Leaf Classic? Dehydration and exhaustion. My body needed rest and I made the decision, in consultation with my doctor and Coach Renaud, to prioritize my long term health over one competition.

How was I feeling about the Olympic season? Excited and focused.

How was training with Adrian Zhao? Adrian is one of the best skaters in the country. Coach Renaud's program is stronger for having him.

What can fans expect from you this season? Anything different? More honesty, I'd said. It had slipped out before I could dress it up into something safer. I think my skating has more emotional depth this year. I've grown. I want people to feel that.

Every answer clean. Every answer true enough. Every answer built to protect the narrative Renaud needed—his reputation, his program, the carefully managed story that nothing had gone wrong, that his nephew had simply rested and returned and everything was proceeding according to plan.

I was good at this. I had always been good at this and I wasn't sure anymore whether to be proud of it or frightened by it.

Then the last question.