“When we get to St. Moritz you’ll be too busy to meet someone new, but… you might see someone from the past,” Sienna said softly. And just like that, their attempts at setting her up made sense. She should have known.
“Come on, are we still talking about this? I told you, it’s over,” Ari said, suddenly defensive.
“It’s just… we know you still like him and he’s obviously going to be at the Olympics. We just don’t want you to get—” began Izzy.
But Ari put her hands up to stop the suffocating protectiveness that came over her friends whenever they broached the topic of her ex-boyfriend Harrison. Mentions of him always soured conversations among Ari and her teammates. But they were right, it was inevitable that she was going to bump into Harrison at the Games because he was a gold medal–winning snowboarder on Team GB. They would all be flying out to Switzerland together and staying in the same athletes’ accommodation block. But unlike her friends, Ari knew that her on-again-off-again relationship with her ex wastrulyover this time.
“Me and Harrison aren’t getting back together, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she snapped. Yasmeen and Sienna exchanged knowing glances, as if they’d heard her say the same thing a dozen times. She had. Which was why she knew her friends didn’t believe her. So, instead of trying to convince them she was sure this time, she took a deep breath, softened her tone,and decided to play along with their matchmaking scheme. Anything to bring some levity back into their conversation.
“If you’re trying to set me up to stop me from sneaking up the stairs of GB House to find Harrison, I don’t want to hear it. But… I’m not opposed to having a bit of fun before the opening ceremonyifthis hockey player is as great as you say he is,” Ari said. “Pass me the phone, let me see Mr. Canada,” she relented. Izzy grinned and shuffled across the locker room, dangling her phone from her fingers like a carrot.
Ari turned her attention to the screen in front of her. Chad Thompson was the alternate goalie of the Canadian men’s ice hockey team. He was six foot four with a sweet, crooked smile. Judging by the photo of Big Ben on his Instagram story, he was in London with his teammates to celebrate New Year’s Eve before they flew to Switzerland. He didn’t have the face of a could-be serial killer, but you could never be too sure.
“I don’t know about this,” Ari said as she scrolled through photos of Chad. She had a long, messy history when it came to dating other athletes. They either feigned disinterest if they thought she was more successful than them, tried to downplay her achievements if they were further along, or, like Harrison, got strangely competitive the minute her success began to eclipse theirs. “I think I’m done with athletes.”
“Ari, you’ve got to dateat leastone hot hockey player in your lifetime,” said Yasmeen.
“I don’t need to date a hot hockey player. Iama hot hockey player,” said Ari with a wicked smile, a comment that was met with a wave of agreement from the rest of the girls on the team.
Ari and the other girls had started playing the sport as children. Their parents had ferried them to the local ice rink every weekend and cheered them on from behind the glass-lined stands. But no one had everreallythought they would get that far.
While hockey was one of the biggest winter sports and the UK was home to some of the most successful athletes in the world, their women’s ice hockey team had never qualified for an Olympic tournament.
Until a couple of years ago, when their team had signed a game-changing new player, Gracie Walters. The twenty-six-year-old, London-born, Montreal-raised ice hockey champion had moved to Canada when she was three years old, and she’d become one of the top players in North America. But to everyone’s surprise, she’d moved back to the UK in 2022 to study for her master’s. She’d given up her prestigious North American career and used her dual citizenship to join Team GB. A decision that shook up the entire International Ice Hockey Federation.
The months after Gracie joined the team had been a beautiful blur. Gracie pushed Ari and her teammates to believe in themselves, train harder, and play better than ever before. She took a vested interest in each one of them, spending hours studying the way they played to amplify their strengths and improve their weaknesses. For some reason, she’d taken Ari under her wing, taking her out for coffee to talk strategy and giving her advice on how to be a better leader on and off the rink. It was inspiring for Ari to have a captain who genuinely believed they could win and forced the rest of the ice hockey community to take notice of them.
The uninspired coach they’d been stuck with for the past few years was replaced by Niall McLaughlin, the legendary former head coach of the men’s ice hockey team. And then, after years of being warned that they would never see an international win in their lifetimes, Ari and her newly thriving team won their nail-bitingly tense qualifier match against the Netherlands. With that, they’d secured their place at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.Which was why they were spending the days after Christmas at a high-intensity, six-week-long boot camp.
But it was New Year’s Eve. At the end of their afternoon training session, Coach McLaughlin had given them an unofficial pass to celebrate the most successful year of their careers before their schedules filled up with more training sessions, uniform fittings, and travel plans. But Ari and her team were still split on whether to do the responsible thing and spend the night in the boot-camp hotel or throw caution to the wind and head into the city.
“Why don’t we just stay in and relax? We could watch a movie or something,” said Sienna. She’d spent the better part of her teenage years sneaking into clubs she was too young to be in and was too tired to go out-out now.
Ari agreed. “Coach isn’t going to give us this much time off again for the rest of the winter.” She was salivating at the prospect of a sleeping in after an intense day on the ice.
“It’s New Year’s! We’re not staying here all night,” said Izzy, who loved a good party. “I heard the hockey boys are going to the—”
But Sienna cut her off. “There’s nothing I’d rather do less than sit in a random countryside pub and talk about training regimens with thehockey boys,” said Sienna.
Ari didn’t want to go, either. Harrison was friends with them, and she didn’t want bumping into him to ruin the last night of her year. But the rest of the team was determined to go out.
“Shall we get a train into London? I think I could get us into a good party,” said Yasmeen, pulling her phone out. Yasmeen was the most well-connected person Ari knew. She’d spent her early twenties as a firm fixture on the London party scene, and her contacts were filled with the kind of musicians, DJs, and celebrities who threw star-studded parties every week. But before Ari could try to convince them that they would have just as much funwatching the New Year’s Eve scene ofWhen Harry Met Sallyas they would at an actual party, she heard a muffled voice calling her name through the locker room speakers.
“Arikoishe, could you please come to my office once you’ve finished getting ready? Thank you,” the voice said. The whole teamoohed as Ari finished putting on her tracksuit. Coach McLaughlin only asked people to go to his office when they were in trouble, and Arinevergot in trouble.
She got up, slung her duffle bag over her shoulder, and promised she’d be back to finish making New Year’s plans. Then she walked out of the locker room, curious to hear what Coach McLaughlin wanted to talk about. As she did, she clasped her black-leather-and-gold watch around her wrist. It made a quiet, reassuring ticking sound each second, as if it was excitedly counting down to the new year with her.
Ari couldn’t help but walk with a spring in her step as she made her way through the corridors of the ice hockey building. She looked up at the walls decorated with old, framed team photos and vintage posters from matches played decades before she was born. There were barely any Black players in those photos, and beyond her group of friends, Ari had never quite felt like she belonged to the ice hockey community. She’d answered, “Yes, there are Black ice hockey players” and “No, the cold doesn’t botherpeople like me” more times than she could count. But random people’s preconceptions mattered way less to her than the fact that she got to play her favorite sport with her best friends. Because one day her face would be in the photos up on those walls, and there would be countless more after her. While it was daunting to be one of the first, she knew it meant she wouldn’t be the last.
Coach McLaughlin was a Northern Irish man in hismid-sixties who spent every single match pulling at his hair and indirectly shouting at the referee until he was red in the face. But off the rink, he was a quiet, easygoing guy who spent training sessions carefully choosing his words, as if one wrong move might cause the team to turn against him. He didn’t tell them anything more than they needed to know, which was why the immediacy of what he said as she walked into his office sent a chill down her spine.
“I have bad news,” he began as Ari took a seat. Coach McLaughlin looked nervous as he fidgeted in his seat and glanced over at the clear glass door.
“If it’s that we have six a.m. training on New Year’s Day, Coach, I can’t be the messenger,” Ari joked.
“It’s not that,” he said, his voice solemn.
“Are the uniforms arriving late?” Ari frowned. “Yasmeen made a whole list of video ideas for the team TikTok account, and she’ll be devastated if we can’t film those this weekend.”
