Page 45 of About to Fall

I could have leaned over. Asked if he was okay. Made some smartass comment about his movie selection. Offered him gum. Done literally anything to break the spiral I could see building behind those blue eyes.

But Renaud was right there, placidly turning pages, and Nicky had made it very clear since Québec that whatever fragile thing existed between us was not something he wanted acknowledged.

Definitely not in front of his uncle.

So I stayed on my side of the aisle.

Watched him fidget. Tried to sleep. Couldn’t. Tried to watch a movie and lost the plot in about seven minutes. Tried to read and made it through the same paragraph four times.

Eventually, I passed out somewhere over the Pacific.

The last thing I saw was Nicky still awake, staring at the seatback screen with the blank expression of someone who was very much somewhere else.

◆◆◆

The hotel in Osaka was the kind of place that international skating events always used—bland, boring, beige. The lobby was crawling with athletes and coaches and federation officials all doing that thing where they pretended to be relaxed while radiating competitive tension from every pore. Renaud and Nicky had gone to check us in and get our room keys while Sabrina and I lingered in the lobby with the luggage.

“Théo!” Sabrina shouted and I turned in the direction she was calling.

There he was. Standing near the elevator bank. He looked thin and pale, dark circles like bruises under his eyes. Not just jetlagged but tired. He was wearing a pullover with another rink's logo on it. It was so weird to think of it as my rink and that Théo was the defector. I didn't recognize the older man next to him gripping a cup of coffee. His new coach. The Chicago downgrade.

Sabrina was already in motion. She hit Théo at full speed—a collision of red hair and enthusiasm that made him stagger back a step before he wrapped his arms around her.

And then they were talking. Fast, overlapping, Sabrina's hands on his shoulders examining him like a mother inspecting a child she'd left in someone else's care. Théo was smiling—a real smile, not his usual tight lipped press smile—and for a second I thought maybe the guy couldn't be that bad if he could draw that kind of reaction from someone as sharp as Sabrina.

For a second.

And then Nicky appeared. He had our room keys in his hand. Renaud was probably already across the lobby charming the people who actually mattered to him. Nicky was wearing his tortoiseshell glasses—no contacts for long flights—and he wasn't paying attention at first. Just walking toward me, sorting through the key cards.

Then he looked up.

And saw Théo.

And Théo saw him.

The lobby didn't go quiet like it would in a movie. People kept walking, phones kept ringing, the front desk kept checking in guests who had no idea they were witnessing the most loaded eye contact in Canadian figure skating history. But something shifted in the air between the two of them—a charge, a recognition, the particular electricity of two people with a mountain of unfinished shit encountering each other in a space where the only acceptable response was professionalism.

I stood there and watched it happen. Lucky me.

“Nico.” Théo said it softly. His name in Théo's mouth sounded different than it did in anyone else's. Gentler. Almost tender. Like a lover.

Cool. Great. Not at all making me want to put my fist through a wall.

“Théo.” Nicky hesitated—that awkward moment where neither of them could decide the appropriate level of physical contact—and then went for a quick hug. Brief, careful, the kind where you patted once and pulled back. “It's good to see you.”

“You too.” Théo's eyes were already scanning Nicky's face—quick, clinical, cataloguing damage. The way he looked at him put me on edge.

“Did you just get in?”

“Last night. Long travel day. Layover at LAX.”

“How was the flight?”

“You know LAX.”

They both laughed—short, strained, the shared shorthand of people who'd spent years travelling the same circuit—and I stood there like a potted plant trying to remember how my legs worked.

I should leave. But my feet seemed to be glued to the beige ceramic tile.