Work Text:
PART FIVE. (again)
-
alternatively.
-
They’re both nineteen.
She always thought the view from the top step of the podium would be brighter. She always thought there’d be this rush—a rush of feelings, of adrenaline, of pride. And there is, really, there is. It’s just…
She just thought it’d be more.
She and Will are both nineteen, and there are gold medals around their necks, and to her, and maybe to only her, the gold feels like—God, it feels almost like a noose, like a bunch of answered promises and wishes and dreams suddenly weighing her down.
Because when she angles her head down, angles her head to the side, when her eyes wander against her wishes, it’s Harry Bingham that she finds, a forced smile on his face as he holds a silver medal in his hands. And she doesn’t know why exactly that smile feels so familiar, why she can’t look away from him, why she can’t seem to find it in herself to care about the gold that she’s dreamt about since she was eight years old.
They’re both nineteen, and Harry’s twenty, and all Allie can seem to think about are what-ifs.
…
That’s how it could’ve gone. Maybe. That’s how it could’ve gone if things were just a little different. She can’t decide if that world’s better or worse.
-
viii.
-
Waking up beside Harry has never not felt familiar. It’s the way his arm is so perfectly draped over her, his nose against her neck, his hair tickling her face. The moment it happened for the first time, waking up beside him, it felt familiar.
He’s summer. And winter and fall and spring. He’s every second of every day, and he has to have realized that by now, realized how much she fucking needs him. Yeah. He’s familiar.
So, Allie wakes up beside him, his arm warm wrapped around her, his breath steady and constant. He’s there in a way he hasn’t been for… for months. For forever.
It’s funny how she used to think he’d always just be there. It’s funny how she almost once thought that loss wasn’t possible, at least not when it came to him. She spent years thinking—years wishing—and then she got him, got a part of him. A part of him that large should’ve been enough but… it was a bit like collecting pieces to some puzzle. She wanted the full image. She wanted to see it all put together.
She found pieces and pieces and pieces of him that summer. And then she lost them, left them behind in the Hamptons, hidden under couch cushions and behind bookshelves because there were other things that needed to be put together first.
It feels a little like those pieces are reappearing now, like they’re materializing as she admits it’s not like this with anyone else, as he kisses her, soft and slow, like summer never ended, like things never changed.
Allie wakes up, and she untangles herself from him slowly, stands in the open window and pulls down at the edges of his shirt, plays with the hem and watches as the sun rises. If she closes her eyes, she’ll see a different sunrise, one from…
Before.
There’s always such a clear before and after with them, but right now, right now she feels like she’s standing in the between, staring down over the edge at everything that could happen—everything she wants and doesn’t want and needs and doesn’t need to happen. Everything that’s going to happen anyway, no matter what.
She stands on the edge and closes her eyes and tries to remember how things all went wrong the last time because maybe that’ll make everything slow down, make everything make sense.
And when that doesn’t work… She puts on leggings and a sports bra and that pair of running shoes lined up on the rack by the door. Because running from things, running along the edge of—of something, running and waiting to fall—
God, what’s so wrong with that?
-
She leaves a note behind on the kitchen counter, written on the back of an envelope pulled out of the junk drawer. It leaves a pen smudge on one of her fingers that she spends too long trying to rub off.
But… that’s easier than thinking about everything that’s going on.
(Looking at him makes her think of those two months, and that makes her think of how easy it would be to fall back into that. Or fall into a year, a year away from all of this. Maybe that’s what she’s running towards. Who fucking knows?)
-
It’s a lilac sky as the sun sets.
She drags him up onto the roof, climbing a ladder that she should probably give back to the neighbors.
They share a caprice pizza from that place downtown. She pulls out a disposable camera, one that usually sits on her dresser as she waits for the moment, the right moment, to spend it on. Maybe this is the moment, him against a lilac sky, him staring at her, like he doesn’t believe she’s really there.
He pulls the camera from her, leans back like he’s trying to get the perfect shot, and it makes her laugh harder than it really should.
“You’re gonna fall,” she says, her chin tilted up, almost defiantly. And her smile hurts as it pulls at the corners of her mouth, but she can’t stop, can’t stop smiling.
“It’ll be worth it, though.”
“Well, obviously.”
He lowers the camera slowly, his eyes meeting hers as he tilts his head just barely to the side. “If you had to choose between saving me and the pizza,” he starts, and she can see the smile he’s trying to bite back, can hear how the faux seriousness in his voice is already starting to shake, “which would it be? Keep in mind, there is a right answer.”
“The pizza,” Allie says without blinking, and he gasps like it’s some sort of betrayal, and she laughs some more, and he pulls her closer to him as he joins in.
“And you’d save me?” she asks after a moment, and it’s mostly joking—really—because he has that last slice of pizza in his hand, is holding it up by the edge of the crust, and the sheer domesticity of the moment makes her heart soar and she needs something to anchor her down to the ground before she floats up off the roof.
He stares over at her like he’s trying to figure out the right answer, trying to find it in her smile, in her eyes. He pauses. “Yeah, ‘course I would.”
For a moment, that leaves her at a loss for words, how casually he reminds her of why exactly she cannot seem to move on from those two months. That wasn’t the point of her asking, wasn’t the point at all, but she can’t find it in her to mind the answer. Allie takes a deep breath. She tries to steady herself. “Good.”
He snorts in a way that nearly sounds elegant, and scrunches up his face at her, throwing a piece of basil in her direction. It catches in the wind, and then they watch as it falls to the ground, all around them, the lilac fading into a mess of navy blue and bright stars just as quickly as it appeared. She leans her head on his shoulder. She tries not to think too hard about any of this.
Harry keeps the disposable camera in his lap, and then takes it with him down the ladder, takes it with him as they slip inside, the door closing behind her as they move to the couch to watch some show on Netflix. It’ll become background noise as the night goes on. And she almost wants to tell him to take the camera with him. That was always his thing anyway. It’s something she stole from him when she realized that he wasn’t really there anymore.
Only then she thinks about that photo of him taken against the canvas of the sun falling from the sky, and…
She’s just not ready to give that up yet.
-
She feels like she’s just counting down the days until they return to the rink. She feels like she’s waiting to find out whether or not this is actually going to work.
Because they’re still somehow in that in between. They haven’t fallen yet, and Allie can’t help but think that if they can skate like they did before, skate like nothing’s changed, and then can go back to her place and do whatever the fuck they’re doing right now then—
Then, yeah, maybe things really would be alright.
(Harry makes her coffee while she stares at his overnight bag sitting in her room. The top is unzipped, and a plain white t-shirt is spilling out. She wonders how long he’s going to stay. She wonders if he’d stay even if they couldn’t skate.
She wonders if she’d let him stay.)
-
After going to the gym, he takes her through the Dairy Queen drive-thru. She’s only had one scrambled egg, a slice of toast, and half of a fruit smoothie today, but that doesn’t change the fact that they shouldn’t even be anywhere near a Dairy Queen right now. He has to know that, has to understand that. He probably doesn’t care. And that makes her smile without thinking, and he’s tapping his fingers against the center console, and she could reach out and grab his hand if she wanted to, and--
And he orders them both vanilla blizzards even though it’s the most boring thing on the menu, and she’s never really known how to say no to him, not when he’s like this.
“Maybe we should spice up our order a little bit,” she says while they wait, her body angled towards him, the strap of the seatbelt pressed into her shoulder.
“That sounds like a horrible idea, Pressman. You’d probably make me get some chocolate Oreo shit—”
She lets out this indignant half scoff, and it makes him grin, and that, that makes her heart grow a size larger. “Oreos are amazing. We both know that you would love an Oreo blizzard.”
He rolls his eyes at her fondly, his head tilted to the side. The car in front of them is moving, but Harry’s not paying any attention to that. “What’s so wrong with vanilla?” he eventually asks, and he says it so seriously for the question that it is.
A car behind them honks before she can come up with an answer that makes sense—vanilla reminds her of before, and that’s fine, really, it is but… aren’t they trying to move past that? Aren’t they beyond whatever before is? They should be.
The car honks again, and it startles her enough that she spits out a laugh, and Harry’s reaching across the center console for her hand, squeezing it once, twice, three times.
It shouldn’t, but it feels almost like betrayal, how hard she’s thinking about the possibility of a year without…
-
When he finishes his blizzard, he dips his spoon into her cup, leveling a gaze in her direction that’s probably meant to look something like a challenge. She shrugs, and he raises his eyebrows, and she wonders when exactly they started to be able to communicate without words so casually. Was it like this from the start? She can’t remember now. It feels like so long ago.
They’re sitting in a park near her place, at a picnic table under a tree. It’s warm again today, enough for her to want to open every window in her house and fill the rooms with summer air. God, it’s almost summer. It’s almost summer.
“You okay, Allie?” he asks when the silence between them starts to feel heavy. And she snaps out of whatever she was in, forcing it away
“Just thinking, that’s all,” she says simply, but she feels breathless suddenly, and she thinks he notices.
“About…?” he prompts gently.
In her head, she makes a list:
The way his hair smells like her shampoo. They were making out in the parking lot of the gym earlier, and she took a deep breath in, and it hit her all at once, this idea of them living together in the context of something other than two months. And she used to smell like his shampoo. And probably his cologne too, seeing as was only really with him for… for a little while.
The sky. It’s this bright, clear blue, and it makes her think of cloudless days out on the beach, her hair tangled up in the sand, Harry holding a book up over his face, squinting as he reads bits of it out loud. And it’s the sky as the sunsets, him taking a picture of her as she stares out onto the water. He took a million pictures of moments like that. She wonders if he still has them. He’s never been one to delete photos.
The freckles on his face. They’re faint right now, barely there, but come mid-July she can count them in the sun, staring as he sleeps. He’s always said that he loves her freckles, but she can’t help thinking that they look better on him.
The ocean. When she closes her eyes, she can still see it, can still hear it, as if she’s back at that house, the sliding door wide open, the smell of saltwater so deep in her lungs that she really does wonder if it’ll ever go away. It does go away; it went away the second she boarded that flight back to Michigan. She hadn’t known that then, though.
The look he’s giving her across the picnic table. Lips slightly parted. Eyes flitting up and down her face, searching, searching for something, something she doesn’t know. It’s the look he always gives her, the one that makes her wonder if he thinks she’s just going to leave or something. Like he can’t believe it’s really her. Like he can’t believe she’s really there.
A break. A break from all of this. A year of thoughts that don’t revolve around skating. A year without the idea of the Olympics acting like some sort of prism for all of her thoughts and actions.
She smiles at him as brightly as she can, taking a deep breath in, a spoonful of half melted ice cream held close to her mouth. “Nothing. Just… nothing.”
He doesn’t look like he believes her. He looks like he wants to believe her, though. And that probably counts for something.
-
Standing beside him on the ice, she feels shaky.
Her skate guards are lined up beside his behind the boards, and Pfeiffer’s moving to start their music, and they’ve just barely warmed up. And should she tell him, should she tell Harry that’s she’s nervous about a fucking practice, about a regular day at the rink. Would it be stupid to say? It feels stupid.
He’s staring up at the rafters, but squeezing her hand once, twice…
Maybe he’s nervous too.
Because here’s the thing: she wants more than just a summer with him. She doesn’t want that to be the promise. She wants them to have a chance, a real chance at all those things she dreamt up when she was eight years old. And she wants them to have a chance to be something special.
The music starts, echoing in her ears until it’s the only thing she can hear—not Harry’s breathing, not the sound of skates to ice, not Pfeiffer’s mumbling. She’s still shaking. He’s focused his gaze on some faraway point across the rink.
God, all she really wants is for them to be alright.
-
Sometimes she’ll dream of gold medals. Some muzak version of the Star-Spangled Banner is playing, and Harry’s holding her hand so tight in his own, beaming over when she turns to face him.
The medals hang heavy on their chests, and she’s proud, proud of herself, proud of them.
But sometimes those dreams feel like they’re from a different time. They’re right in between that before and after, and sometimes those dreams feel so firmly in the before that just the thought of them startles her awake.
Sometimes those dreams don’t feel like her own anymore. Sometimes they make her feel like she’s eight and too naïve to know anything but the Olympics.
She’s not eight anymore, and things are complicated now and messy and—
What really is a year, in the grand scheme of things?
-
Pfefffer’s yelling no, no, no like she and Harry don’t already realize how fucking wrong all of this is. But he won’t stop yelling, and she can’t seem to pull her gaze away from the ice, away from the jagged white line she’d left skating towards the boards, her blades suddenly heavy, something weighing her down.
Harry’s staring at her. She can feel it. And she just wants to know what he’s searching for, wants to ask him because that’s always what she’s wondering, and it’s always felt like some secret.
She wants to ask him if this is really the way things are meant to go. She wants to ask if this is where they fall apart, because he’s snapping at her—something about a lift that they’ve had down for years—and she really thought that everything would go a different way.
Maybe she’d once said they couldn’t have both. Maybe that’s true. But…
She doesn’t want it to be true, and he has to know that. God, he has to know that by now.
He’s staring at her, and she’s falling out of a lift that they’ve been doing for years, and she’s thinking now that if she had to choose, if she had to choose between them and a gold medal—
She’d choose herself. For once, Allie would choose herself.
A year is nothing.
-
In the car, in the silence, she waits for an answer.
And a Harry Styles song is playing, something sad that she can’t get herself to not focus on… what if I’m someone I don’t want around?
If they can have it both ways, he should say something. If they can have it both ways, they should be talking right now. It shouldn’t even be a question.
She doesn’t want an ending, not yet.
(He yells something about her always leaving, and she suddenly can’t breathe, words falling out her mouth, excuses and explanations that neither of them are hearing, and it ends just like it always ends.
He’s right. She leaves. He doesn’t ask her to stay. That’s probably just how things are always meant to go between them. Because maybe she just needs to be away from him. Maybe that’s part of choosing herself.)
-
She’s tired.
She’s tired of waiting for him to come back. She tired of sitting on the front steps, staring out at the road, at the sky, her head tilted back, her eyes burning, her mouth dry. She’s tired of not being able to take a breath. She’s tired of thinking about him. She’s tired.
Why is a part of him never enough for her? Why can’t she just learn to settle? Why can’t they just settle, for a little while?
She stands up, unlocks her front door, pulling it open. It sticks for a moment, and she wants to give up almost immediately. She wants to get a hotel room. She wants to call Elle and ask where she and Helena are so she can go running to them. It opens, though, before it can become an excuse.
His overnight bag is still sitting on her bed, that white t-shirt on top of her dresser, where he’d left it after getting dressed this morning. The air is pushed straight out of her lungs the moment she sees it, and she finds herself backing out of the room, running from it, running to the kitchen until she spots that stupid covfefe mug, and, God, has he ruined that for her too?
She’s running. She’s running from something. She’s running from him. Sitting on the front porch steps, she calls Cassandra.
“Do you wanna go to Europe with me?”
-
They book all the flights, plan out a trip. Cassandra doesn’t ask any questions, for which Allie is grateful. She’s not sure she has any answers.
She’s writing the names of cities on a list next to dates, and Cassandra’s on Facetime telling her that she’ll only be able to stay for a month, and Allie doesn’t really know what exactly she’s supposed to be thinking about right now.
“A month is a long time,” Allie finally says, and she can’t read the look on her sister’s face—pity, maybe. Confusion. Surprise? God, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t really know anything.
“It is. And then you’d be okay to do the rest of the trip on your own? That’d be okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathes out. “Yeah, Cass, that’d be fine. That’d be good.”
Her sister pauses. The image is grainy, distorted, and that can probably be blamed for every single emotion Allie thinks she might see. “Allie, is everything—”
“I’m fine, Cass. I’m just… We’re going to go to Europe, and we’re going to have the best time. It’s gonna be fun,” she interrupts, and there’s this forced brightness behind her words that only one person has ever been able to notice.
Later, when it’s way too late and she just can’t sleep—his overnight bag hidden in the closet, no one needs to know she’s wearing his shirt—she calls Pfeiffer.
“We’re taking a year off,” she says, firmly, and she thinks maybe she can hear him yawning.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re taking a year off,” she repeats, and her voice doesn’t waver, not yet. God, she’s so tired. “We’re not skating for a year. No competitions. No early morning practices. No scheduling my life around the season. You can focus more on—”
“Allie,” he cuts in, “that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She scoffs. “No, it’s not. It’s been done before. We take a year off and we still have two left to train for the Olympics. It can be done. We’d be fine.”
“Does,” her coach sighs, “does Harry know about this plan?”
“It’s not a plan, Pfeiffer,” she says as forcefully as she possibly can. She wants to hang up. “It’s happening. Harry knows about it. We talked about it. It’s happening. We’re taking a year off.”
He sighs again, and there’s a pause, three seconds of silence before the line clicks and he’s hung up. The clock beside her bed reads two am.
She’s doing this. They’re doing this. It’s just a year.
It’s just a year.
-
The air is just a little too warm, and her Uber driver is helping her with her suitcase, taking it from her to put in the trunk. It’s probably stupid of her to be bringing a suitcase but… whatever.
The air is just a little too warm, but instead of asking for the AC to be turned on in the car, she rolls down her window just a little, tries breathing in the air. She hasn’t taken a deep breath since… for a little while now.
They drive by that old apartment building, moving too fast for her to get a good look, but she swears he’s up there, Harry, standing up on the roof. Does he remember her saying that that was her favorite place in all of Canton? Does he remember it snowing, her dragging him up there to watch it fall? Does he remember every single time they stood side by side staring over at what he swore were pieces of the Detroit skyline? Does he remember it as well as she does?
The driver asks her something about where she’s going, and it makes her pause for no real reason.
“Europe,” she eventually says, and they nod at her in the mirror.
“Spent a summer in France once. Nothing quite like it.”
She blinks. She breathes. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard.”
-
She sleeps the entire flight from Detroit to Hartford, but the moment she turns airplane mode off, she starts thinking she should call him.
It wouldn’t be that difficult.
Only…
She needs to not have him for a little while. She needs to remember that even the tiniest bit of him is better than nothing. She needs to live in a world that he doesn’t entirely occupy. Just for a little while.
(She keeps going back to summer. She keeps thinking about lilac skies, about ocean breezes, about him and her and them. In her bag, there’s a disposable camera full of film she forgot to get developed. For now, that’s all she gets.)
-
It’s mid-June, but in London, the sky is yet to be anything but gray.
The rain catches her off guard at the worst moments, usually nothing but a drizzle, sometimes an all-out downpour, causing her bangs, the ones she never should’ve cut, to stick to her face.
She buys an umbrella from a corner store and stares at a rack of postcards for a long enough time that the storekeeper tells her to just take one for free.
“Oh,” she says, just a little caught off guard. “I don’t, if—”
“The one of Big Ben is my favorite,” he says, ignoring whatever she was about to say next. He hands it to her along with her change, and she pulls a smile onto her face.
“Thanks.”
Walking in block heels under the umbrella, street lamps turned on the pavement slick, she and Cassandra do some half-assed sort of pub crawl. Cute British guys with cute accents buy her fruity drinks, and she laughs at their stupid jokes. That’s about as far as it gets, though. She doesn’t really want anything like that right now. No, not right now.
(All she can think about is that one time her aunt Lynette that her uncle Doug lost her and Will and Harry and Kelly at some competition about fifteen miles from where she is now. She wants to text him, Harry. And everything in her head is too fuzzy for a list of reasons as to why that is such a bad idea to fully form.)
And it’s later, and they’re back at the hotel room, Cassandra passed out in one of the two queen beds, Allie sitting at the desk, that Big Ben postcard in front of her. Cass put one of those international stamps on it and now…
She’s half drunk and not thinking straight and—“It is yet to stop raining. Very gray here. Reminds me of Canton. She knows immediately who it’s meant for. She almost writes missing you.
And then it’s the address to that house in the Hamptons, and she probably shouldn’t be writing it, she probably should be writing to Elle or to her parents, but, God, she just can’t help it. It’s meant for him. Most things like this are meant for him.
In blue pen, she writes Harry Bingham off to the side of her words. Slipping it in her bag, lying down in bed, she tries convincing herself that maybe she won’t actually mail it. She tries promising herself that something like this won’t happen again.
(In the morning, before Cassandra drags her out for a tour of Buckingham Palace, Allie stops by a post office. She thinks that this is probably going to happen again.)
-
They take the Eurostar south to Lille. She eats a pastry that almost tastes stale and drinks a cup of tea that burns the inside of her mouth. She leans her head against the glass and takes a picture of the view outside the window as the train slows to a stop. She imagines it’s blurry, just barely out of focus. That doesn’t really matter, though.
At the station, Cass buys her two more disposable cameras without Allie even bringing it up.
“We could probably find a place to get the film developed too,” she offers. Allie pauses, stares down at the Kodak camera. All she can think about is that one picture of him on the roof. All she can think about is how the purple the sky was behind him; how wide he was smiling. How wide she was smiling.
“Maybe.”
She practices broken French at a bakery near the house they’ve rented for the next few days. The person behind her in line laughs, but that somehow only serves to make Allie laugh too.
That last time she was in France was for Worlds. They came in second, and she barely talked to him the entire trip.
Here, now, she puts on that pair of pearl earrings she couldn’t bring herself to leave behind and goes out to some fancy restaurant with Cass. They drink too many glasses of this full-bodied merlot that leaves them both a bit wobbly walking down cobblestone paths.
In her room, the only light comes from a tiny lamp in the corner, so she writes slowly, and tries not to think too hard about any of the words appearing on the card.
Chances are, some housekeeper will read them before he ever does. What she’s saying shouldn’t matter.
It’s just… France reminds her of him, in some weird way. Most things do, though, so…
-
Traveling to Amsterdam, Cassandra finally asks about what happened.
“You’re not talking to him, are you,” she says, and it almost sounds like a question.
Allie sits in denial. “What?”
Cassandra blinks over at her. “Harry. You’re not talking to Harry. Which… is everything okay?”
Allie swallows something down, the truth, probably. She pushes back everything she’s been feeling since left. “We’re just on a break. From skating.”
“Because…?”
Allie shrugs, but it feels painfully awkward. “Because we wanted a break.”
Cassandra raises an eyebrow, looking skeptical and surprised and maybe tired. “We? You both wanted a break?”
“Yes.” Her voice shakes. Cass exhales softly.
“Really? Because I’ve met Harry. I don’t think he’s ever wanted a break from you.” Allie blinks over at her, silent. There’s probably something to be said, but she can’t find it. They sit in that for a moment before Cassandra continues. “So you wanted a break. From him?
“I don’t know, Cass,” Allie says, all in a rush, sounding desperate, desperate for an out, desperate for a reason to stop thinking about him. Because she’s an ocean away from him, and it’s not fair that all she can think about is a summer that’s already come and gone.
“You ran away to Europe, Al. Are you guys going to be okay?”
There are a million things that she could say right now. She goes with the answer that sounds most like a lie. “We’ll be fine.”
-
She sits in front of the paintings that remind her of him. Most of them are covered in pastels, pictures of beaches and sunsets. There’s always blue, somewhere. In her mind, he’s all blue, the brightest blue, the clearest blue. Like the sky, maybe. Or the ocean. It doesn’t really matter.
In the giftshop, she picks out a card that has one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits on it because it’s the only one that doesn’t immediately remind her of him. On the way back to where she and Cass are staying, she drops the postcard off at the post office, writing on the back while she stands in line for one of those international stamps. She still sends it to that same house.
God, maybe she should just call him.
-
In Paris, she wakes up early one morning and sits at a café with one of those books Cassandra always carries with her.
At the airport she bought a vintage looking postcard that had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. Just looking at it makes her smile.
The city of lights makes her tired. She stands on the bank of the Seine with a disposable camera (they’re starting to pile up in her bag. Cassandra keeps bugging her to get the film developed. Allie doesn’t know why she can’t bring herself to just do it already) and wonders how she can be in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and only feel a painful longing for some suburb of Detroit.
On the fourth of July, she wakes up early and sits in a café with one of those books Cassandra always carries with her. She stares at a tacky postcard and tries to find the right words to describe how much she misses home.
And when she can’t find them, she writes something about clichés and berets and tries hard not to imagine him sitting beside her.
(Maybe then she’d lose the painful longing. Maybe.)
-
Brussels is the last city before Cassandra flies home, leaving Allie alone. When she thinks about it, it’ll be the first time she’s ever been properly alone while traveling. But maybe that’ll be good for her.
They walk through the city at night, everything lit a pale orange, all around them things coming slowly to life. They stop in at a club, live music in the background, the lighting a purple that reminds of a sunset at its peak.
On a disposable, Cassandra takes a picture of Allie standing in the entrance, people pushing past. It probably ends up blurry, not that she’ll really know until she gets the film developed.
If she ever gets the film developed.
On a picture of the city, she writes her regular note, and then the regular address too. It’s tucked in her bag, pulled out after hugging Cassandra good-bye, so Allie can trace over the words like they weren’t something she wrote for him, but the other way around.
Because here’s the thing about her:
She’s never been good at being alone.
And she remembers admitting that to him once, not too long ago, them pressed close on her couch. And she remembers what he said after that: that’s not a very good reason to keep someone around.
Maybe that’s what she does, forces people to stay with her because she’s afraid that they’ll leave if she doesn’t.
Or maybe that’s what she did. Past tense.
The morning Cassandra leaves, Allie mails another postcard to a boy she worries she won’t ever stop missing being around. And then she tries to figure out how to be alone.
-
She spends hours staring at the Rhine, walking across the bridge and staring over the edge. She monopolizes a bench in a park, takes pictures of the sky, the trees, the row of shops that sit nearby.
And of the river, of course.
In Cologne, the Rhine makes her wonder if she’ll ever escape home. Because there's a boardwalk in a park back in Detroit, and that’s home. And there’s also a rooftop and an ice rink and a house in the Hamptons and him. Most of all, he’s home.
In Cologne, the Rhine reminds of her home.
If she closes her eyes, she can taste vanilla ice cream and hear his laugh and the sound of a camera shutter clicking away. And maybe the sun is setting in her memories, everything pink and purple and orange. Maybe he’s beaming over at her, so incredibly bright. Maybe they’re dancing on the beach under the stars.
It doesn’t really matter. She closes her eyes, and suddenly, for a single fleeting moment, she’s happy.
Allie knows exactly what she’s chasing.
-
She flies out to Vienna, and then takes a train to where she’s staying.
She makes a friend out of the person in the seat next to her. He notices her collections of disposables, and they talk a little about photography.
“I feel a little like an imposter in this conversation,” she says, and he throws his head back laughing in a way she can only describe as similar to Harry.
He leaves her his number, and she makes a promise to reach out at some point during her stay.
And she’s rented a single room out of someone’s house, the bed frame painted a fading white, the paint chipping away at the edges. In the mornings, when she doesn’t want to get out of bed just yet, she’ll pick at it with her fingernails and only feel a little bad.
She takes pictures of palaces and walks through gardens while listening to Bach and thinking about the potential for future programs. It’s been so long now since she last put on a pair of skates. She wonders if that’s an ability she can lose, if skating is a muscle that will atrophy without use.
She calls up that guy from the train and drinks a disgusting craft beer and writes her message to Harry. The cards are probably pilling up now.
(There’s a key under a rock, and if that’s gone, she knows the code to the garage. Maybe she can go back to the Hamptons and whisk away the cards before he ever sees them. Maybe that’s what she wants.)
-
She misses him.
In Venice, the weather is hot, and she only wears those sundresses she bought last year. And that’s probably when it first hits her.
Or maybe it’s when there’s a cup of stracciatella in her hands, a tiny wooden spoon and a million memories of every single time Harry brought up he was half Italian.
She lays on the beach, and sand tangles into her hair, and her skin turns pink, and later she smells like sunscreen and saltwater.
Sometimes it’s like he’s right there beside her, pointing something out to her as she walks down the street, humming along to whatever music she’s listening too, making one of those stupid jokes that always made her laugh anyways.
She’s pulled back into years of him and her and them, them talking and laughing and sharing fries after competitions and sharing oranges in kitchenettes and staring across rinks and—
In the Hamptons, she was stupid enough to think she could ever live with just part of him. In Venice… In Venice she realizes it’s all or nothing.
-
Of everywhere she’s visited, Florence feels like the place he’d love the most.
She watches the sunset over the water—everything the brightest blue—and that’s probably it. That’s probably why she thinks he’d love it so much.
(Him and her and walking through the streets hand in hand feels a little like a dream. She’s pretty sure she’s writes something like that on the postcard.)
-
Rome feels a little like an ending.
That’s probably because it is. It’s an ending, one of those clear ones that leaves room for a before and after.
-
She lands in Detroit, and the first thing she sees is the notification on her phone.
Harry Bingham. 1 missed call.
Her heart stops.
When she texts him, immediately because it’s him and she’s her, and she’s never been good at keeping her distance, it’s hours before he responds. And then it’s about the Hamptons and the postcards, and she feels a little like she can’t breathe.
Because she’s home, back in Canton, back in her house, in her room, in her bed. And Elle and Helena are only a room away, and everything else in her life is just about the same as before. Except…
He texts her a picture of the sunset. She cries for the first time since she left.
-
Helena leaves early in the morning for practice, and Elle makes Allie breakfast.
It’s scrambled eggs and bacon and pancakes and fresh berries. And she feels taken care of. But that’s always what Elle’s done. So it’s not surprising.
“I missed you,” Elle says, her head tilted to the side, a sad smile on her face, almost hesitant, very quiet.
“I missed you too.”
And then, “I’m retiring.”
There’s a pause as Allie processes the words, her eyes probably wide, her fork frozen near her mouth, that perfect bite of food hanging in mid-air. “What?” she breathes out. “You’re retiring?”
Elle laughs, something soft and just like her. “Yeah. I just… didn’t want to do it anymore. I made a choice. And it’s Helena. It’s always Helena. And I might coach. Or open a ballet studio, maybe.”
With an exhale, leaving a moment of silence light between them, Allie finally says, “A ballet studio would be nice. You could teach.”
“You’d send your kids there?”
“Yeah.”
Elle blinks, spearing a blueberry with her fork, the metal sounding against the glass. “And so you and Harry are on a break?” she asks, almost casually, and that feels like the question everyone must have back at the rink.
Allie nods.
“For a year?” Allie nods again. Elle sighs. “And it was your idea, right? Because Harry would never…”
“It was my idea,” she says slowly, carefully, the words barely there. “Cass said that thing about Harry too, you know. Is he really…?
Elle rolls her eyes. “Yes. He is.”
“Oh.”
They spend the rest of breakfast talking about Europe. Elle points out the disposable cameras. Allie doesn’t know why she just doesn’t develop the film already.
Or maybe she does.
(It’s just one picture among dozens. And she shouldn’t be avoiding it anyway. Not anymore.)
-
It’s either very early in the morning or very late at night. She’s not quite sure. It doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that he’s calling her, his name and his picture lighting up her phone screen in the dark of her room. And she stares at it for a moment, a moment too long, caught up in remembering when she took the picture—years ago on that boardwalk along Lake St. Clair.
But then she’s answering the phone, and she’s tired, and she’s worried, and she’s a little scared, and—“Harry?”
“Sorry,” he says quickly. The last time she heard his voice was months ago. She didn’t think it’d be like this. And, fuck, it’s his birthday, isn’t it? It’s September now, and it has to be his birthday, and, God, did she forget? How could she forget?
So, “No, no, it’s fine.” And then: “It’s your birthday, right?”
“Yeah,” he breathes out. “It is.”
She smiles a little because once upon a time she was seventeen and he was eighteen, and they got drunk off cheap vodka and danced in his living room. She smiles a little because it’s him she’s talking to. It’s him.
“Happy birthday, then.”
“Thanks.” He pauses. She holds her breath, waits for the line to click, for that to be his goodbye. Maybe she deserves that. Maybe. Only then he’s saying, softly, “Can I ask you something?”
She tries to breathe, deep breaths. Steadying breaths. Only a question, right now… the million things he could ask… The million things she doesn’t know the answer to. “Harry, is everything—”
“You really did love me, right? Before. Because I loved you. I loved you so fucking much.”
Oh.
And the words hit her, leave her wondering who she was and who she is, and how exactly he couldn’t know. How could he not know?
“Harry,” she finally says, her voice halting, “I—yeah, I loved you. I loved you a lot. And I—” She almost says, I still love you, the words right on the tip of her tongue. But that almost feels cruel, a declaration over the phone, too late at night or too early in the morning. It doesn’t feel fair. To her. To him. “Happy birthday, Harry,” she says instead. “Sorry I didn’t call.”
She hangs up.
-
She can’t fall back asleep.
She tries. She tries for hours, eyes squeezed shut, her heart racing, a million thoughts in her head, those four stupid words still right on the tip of her tongue.
Maybe she should’ve said it. Maybe she should’ve told him. Maybe that never should have become a thing he was uncertain about.
Maybe she should’ve stayed.
Or maybe she left for a reason. Maybe she left because there’s something wrong with the two of them. Maybe she left because her dreams didn’t feel like her own anymore, and maybe they still don’t. Maybe she just wants them to be okay. Maybe that’s all she’s ever wanted.
When it’s been hours, and she is still yet to fall back asleep, she throws the covers back and goes outside and props that ladder that they really should’ve given back to their neighbors by now up against the side of the house. And she climbs up onto the roof, and she watches the sun rise.
It’s a lilac sky.
When Elle wakes up hours later and finds Allie still sitting up on the roof, she climbs halfway up the ladder and calls out a question.
And the answer to it is simple, and the words fall out of her in a rush. “I miss him.”
With a start, Allie realizes that that’s the first time she’s said the words out loud.
-
She flies back to West Ham.
There’s no reason for her to be in Canton, not anymore. There’s no reason for her to sit on the couch, watching shitty Netflix Originals while Elle and Helena act all soft and happy, trying to nudge her slowly back towards the rink, back towards that whole world, as if Allie wants to live in it with Harry not around.
So she packs a bag that is honestly mostly just disposable cameras and a pair of earrings and an old cotton t-shirt that she took from him forever ago. It doesn’t smell like him anymore, so there’s not much of a point to it. But… she’s attached.
She packs a bag and flies back to West Ham. It’s not home, but neither is Canton, not anymore. (Sometimes she thinks she can’t remember the last time Canton was home. Other times… other times she knows. She just knows.)
-
In Connecticut, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
There’s only so much to do around West Ham. There’s a row of shops and restaurants downtown. There are about five places where you can get a decent brunch. If you walk through any one of the three parks the town has, you will see any number of kids jumping in piles of leaves while parents yell for them to stop. And if you really want to, you can avoid a whole neighborhood because once upon a time you stood on some boy’s doorstep and asked for him to give the two of you a chance. And then he gave you a chance. Again and again and again.
So she doesn’t really know what to do with herself.
It’s October, and her parents are both at work, and Cassandra’s at school, and…
That tiny ice rink in Greenwich is right there.
The metal door is cool to the touch, and it sticks a little as she pulls it open. And it’s still the same person working the front desk, and the linoleum is still slick enough to be considered a safety hazard, and everything feels exactly the same as it was when she left.
That’s comforting.
Allie’ll sit up in the stands and stare out at the ice, until her aunt Lynette is gesturing for her to come down to the boards, and Allie’s complete shit at saying no, so…
“I haven’t seen you in forever,” her aunt says, and Allie lets out the softest exhale.
“I haven’t been back in forever.”
They pull apart, and Lynette’s got her head tilted to the side, her gaze flickering between Allie and some girl skating on the other end of the rink. “Harry was here a few months ago,” she finally says, lightly. “You two are doing really good. You’re making us all proud.”
“Thanks,” Allie breathes out, and it’s nothing but genuine.
There’s a pause, and Lynette stares out at the ice, at the girl, and the girl’s getting closer now, closer and closer and—
Oh.
It’s Sarah Bingham.
“Allie,” she calls out, so bright, just like her brother, her eyes shining and her smile wide. And Allie’s pretty sure she’s smiling too. She’s pretty sure she’s happy, that this is one of those fleeting moments in which there’s no room for sadness.
“Hi, Sarah.”
“You’re never around anymore,” Sarah says, casually, slipping on skate guards and pulling Allie in for a hug. Lynette’s disappeared, probably gone to go coach someone. Gone without a goodbye but… Allie’s left without goodbyes plenty of times. “Probably the reason why my brother always looks so sad.”
Those few words that so easily fall out of Sarah’s mouth, and it leaves Allie breathless. Oh.
“You two are on a break, right? Just for the year?” Sarah continues, pushing past Allie’s silence. “God, I cannot imagine not skating for an entire year. Are you guys not allowed to skate? Harry never goes skating with me.”
Sarah blinks over at Allie expectantly, waiting for an answer, her eyes wide and her smile still firmly in place. Sarah’s smile reminds her so much of Harry, and that hurts, but not nearly as much as she thought it would.
“We can still skate,” Allie finally says, and Sarah lets out a little laugh, and all Allie can think about is that one summer she spent with her and Harry, the three of them sitting out by the pool and going to the beach. The three of them all so undeniably happy. That was only three years ago.
“Well then I guess you’ll just have to skate with me, since Harry refuses to. I—My mom is picking me up in like five minutes, so I’ve gotta get going, but…” Sarah’s smile is so fucking bright. “It was nice seeing you, Allie.”
“It was nice to see you too, Sarah.” And that’s not at all a lie.
-
If seeing Sarah doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as she thought it would, then maybe…
Allie gathers up all the disposable cameras she’s been collecting. She drives down to CVS. It’s just one picture. It’s just him. She’ll be okay.
-
They’re sitting up on the roof. The sky is turned lilac as the sun sets. He’s smiling, wide and bright, staring just past the camera. She’s smiling too, so wide that she remembers it hurting. She’s smiling at him because back then he was there.
Her heart stops, and then it starts again. And then it stops.
She calls him.
He doesn’t pick up.
-
There’s only one picture of him.
The rest are of everything else.
She lays them out on the floor of her childhood bedroom, organizing them by place, setting up a messy timeline of her summer. Near her door, it starts in London, a picture of the view from her hotel room, the sky a light gray, rain falling.
Then there’s Lille and a train window. Amsterdam. Paris.
Brussels zigzags across the middle of the room, a picture of the city at night, the flash turned on and reflecting on the building. A picture of her outside a club, the lighting a light purple, everything just barely blurry.
And there are too many pictures of the Rhine, and too many pictures of palaces and gardens.
While she lines her floor with images of the beach, of the ocean, of gelato, of every single time she was reminded of him, her phone rings. Once, twice—
Oh.
It’s Harry.
-
She arrives at the coffee shop a half hour early. She spends the first fifteen minutes in her car trying not to hyperventilate, and then the next fifteen minutes inside, sitting in some corner booth, staring at the door.
And then he’s there, right there, and they’re hugging, and his face is in the crook of her neck, and she can smell his cologne, and feel his heartbeat, and, God, she’s missed him so fucking much.
She’s missed just being near him. She’s missed touching him. She’s missed picking out the gold flecks in his eyes, staring at his curls, listening to him talk. She missed all of it.
And she’s crying, probably, just a little, and he’s wiping a tear from her face, and he missed her too.
For a moment, a really long moment, that’s all that matters.
“So tell me about Europe,” he says as he sits down, and she bites the inside of her lip and lets out this watery sort of laugh.
“It was great. It was amazing. It was… yeah.”
“You had fun?” he asks, leaning forward just slightly, like any words she’s about to say are some secret he’ll have to strain to hear.
“I had a lot of fun,” she says, pausing, staring down at her drink and then up at him. At him. “Those postcards I sent you felt kinda like a game, sometimes. And I took pictures everywhere I went, disposables. I’ll have to show you them sometime.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I’d like that.”
They share pastries and drinks, and she talks way too much about all the food she ate in Europe, and he doesn’t even care, just sits across the table staring at her, his head tilted to the side, a smile firmly on his face. That smile doesn’t fade once.
At the end, when the sky’s starting to get dark and she realizes that she can’t stay here forever, they hug again outside the coffee shop. She holds on just a little too tight for just a little too long.
She tries not to get too caught up in the fact that he’s not the one pulling away.
She fails.
-
Without thinking, she texts him a tweet that she found funny.
And this is what she wanted, for things to feel easy again, for conversation for flow like water, for him to call and for her to answer after the first ring because she’s not getting caught up in staring at his picture on her screen.
“You should come over, I can show you all the pictures I took in Europe,” she offers, and he doesn’t pause before accepting.
She thinks that maybe soon they’ll be okay.
-
The day that Harry almost kisses her outside the ice cream parlor is the day that she goes back to the rink for the second time.
She brings skates this time, old skates that are probably a bit too small now because they’re from years ago. They’re a dirty white, all scuffed up, a bit of the leather torn. They’re from a time so far in the before.
She brings her skates, and she sits out by the boards, and she stares at the ice for too long.
She doesn’t have it in her. Not right now.
(Just like she doesn’t have it in her to kiss him, even though she wants to so badly. And she doesn’t know why she can’t, she doesn’t know what part of her is missing now. She doesn’t know, and she wants to know.)
As she’s leaving, she bumps into Sarah in the hallway, and the girl beams over at her, and once again there’s not enough room for Allie to be sad.
“Are you skating?” the girl asks, and Allie shakes her head.
“Just leaving, actually.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” And then: “Harry’s a lot happier not that you’re back. I don’t know if it’s because of you, but…”
Allie exhales. “I’m a lot happier too.”
“Good,” Sarah says brightly, pausing for a moment before saying, “I’m having my birthday party next weekend. You should come.”
Allie doesn’t stop. She doesn’t think. What she wants is to see him, so… “Sure.”
-
They’re sitting downstairs, pressed close on the couch, a slice of cake on a plate on his, her head on his shoulder. It’s not late, not really, but she’s tired anyway.
And all she can think about are those postcards in a stack on his desk. All she can think about is how close he’s kept them, how he took them with him when he left the Hamptons, how quick he was to say of course I did when she said out loud, mostly to herself, that he kept them. He kept them.
Her head’s on his shoulder, and she’s trying to breathe him in, and Sarah’s sitting across from them talking about something that happened to her at school.
Allie never wants this moment to end.
(Sometimes she wishes that he asked her to stay. Sometimes she wishes that she’d stayed anyways, without him ever having to say the words. Sometimes she thinks that none of that matters.
Because they’re here now. The two of them—they’re okay. For the first time in a long time, they’re okay.)
-
It’s snowing, the first real snow of the year, and she thinks that that’s probably what wakes her up.
From her bedroom window, too early in the morning, she watches it fall, staring at the streetlamps.
And Allie’s not thinking, not really, not clearly at least. It’s snowing, and she’s not thinking, and it’s too early in the morning, and the snowflakes get stuck on her car windshield as she pulls into the parking lot.
She used to do shit like this all the time. When the air felt blue and snow fell from the sky, there was never really any other place she could imagine being but the rink. That hasn’t really changed.
That’s why she’s at the rink. That’s why she’s stepping out of her car, tilting her head back and closing her eyes and letting the snowflakes fall on her face just once as she approaches the building.
Near the door, as she reaches out to pull it open, her foot lands on a patch of ice, and she’s about to fall, is so close to falling, only suddenly he’s there, right there, always right there, always catching her.
Harry. He’s always there to catch her.
“You good, Pressman?” he asks, and she leans just barley into him, shock and surprise and something else, something warm coursing through her.
“Yeah,” she breathes out, “yeah, I’m good. Thanks for catching me.”
“Always.” He’s standing just a little too close, but she doesn’t mind at all. Maybe she never minds. Maybe she’s never minded. “What are you doing here?”
“I just…” she shrugs a little, staring up at him. Of everyone she knows, he’s probably the only person who’d understand her reasoning. So… “It’s snowing, and I just wanted to skate. What about you?”
She barely hears his answer because suddenly all she can think about is—
“You have your skates on you?”
He tilts his head to the side, his lips parting, a smile on his face. She thinks he knows where she’s going with this. “Yeah.”
“You wanna skate with me?”
-
That waltz is playing, but she can only barely hear it over her heartbeat, loud in her chest. And he’s spinning her around and around, her hand held so tight in his, like she’s some lifeline, like he’s afraid to let go.
When she thinks of skating with him, this will forever be what she thinks of, not some Olympic stage, not them under the lights, the people cheering and music echoing. No. She’ll think of this, of only being able to hear her skates against the ice and her heartbeat and that waltz, of it just being the two of them.
With her heart right on the edge of her sleeve, she kisses him, and everything else goes quiet. There’s something about all of this that feels so undeniably like fate, like the way things were always meant to go.
Standing on the ice in the middle of the rink, she tilts her head back and stares up at him. The flecks in his eyes look like stars and only stars. “Skating with you,” she whispers, “God, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“Ever?” he breathes out, a half laugh right there. It makes her laugh a little too. She can’t help it.
“Ever.”
-
after.
-
A list of things that will happen soon:
They’ll go back to the Hamptons. It’ll be two months, and they’ll walk up and down the pier with vanilla ice cream cones, and they’ll spend too long days on the beach, and they’ll sit and watch the sunset or the sunrise, the sky an explosion of pink and purple and orange. It’ll be two months, and at the end, they’ll drive home together in whatever expensive car he’s driving.
They’ll watch Helena and Elle disappear to Hawaii one day, and then they’ll watch the two come home saying they eloped. They’ll have this tiny little party, and it’ll happen on such short notice that the only food served is a slice of chocolate cake Elle somehow finds a way to split four ways.
They’ll go to Florence. She’ll take him around the city like it’s a place she knows. He’ll try speaking Italian even though he’s horrible at it, and they’ll eat way too much pasta and gelato and pizza. She’ll buy a postcard. Just because.
They’ll dance to that stupid waltz in the dark in the middle of the night. Maybe on the beach, under the stars, or maybe just in the living room.
They’ll go to the Olympics. They’ll stand on that stage, and it’ll all go the way it’s supposed to.
They’ll be alright.