Chapter Nine

Declan stopped just inside the entrance."Hey oh." He had his skates over one shoulder and a coffee in each hand and the expression of someone who has walked into a room and immediately understood they've walked into something. "Practice ended early," he said. "I thought you'd be"

"I'm just finishing up," I said.

He looked at me. Then on the ice. Then back at me.

"You okay?" he said.

"Fine," I said.

He walked to the boards and set both coffees down on the ledge. He didn't say anything else. He sat on the bench and started lacing his skates, slowly, with the patience of someone who had nowhere particular to be and was not going to perform urgency to fill silence.

I skated to the boards and picked up one of the coffees. Terrible vending machine. I didn't ask how he knew I'd want it. He didn't explain.

"The Lutz?" he said, without looking up from his laces.

I wrapped both hands around the cup. "Entry work," I said. "Not the jump."

"But you pulled out."

"Three times."

He finished lacing. He looked up. "What does it feel like? When you pull out."

I thought about how to answer. "Like the jump makes a decision before I do," I said. "Like something downstream of my brain just votes no. Without consulting me."

"And you can't override it."

"I haven't yet."

He was quiet for a moment. He stepped onto the ice and glided a slow circle, unhurried, the way he always moved when he was thinking. "When I future trip," he said, "when I'm already at the next shift before this one's done, Briggs says it's because I'm trying to control the outcome before I've done the work that creates the outcome." He completed the circle and stopped near the boards. "Like I'm trying to skip to a place I haven't earned yet."

I looked at my coffee.

"That's not what I'm doing," I said.

"I know," he said. "You're doing the opposite. You're already at the fall before the jump happens."

The rink was quiet around us. The overhead lights hummed.

"That's not a new observation," I said. "I know that's the problem."

"I'm not trying to give you new information," he said. "I'm just" he paused. I watch you skate twice a week. You're not afraid of the ice. You're not afraid of the speed. You're not even afraid of the jump." He held my gaze. "You're afraid of the specific moment where you commit and it's not undoable anymore. Where you've left the ice and there's no version of the next two seconds that doesn't require you to fully trust yourself."

I stood at the boards and felt the words land in a specific way not like critique, not like pity, but like something being named that had been living unnamed for two years and was tired of going without a word for itself.

"Don't," I said.

His expression shifted. "Don't what?"

"Don't be" I stopped. I looked at the ice. "Don't be perceptive to me right now. I'm having a bad practice and I don't need you to fix it."

"I'm not trying to fix it."

"It sounds like fixing."

"It sounds like" he exhaled "I'm trying to say something true and you're closing the door before it finishes." He wasn't heated about it. He was patient in a way that was somehow more frustrating than heat. "You do that."

"I do a lot of things," I said.

"You manage everything," he said. "You structure everything. And when something doesn't fit the structure you work harder instead of"

"Instead of what?" I said. "Instead of standing in the middle of the ice until someone skates over and explains me to myself?"

He was quiet.

"I don't need that," I said. "I don't need you to watch my practice footage and show up with observations. I'm not a project."

The words landed harder than I'd intended. I could see it not in a flinch, Declan didn't flinch, but in the slight stillness that preceded his careful version of a response.

"I know you're not a project," he said.

"Then why"

"Because I wanted to," he said. Simply. No performance around it, no cushioning. "I watched the footage because I wanted to see you skate. I show up with coffee because I want to. That's it. There's no angle."

The rink held the quiet.

I looked at the ice. At the center, where I'd been standing when he walked in. At the spot where the entry for the quad Lutz would begin if I started it from the east wall.

"I know there's no angle," I said, after a moment. Quieter.

"Okay."

"I just" I looked at my coffee. "It's easier when it's structured. The profile, the sessions, the journalism. When there's a reason."

"And without a reason?" he said.

I didn't answer.

He didn't push it.

We stayed at the boards for a while in the particular silence that lives after something true has been said and not yet fully absorbed. The ice waited. The lights hummed. Outside, somewhere, the east lot geese were presumably doing whatever geese did in February, which was probably also not nothing.

"I should go," I said eventually. "Essay outline's due Friday."

"The personal essay?"

"The coming back one." I pushed off the boards. "Hendricks thinks I have a natural angle."

"Do you?"

I looked at the ice. At the center. At the east wall.

"I'm starting to think I might," I said.

I gathered my things. I was almost at the exit when he said my name.

Not Torres. Not hey. Just Zara. Singular and unhurried, the way he said things he meant.

I turned around.