Page 62 of About to Fall

Something in my chest tugged.

I told myself it was satisfaction. The thrill of competition.

But it felt a lot like disappointment.

29. Nico

Toronto felt different after Osaka.

The city seemed to match my mood—grey and cold and miserable. I knew it was just one skate but it felt like I had proven all the haters right. That the golden prince might be tarnished beyond repair. I scraped through my quad Salchow during the free skate and managed to cling on to fourth place. My worst international result since juniors.

Renaud hadn't said much on the flight home. He hadn't needed to. His silence was louder than any critique.

So I did what I always did when the world got too heavy. I made dinner plans with my best friend.

The sea bass was resting under foil, the lemon and dill fragrant enough to fill the small kitchen. Side salad dressed. Kat's favourite cocktail—vodka, elderflower, a splash of grapefruit, more ice than liquid—sweating on the counter beside mine.

I'd been standing at the window for ten minutes, watching the city lights blur into streaks against the glass, not really seeing any of it.

This morning's practice session kept replaying. Adrian on the opposite end of the rink, moving through his step sequence. The careful distance we'd maintained since well before Osaka. At least publicly.

Weeks of dancing around each other. Not avoidance exactly—we still trained in the same facility, still passed each other in hallways, still occupied the same competitive universe. But something had shifted. A door had opened that neither of us knew how to close and now we were both pretending it hadn't happened while being excruciatingly aware that it had.

This morning, for one unguarded second, our eyes had met across the ice. He'd been mid-crossover, I'd been resetting for my step sequence, and it just—happened. A zap of awareness that went through me like a current. Everything from Osaka compressed into a single look—the anger, the heat, his hands on my skin, the way he'd said there he is like finding the real me was something worth celebrating.

Then he'd looked away. Quickly. Deliberately. And kept skating like the moment had never happened.

It was for the best. I knew that. I had finally confessed to Dr. Priya that I was attracted to Adrian but stopped short of confessing that we had slept together. We spent the whole session dissecting what it meant. Why I kept reaching for people who ran too hot. The pattern was clear enough that even I couldn't pretend not to see it.

But knowing the pattern didn't stop the ache. Because Adrian had made me feel like I was allowed to want things. Like my anger wasn't shameful and my desires weren't inconvenient and the messy, imperfect, unpolished version of me was worth showing up for. He had kicked open a door I'd spent my whole life keeping shut and then—what? Walked away? Gone back to his side of the rink and his sleeveless training shirts and his unbothered existence like none of it mattered?

That was the part that made me want to throw something. Not the rejection—I could handle rejection, I'd been handling it my whole life. It was the permission. He'd given me permission to be real and then taken it back without warning, and now I was standing here with all these sharp, inconvenient feelings and nowhere safe to put them.

My phone buzzed.

Kat: Sorry, running late. Madame is a sadist. Be there in 20.

Kat was always late. I blamed her ballet mistress more than her—the woman was a dictator in pointe shoes. She had a cane. Claimed it was for keeping the beat but I'd visited the studio enough times to watch her use it to correct a turned out hip or a lazy port de bras. Old school Russian training at its finest.

I checked the sea bass. Adjusted a place setting. Tried not to think about Adrian in his sleeveless training shirt, the tattoos on his forearms glistening with sweat, the way his jaw had clenched when he'd looked away from me.

Failed.

The buzzer finally sounded 30 minutes later and then Kat was sweeping through my door in a flurry of cold air and expensive perfume, shedding her ankle length wool coat to reveal a cropped cream sweater over high waisted pinstriped trousers. Effortlessly chic—like she'd thrown it together in five minutes and accidentally looked like she'd stepped off a runway.

Katerina Smirnova was the principal dancer for the TMB and she looked the part even offstage. Dark hair swept into a low knot at the base of her neck. Cheekbones that could cut glass. Eyes so blue they bordered on unsettling—pale and sharp and always watching. Full lips that defaulted to a pout that photographers loved and that she weaponized in conversation when she wanted something.

We'd known each other since we were five, thrown together in the same beginner ballet class before either of us understood what our bodies would eventually be asked to do. She'd stayed and I'd pivoted to the ice. But something about those early years had bonded us in a way that nothing since had managed to undo.

“That woman,” Kat announced, dropping onto my couch and immediately reaching for her cocktail, “is going to be the death of me. Fifty years old and she still moves like she has something to prove. Today she made the corps repeat the snow scene 17 times because—and I quote—the falling was not tragic enough.”

“The falling?”

“The choreography. When we collapse at the end. She wants existential despair and she's getting mild inconvenience.” She took a long sip and closed her eyes. “I'm going to murder her before opening night. They'll have to find a new Snow Queen.”

“I’m sure Natasha would love to step up.”

“God, I would rather dance on a broken toe than let her take my part.” She kicked off her ankle boots and tucked her feet beneath her. “It's fine. I love suffering. It builds character.”