I found the stretching mat and spent an hour on off-ice conditioning. Jump rotations—the mechanics of the takeoff, the air position, the landing edge, all of it rehearsed without ice. Box jumps and jump squats until my legs burned. Planks and dead bugs until the muscles in my core protested. When I was finally too exhausted to continue, I headed back downstairs.
???
Derek had left an envelope on the kitchen counter with my name scrawled on the front. Inside were five crisp hundred dollar bills.
American money still looked like play money to me. The colours were wrong, the scale slightly off from what my hands knew.
I treated myself to an early dinner from the deli inside Walsh & Wilde, the gleaming high end grocery store across the street from his building.A kale salad with grilled chicken breast and tahini lemon dressing—light, clean, something I could account for precisely. I ate it at one of the small tables near the window, watching people bustling down the sidewalk, traffic snarling down the block.
After dinner, I took Aspen for another walk. Sent Derek another photo. Aspen sitting in a square of window light, ears up, dignified.
He hearted it within minutes.
He misses you.
Derek: Seems like he’s doing just fine without me.
He’s putting on a brave face but he keeps checking the door. Very loyal. Very tragic.
Derek: Now you’re just trying to make me feel guilty.
Aspen made me do it. Are you having a good trip?
Derek: Depends on how tomorrow goes.
What’s happening tomorrow?
Derek: I see how it is. Safe to say you’re not watching the game tomorrow?
I’ll put it on for Aspen. Good luck.
The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it. I pocketed my phone and looked down at Aspen, who was still watching me with those patient, expectant eyes.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
???
I showered after my second round of off-ice conditioning, letting Derek’s water pressure—noticeably better than Avery’s—hammer my shoulders loose. I tried not to notice anything else.
I failed.
The body wash was bright and citrusy, clean in a way that felt expensive. Bergamot. I’d clocked it on him when I had slid past him the other night. Even the shower shelf was freakishly organized—everything lined up, labels facing out, like order was a reflex.
I turned the water to cold for the last thirty seconds the way I always did and stood there until my pulse settled.
In the mirror afterward, towel around my waist, I brushed my wet hair back and looked at myself for a moment.
This was something my therapist in Montréal had calledgrounding. You look at yourself. You name what you see. You stay in the present tense and you don’t let the image become a verdict. I had been very good at it for about three months and then I had stopped going to therapy and now I was standing in someone else’s bathroom doing an amateur version of it with mixed results.
I didn’t recognize this version of Théo.
The dark circles were newish—not new exactly, but deeper than they used to be, more permanent looking, the kind that a full night’s sleep didn’t fully fix anymore. They stood out against my skin, which was pale in the particular way of someone who burned in under twenty minutes and had therefore made SPF 50 a non-negotiable daily practice since adolescence. Religious about it. Sabrina called it my vampire routine.
My hair was wet and pushed back from my face, bluish black in the bathroom light, the color it always went when it was damp. I had wanted to dye it since I was 15. Something dramatic—bleached, or a deep red, or even just a lighter brown. I had mentioned it to mom once and she had looked at me like I had suggested something genuinely criminal.
Don’t you dare touch that beautiful hair, Mathéo Beaubien,she had said,It’s the only thing you inherited from me. You look too much like your father.
So the hair stayed.
