Chapter Text
What does that say of me
when I know it’s you calling but I let it ring?
Tell me, what’s left of us?
Should this house feel as empty as it does?
She hasn’t gone outside in days. There’s a cluster of mail on her welcome mat, unfinished mugs of tea molding in her sink, and a nightmare of unread emails she can’t bear to inspect.
She thinks that if she just stands still for long enough, maybe the world will get bored and forget about her. Eventually.
The only visitor she’s allowed so far is her mother, exactly once, and only because she showed up unannounced with a full tray of brownies and a box of wine. Tessa thanked her and sent her on her way. “I'm fine, mom. Really.”
She certainly hasn’t talked to him yet.
Talking would require listening, which would require her to witness his reaction in real-time. God, she’d trade her medals -- every one of them -- to avoid having that conversation. What would she even say?
“Hey, Scott, sorry I aborted our child before the Olympics without telling you and you had to find out about it from the CBC.”
No.
Better to sit and do nothing. Better to let the bills collect on her doorstep, let the sponsorships evaporate, let the internet tear her apart piece by piece, until there’s nothing left for them to scrutinize.
***
He only calls her twice. The first time, it rings once before the line clicks off. The second time, it goes straight to voicemail.
***
It does get easier. Somewhat.
She eventually goes outside -- to the store for groceries, to her local cafe, always wearing sunglasses (Tessa Virtue for BonLook, rest in peace). She sees her family. Sees some friends. Realizes who her real friends are.
It’s funny how things happened. She’s never felt so free in her life. Her greatest fear came to pass -- worse than that -- and still she lived to tell the tale. No sponsors? No problem. No partner?
No partner.
She thinks maybe she can live without Scott. It’ll be like living with her eyes closed, or losing a limb. Tough, but manageable. People have survived worse.
On the good days, she is fine without him. Happy, even. She upgrades from markets and cafes to museums and concerts. She goes on dates and has unromantic, desperate sex. She learns to crochet.
On the bad days, she has to remind herself to breathe. She holds her stomach and cries, spills wine on her new carpet, writes him angry, drunken letters she'll never send.
She likes the way she looks, now, when she cries. She used to hate showing weakness. But now, her weakness is all that’s left of him. Her muscles have softened. Her medals are collecting dust. But her tears are fresh, and that’s something to remember him by.
Has it all just come to this?
Both wanting what the other cannot give.
Are we still trying to prove
this isn’t something we’ll grow out of like old shoes?
She doesn’t need to look at her calendar. She’s been anticipating this day for a year.
A year ago today, the video went live on instagram. The CBC picked it up, and within hours, it was all anyone in Canada could talk about -- grainy cell phone footage of five-time Olympic medalist Tessa Virtue in the waiting room of an abortion clinic, taken five months before Pyeongchang.
There was no use confirming or denying for the public. Scott would know, and that would be enough. Any hope for a united front was shattered. There would be no Stars on Ice. There would be no victory lap.
She decides to take today off. She orders herself a large veggie pizza. Changes into her favorite pajamas (powder blue flannel with little dancing pies), selects a documentary from her Netflix queue, and buckles up for a full day of wallowing.
Ten minutes into Cosmos , the doorbell rings.
“Coming!” she says, detangling herself from her couch blankets. She races to the door, pulls it open, mutters “Sorry, I--”
She stops dead.
He looks the same. At least, he looks exactly the way she always pictures him. Hair a little too long at the back, acne along the edge of his jaw, brows furrowed, shoulders back. She could collapse into him, breathe in the familiar scent of his shampoo, and forget about the last 12 months.
She doesn’t know how long she’s standing there, staring at the crook of his neck. Her mouth has gone completely dry. Does she say hello? Does she slam the door in his face?
“I thought you were pizza,” she says, finally.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he says. He sucks in a deep breath. “Can I come in?”
“Um. Yeah, okay.” She steps aside to let him enter, closes the door and lingers there for a moment, shell shocked.
He is an alien in her home. She feels like she’s hallucinating, but then he turns to look at her -- well, to look right past her -- and she knows she’s not imagining the anxious set of his jaw or the quickening of her pulse.
Fuck.
The doorbell rings again.
“Sorry,” she says, her voice too loud. She quickly opens the door, accepts the pizza and tips her driver.
And then it’s just the two of them again, standing in her formal entryway. Framed black and white photos (none of them) and a gold statement chandelier. Tessa in flannel PJs with a large pizza, Scott with his hands in his pockets.
“Do you want some?” she asks, meaning the pizza.
“No,” he says. “Maybe just a slice. I don’t wanna…” Stay too long? Tessa finishes.
“I figured.”
She moves past him, maximizing the space between them, and into her kitchen. He follows at a distance. She busies herself grabbing plates and napkins and glasses for water, cleans a spot on the counter, looks anywhere but his direction.
“Tess,” he says. The sound of her name in his mouth takes her back. The last time she saw him, they were curled up on his couch in Montreal, his tongue on her neck, her toes curling into themselves, breathless, grinding down on him... "Oh, Tess. Fuck."
She has to steady herself on her marble countertop at the memory. She takes a deep breath, holding back tears, and wordlessly hands him his glass of water.
“I’m not thirsty,” he says.
The glass sweats in her hand. She grips it until her knuckles turn white. The funniest idea flits across her mind, and she can’t help herself. She takes it and throws it across the room. Shards of glass and water scattering across her polished hardwood floors. She lets out a gust of breath, and she laughs. Full-throated, ugly laughs. The look on his face -- it does something to her, the absurdity of it all. She’s never seen anything so funny in her life. She wipes fat tears from her eyes as she howls. She’s losing it.
He frowns, deep lines setting into his forehead. He was never very hard to read.
“I’m sorry… your… face,” she chokes out through laughter.
"Jesus, Tess." He grabs a roll of paper towels from the counter and starts work on her mess.
She manages to catch her breath. The hysteria subsides. She feels about a thousand pounds lighter. Every day for 365 days, all she could think about was how this reunion might play out. Not in any scenario was she wearing cartoon pie pajamas or throwing breakable objects across her kitchen.
She takes a triumphant bite of her pizza and shakes her head. “What are you doing here, Scott?”
“Dustpan?” he says, ignoring her question.
“By the fridge.”
Scott sweeps up the smaller shards and deposits them in the trash. He washes his hands, dries them on a dish towel, and leans up against the counter. All without so much as a glance in her direction.
They’re standing fewer than two feet apart now, wedged between the counter and the island.
“I missed you,” he says, finally.
Her whole body tenses, all humor sucked right out of her. “Does Genevieve know you’re here?” She sounds bitter, but she doesn’t care. Scott had to know she’d been keeping tabs on him, had to know she would know about Gen.
For his part, he doesn’t sound surprised. “She knows I’m in London.”
“So, no.”
“Not exactly, no."
“I missed you, too,” she says, after a moment, her voice small.
They finally lock eyes. All the pretense between them out the window. She hasn’t really looked at him, yet. His hair is not so long at the back. The acne she imagined has cleared up. His shoulders are slimmer from lack of training. She wonders if he’s changed his shampoo. There’s so much she doesn't know about this Scott. It makes her ache.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
“Scott,” she says. Her voice a warning.
“No. You had a million opportunities to tell me. I deserved to know.”
“Scott. ”
“Tessa,” he replies, mimicking her tone.
“It was my choice.”
“Bullshit, Tessa. That’s not what this is about, and you know it. You could have told me.”
“If I had told you, it would have immediately been about us! About our child. About our medals. Our future -- not mine.”
“That’s what couples do! They make decisions together!”
“Oh? Were we a couple, Scott? I seem to remember a very long conversation--”
“I knew you would bring that up--”
“--in Kyoto about ‘not wanting to label anything.’”
“ --I was talking about the press! ”
They both pant for breath, fuming. Tessa is suddenly very aware of the open window over the sink. She pulls it shut, then crosses her arms across her chest.
“If you had just told me,” he starts.
“What?” she snaps. “What would have happened, Scott?”
He doesn’t respond.
“You would have wanted me to keep it. I know you. And I couldn’t--” she swallows, hard, but presses on. “I couldn’t live with that disappointment. You would have been supportive, and it would have killed you. And I wasn’t ready. I’m still not.”
He shakes his head. “You should have told me.”
“Well, it’s a little late for that now.”
"I just don’t get it. I've known about every period and headache and weird rash you've had since we were kids.”
“No, you haven't. You don’t know everything about me.”
“Fine. You know everything about me.”
“I’m not you, Scott!” Her voices catches, briefly hysterical. “Not everyone is an open book. I can’t just be like you. Some things are personal.”
“Not between us.”
“Especially between us. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me, growing up with you, knowing every little detail of every relationship? We could have used some boundaries back then.”
“Oh, drop the Psych 101. You know we’ve already worked through that. Just because I was an ass when I was seventeen doesn’t mean it was okay for you to lie about the fact that you were pregnant with my child.”
“I think you should go.” She sounds ready to throw something else. He hears this, nods, and leaves.
As soon as he’s gone, she vomits into her sink. Slimy, undigested chunks of pizza she rinses down the garbage disposal. She rinses her mouth with water from the tap, looks down at her powder blue pajama pants -- slices of apple and and pumpkin and cherry smiling up at her -- and decides she’s going to burn them.
I’m tired, you’re lonely.
Screaming, “babe, console me.”
But I’ve already given all that I have.
Summer and fall come and go.
She spends the hotter months in Florence, then Tulum, then Denpasar, all documented and curated for Instagram. Here I am, smiling in a gondola. Here I am, laughing while drinking from a coconut. Have you all forgotten about my unborn child?
She combs through the comments every night before bed, deleting the ones that call her a whore or a slut or a baby killer. Those are fewer and farther between, now.
Only every other comment is about him. Asking where he is. "Have you talked to Scott? We miss Scott. Are we going to see you and Scott out on tour this year?"
("Was Scott the father? Is that why you stopped talking? When did he find out?"
Delete, delete, delete.)
In the fall, she meets the hockey player. He’s exactly her type, which is to say, he is nothing like Scott. He keeps his sandy blond hair high and tight. He’s 6’3”, has a deep, booming voice and bulging muscles. He responds to her texts in a timely manner. He pretends to like museums, and he never makes fun of her cooking.
He laughs at all of her jokes, but never tells his own. When a song she loves comes on the radio, he doesn’t sing along. When he looks at her from across a crowded room, he doesn’t read her mind. When she says she’s fine, he believes her.
He is nothing like Scott, so she keeps him around.
(She still checks up on him. He deleted his social media accounts, but she catches up on Genevieve’s private page. She had to create a burner account just to follow her. It was worth it, because there he is, in the background of a selfie, shirtless and making breakfast. And there he is, on a group outing with her family, wearing matching button down shirts. Tessa gets a sick sense of satisfaction whenever his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, which is increasingly often.)
***
In November, she receives an email from the Mayor of London inviting her to the unveiling of their statue. She sends a screenshot of the email to Jordan and asks whether she read that right. Can they seriously just put up a statue of you without asking first?
Of course she wants to go. But, as with everything else related to the most important 20 years of her life, there’s no way to get around the Scott of it all. She supposes she could text him. “Hey, are you going to that statue thing? Are we still avoiding each other like genital herpes?” They didn’t exactly leave things on friendly terms, but months have passed, now. Whatever residual anger she was feeling has loosened its hold on her central nervous system. Which is to say, when she hears his name, she no longer tumbles headfirst into a panic attack.
He reaches out first.
T - assuming you got the invite. We should go.
She reads his text 30 times over, parsing every character. Notes the capital letters and existence of punctuation marks. Notes the familiar greeting: T. There’s no question mark, but he leaves the ball in her court.
Fuck it.
Okay.
***
The word of the day is: pivot.
She had forgotten what it felt like to be at the center of a media blitz. It’s nothing like how it seems from the outside. Cameras and lights pointing from every direction, questions shooting off rapid-fire, always needing to pee, feeling constantly like there must be lipstick on her teeth.
It’s their first joint public appearance since before the incident. They have a brief, totally civil pep-talk in the morning as soon as they arrive. We present a united front. Talk about our skating. When our relationship comes up, pivot to skating. When anything else comes up, pivot to skating. If they push, decline to comment. Make them look like jerks for asking.
“You okay?” he asks. The first reporter is already headed their way.
She nods, not wanting to lie to him outright, not wanting to get into the truth.
He gives her hand a squeeze -- once, automatically -- then immediately pulls away. It sends a jolt through her body. She can practically taste her own heartbeat.
“Sorry,” he says.
The apology somehow makes it worse.
***
She knows he spent Christmas in Montreal last year. Gen posted a #tbt to Christmas dinner with her family a few weeks ago. She wonders if he’ll come home to Ilderton this year, now that the waters have settled between them. Not that they’re in danger of running into each other. But people talk when they’re within a 30 mile radius of each other. Like to poke and prod and suss out the status of their relationship. Are you seeing Scott again?
She wouldn’t know how to answer that question.
Scott is… frustratingly unreadable to her now. After the statue ceremony, they said goodbye with an unspoken, “See you next time,” but there was no indication of when, or whether they were “friends” again, or ever would be. Civility is wholly uncharted territory for the two of them. She only ever knew him to be wild and unguarded, even with acquaintances, with complete strangers. Scott was Scott in any context.
But he’s put up walls since the incident, and it makes her unbearably sad to think that she did that to him. It was exactly the fate she’d been hoping to avoid.
She arrives at her mom’s house early on the 24th with a trio of homemade pies (the crusts were store bought and the fillings came from cans, but she counts assembly as a real cooking skill). She helps her mom set up for dinner -- plating cheeses, mulling wine. Since her parents’ divorce, Christmas has become an intimate affair. Just her brothers with their wives, her sister with her fiancé, Tessa with her pies. They celebrate on Christmas Eve, now that the Virtue kids have their own kids to open presents with on Christmas morning. Tessa doesn’t mind. She’ll spend Christmas morning alone with her mom. They’ll drink coffee and eat leftover dessert and go out to the movies. There can be comfort in new traditions.
After dinner, as they’re all sitting around the fireplace, apologizing to their stomachs for the hell they’ve just put them through, Tessa sneaks onto the back patio and indulges herself an old tradition.
While they were in Canton, Tessa and Scott picked up a few bad habits, smoking being the worst of them -- it was an easy way to keep her weight down, and an easy distraction from their raging hormones. The phase thankfully only lasted a year or two, but every year at Christmas, she’s allowed herself a solitary cigarette. She’s not even sure she’ll like it anymore. Something about growing older has diminished the enjoyment she derives from anything remotely bad for her.
Two puffs in, her phone buzzes in her pocket.
I’m at the rink.
Her heartbeat does a samba.
Three little dots appear and disappear. Reappear again. She holds her breath, then realizes she needs to exhale, lest she give herself lung cancer.
The little dots disappear again. She imagines him leaning against the boards, cursing himself for hitting send in the first place. It’s not an invitation, exactly, but it is if she wants it to be.
Her hands are shaking from the cold and from the nicotine. She’s slightly woozy from the wine. She types out her reply and hopes it’s the right one.
I’ll be there soon.
***
She has to run home to grab her skates first, but it’s on her way to Ilderton. She assumes he grabbed his mother’s set of keys to the rink, or maybe he has his own by now.
The walk from the parking lot to the lobby takes a century. She has no idea what to expect tonight. Her blades haven’t touched ice in two months.
When she finally finds him, he’s alone on the ice. Only half the lights are on. She clears her throat, but he doesn’t hear her over the roar of the air conditioning. She decides to watch him covertly as she laces up her skates. He looks as good as he always has -- a natural. She used to hate him for that, and maybe still does. With her, there was always so much effort. It was agony, playing catch up for twenty years.
She steps out onto the ice without a word. Strokes around the boards, getting her sea legs. On her second lap, Scott falls into step beside her like it's nothing -- they always understood each other so much better on the ice than off it.
They don’t talk, is the thing. The thing that drives her mad for the days that follow. He takes her hand and they go through simple patterns. All told, maybe thirty words are exchanged the whole night, and only to coordinate their bodies. The muscle memory is all there -- it’s only the loss of stamina that either of them really feels.
She missed him so much, misses him even now, with his hands on her waist, on her thighs, holding her in a curve lift, guiding her through a step sequence. She already feels the loss of him approaching.
When they’re too tired to continue, they stand by the boards gasping for breath. She’s glad she only smoked that one cigarette. Sweat beads from his forehead, radiates from his chest. He steps off the ice first. She just stands there, watching him untie his skates. Hands on her hips, deep crease in her forehead. He doesn’t look back at her again. Throws his skates in his locker and disappears into the booth, waiting for her to leave so he can turn off the lights and go.
It’s one of the worst nights of her life.
***
They meet up again after that. Once a month, then every other week. They work through portions of old routines and only speak when absolutely necessary. He’s been splitting his time between coaching in Montreal and the skate shop in London, so he's around. It turns out, Scott has so much more to offer the skating world than she does. She never had any desire to coach or judge. Her love for the sport began and ended with Scott.
She’s glad she has that back again, even if it kills her to be so close to him and still so far away.
***
One day in April, he texts her that he’s in town. She heads to the rink right after close and waits for him in the parking lot. After 15 minutes of sitting in her car, she checks her phone and sees that she has two missed calls and a text from Scott.
Got here early, in the booth.
Inside, she laces up her skates and gets out on the ice while Scott fiddles around in the booth. On her third lap around the rink, she hears Tchaikovsky playing faintly overhead. The volume increases, then stops, then starts again. When she realizes what’s happening, she turns to look at him, stepping out onto the ice with his head down, and doesn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him.
He looks up at her and shrugs. A small smile playing at the corner of his lips.
Tessa twirls around on the ice, improvising balletic choreography, which he mimics gleefully, jumping around on the ice like a fool. They go back and forth like this, not really following their original choreo, until the Nutcracker comes to a triumphant end and the opening beats of “Gonna Make You Sweat” blast overhead. She laughs as Scott swaggers through his portion of the routine. They’ve both completely forgotten the moves, but she can’t stop smiling. Neither can he. By the time the music ends, they’re just chasing each other in circles like they used to when Marina was on the road with Meryl and Charlie and they had the rink to themselves.
It’s intoxicating. It’s the first time she’s felt like this since Pyeongchang.
Afterwards, he takes her hand, and they skate silent laps together, basking in the temporary glow of normalcy.
“We should re-learn the choreography,” she says, after a while.
"Or we could work on some new programs.”
She tries not to sound too surprised by this. “Yeah. Okay.”
“It’s Stars on Ice next month.”
“I know.”
“We could… I don’t know. Work something out. If you wanted.”
“Okay. I mean, I’ll have to think about it.”
There’s nothing to think about, really. She’s house poor, and despite all her grandstanding about going for an MBA or whatever, Tessa has no real desire to go back to school. Touring was always part of the plan. Was the plan.
“Only if you want to. I don’t want to… I just want things to not be so hard with us.”
“I know. Me too.”
Her hand is still in his.
“Scott?”
He responds with a sideways glance.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Me too.”