Chapter six

The thing about sharing ice with a hockey team is that it requires a level of diplomatic patience I was not issued at birth.

I have tried to explain this to Bria, my roommate, who is a swimmer and therefore operates in her own lane literally and has never once had to negotiate rink time with seventeen men who treat every surface they occupy as something they conquered rather than borrowed. Bria's response was to make tea and say "that sounds really hard" in the voice she uses when she's listening but also reading something on her phone.

My point stands regardless.

Tuesday morning was our overlap day. The figure skating team had the ice from five to six thirty. Hockey had it from six thirty to eight. The agreement, such as it was, lived in a shared athletics calendar that both programs theoretically respected and practically treated as a loose suggestion when it suited them.

Today it suited them to arrive at six twenty.

I was in the middle of my step sequence the section of my program I'd been rebuilding since last semester, the footwork that connected two halves of a program that still didn't feel entirely like one cohesive thing when the doors opened and the sound of hockey equipment entered the rink approximately ten minutes before it was scheduled to.

I finished the sequence. I did not stop mid program. Stopping mid program for anything short of structural building failure was not something I did.

But when I came around the far end and looked toward the entrance, there was already a cluster of them at the boards, bags dropping, sticks clanking, the general ambient noise of a team that takes up more space than the people in it.

And there, second from the left, lacing his skates with the focused attention he gave everything, was Declan.

He hadn't seen me yet.

I used the not yet to compose my face into something neutral, which should not have required composure and did anyway, which I noted privately and filed under things to examine later, specifically never.

My teammate Sofía glided up beside me during my cooldown lap, which she always did when she had something to say and wanted the moving conversation to provide plausible deniability. Sofía was my closest friend on the figure skating team, a pairs skater from Miami who had opinions about everything and delivered them with the warmth of someone who wanted you to take the opinion seriously but not personally.

"They're early again," she said.

"Ten minutes," I confirmed.

"Briggs is going to stand there and pretend not to know what time it is."

We both looked at Coach Briggs, who was indeed standing at the entrance with the expression of a man consulting an internal clock that ran slightly fast and saw nothing wrong with this.

"I'm going to say something," I said.

"You always say something," Sofía said.

"Because it keeps happening."

"You could also just" she made a vague gesture.

"Let it go?"

"I was going to say accept the chaos but that works too."

I looked at her. She smiled at me with the serenity of someone who had made peace with imperfect rink scheduling and genuinely could not comprehend why I hadn't followed.

I skated toward the boards.

Briggs saw me coming. His expression did the specific thing it always did when I approached with a professional grievance not defensive, not dismissive, but carefully neutral in the way of someone who respects your right to the grievance while also having absolutely no intention of changing anything.

"Miss Torres," he said.

"Coach Briggs," I said. "Six thirty."

"We're warming up at the boards," he said. "Not on the ice."

"The agreement is six thirty ice access," I said. "The boards are the entrance to the ice."

"The boards are the boards."

"The boards are" I stopped. This was a philosophical argument about the ontological status of hockey boards and I had a nine AM lecture. "Six thirty," I said. "Please."

"Six thirty," he confirmed, with the tone of someone confirming something they had no memory of agreeing to.

I turned back to the ice.

Declan was at the gate, skates on now, watching this exchange with both hands on the top of the boards and an expression of careful non-involvement that told me he'd been watching the whole time and had made a strategic decision to stay out of it. Smart. Annoying, but smart.

"Nice sequence," he said, as I passed.

I looked at him.

"The footwork," he said. "Before we came in. I watched from the door for a second. It's good."

I held his gaze for a moment. "You're early."

"Briggs is early," he said. "I go where the team goes."

"Then maybe tell Briggs"

"I have told Briggs," he said, quietly enough that it was just between us. "Three times. He believes the calendar is a recommendation."

I looked at him. He looked back with an expression of genuine, slightly exhausted solidarity that was so unexpected I didn't have an immediate response to it.

"Six thirty," I said finally.

"Six thirty," he agreed.

I went back to my cooldown.

Sofía was waiting for me at the boards with my water bottle and an expression that communicated she had observed the entire exchange and drawn a series of conclusions she was restraining herself from stating.

"He told Briggs," I said, preemptively.

"I heard," she said.

"Three times apparently."

"Mm," she said.

"That's not it's just useful information. For the rink situation."

"Absolutely," Sofía said, handing me the water bottle. "Very practical."

I drank my water and watched Harlow hockey take the ice at six twenty nine, which was technically not six-thirty but was close enough that I decided to count it as a win and gather my things.

I was unlacing my skates on the bench when someone sat down two seats over that wasn't Sofía.

I looked up.