“Maybe not. But if you did a filmed interview, then you’d have more control. It would be your words, directly, exactly as you want them to be.”
I thought for a moment, trying to shake off the haze of anger that clouded my thoughts. I wanted to protect Mom’s and Maddie’s privacy more than I wanted to protect my own pride, but it still stung to think of giving that asshole anything to work with. “He won’t do it, Steph. He doesn’t want a sob story or a comeback narrative. He doesn’t want my reasons or my repentance.”
“Then give him what he wants,” she said matter-of-factly.
“And what is that?”
Another apologetic smile. Another cherry. “Duluth.”
I was so tired the next morning that I had those weird tired shakes, like my body couldn’t decide if it was jittery or ready to collapse onto a snowbank. I’d spent the night on the phone with Mom and Maddie, making sure they were okay, and seeing what they were comfortable with me sharing in an interview, and then I’d gotten up at dawn this morning to talk with Emily Albright, who was now a coach in Colorado Springs and still kept the godforsaken hours of a competitive athlete.
We hadn’t spoken since that night in Duluth, when I’d left her in the care of the Olympic Village doctors, which was funny because I felt like our fates had been so strangely intertwined. But the truth was that we’d barely known each other before that night and then the fallout from the Olympics had been so catastrophic that I hadn’t really had the bandwidth to talk to my fellow scandal survivor. I guessed that she’d felt much the same, because she’d never reached out either.
But despite all that, our conversation was warm and friendly, and Emily was more than willing to talk through what she was ready to make public.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you,” she said toward the end of the call. “For being there that night. For coming when I called. Bram and Sem were so scared of getting in trouble, and too panicked to be of any help, and you were the only person I could think of that wasn’t my coach. And then you didn’t even flinch when you found me naked and puking.”
“It was nothing,” I assured her as I pulled on my duke boots. Steph wanted the optics of me looking like a Committed Actor during the interview, so I’d be in full ducal garb while I attempted to wrestle the human eel that was Dominic Diamond.
“It wasn’t nothing,” Emily said. There was a hollow sort of echo, like she’d just walked into an empty rink. “It was the end of your career. And I never said anything to contradict all the stories they made up about us.”
I gave a rueful laugh. “My career was already ending. Any good buzz I’d had around my solo album was swallowed up by all the trouble I was getting into. This was just the nail in the coffin I’d built for myself. Seriously, Emily, there’s a reason everyone believed that I’d corrupted you into a night of minitrampoline depravity. It was an ironic sort of justice that the one time I’d actually been innocent of any debauchery was the time when it all exploded in my face.”
“Do you ever regret it?” she asked after a minute. “The trouble? The debauchery?”
I thought for a minute. I regretted not playing the game well enough to secure my family’s future, and I regrettedsquandering opportunities that I’d kill for (or wear fake sideburns for) now. I definitely regretted all the times I’d been burdensome or disrespectful or selfish—or all three.
But the actual misbehavior? The sex, the adventures, the batshit hijinks? Honestly, I would’ve probably found all those as Nolan Kowalczk anyway. NolanShawjust had more opportunities and a tour bus with lots of sex-friendly flat surfaces.
“No,” I finally said. “I don’t.”
“You know what?” Emily said. “Me neither.”
I stood and pulled on the duke’s jacket and then found my peacoat to tug over it all. “Are you sure you’re okay with all of this?”
“I am,” she said. “We should have made a real statement a long time ago, but I was too embarrassed at first, and then when I was done being embarrassed, I was so scared of feeling that kind of humiliation again that I never even let myself talk about it. And that’s stupid, because I did nothing wrong. Well, except for ordering tuna tartare in Michigan.”
I couldn’t argue with her there.
After the phone call was finished and I was dressed, Sunny did my makeup and Denise did my hair while Steph sat next to me and coached me on all my answers. We had long, complicated flowcharts about all things Duluth, Emily, and my family, and I had all my sound bites memorized. Steph would be standing just out of view to coach me through any curveballs.
“Hey, duke,” Sunny called as I was walking out the door with Steph. “Tell your former bandmate that his sex tape was really, really good. And that’s an informed opinion, because I basically have a postdoctoral fellowship in sex tapes.”
“Sure thing,” I said with a salute, and then Steph and I walked out to the town square.
Steph had framed the entire scene perfectly for the Committed Actor tableau. Dominic and I would sit under a production tent near the town square, with the Christmas fair in full swing behind us, and enough production equipment staged nearby to make it very clear that I was taking precious time away from the shoot to talk. With me in my costume and the sparkly flurries drifting down from the sky, it was equal doses of Christmas and earnest, humble celebrity. It was good.
Now all I had to do was manage Dominic.
When I sat—grateful for the warmth of the small outdoor heater just out of frame—Dominic gave me a delighted look. “I am so glad you agreed to this,” he said, his voice overly friendly. “I think this will give so many of your disappointed fans some closure at long last.”
Ugh, what a gaping dickhole.
Steph gave me a quelling look, though, and so I said, “Thanks so much for the chance to talk,” and crossed my legs, like there was nothing I wanted in the world more than to talk with the guy who’d ruined my career.
His delight didn’t fade. He was planning to provoke me into giving upsomethingscandalous, and he had an entire interview to do it in, but little did he know that Steph had drilled me harder than a championship spelling bee coach to get my answers right. I was ready.
We kicked off with his signatureWell, well, well, and then he went right in. “Nolan Shaw, you’re probably most famous for the events of the Duluth Olympics. When you draggedEmily Albright into one of your signature bacchanals, you started a chain of events that led to her missing her free skate and her shot at the gold. She never skated competitively again. Did you know the cost she would have to pay for spending time with you that night?”
