Work Text:
him
Tessa chooses the diner. It's the last place he ever thought she would pick, the kind of beaten-road joint where the menu has pictures on it and all the food comes served with a side of grease. In the background, he can hear the fry cook yelling at the waitress about the toilet overflowing. Their chairs are oily with fingerprints, sticky with spilt soda, and he can hear her jeans squeak against the vinyl every time she squirms in her seat. Maybe she thought they wouldn't be recognized here - not that they get recognized much anymore. Not him, anyway. Maybe she thought he would be more comfortable here. She was always making gestures for his benefit that made him feel about two inches tall.
She looks different now than she does on TV. The last time he saw her, she was in this dopey commercial for string cheese where the animated mouse on the packet was trying to convince her to buy it. "Wow!" she exclaimed, in the commercial that played twice during the last Raptors game. "What a gouda idea!" She'd looked as two-dimensional as the mouse, smooth and flat and uncanny.
He can't remember the last time he saw her in real life. He knows she keeps a house fifteen minutes away from where he lives, but he's never seen her or her family around. He thinks he saw her mother at the supermarket a couple of years ago but he didn't stick around to find out for sure. One flicker of that white bob that reminded of him of every disapproving teacher he ever had and he was down the hardware aisle, pretending to look at lithium batteries until he saw the back of her head at the checkout. He's never been the type to avoid confrontation, but he did them both a favor that time. Tessa's mother always got a pinched look on her face whenever she saw him, like she'd swallowed a whole twist of lemon, and he wouldn't have been able to swallow back a sarcastic comment. Her mother always thought Tessa deserved more than him, like he hadn't already tried to give her everything once and she hadn't wanted any of it.
Across the table, Tessa looks so strange to him, so completely unfamiliar. It unsettles him sharply, like landing in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and don't know the airport. She doesn't look like he remembers. There are faint purple aprons under her eyes now and spidery lines down the valley of her cheeks. She's graying a bit at the temples, stark strands of silver weaving in and out like vipers in a nest. She looks nothing like the girl he used to know, the woman he used to love. He realizes suddenly that what she looks like now is her mother.
"Should we order?" she says. Her voice is quiet, blurry with sleep. They have to meet before sunrise because he's due at the rink at seven, and the Olympics are in two months so he can't negotiate on that. The last training session ends at five thirty and then he's got to pick the kids up from soccer and karate and he can't negotiate on that either.
They flag the waitress over, a mousy girl with braces who can't be older than sixteen. A long time ago, they had to be careful about interacting with teenage girls or women over forty-five unless they wanted to spend the next half hour signing autographs and making small talk. This one barely gives them a second glance as she scribbles on her notepad before scurrying off.
"How are the kids?" Tessa asks.
The kids are getting older. He found a vape in one kid's room and the other kid told him last week she's taking a leave of absence from university to follow her deadbeat boyfriend's metal band on tour. They communicate in eye rolls, text all during dinner and send him to voicemail when he calls. His wife says he doesn't spend enough time at home and what does he expect.
"The kids are great," he says. "How about yours?"
"They're doing good too," she murmurs. She's fiddling with the edge of the table. "I can't believe how fast they're growing up. We're getting old."
"It feels like yesterday," he says automatically, though he's not sure why he does, because it doesn't. It feels like so long ago. He feels like his life contains several smaller lifetimes, all in their separate compartments, never meeting, never touching. Each lifetime has its own Scott and none of them recognize each other. The Scott thirty years ago would've been delighted to be here at the crack of dawn in this very un-Tessa-like place, sharing her tepid coffee. The Scott thirty years ago was delighted by everything about Tessa. The Scott now watches her silvering hair and her crumpled hands and just feels utterly lost.
He's only met her children a handful of times. They favor their father and her brothers and don't really look anything like her, but then they'd call him 'sir' or 'Mr Moir' in their well-rehearsed little voices, like they're acting in a play, and that's when he knows he's talking to Tessa's offspring. It makes him want to laugh sometimes, inappropriately, like giggling through a school assembly. Her children talking to him like he was little more than a stranger on the street is just extremely funny, no matter how you diced it. The Scott thirty years ago certainly would've thought so.
Only, now that he's thinking of it - he remembers some swishy event honoring their career (he didn't know who organized these things because he sure as hell wasn't the one doing it), and one of Tessa's girls had approached him, looking determined.
"Can you do jumps?" she'd demanded to know.
He'd looked around. Tessa was nowhere in sight. "Er, no," he said. "I was an ice dancer. We don't jump."
The girl had reddish-brown hair neatly combed into two spindly braids. She looked nothing like Tessa as a little girl, blunt-faced where Tessa was delicate, ruddy and pink where Tessa was porcelain. "Oh," she'd said, disappointed. "I thought you could teach me. Mum won't let me jump. She doesn't even really like when I skate."
"Sorry, kiddo," he said, before he even knew what he was saying. He winced slightly, but she didn't even seem to register the nickname.
"Hmm," she said thoughtfully and started chewing on a fingernail. Tessa used to hate when he did that, he thought vaguely. "Well, what can you do?"
They'd sat through at least seven video montages of Virtue and Moir through the gala dinner, though he'd zoned out halfway through the first one. He made very sure to keep the Scott from all those other lifetimes, twenty and thirty and forty years ago, locked up tight at these things. "I can dance," he said finally.
"You can?" she said, face bright. "What kind of dance?"
He thought for a moment. "Can you waltz?"
"No," she shook her head. "Can you teach me?"
He hadn't known what on earth possessed him to nod, but it was what he did. "Sure," he said, as casually as he could manage.
The girl frowned suddenly. "But I'm not wearing a ball gown. You need a ball gown to waltz. Like Cinderella."
He paused. “But of course you are," he said after a moment, leaning forward conspiratorially, like they shared a secret.
Her brow furrowed and she glanced down at her plain navy dress and mary-janes. "No, I'm not," she said blankly.
He stood up and held out his hand. She took it without hesitation, her little palm feeling so small in his. She should really be more careful about strange men offering to hold her hand, he thought after a moment. "Yes, you are," he said. "You're wearing a big poofy ball gown with puffed sleeves and an enormous train. It's pink..."
"...blue!" she'd interrupted, indignant.
"...blue, like I said. It's made of diamonds and sparkles whenever you move. You're also wearing a tiara and when you go out onto the dance floor," he leads them to the darkened dance floor where scattered pockets of people are swaying to a half-hearted string quartet, "everyone bows and calls you 'your highness'."
He'd watched as her eyes scanned the banal hall at the convention centre, not knowing if she was going to play along. He didn't know what he was doing. He didn't even know this girl. He didn't know if she still played dolls and princesses, or if she was too precocious for all that. He didn't know if she was good at school, if she was funny or if she was a square, if she was cheeky or brave or selfish or kind. He knew nothing about her and that wasn't all his fault, but it was at least half.
And then the girl did a miraculous thing - she curtsied, one knee dipping to the floor, her hand holding up the skirt of her dress, a little grin lighting up her face. She was missing her two front teeth. "My lord," she said and she was still smiling that sweet gummy smile.
He bowed. "My lady," he said, in a crusty English accent, and then he took her in his arms and lifted her onto the top of his shoes. She was so little, she still only barely reached his chest.
She'd given a faint squeak of surprise, and then delight, as one hand clutched his waist and the other gripped his hand and he took off on a circular box-step around the dance floor. He could almost hear Marina in his ear - "odin, dva, tri, odin, dva, tri" - as he spun them around the hardwood. He couldn't help going faster and he could hear the little girl's squeaks turn into squeals. Her shoes were digging into his toes and he hadn't kept up a consistent gym routine in years so his arms were starting to ache, but there was an undeniable rush of adrenalin hurtling through his chest and then, he started to laugh too. He felt lighter than air.
Eventually, they slowed, her giggles still popping like champagne in his ears. "That was not a waltz," she declared.
"It was too," he said. "I have two gold medals and I say it was."
"It was not. You don't waltz on someone's toes."
"Well, how many gold medals do you have, princess?"
The girl giggled again. After a moment, she quieted, but she didn't stop looking at him. Her eyes, Tessa's eyes, fastened on his and he felt something inside him unravel, locks coming loose. "It's weird, seeing you in real life and not on a screen," she said.
"Well, it's weird to see you in real life and not in a photo," he countered.
She blinked at him. "You've seen photos of me?"
"A few, when you were a baby," he shrugged. Sometimes, when they caught up for the occasional press event during an Olympic year, and they'd bantered enough on-air to feel almost comfortable to fall into a facsimile of their old relationship off-air, he and Tessa would exchange photos of their families. Fat-cheeked babies in cribs, toddlers grinning toothily behind tricycles, first days of school in freshly pressed new uniforms, hockey matches, piano recitals. She'd even sent him a Christmas card one year, a glossy photo in front of a fireplace and huge fluffy stockings, though he'd barely taken it out of the envelope before throwing it in the trash.
"Oh," the girl looked surprised. "Why don't you ever visit?"
"I live far away," he lied.
"Where do you live?"
"Timbuktu."
"I've never heard of it."
"It's very far away."
The girl nodded solemnly, like she understood. "Well, I'm glad I finally met you, Mr Moir. I asked Mum about you sometimes."
His jaw ticks in spite of himself. "What did she say?"
"Nothing, really," the girl shrugged. "Just that you were her skating partner and you won the Olympics twice."
It was probably unfair that he felt bitter in that moment. It wasn't like he'd told his own children any differently. "We also lost the Olympics once," he said.
"I know," the girl said frankly. "I didn't like that free program at all."
"That makes two of us."
The girl let out another little laugh. "You're funny," she said and she gave him a lopsided grin. "I knew you would be."
He blinked. "What do you mean?"
She scuffed her shoe into the floor for a moment, avoiding his eye, but she didn't seem shy, just contemplative. "Just from videos," she said. "When you got a good score and you would jump up and roar. Like a lion. And in interviews when you would make Mum laugh. I thought you would be funny. I was right."
For a moment, he just stared at her, this scrawny little thing with her father's nose and chin and ears and mouth but her mother's eyes, and his chest tightened and he really thought he was about to cry. All he could see was Tessa's eyes, Tessa's eyes when she was seven years old and she took his hand for the first time, Tessa's eyes when they first moved to Detroit, Tessa's eyes when they won the Olympics, Tessa's eyes when they lost the Olympics, Tessa's eyes when she told him she loved him and meant it. Tessa's eyes, the truest thing he'd ever known.
He had to look away. Silence was stretching on between them, him and this little girl who was a complete mystery to him, but he couldn't think of anything to say, except that he knew her mother once and he loved her mother once, and once, they were so close he felt like he could touch her entire soul with his bare hands, only now they were whole worlds apart and they didn't love each other at all and maybe it was her fault or maybe it was his, he can't quite remember, but he wished he knew the girl better. He wished he knew her at all.
But he couldn't say any of that to a little kid without sounding insane, so he kept his mouth shut. Eventually, one of the girl's relatives had called for her and she'd trotted away with a little wave goodbye, although not before she gave him one last curtsy, an impish smile awakening a dimple in her cheek.
That was seven years ago. He'd never seen the girl again.
He wonders how she's doing now. She must be fifteen or sixteen now, deep in the throes of high school and mired in adolescent angst. He wonders if she gives Tessa a hard time or if Tessa had raised a daughter as pliable as she'd been as a teenager. He wonders if she still skated, if she ever learned to jump. He wonders if she would remember that time she danced on the shoes of her mother's old skating partner at some silly event for her mother's silly skating career. She definitely doesn't think of it as much as he does, he's certain of that much. She probably doesn't think of it at all.
He could ask Tessa how the girl is doing now, but he doesn't. He doesn't even know her.
He refocuses on the Tessa across the table from him. "Why did you want to meet?" he asks finally. He's tired suddenly, wants to get this over with. Keeping up appearances has always been exhausting for him, though he knows she's capable of keeping her mask on for years without slipping. If it even is a mask anymore. Maybe it's just her face now.
Tessa's cup of coffee is halfway to her lips. "Well, I guess the small talk portion of the day is over," she says wryly.
"I have to get to the rink," he says.
She doesn't look at him. "I could come with you," she says quietly.
He stares at her. "Why on earth would you want to do that," he blurts out before he can stop himself. His voice comes out much harsher than he intends, but she couldn't have shocked him more if she'd told him she wanted to take a piss on the moon. If one thing has been obvious in the last however many years, it's that skating is that last thing she wants to do with him.
Tessa's entire face pales until she's as white as a sheet. "This was a mistake," she says in a furious sort of whisper and then she's up out of her seat, tossing her fork with a clang against her untouched plate.
She's out the door and halfway to her car by the time he gets a hold of his scattered senses and races out after her.
"What the hell was that!" he yells in her general direction. It's still dark outside and he can barely make out the faint outline of her body against her Lexus.
He hasn't yelled at her in a long time. That would require them to speak to each other now beyond polite chitchat and stilted pleasantries. Yelling, screaming, arguing - it's all far too intimate for what they are to each other now. Now, they ignore any topics that would necessitate disagreement. Fighting would mean they have something to fight about, and they've spent a long time pretending they don't.
Tessa says nothing, just stands there next to her glossy car, not getting in and driving off, but not turning around to look at him either. Another impasse.
"Are you just going to stand there?"
He can hear her sharp intake of breath. "I forgot you were like this," she says finally and he thinks he can hear her words crack in her throat.
"Like what," he says impatiently.
"Stubborn. Temperamental."
"Well, I forgot you were like this too," he retorts.
She spins around to face him. "Like what?" she says and her eyes are so bright, he can see them in the dark.
He's about to say fucking crazy, because that's what she is and that's what she's always made him too, but the look in her eyes is suddenly so vivid, so familiar, like driving past your childhood home, that it splinters something raw inside him. He hasn't seen that look in such a long time. It's not the pristine, glazed-over look he's gotten for the past twenty years, the deliberate smiles and wary, careful conversations. His old body feels young suddenly.
The sun is starting to rise in the distance, a faint dusting of pink, like powdered sugar across the horizon. He blinks in the faint sunlight. She probably doesn't want to anymore, not after he yelled at her when they'd both agreed years ago that nothing between them was worth fighting for anymore, but he tells her anyway: "You can come with me if you want."
-
her
She's never been to this rink before. It looms over them, shiny and mechanical and new. The old rink where she'd spent years of her childhood was shabby and sweaty, but she'd liked it that way. It felt like her favorite old pajamas felt, warm and comfortable.
This new rink is so alien to her and she creeps through its empty, sterile hallways, feeling like an intruder. "How long have you been training here?" she asks.
"A couple of years."
"What happened to the old rink?"
Scott looks at her oddly. "They tore it down. Built a new apartment complex."
She had no idea. A sharp stab of resentment tears its way through her. He should've told her. He never tells her anything - she found out he was engaged from her sister, found out he was going to be a father from his cousin. Even when they were kids, she was the last to find out he'd flunked out of science or that he'd got arrested for that bar fight or that he'd finally lost his virginity. He used to demand so much from her when he seemed to give nothing in return. "I didn't know," she says in lieu of anything else.
He gives a small shrug. "You're not around," he says simply. He doesn't sound bitter, he just sounds normal. "How could you?"
Scott's office is cramped but extremely tidy, folders lined up in neat stacks on battered shelves. His desk is bare except for a meager lamp. She tries to imagine him sitting here after a long day of coaching but finds she can't seem to conjure the image at all. The person standing in front of her is nothing like the boy she used to know, the man she used to love. She can't imagine him doing anything at all, except stand there in front of her like he’s doing now. He's faded so thoroughly in her mind that neither her memory nor her imagination can fill in the gaps anymore.
He looks different now than how she remembers. It's been years since she saw him last. He's finally grown out of the boyishness that had marked their years together. He doesn't just look older, he looks old - grizzled. He finally has the facial hair that eluded him through his youth, salt and pepper stubble framing his pointed jaw. He's rounder around the belly now than he used to be. She remembers being held by him when she was younger, when he was nothing but lean, hard muscle, the broad planes of his shoulders so solid and warm beneath her fingertips.
The vain, preening part of her wonders how she looks to him. She's rounder now too, softened by pregnancies and a plush life where she wants for nothing and cares for even less. She is suddenly very conscious of the gray in her hair - she was going to get it dyed before she saw him, but then her colorist fell ill and she didn't want to call him to reschedule. She didn't know how he'd react to things like that anymore, if he'd think she was jerking him around. She tells herself he's seen her sweaty and smelly and with bad breath in the mornings and it wouldn't matter - although now that she thinks of it, that doesn't feel exactly right. He'd seen the old Tessa that way and she'd shed that Tessa so many skins ago.
She thinks vaguely that with their twin grays, their hair finally matches again, for the first time since they retired.
Scott takes his skates from a gym bag under his desk and she follows him down a winding hallway. She can feel they're headed toward the ice before they get there - the air changes, gets crisper, sharp enough to carve little red crescent moons in her cheeks.
She watches Scott lace up his skates, forcefully, like he's trying to strangle the boot. He does it the way he always did it, too vigorous, too energetic by half, and she's hit with a wave of nostalgia so strong, it's nauseating. It seems impossible that so many little things about him would stay the same, exactly the way she's always remembered it, but now they add up to a whole she doesn’t recognize at all.
When he's finished, he looks up at her, considering. "Do you want to?" he says, a half-sentence she somehow completely understands.
She pauses. "I didn't bring my skates."
He disappears behind a door somewhere and returns with a set of worn white skates. "They're falling apart a bit," he says. "But they should hold up as long as you don't do any triple axels. You're not going to, are you?" His smile is wry but warm, and she finds herself smiling back.
"No, I didn't somehow learn how to do a triple axel since we retired," she says.
"Well," he says and his smile fades, just a tiny bit. "I wouldn't know."
She hasn't skated in a long time. After they retired and they did those few disastrous tours, she was determined to make a name for herself outside the rink. Going back there felt like a loss in a way she couldn't explain. Occasionally, a well-bred girl whose father had deep pockets could tempt her and she'd let herself pretend to be a coach for one afternoon every other month. She'd see Scott there sometimes. His face would be blank, but back then, only a few years removed from their retirement, she could still read every tick in the set of his jaw and she knew he thought she was little more than a fraud.
Scott's face is blank now as he watches her lace up his skates. She doesn't know what that means anymore.
The skates are soft, well broken in, and she feels a little unsteady on her feet. The ice looks so endless before her. Did she really used to stroke laps of this, over and over, every day for twenty years? What a strange life she used to live.
For one mortifying moment, when she steps out onto the ice, she thinks that she's going to fall. She feels like she's five years old again, in learn-to-skate, and it's embarrassing that this is even happening at all when she has two Olympic gold medals, but it's magnitudes more embarrassing that it's happening in front of Scott. Scott, who pretends not to notice her gingerly leaning against the boards, and who is now stroking at full speed down the other end of the rink. His body is old but his skating is not, and he looks like he always did when he was on the ice, just about the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.
Suddenly, she misses him so intensely, she almost can't breathe. She hasn't missed him in so long, she'd forgotten what it felt like. She doesn't think about Scott very often. She locks him away in a secret compartment in her crypt-like heart and she rarely lets herself open it. When her husband asked, years ago when they first started dating, she answered in the vaguest terms. He was her skating partner. They retired. They wanted different things. When her children asked, curious when someone recognized her at a restaurant, she answered in the most clinical terms. He was her skating partner. They won the Olympics twice. They lost the Olympics once. She doesn't open that secret compartment for her husband or her children or for anyone in the world. This is the one thing that is just hers, only ever hers.
She lets herself open it now and almost wishes she didn't. It's too much. It always was.
Scott skids to a stop in front of her and he must see the look in her eyes, he must recognize something from the Tessa of years ago, because he puts his hand on her arm. "Are you okay?" he says carefully.
She's afraid to speak in case she cries, so she just nods shakily, her head turned away from him.
She can see him hesitate, unsure what her boundaries are anymore. And then she feels him take her hand, thumb brushing briefly across her palm, and she feels him lead her across the ice.
His hand is so wrinkled now, scored with calluses and faded scars she doesn't know the stories behind. It's an entirely different hand than the one that held hers when they were younger, a hand that's lived a whole other life without her, yet inexplicably, his touch still feels exactly the same. She doesn't know how to explain that, but she still keeps it close to her heart, another memory for her secret compartment that she never opens.
"Like riding a bike," he says, and he gives her a little sideways grin that makes her feel sixteen.
They skate hand-in-hand in silence for a while. He stares straight ahead and she can't bear to look at him. "So why did you want to meet?" he asks again, through a sigh.
There are a lot of ways she could answer that question. She'd already made up an excuse - it's an Olympic year and she's had offers from her media contacts for some joint interviews to exploit Canadians and their sentimentalities, some fluff pieces to pad the evening broadcast. Doing press has always been easy for them, even when their relationship was at its worst. It's just acting, and she's been playing the same role for so long, that it's easy to slip into.
But the words refuse to matriculate in her mouth - she's got the words, she just can't seem to use them. They've spent all these years pretending, tap dancing around civility. They haven't had a real conversation in years. So she decides to be honest. "I was lonely," she says.
She's not looking at him but she can feel him freeze. "Okay," he says slowly. She can't tell what he's thinking. "Don't you have friends?"
"Not like you."
He doesn't say anything for a long time. "Yeah," he says finally, and his voice is soft. "Me either."
Because there are a lot of things she misses about Scott, but as the years have gone by, it's the loss of his friendship that has haunted her the most. There was no one like him for her, and when they'd ended, she knew there never would be again. It wasn't just their childhood, it wasn't just their careers, it wasn't just their years of shared history - it was sitting with him in an empty rink in Detroit when she was sixteen, whispering her vast dreams and endless fears into the crook of his neck, and feeling his arm around her, somehow warm even though the rest of him was cold. It was a high of intimacy she'd never reached with anyone in her life ever again, the way he'd kissed her head so gently, the heartbeat of his palm pressed against hers.
"Why did we stop being friends?" she asks, even though she already knows the answer.
"I don't remember," he says but she knows he does. He was proud and stubborn, and she was proud and hurt. It had seemed so monumental and world-ending at the time, but however many years and children and lifetimes later, it seems unthinkable that they'd thrown away everything they had for something that stupid. Maybe they would have ended eventually anyway, time and distance rusting the ties that bound them together, but the way it happened, the sudden severing with little warning, had unmoored her for years afterwards. So many of her choices seemed to go back to that terrible moment.
She never had anyone like Scott again, but she never wanted to. She found someone safe and steady and dependable, and she married him. She'd never fly that high ever again, but at least she'd never crash that hard to the earth again either.
"Are you still angry?" she asks. "About us."
She watches his brow furrow. "No," he says, though she has no way to know if he's telling the truth anymore. "Are you?"
Not really. Only a little. Only when she sees his wife. Scott's wife has never liked her - even as she's thinking about it now, she remembers her as sour little girl, cliquey, nose upturned at any new kids at the rink. Although there's a real possibility she could just be making that up and she never remembered his wife at all. Her grievances had a bad habit of warping her memories. She'd never admit this to anyone, but there was a time, even after he got married, even after he had his first child, that she'd thought he'd come back to her. She wasn't wrong about much about Scott, but she was wrong about that one.
She ignores his question. "It's crazy that you married her," she says instead. She's aiming for lightness but falls maybe an entire foot short. "What were the odds." It's the first time she's ever offered any comment on his marriage and she can feel him stiffen beside her.
"It had nothing to do with you."
"I didn't say it did."
She thinks he'll let go of her hand but instead his grip tightens around hers until it almost hurts. "This is why we're not friends," he says.
"Okay," she breathes. "Let's just skate then."
They skate for a little while longer, hand-in-hand, though his blades are much smoother across the ice than hers and she huffs a little trying to keep up. She remembers faint conversations they'd had when they were still young, of watching Jeopardy when they were old and gray, and taking ballroom dance lessons for seniors. They always did have such big, impossible dreams.
"This is strange," he says finally, breaking the silence.
"What is?"
"Skating together again." His eyes burn her up from the inside. "Holding your hand again."
"It is, a little," she agrees. "I can't believe we used to do this every day."
"We don't even know each other anymore," he says baldly.
His words slice right through her. It's the truth, but it still hurts. She'd never quite been able to inure herself of the callousness of his indifference.
"Well, what do you want to know?" she says after a moment.
The possibilities seem to overwhelm him. She wonders what he would ask. Are you happy? Do you love him? Do you love him more than you loved me? Do you miss me? Do you ever think about that time in Korea when you were twenty-one and I was twenty-three?
He doesn't ask any of those things. He thinks for a moment and then he asks about her second daughter.
Tessa has to take a beat to gather her thoughts. It's the last thing she ever thought he would ask. They ask after each other's children like they ask about the weather, a formality only. She didn't know he actually cared. "She's doing alright. She acts out sometimes, I think she's got a bit of middle child syndrome. Her sister - well, she doesn't mean to but she outshines her sometimes, and she gets very insecure. I try to make sure she knows it's not a competition, you know, but these days I think I'm the last person she wants to talk to...and, well..." Tessa trails off, feeling awkward. It's the realest thing she's said to him in decades. "Why do you ask?" she says at last, feeling naked, like her nerves are living outside her skin.
Scott pauses. "I talked to her once," he says hesitantly. "Years ago. At the anniversary gala in Toronto, do you remember? She must've only been about eight or nine. And all I could think was, I can't believe you have this little girl and I don't even know her. I never could have imagined, back when we were..." He doesn't finish his sentence. "I never thought we'd end up here."
"Here?" she echoes.
His voice is quiet. "Strangers."
Her breathing is shallow in her throat. "We're not strangers," she says softly.
"No?"
"No," she says. "If you were stranger, I wouldn't recognize your hand like the back of my own."
His blade stutters on a rut in the ice. "I think that makes me feel worse," he murmurs.
"Yes," she says. His hand in hers feels just like it did when she was seven years old. "I suppose it does."
They fall into silence again and keep skating, fingers intertwined in each other. They don't stop until light is spilling over the top of the rafters of the rink and she can hear the whir of the Zamboni somewhere in the bowels of the building.
He leads her off the ice. "I have to work," he says. "My first lesson is at seven."
"Okay," she says and she extracts herself from his grip. Her hand feels cold without his already, bare and exposed. They can't have been skating for more than half an hour, and it's almost enough to undo the last however many years. She unlaces her borrowed skates and hands them back to him. Their fingers brush just faintly again, and in that moment, she can't believe he ever thought they were strangers. Strangers don't touch each other like they do. Like they did.
He walks her to her car. "Well," he says, jamming his hands into his pockets. "I suppose I'll see you around."
She lifts her chin to look at him. Scott's eyes are just like she's always remembered - they're his eyes when he was nine and he took her hand for the first time, his eyes when he was sixteen and he told her she looked beautiful for the first time, his eyes when he was thirty and he told her he loved her and she felt it, all the way to her heart. Scott's eyes, too stubborn to be afraid.
"Will you?" she asks. A challenge.
-
him
He's never been one to back down from a fight.
"Yes," he says, and her eyes are so green, the one thing that's never changed.