Every team in the Olympic Village had a log cabin–themed team lounge room to hang out in when they weren’t training or competing. The lounge rooms were decorated with fireplaces, cozy blankets, and athletes hanging out in loungewear holding steaming mugs of tea as day turned to night. The cabins werewhere they unwound after a long day of training and competitions. When Drew walked in, the only people inside were the athletes living there. He didn’t want to intrude, so he turned around and readied himself to leave. But then someone called his name.
“Drew?” came a voice he vaguely recognized. He turned toward the voice and saw a woman with pale skin and red hair. Izzy. She was one of Ari’s teammates he’d met at the curling competition.
“Wait, don’t smile at him, Izzy, we don’t know why he’s here,” said Yasmeen, who’d led the courtside interrogation a few days ago.
“Take a seat,Drew,” said Sienna, beckoning him over. She carefully studied him as if trying to figure out whether to let him stick around. “So, what are your intentions with Ari?”
“Don’t make it weird,” Izzy said to Sienna.
“Are we supposed to just let him in without doing a background check?Shelikes him, butwebarely know this man,” said Sienna, assessing him with a cold, protective glare.
“Tell us, Drew, whyareyou here?” asked Yasmeen, studying him.
Drew looked at all three women and thought about the question. He realized that if there was anybody he could tell, it was probably the people who cared about Ari the most.
“I don’t know how much she’s told you about the fake-dating situation.…” he began.
“You were fake-dating?” said Izzy, her eyes widening in shock.
“Izzy, it was so obvious,” said Yasmeen. “When has Ari ever dated a guy who wasn’t a carbon copy of everyone we went to school with?”
“The fact that he takes photos was a dead giveaway. She dates athletes, not… artists,” said Sienna.
“Well, the way she’s been smiling at her phone all week didn’t look fake,” said Izzy. The other two nodded and cast their eyes back to Drew. So, they’d seen it, too?
“Well, yeah… it was complicated. Which is why I’m here. I want to tell her how I feel,” he said, watching their expressions soften. The three of them exchanged glances, having a conversation without saying a word. After a few moments of unspoken dialogue, they reached a silent consensus. They were still fixing him with intensely protective looks, making it clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to deal with him if they needed to. But eventually, he got a response.
“She’s outside, on the lake,” said Sienna.
“She skates in circles when she’s stressed out,” said Yasmeen with a nod, gesturing to the window. The lounge was on the seventh floor of the building, so you could see a good view of the village from its windows. As Drew looked in the direction Yasmeen was pointing toward, he noticed a circle of trees surrounding a frozen lake. The very place he and Ari had visited a few days ago. And sure enough, there was a tiny figure in a blue puffer coat skating in circles in the middle of the frozen lake. Drew immediately stood up.
“Do you have ice skates I can borrow?” he asked, looking over at the ice.
“What’s your shoe size?” asked Yasmeen.
“Eleven,” he said. Unsurprisingly, Ari’s teammates didn’t wear the same size shoe as him. So, Izzy got up, stood on the armchair she’d been sitting on, and raised her voice for the whole common room of athletes to hear.
“Does anybody have size eleven skates I can borrow?” she shouted across the room. When no one responded, Izzy raised the stakes. “This man, Drew, is in love!” she shouted.
Drew hadn’t said he was in love. But he could imagine a future time when that would be true.
“He’s in love and has to tell her right now,” Izzy said dramatically. “But he needs to cross the lake to get to her. So again, I’m asking, does anybody have a pair of size eleven skates?”
“I could fit into a twelve, too,” Drew said.
“He could fit into size twelve, too!” Izzy shouted. People looked up, but nobody responded.
“Theo, I know you have skates he could borrow,” said Sienna, looking over at a guy wearing a speed-skating jersey.
“Theo?” said Yasmeen, looking at Sienna curiously.
“Theo?” said Izzy with a teasing voice.
“What happens in the Village stays… actually, that’s none of your business,” Sienna said, crossing her arms as her friends laughed. But Theo came over, gave Sienna a kiss on the cheek, and took a pair of skates from his kit bag. Izzy grinned, Yasmeen smirked, and Sienna focused her eyes on the ground. But Drew just grabbed the skates and thanked them.
When he left the cabin, his feet plunged straight into eight inches of snow. He ignored the cold and ran down the slippery steps toward his destination. As he descended, he looked around at the Village. At the buildings that now lit up the sky and the way the moon reflected onto the icy lake. Tiny flakes of snow were falling all around him, but the night felt still. The world felt quiet. He slowed the pace of his snowy trudge when he reached the bottom of the steps. Only then did he realize how big the lake actually was.
Ari was still skating around it, moving in fast-paced circles along the perimeter. But she occasionally crossed from one side to the other without any pattern or apparent cause. She was wearing headphones, that blue coat, and heavy-duty hockey skates. But she looked as graceful as anything, smoothly moving along theice like a seabird skimming a quiet ocean. As he watched her and thought of all the moments he’d spent with her, he realized that what Izzy had said was right.
