9. Derek
Pre-season was getting under way and I fell into a strange sort of routine.
I still showed up at the same time every morning, dropped Stanley’s donut on his desk, swiped my badge. But I stopped going straight to the weight room.
The first time I’d heard noise from the rink, I assumed it was a teammate getting in some early ice time. I had followed the sound out of mild curiosity and snuck in through the side door, already planning to wave and head back out. But it hadn’t been a teammate.
It had been Théo.
I should have left when I realized. I was intruding on something private—I could feel that instinctively, the way you feel when you’ve walked into a room mid-conversation. But I physically couldn’t make myself go. I found a seat as far back in the shadows as the arena’s modest stands allowed and stayed there.
He was mesmerizing to watch.
He always wore head to toe black—fitted training jacket, compression leggings, skates, even his gloves were black. Against all that darkness his face was very pale, cheeks and nose tinged with pink, his hair damp at the temples, his eyes catching the rink light when he turned.
Some elements he made look easy—grace and power so refined the effort had disappeared. But he was struggling withhis jumps. I could see it in the set of his jaw, the controlled stillness after a bad landing, the way he reset like he was swallowing something sharp. Even frustrated, even fighting his own body, he was extraordinary to watch.
I started looking up his competition clips after that first morning. I lost two hours to them the first night, following one video to the next. The quad axel I’d already watched six times. Then the World Championship short program from two years ago, then a Grand Prix final, then a clip someone had compiled of just his jumps in slow motion so you could see the mechanics. The contrast of it—the musicality of his upper body, the barely contained velocity of the rotations—made me feel like a charging bull on ice. A caveman with a stick versus a man who had turned physics into art.
The competition clips led, inevitably, to the interviews. He was exactly as standoffish on camera as he was in person, answering questions with a precision that gave journalists nothing to work with and somehow made them want to work harder for it. Someone had compiled those too—a montage someone had titled, not unkindly,Théo Beaubien Best Snapbacks.
The thumbnail alone made me click. Théo stood in the kiss and cry, looking like a villainous ice prince—all pale skin and sharp cheekbones flushed pink from exertion, obsidian hair slicked back from his face. He wore a dark crimson shirt covered in tiny beads, unbuttoned just enough to expose his collarbones and a sliver of chest. He looked like he’d just stepped off the ice and directly into someone’s fever dream.
The interviewer leaned in with her microphone, clearly charmed and clearly getting nothing for her efforts.
“With Adrian Zhao skating right after you, did that add pressure?”
Théo didn’t blink. “My only competition is myself. The order doesn’t matter. The score doesn’t care who skates before or after me.”
“But surely Zhao’s momentum this season—”
“Is Zhao’s business.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Next question.”
I watched it three times.
For research purposes.
Then I found the speculation threads.
Message boards and skating forums and comment sections, people theorizing about his hiatus. Doping? Hard drugs? Sleeping with a teammate? Mental health issues? The skating community, it turned out, had opinions and the internet had given them all a megaphone.
I closed the browser and didn’t go looking again.
If Théo noticed me watching from the stands on those early mornings, he never acknowledged it. No wave, no glance in my direction, nothing. Occasionally we would pass each other in the corridor—him leaving with his skate bag over his shoulder, freshly showered and in his street clothes—while I was heading in the opposite direction. He would nod. I would nod. That was the extent of it.
Until it wasn’t.
???
We were heading to Detroit tomorrow for a pre-season game and I was heading to put my phone away after lunch when it buzzed with an incoming message.
Samantha: Hi Derek. I’m so sorry to do this last minute.
Samantha: My dad had a stroke last night. I’m at the hospital now and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back.
Samantha: I can’t take Aspen while you’re gone. I’m so sorry.
Samantha. My dogsitter.
