I lived and breathed figure skating. I always knew that this was what I wanted to do. This was where I wanted to live and die. This was my place, my life, and nothing ever compared with it—except maybe loving Noah.
“Did you even eat today, Sophie?” Liudmila yelled again, and I both hated and loved that she always had to use my name with every single sentence. Liudmila and I met five years ago, when my previous coach decided to retire, leaving me all alone in the big, crazy world, thinking that I would have to do everything by myself now.
Of course, all those thoughts racing through my head at that time were nothing more than a product of an overly competitive teenage girl, who thought the world would end if I ever skipped practice.
I knew my parents didn’t always agree with the way I went on about these things, but the older I got, the more they understood that there was nothing they could do to make me stop practicing. I was a girl who dreamed of the Olympics one day.
I was a girl who didn’t mind having two practices per day. Ballet and figure skating went hand in hand. I didn’t mind having only one day where I didn’t have practice, or that all my friends spent all their free time just hanging around, playing, being normal kids.
My mom often joked that she gave birth to two sports machines, since both my brother and I lived for our sports—Andy with football and me with figure skating.
They were proud of us, but I knew that more often than not, they wished for us to spend more time just being kids, instead of competing on these levels. But there was no going back for me, especially after the first competition I’d won.
People often thought that what athletes did was as easy as breathing, and on some days, it did feel that way. But on most days, we felt like we had no idea what we’d been doing our entire life. I’d spent countless hours perfecting the simplest moves. I couldn’t accept that they weren’t flawless in execution.
I’d spent even more hours crying, because I thought I was failing myself and all these people that believed in me. And every single time, even though it now left a bitter taste in my mouth, Noah was there to shake those thoughts away.
He was my safety blanket, my perfect match. I held him up when he had a tough time, and he held me. Through good and bad, tears and smiles, we were always there for each other. He held my hand when I lost the regional competition two years ago.
He hugged me tight when I won the next one. It was messing with my head that all these memories I associated with my skating had him in them as well. It was fucking me up. Even though I wanted to leave all these things at the front door of our sports center, I couldn’t.
Which was why I performed like shit today.
“Sophie!” Liudmila thundered. “For all that’s worthy, just stop!”
And I did, hating myself more and more and more with each passing second. The regional competition was coming up in less than five days, and this close to it, I shouldn’t be this distracted. I couldn’t even blame it on my headaches or the fucked-up thing with my balance anymore.
I blamed this on Noah, and the constant stream of thoughts all directed to him. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, about that morning from five days ago. I couldn’t stop thinking about the look on his face, or the heartbreak screaming at me from his eyes.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain in my chest when Bianca found me, or the fact that I couldn’t even go through the entire day without a headache. Andy had to pick me up and bring me home. I had started puking somewhere around fourth period.
God, I had to put this behind me. He was finally done with me, and I got what I wanted. But even though I told myself that this was what I wanted to have, I couldn’t stop thinking if it was the right decision to be made.
Liudmila skated closer to me, the thunderous look on her face telling me everything I needed to know—I fucked up. And not just a little bit.
“What the hell was that, huh?”
The worst part was, she had all the rights to be angry. I was angry at myself, but I couldn’t exactly show it right now.
“Is there something going on that I should know about,krasotka?” she asked, making me flinch at the nickname she gave me on the first day we worked together. I wished I could tell her everything, but I couldn’t—not yet.
“You’ve been sick a lot lately, is that it? Are you feeling okay?” God, I wanted to cry and scream, and throw something. Punch a wall maybe, get drunk, but none of those things would change the reality. None of them would change the inevitable things coming my way.
“No, I’m fine,” I murmured, my voice small, barely audible.
“Then what is the problem?” Her accent was more noticeable now. It only came out when she became so pissed off that she couldn’t contain herself.
Liudmila moved here with her parents, all the way from Novosibirsk in Russia, when she was barely eight years old. While her accent might have changed with all the years she spent in the United States, those hardR’s still tended to slip out whenever she was on the precipice between her infamous silent treatment and cursing in Russian.
“I fucked up, I know.”
“Do you really? Because that looked like something one of the novice girls would do, not you. Where is your head, Sophie?”
Everywhere.Nowhere.
It wasn’t in the right place, I knew that, but getting reamed by my coach was the last thing I needed right now.
I was my biggest critic, and at moments like these, it felt as if my entire world was collapsing.
