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I skate out onto the ice in almost total darkness.
The Olympic arena is quiet, the crowd in the stands waiting for the next performer in tonight’s exhibition gala to be announced. For a few seconds, the only sound in the cavernous space is my blades carving into the ice as I skate towards the center of the rink. Then, the introduction I’ve been waiting my entire life to hear.
“Your Olympic champion, from Russia…Mello Keehl!”
There are some cheers now, but they still can’t see me.
I come to a stop and turn so my back is facing the TV cameras that I can’t see but know are there. I strike my opening pose.
Heavy metal blares from the speakers all around the stadium a second before the spotlight hits me.
I don’t know if the crowd is screaming out of shock or excitement, but it’s music to my ears, practically blending in with the actual music I’ve picked for this exhibition. I pivot with my toe pick digging into the ice, launching right into a step sequence as frenetic as the song playing—an intense rock piece I heard for the first time at the club Matt’s been Doing at.
I couldn’t do this program in competition; it’s too far from the classical vibe that the judging system expects. But this is the exhibition, a performance that won’t be judged for points.
And I have just won my first individual Olympic gold medal.
So now I’m doing whatever the hell I want.
I have on a pair of cheap sunglasses as part of my costume, and as I finish up the complicated series of steps and dizzying turns, I lower the shades, just for a second or two. Just long enough for the audience members who are close enough and the cameras to pick up the thick black eyeliner I’ve dramatically blended around my eyes.
For the rest of the costume, I’m wearing fingerless gloves dusted with tiny gemstones, skin-tight leggings made of faux leather, a black, sleeveless crop top, and a golden crucifix necklace. Although these latter articles of clothing are currently hidden beneath a magenta-colored costume jacket.
I usually wear my hair in braids close to my scalp when I compete, but today I’ve left most of it loose to hang in a jagged bob along my jawline, the rest of it pulled back strategically into a half-bun to keep the sunglasses from flying right off my face in the middle of my performance.
Even though it’s been years since I left Wammy behind and started working with a new coach, skating at a new club, part of me knows that every time I compete, the figure skating world still expects to see the Wammy’s kid I used be. The angry, desperate pre-teen always overshadowed by my competitors, first Near then Light Yagami.
I’ll show them, I used to think.
Now the world has seen me win on the biggest stage. And tonight, in this exhibition gala, I’m going to show them a different side of me entirely.
The spotlight swoops across the ice, following me as I skate backwards, building up speed before I jump up into a triple lutz. The crowd is invisible to me with the blinding light of the spotlight on me, but I hear their cheering crescendo as I land the jump cleanly and with a flair of my arms.
I increase my pace to match the music and launch right into a flying spin. While continuing to spin on one foot, I reach back with one arm and grasp the blade of my opposite skate, arching my back in a layback spin.
Next, I pause just long enough to shrug off the costume jacket, tossing it away to bare my shoulders and stomach and the glint of my necklace. The screaming from the audience reaches a fever pitch at this strip tease.
I build up speed again in a few steps, then go into a triple axel jump from a spread eagle glide. Snow goes flying from the glistening surface of the ice as I land the jump and go into another sequence of complicated footwork, working the crowd up alongside the screeched lyrics of the background music.
There’s a collective gasp from the audience as I leap high into the air once more, bringing my legs up into a perfect split mid-air. As I land, and approach the barrier surrounding the rink, that’s when the second spotlight appears, revealing my skating partner.
Even singles’ skaters like myself can bring along a plus-one during exhibition performances.
Matt traded in his figure skates for hockey skates ages ago, so I haven’t demanded too much of him for the performance tonight. His main job is to stand by the barrier and look hot…well, that, and one other thing.
I skate right up to him, but ignore him for the moment in favor of ripping the sunglasses off my face, and throwing them as hard as I can up into the stands, where there’s a commotion to be the one to catch them. Then, staring at my Matt with an intense glare and no shades in the way, I extend one hand.
Like we agreed, Matt smirks and pulls my glove off for me.
I twirl around and offer up my other glove for him to do the same.
This time, he lowers his head and drags the glove off with his teeth. As he spits out the glove and tosses it aside without breaking eye contact, I make a dramatic gesture and drink in the screaming from the audience. We share the same spotlight for a second, my heart feeling like it’s about to burst, my hand still warm with the sensation of his touch, tingling with the feeling of his teeth.
Then I’m off again, running forward a few steps before sinking into a spider lunge, leaning backwards to place my now-bare hands on the ice and tilting my head up to look at the stadium ceiling as I slide across the surface of the ice.
The rest of the performance passes in a frenzy. My muscles start to burn and my lungs ache from the speed I have to keep up. I do one more jumping pass, a triple salchow-double toe loop combination. I can’t see it as I head into my final spin—even if the spotlight on me weren’t so bright, I’m spinning so fast everything is a total blur—but I know that from where he’s standing at the barrier, Matt has raised his hand and is pointing a finger gun at me.
He aims, and shoots, and I tumble out of my spin as if he’s killed me and fall dramatically to the ice, just as the music ends.
Hair fanning out against the frigid ice as I play dead, the spotlight catches my crucifix and glints in the spotlight, blinding me. The cheers from the crowd seem almost to be coming from another world.
“MELLO! MELLO! MELLO!”
The spotlight turns off. I grin, and get up, sweeping my jacket with me as I leave the ice.
How’s that for a fucking victory lap?
The tragedy is that the night doesn’t end there.
Near is next on the ice after I am.
Matt and I watch from the side of the rink, his arm thrown around my shoulders and both our face masks on. The official rule this Olympics is to wear them at all times unless you’re on the ice.
I exchange a glance with Matt as the spotlight follows Near through the big glowing Olympic rings onto the ice.
Near is wearing pajamas, for one thing. And when his music starts…
“Bloody hell,” Matt whispers to me, laughing, “is this K-pop?”
I have to admit it’s a bold move. I’d rather die than do a performance like that, but—
“I guess he’s having fun for someone who got fucked by the Olympic favorite curse as viciously as he did,” I mutter back.
It’s me and Near’s first Olympics competing against one another. But even though Near went undefeated at every competition he skated in this season before the Olympics, and nearly everyone—not me—thought he was going to win the Olympics easily too, he choked, big time. He fell on all but one of his jumps in his free skate and didn’t even podium in the individual competition.
He looks like he’s having fun performing to whatever the fuck this is, though. When we were kids, he totally would have shut down if he didn’t win, but he seems fine now, as far as I can tell, anyway. Just like I’m already seeing social media flood with comments about how I would have never won gold if Near hadn’t had such a disastrous free skate, but you don’t see me punching a wall over it, even though when I have a poor competition, no one says these kinds of things about Near.
I guess we all grow up eventually. Matt and I are twenty-one now, and even Near is almost twenty.
“It’s just so…Near,” Matt says.
I snort. “He’s such a fucking loser.”
Grown up or not, childhood grudges never die.
As we watch, Near jumps a quad lutz—the jump he under-rotated in his short program and fell on in his free skate—with seemingly no problem, even though it should be harder to jump like that in pajamas than in skating clothes. The ends of his long, white ponytail stream out behind him like a jellyfish as he glides on the landing of the jump.
I roll my eyes, because what a show-off. I sincerely can’t wait to compete against him again at Worlds. I hope he’s fixed whatever psychological issue he has by then, because I want him to perform his best when I win against him.
It’s the Olympic Games, so of course there are celebrities, and journalists, and plenty of fans from around the world. What I don’t expect is to see these particular people in the crowd.
The exhibition gala has wrapped up, so the lights are back on, and the audience is starting to trickle out. The athletes are hanging around, taking pictures with their medals, and talking. There’ll be parties later. Stuffy, official ones, and less stuffy, less official ones after that. At the Grand Prix Final a couple of months ago, someone actually brought out a stripper pole.
I’m thinking about taking shots and getting Matt alone somewhere that doesn’t have sex-proofed beds when up in the stands, a group of people catches my eye—and all of a sudden, my stomach drops.
I haven’t seen Light Yagami in three years. Not since the World Championships that was his last competition before he went professional. I haven’t seen L since a month before that, when I dropped his spare key on the table and walked out of his flat in Moscow.
It’s their friends I see first. Rem and Misa, who are Matt’s friends too, the first sign that he’s been keeping something from me, because why wouldn’t he mention that they’d be here tonight, unless…
Unless.
There seems to be a third girl in the group, but I don’t recognize her and my gaze skips right over her. To Yagami. Like the others, he’s wearing a face mask, and he has a dark-colored beanie on even though he’s indoors—like he thinks that makes him invisible or something. It doesn’t. I can clearly tell it’s him, even from this distance. And the final member of their group is…
L.
He has on a black hoodie on with the hood drawn up around his face, so I can’t actually see his face at all, but I know.
I could pick him out of any crowd just from the way he stands, the way he moves.
As I stand staring, I slowly realize they’re leaving. The entire group of them is following the flow of spectators and filing towards the exit.
“Mels, wait!”
Matt curses under his breath when I take off for the nearest stairwell.
For once, I’m grateful for the strained ankle ligament I’ve been nursing, because it means I’ve already changed out of my skates into trainers. Matt’s still wearing his skates, which keeps him from following me right away.
I take the stairs four at a time. In my mind, I have a half-formed idea of blocking their way just as they get to the exit, dramatically forcing a confrontation as they try to sneak away. But as I burst out of the stairwell into the upper level, I realize that the lobby of the arena is crowded with spectators trying to leave. In the chaos, I don’t see them anywhere.
Worse, I realize just how conspicuous I am in a sea of potential fans.
There’s nothing I can do about my Team Russia jacket, but I tuck my gold medal, and the silver from the team event, into the front of my jacket, and plaster myself against one of the large pillars, peering towards the arena exit I think they’re most likely to come out from. Fuck, did I guess wrong? Did they pick a different exit, or leave already?
“Mello.”
I could have gone my entire life without hearing that voice again, and been happy.
It’s Yagami, he’s found me before I could find him.
I turn, bracing myself for something that doesn’t happen. The group has apparently split up; it’s only him, and the girl I don’t recognize.
“Light,” I say, and he smiles behind his mask, eyes crinkling. The tips of his honey-brown hair peek out from beneath his idiotic beanie.
“Long time no see,” he says, then gestures to the girl beside him, “Mello, this is my sister Sayu. Sayu, this is—”
“The Olympic gold medalist!” She beams and I can see the resemblance now, even with most of their faces covered, although her eyes are warm as melted chocolate compared to his. She reaches into her purse and brings out one of the Olympic mascot plushies. “May I have your autograph? I’m a big fan.”
I stare at her without making any move to take the Sharpie and the plush she’s holding out to me until her expression turns confused, and Light has started glaring at me.
We’re saved from any further awkwardness by the reappearance of Misa and Rem. Misa takes one look at the situation, loops her arm through Sayu’s, and starts pulling her away, babbling a string of Japanese I don’t understand. Rem gives me a short nod and follows those two.
Then I’m alone with him.
Three years has not been long enough for me to forget the muscle memory of hating him.
“Did you lose a member of your group?” I sneer, addressing the elephant in the room.
“You didn’t come charging up here to see me?” he jokes, then smiles placatingly, “He went to the restroom.”
Fuck, I think.
That means he could reappear at any minute.
He studies me in silence for a moment. When I react or don’t react the way he was expecting, he changes the subject. “That was a very nice exhibition you skated,” he smirks, “very…hot.”
“Hey, Mello’s my girl,” Matt butts in, arriving just in time to hear this part. I’m more than a little pissed at him for not preparing me for this reunion, and I’m not sure how I feel about him following me up here, but it is satisfying to see Yagami blink at the two of us as Matt crosses his arms and leans against the pillar. Effortlessly cool in a way he’s never been.
“You were both hot,” he says, agreeable. “I mean, the glove bite?” He laughs and says something else, but I don’t hear it, because I’ve spotted L, now, picking his way through the crowd towards us. Our eyes meet as he stops to let a little girl holding a popcorn bucket run past.
His widen slightly. I wonder, is he surprised to see me?
In any case, he still comes over, so either he doesn’t care enough to avoid me, or he’s realized the futility of him trying to run away from an Olympic athlete.
“Hey,” Yagami says to him. I say nothing. Matt puts out his fist for a fist bump.
“Hey, man. How’ve you been?”
I look away, bitting the inside of my cheek, as L actually gives him a fist bump. That’s Matt for you, but I—
“Do you want anything from concessions? I might buy a bottled water,” Yagami says somewhat abruptly.
“I’d take a Reeses, or really any other candy bar they're selling,” L says.
Yagami is waiting again, glancing at Matt like he expects him to volunteer to come along. But when Matt doesn’t move, he shrugs. “Okay.”
And he walks off.
Matt looks between me and L, and sighs. He holds up both hands. “I’m going to keep standing right here, but I won’t be offended if you wanna go somewhere and talk, like, without me.”
I still can’t think of what to say. I’ve spent the past three years trying not to think of L hardly at all, and all of a sudden he’s here, and all the wrong words are bubbling up in my throat. Seeing Light Yagami was fine, just annoying, but seeing L again is another thing entirely. Like I’m a kid again and I’m meeting him for the first time, the figure skating champion who I’ll spend the next decade of my life trying to be become, because he’s my hero—
Only that’s not right, not anymore.
Maybe it never was.
“I could use some fresh air,” L remarks.
“Fine,” I manage.
I trail behind him as we head towards the doors. He glances over his shoulder at me, but says nothing.
Outside, away from the crowded lobby, he seems to relax a little, some of the tension coming out of his shoulders. We stand under one of the outdoor stadium lights, away from the long line of taxis at the curb, and he pushes back the hood of his hoodie and runs his fingers through his hair. Double-masked as he is, I can’t see his expression or guess what it means, but when he catches me looking, he says, “Is it thinning that badly?”
I can’t tell if he’s actually self-conscious about this or if it’s a joke.
“It’s not any thinner than before. But you’re getting some grey hairs.”
“I know,” he sighs, “I’m getting old.”
He’s thirty-two, which is not that old but old enough that he probably would have retired from skating by now, even if not for what happened to him. This occurs to me for the first time and despite myself, it…doesn’t mean nothing to me.
“Ancient,” I say, pretending to go along with the joke, because it’s easier than the alternative. I don’t know if I want to yell at him for being here or for not telling me he was here.
He’s disappointed me so deeply in a way I thought only a father could. Or maybe an older brother? Or maybe the uncle who you think is so cool, only to find out, once you’re older, that he was a sleazy piece of shit all along.
Deep down, I don’t want to yell at him at all. I want things to be fine between us. I wish seeing him again wasn’t so awkward, and so painful.
“What are you doing here?”
It’s a question designed to prompt more meaningless small talk—he’s here to watch the Olympics, what fucking else?—but he answers anyway. “Light was invited by a Japanese news channel to come and do some commentary on the figure skating events. His sister wanted to see the Games. It became something of a group trip, and I was convinced to join.” He pauses, lowers his gaze for a moment as if ashamed, although his tone stays matter-of-fact. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me.”
Why wouldn’t I? I almost say, but we both know why.
“Did you see all of the figure skating then?”
He makes a noise of assent. I resist the urge to kick the pavement.
“Do you want to know something, Mello?”
Taken off guard by this shift in his tone, I’m suspicious. “What?”
“If you don’t—want to listen to this,” he says haltingly, as if suddenly remembering this disclaimer, “you don’t have to. You’re not obligated to, and I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to fuck off. It’s okay, really.”
I scoff. “Believe me, I don’t need your permission to tell you to fuck off. If I wanted to, I would.” And I haven’t. So spit it out already.
For some reason, I get the idea that I’m about to hear some sort of speech. All figure skaters are drama queens; it comes with the territory. I’m no exception, and neither is he.
“I really hated it,” L confides in me, “watching the figure skating this year. I was so bitterly jealous.”
At first I think he’s being facetious, but there’s something in his voice that leaves no doubt in my mind he’s telling the truth.
“Not for the reason you might think, though,” he goes on, shaking his head slowly, after a moment. “No, the truth is… When I won Olympic gold, thirteen years ago, I was all alone. I had no friends among the other skaters, if that wasn’t obvious. Even Wammy wasn’t at my side while I sat and waited for the announcement that I’d won, because he was trying to talk the silver medalist out of a public breakdown. And to be honest, that was the way I preferred it. I was happy to be hated, because it meant I alone had—transcended everyone else, and won.
“It’s awful but that’s really the way I thought, back then. And I don’t say this as an excuse, but Wammy encouraged it. But you know that, I’m sure you remember what the rink was like as well as I do.
But we had you, I think.
“Watching the competition this year, it made me think of those days again. I’ve come to terms with not being able to compete anymore, but after so many years away, I came back to watch the sport and I saw—athletes having fun out on the ice, and supporting each other off of it, and hugging their coaches in the kiss and cry with smiles on their faces even if they hadn’t won the gold. I really hated it, Mello. What was all that pain and suffering for, then? Why did I put myself through all of that, if the sport could have looked like this all along?
He looks at the ground. “After what happened to A back then, I wanted things to be different. But that doesn’t change the fact that I failed her when I still had the chance to save her life. And I did worse than that with Light; you know.
“But you’ve accomplished what I never could. I know I have no right to say this, but since you’re here and you haven’t told me to fuck off yet, I wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you. Even if I can’t honestly say I’m happy for you—I’m simply too selfish for that.”
He stops talking, and we look at each other in silence as we stand outside the arena in the February chill. Slowly, I realize that it’s started snowing, soft flakes that melt away as soon as they touch the tops of our heads.
“Bullshit,” I say.
“…Which part?” he says, taken aback, “I mean it, I really do.”
I take a half-step forward, making my stare as hard as I can. “You have no idea how much I used to look up to you. Do you seriously fucking think it was just because you won a gold medal or two?”
He was the only adult who was ever kind to me. It’s only now that I’m the age he was then that I can see clearly that he was barely more than a teenager then, one raised in the same toxic environment I was.
Near, Matt, and I were never his responsibility, any more than A was, but he tried anyway. It’s not as if I ever thought he was a saint. But he was the only one who even tried.
When I came out, he was the first person I told. Not even Matt, him. That was how much I trusted him, how sure I was that he really cared.
Nothing else he’s done, or the reasons he did those things, erases that. It just makes him a more complicated person.
“You’re right that I didn’t want to see you,” I say, and watch him flinch. “It’s not like I lost your number. I just didn’t call. You know, growing up, we all wanted to be you. I needed time to figure out who I wanted to be, separate from that.”
He nods slowly. “I can understand that.”
“And I was training for the goddamn Olympics.”
“Yes, that too.”
I think he gets the idea, but I need to say it anyway, I need him to hear it. “It’s not because I hate you. I could never.”
I wanted to get through this without getting emotional, but I have to scrub my arm across my eyes quickly.
“But you could have told me anyway. You could have let me at least say hi.”
“If we’re in the same place again, I’ll text,” he promises. “You don’t have to reply if you don’t want to, but I’ll text. Deal?”
I don’t know if I believe him, but I say, “Deal.”
He shifts his weight slightly. I look at him and think about how he didn’t answer Matt’s question, about how he’s been.
“How have you been?”
“Surviving.” He shrugs. “It’s been a weird couple of years.”
“Seriously?”
He eyes me in silence for a long moment. “I wasn’t so well but I’m okay for the moment,” he admits. “It comes and goes.”
I pick my words carefully. “I don’t want to know details, to be clear. But are you and that asshole still roommates? ‘Cause if he’s causing issues for you, I’d love to break his fucking nose.”
This makes him laugh. I’m surprised at the sound; he looks like he is too. “Light would be very upset if you did that to him. No, it’s—we certainly got on each other’s nerves during quarantine, but you don’t need to do that.”
I really don’t want to know, so I leave it at that.
And speak of the devil—
I see L’s gaze go over my shoulder, in the direction of the front doors of the arena. He raises his arm and waves. ‘Sorry,” he says to me, “I’ll tell him to go for a walk if—”
“No, I need to go back inside anyway.” I stuff my hands into my jacket pockets. Still, I wait while he comes over.
“The girls left already,” Yagami tells us, glancing down at his phone screen as he appears over my shoulder, “they’re back at the hotel getting ready for the club. You ready to go?”
L nods and, deciding to see them off, I walk with them to the curb.
“I’m…rather tired,” L says, quiet. I stare in a random direction when I see the way the two of them almost lean towards each other.
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to. We can just stay in—”
“Can you two shut the hell up?”
Yagami turns his attention to me. “I’m going to text you Sayu’s address so you can ship her your autograph,” he says with a smile, “…and a note apologizing for your poor English, which was the reason you didn’t just give it to her when she asked the first time.”
“I’ve lived in England since I was nine years old, stupid.”
He shrugs. “I guess you should have just signed the weasel then, right?”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Please?”
He opens the taxi door for L, but both of them just stand there for a moment instead of getting into the car, snow caught in L’s dark hair and the wool fibers of Yagami’s knit beanie.
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” I say, just to get him to be quiet. I look at L, and L looks back at me, his wide-eyed gaze as inscrutable as ever.
“It was good to see you, Mello,” he says, sounding like he means it. He ducks his head to get into the car, then seems to remember something and stops. “I don’t think I said it earlier. But congratulations.”
“Join the club,” Yagami smirks. He winks at me.
No matter what the commentators say, or have said in the past, I’m not the next L. And I’m certainly not the next Light Yagami. I’m going to be better than either of them ever was. But as I watch their taxi pull out into the stream of traffic, the flurries falling from the sky rapidly turning into a full-on snowstorm, I think for a moment of how much of my history I owe to the both of them.
Then I turn around and go back inside the arena, my medals a warm weight against my chest.
The lobby has emptied out, but Matt is still standing by the pillar where I left him, oversized headphones on and looking bored. He gives me a quicksilver smile when he sees me and pulls the headphones down around his neck. Still, I can tell from his silence that he’s acting tentative in his own way, watching my reactions. I’m shaken enough by my conversation with L that I forgot, for a minute, I was upset with him for not telling me L was here.
“You good?” he asks.
“We’re good,” I decide. I’ll tell him all about it later, maybe when we’re back home, after the closing ceremonies and the flights end in us dragging our luggage back to the flat we share; but for now—
“Let’s get fucking wasted. I want to celebrate.”
“Hell yeah,” he grins.