The arena was cold in that specific way hockey rinks never were, the air thinner, like the building itself was holding its breath. My credential scratched against my collarbone every time I shifted. The roses in my lap were already wilting from the heat of my hands through the cellophane.
Eighteen thousand people were screaming and I couldn't hear any of them over my own pulse.
Joel found his opening position at center ice. The screens showed his face, calm and focused. White and red sequins caught the light, his arms loose at his sides, that expression he got before competition, the one that meant he'd already gone somewhere I couldn't follow.
The music started and my hands went still on the cellophane.
I knew this song. He'd played it for me in his apartment months ago, pacing the living room while I sat on his couch and tried to understand why it mattered so much. I'd said it sounded good. He'd given me that look.
I got it now.
He moved through the opening sequence and I stopped trying to process what I was seeing. When the vocals hit, he arched into a spread eagle with his arms open and his throat exposed, and my fingers went numb around the roses.
The quad lutz came next, and I'd watched him fall on this jump six times in Colorado Springs, watched him get up swearing and run it again until his legs shook. Now he landed it clean and came out grinning, and I had to remember how to breathe.
Natalia's shoulder pressed against mine. The cameras kept swinging toward us. I couldn't make myself care.
The combination spin in the second half was new. He'd added it after Nationals, after Vegas, after a week of waking up in my bed and stealing my coffee and leaving his stupid expensive moisturizer all over my bathroom counter. He'd called me three days after he got back to Colorado to say he'd changed the whole back half.
“It finally feels right,” he'd said. “Like it's actually mine now.”
The spin blurred into white and red. I thought about all the mornings I'd watched him practice this in an empty rink with nobody there but me. All those mornings were for this one.
The music built and he set up for the triple axel, the same jump he'd been working on that morning in Rio Rancho when I walked onto his ice in sneakers and he'd looked at me like I was dirt on his blade, six years ago now.
He landed it clean.
The final notes rang out. Joel held his ending pose with one arm extended toward me, chest heaving, and when his eyes found mine I had to look down at the roses because the alternative was crying on international television.
Flowers rained down and the crowd was screaming and I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, the roses abandoned on the bench behind me. Joel skated toward the boards and I stepped forward to meet him. Natalia was there with his blade guards,pressing them into his hands. He put them on without looking at her, still watching me, and then he was off the ice and his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine.
He was freezing. His costume was damp with sweat, the sequins rough under my palms. He tasted like mint gum and exertion. I kissed him back and the arena dropped away, just his mouth and his cold fingers on my face and my heart pounding hard enough to hurt.
When we pulled apart, he stayed close with his forehead against mine.
"Show-off," I said.
"Always." He was shaking. I could feel it where his chest pressed against mine. "I just won a medal at the fucking Olympics. You're supposed to say something nice to your boyfriend after that."
"That was nice."
"That was an insult."
"It was both." I wiped my thumb across his cheekbone. "You know it was both."
He laughed, that startled sound I'd spent six years learning how to earn, and let me pull him down onto the bench. The roses were crushed under my thigh. My credential had twisted around and was digging into the back of my neck and I didn't bother fixing it.
Joel's thigh pressed against mine. His hand landed on my knee. He was here, right here, where everyone could see us.
The scores came up. I watched him glance at them, watched his mouth curve.
"Good?" I asked.
"Good enough."
I didn't ask what they said.
Near the tunnel, a Team Canada jacket caught my eye. Jean-Luc Bouchard was standing there alone. He was here as analternate, but probably wouldn’t see ice time. He was staring at us, at me and Joel, at where our hands were joined, but his head was somewhere else, eyes unfocused.
