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As far as Scott was concerned, the call from the Stars on Ice creative team couldn’t have come at a better time. He was newly retired from competition, newly exploring the world of coaching and choreographing, and newly abandoned by his partner of 21 years. He was also in a moment of weakness.
So when they’d sent Kurt Browning as their emissary (to go on about how it was 2019 and the buzz from The Most Exciting Olympics Ever had worn off and so many of the previous year’s Olympians were taking the year off from touring to, ya know, build a life outside of skating, yadda yadda yadda), of course Scott had said yes before the offer had even been fully laid out on the table. And Kurt had laughed because that was just so Scott of him, then proceeded to tell him that they needed some fresh eyes and a fresh brain to create some new routines.
Yes, a thousand times, yes, Scott had said. And he’d gotten to work. Or, he was trying to.
Real talk, though, he was working through some shit right now, so maybe this exact moment on this exact day wasn’t the best time for him to be alone, on the ice, at his home rink in Ilderton, trying to choreograph routines in his head.
Because like any artist, writer, or composer whose emotions made them do weird stuff, Choreographer Scott, who was very emotional at this moment, thank you very much, was really just spinning around aimlessly, throwing himself into moves that, for all practical purposes, could probably never be performed because they were ridiculous.
But he kept gliding across the ice, soulfully pantomiming the lines and the rotations of an insane series of imaginary lifts with an invisible partner--lifts he desperately wanted to try because he couldn’t get them out of his head. Practical or not, he could envision them perfectly, like someone had already filmed him performing them--with Tessa, of course--and uploaded the video to a YouTube channel in his mind.
He spun into a potential ending pose at center ice, which he held for a second before he broke, looked around, and shrugged to the empty stands. At the very least, if the elements worked out, they would be interesting and maybe a little surprising. And that’s all he wanted--to create interesting, surprising elements that would make audiences feel something.
And, okay, maybe it’d be nice if Tessa saw them and felt something, too. Because try as he might, he couldn’t stop wanting to do things that made her proud.
I do it for Tess.
He’d said those words over and over, so many times in the last 20 years, and now he was constantly redirecting himself.
I DID it for Tess. And now, I do it for myself.
And he did, truly. Tessa was off building her empire. And, quaint as this was in comparison--coaching in his hometown arena, having creative meetings with the SOI team, dreaming up routines that he could watch other people rehearse and perform a billion times, rather than having to rehearse and perform them himself--this, right here, was Scott’s empire. His dream. And, by and large, it made him happy.
Even tonight, at this exact moment , it was kind of fun--kind of liberating--to be pursuing his own dream. A dream that was still a little abstract and unpredictable, but not ruled by training and competitions and the constant, ratcheting pressure of the Olympic quadrennial.
A dream that, for the first time in his life, wasn’t deeply intertwined with the dreams of someone else.
Speaking of which.
He shooshed to a stop at the boards, where he’d left his phone. It was 11:13pm, Eastern Time, February 19th. He quickly counted forward 14 hours. Yep.
One year, almost to the minute, since they were in PyeongChang, taking the ice to skate the routine of their lives.
Should he call?
They had made an agreement to “be supportive, but give space” in these first couple months of being apart.
“Like a newly divorced couple, but nicer,” their counselor had told them. “A divorced couple who want different things, but are still caring and amicable towards one another because...maybe they have a child together. One that they’ve been raising for twenty years. One that is still an important part of their lives.”
There was an awkward silence, which, of course, Scott was the one to break.
“So, wait. Which one of us is the child?” He had asked, before it dawned on him. “OH. Our skating career is the child? Our skating career is the child.” He deadpanned, turning to look at Tessa, who let out a glorious peal of laughter.
“Yes. Skating is your child,” the counselor had said, fully serious. “Be nice to it. Hold it sacred. But take some time before you come back and visit with it together. Give yourselves the time and space to figure out how to be single parents and how to deal, alone, with the child you raised together. Figure out how to parent it in your own ways.”
Their therapist was a brilliant, brilliant woman, and they took that idea, which had sounded so crazy at first, very seriously. Time. Space. Support. They were making it work.
But today was an anniversary, of sorts.
No, even better, it was their metaphorical child’s birthday.
And that certainly warranted a phone call.
He thumbed through his contacts, but before he could press his thumb on her name, the phone sprang to life, and her face popped up on the screen. She’d beaten him to it.
“It’s Roxanne’s birthdayyyyy!” Scott yelled, instead of hello, as Tessa’s face came into focus.
She was already laughing that wonderful laugh. “Happy birthday Roxanne!” She shouted back at him. Then, more quietly, to people Scott couldn’t see, “Sorry, sorry, that was loud. I’m sorry. I swear.”
“Where are you right now?” He asked, peering at the screen, as if he could lean around the edges of his phone case and fall into wherever she was.
“I’m on the train! The train, Scott! I’m headed home from a late lecture and I’m taking THE TRAIN. To my APARTMENT. In LINCOLN PARK.”
They had traveled the world together, often spending weeks at a time in some of the craziest, fanciest, most exotic cities Europe and Asia had to offer, and yet, here she was, excited about the life she was creating for herself in the American midwest, of all places. He grinned. “You’re so cosmopolitan, T.”
She smiled. She was happy. Of course she was. She was enrolled at University of Chicago, in one of the best MBA programs in the United States, laying the groundwork for a career as an agent. She wanted to work specifically with young female athletes in sports like figure skating, gymnastics, and competitive dance, which was just so spot-on and ambitious and inherently good, and, damn, he was so proud of her.
“Are you…?” She interrupted his thoughts, and leaned in toward the camera like she, too, was trying to fall into the world on the other side of the screen. She could see the familiar rafters above his head. She knew.
“Uh-huh.” Scott said.
“I should be there, shouldn’t I?” She mused, suddenly more subdued, more wistful. “I should’ve taken a long weekend and come up there, so we could be together, on our home ice, on the one-year--”
“No." He cut her off. "Don’t do that, T. We’re both exactly where we’re supposed to be right now. 2018 Olympics Tessa would be so proud to know where 2019 Tessa is one year later.”
He just hoped she couldn’t see that he was swallowing harshly and steeling himself against the wave of emotion that was hitting him. He continued, “We won that gold last year so we could do exactly this: feel finished, move on, figure out what life looks like outside the grind. Outside the...”
“Outside the partnership.” She finished for him, quietly.
“Yeah.” Scott said.
They were quiet, tracking one another’s faces over the screen.
“I should’ve at least, I don’t know, found a public rink or something. Done a few quick spins. Instead I--”
“You put in the work. For your new dream,” Scott said.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Besides,” he said, brightening, “you’re on the ice now, with me!”
He held the phone a little further out and pushed away from the boards, gliding backwards slowly before dipping into some beautiful edges, gathering speed, spinning, then launching into a neat little double-axel, all with the phone held out in front of him like he was pulling her along. He kept going, even taking the phone through the complex lift sequence he’d envisioned earlier, encouraged by the fact that she was laughing again, the way she used to when they’d goof around on the ice together just like this.
“I liked that,” she said as he made his way, breathless, back to the boards a minute later. “Is it new?”
“It’s a work in progress. As it is, it breaks the rules a little bit, so it might never see the light of day.”
“I could tell. Is that double axel going to be a side-by-side?”
“I’m thinking. I'd like it better if it were a triple, but the routine is already a super weird mix of both pairs and dance elements, so I’m not sure who could even skate it.” He paused for a second, wondering if he should go on. Eh, what the hell. “Then there’s that big, crazy, emotional lift sequence...”
“Your specialty,” she grinned, remembering one year ago, That Lift. All their lifts. So many great, great lifts.
“It’s just a vision right now. Might not even be doable, but if it is, it’ll take very skilled skaters--” he raised his eyebrows pointedly.
“Scott…”
“I’m joking, I’m joking!” He wasn’t. He kept talking, rules of single parenting be damned. “But yeah, no, seriously. I’m just saying. You get breaks from school. If you come help me suss it out, I’ll name it after you when it lands in the code of points, although I don’t know why they’d put it in the code of points, because, I’m telling you Tess, in terms of pure physics alone, probably nobody can do it.”
She tried to give him A Look, but he sounded so excited and hopeful, so she mercifully let the whole thing slide. “So what will you call it, then? The lift, I mean, when it goes into the code of points?”
“Duh, Tess, I'll call it The Virtue-ally Impossible!” He cracked.
Another gale of laughter. Long, satisfying laughter.
“T?” He ventured, when they’d finally come back to earth and fallen into another companionable silence.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being on the ice with me--a year ago, and tonight,” he said.
“Thank you for taking such good care of that kid we raised together for 20 years.”
“Hey, now, I think you’re taking pretty good care of her, too. You’re just...taking her to new places.”
“I guess I am,” she said. “And I think she loves it.”
“I think she does, too,” he said, knowing that they were no longer talking about just their metaphorical child. They were talking about Tessa, too. “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”
“You too, Scotty,” she said, blowing him a kiss. “Love you.”
“Love you,” he said, reaching out, catching the kiss, and planting it firmly on his heart.
He wasn’t sad. He was just sentimental. But he clicked off the call quickly, so she couldn’t see how much of that sentimentality was starting to gather in the corners of his eyes.
If he’d waited a second longer, he would’ve seen that it was starting to gather in hers, too.