Page 148 of Oh, Flutz!

Side-by-side quad Salchow. I take a deep breath, keeping an eye on Katya in my peripheral vision, making sure we’re properly spaced apart and take off at the same time.One. Two. Three. Four.

Landed. But I lose my footing, tripping over my toe pick, and have to struggle to stay upright as my blade skids back. I’m about to vomit all over the ice.Oh no, oh god, oh god.I just ruined it. I just ruined everything.

A “shit”jumps out of me, but before the panic can fully seize in my chest Katya shakes her head.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s—”

“It’s okay.”

She switches to backwards before I have a chance to say anything, and we move through the choreography as if nothing has happened—both of us have needed to work on that, which is ironic considering that’s all we seem to do off the ice. Pretend. Move on, but not really.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t even know what I’m doing, because I don’t have to think about it—it’s like we don’t even have choreography. All the movements come so easily, that I don’t need to think about it. All I need to do is look at her.

I’ve always been a more artistically-focused kind of skater, but I’ve never felt anything like this in a performance. This is on another level. Everything is dead silent except for our blades cutting into the ice, the wind whistling, and the already eerily empty track, free of excessive production, hypnotizing anyone who listens. Even before everything happened, this song was hard to listen to casually. The title really is fitting. It’s like a religious experience. Just like skating, if you do it right. And I think we’re finally doing it right.

Any half-decent pairs skater will tell you that non-verbal communication is what really matters. Why else would Lee be talking about it so endlessly for the last year?Connect. Meld. Understand.We’re ignoring the choreography, letting go, letting the music and muscle memory and whateverthisis between us take over. And it finally hits me that I’ve never had someone understand me in this way, on the ice and off; without needing any words. It hits me that maybe I wasn’t lying in all those interviews.

I’ve got her in my arms at the end once we stop, me down on one knee and her laying in my arms. I can hear the audience screaming, I can feel the vibration thrumming in my chest along with my heart. But all I can see is her. And it’s not scripted, but I bury my head in the crook between her neck and shoulder and hold on for dear fucking life, she’s whispering something about not worrying about that stumble, and usually I’d be shitting my pants worrying about a stupid mistake like that but all I can feel is her. All I can hear is the chanting in my head, in my heart, goingyou, you, you.

I can feel it, feel her, down to my bones, in my blood, solid and coursing like the ice under our blades. We get to our feet, but I’m still holding onto her. And she’s holding me too. Even when we finally let go, and I open my eyes to everyone and everything around us, all the people, all the cameras. But then she smiles, her whole face lit up and shaking her hands in mine like a giddy little kid, and there’s nothing else. It’s only her.

It's only her.

“I love you,” I say, before I can stop myself, before I can even really realize what I’m doing, but even though I’m half-dazed and half-panicked, I can’t fully make myself want to take it back anyway. And she doesn’t say anything. She just tosses her head back and laughs, scrunching her nose up and golden hair slipping off her shoulders, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.

She pulls me in and kisses me. And I almost pass out right there.

I pull her closer, twisting her hair in my hands. The audience roars impossibly louder, but I don’t pay attention.

An eternity seems to pass, but when she pulls away it feels like it’s over way too soon. We throw our hands up together, both of us grinning as we bow, and the crowd--well, there’s no other way to put it.

Everyone literally loses their shit.

We collapse into thekiss-and-cry, where we promptly get tackled by our coaches, who crush us with a massive bear hug.

“You guys wereamazing!” Juliet practically screams, and I laugh, taking her by the arms and sitting her down on the other side of me.

“You need to breathe,” I tell her, but I’m grinning so big my face hurts.

“She’s right,” Lian says firmly, reaching for both mine and Katya’s hands. “You did it. You were perfect.”

I shake my head. It might’ve been amazing, but it wasn’t perfect. Not really. “Yeah, other than when I—”

“No. Perfect.” Lian looks me dead in the eye, nodding. “You two need to put aside the rabid perfectionism for a second and realize what you just did. That wasspectacular. I’m not going to say you can’t do better technically. But what really makes a performance matter—listen, you don’t hear about people who watch a skate and say, wow, the physics of that was crazy, their edges were pristine, whatever. People don’t forget the emotion. That’s what people remember. How the skate made them feel. And, in that department, you guys just knocked it out of the park.”

Holy shit. I think that might be the first direct compliment I’ve gotten from my coach in the twelve years I’ve known her. “Jeez, Lee, you’re gonna make me cry or something.” I reach over Katya and pull Lian into a crushing hug.

“Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”

I pull away, and surprise is etched onto her face for a second before she smiles. Well, it’s close-lipped, and barely anything at all, but it’s asmile, goddamnit, and I finally cracked the stone that is Lian Chen. It only took over a decade of me driving her bananas.

But the voice of the announcer over the loudspeaker cuts through the adrenaline and the chattering of the audience. “The scores for Ekaterina Andreyeva and Bryan Young, from the Placid Valley Figure Skating Club.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Katya blurts, and I lace our fingers together.

“Please not on live television, Taylor and Marissa would have a field day,” I reply half-jokingly, even though I’m dangerously close to puking, too. The only thing keeping me from emptying my stomach in front of the American public is the thought of Taylor Davis’s stupid satisfied smirk.

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