We live thirty minutes apart.
His apartment is near the Djurgårdens training facility, mine is closer to the rink where I train with Brita. The thirty minutes between us is close enough for random evenings and Sunday mornings. Sometimes it turns into a few days without either of us planning it.
But then there are the times where it’s the opposite. He travels for games and I travel for competitions, so there are weeks where our schedules don’t align. There are mornings where I’m at the rink at six and he’s already on the ice at his facility, so we’re both in the dark in the same city doing the same thing in different buildings. But there’s something about that I find privately, completely right.
We’re both still building something.
And we’re building it in the same city now. That’s actually more than enough.
The ballroom is full when we arrive.
Iris meets us at the door - she insisted on coming separately because she had dinner beforehand with a friend and also, I suspect, because she wanted the moment of seeing us arrive together, which she has been insufferably delighted about since the first time she met Mateo eight months ago.
She meets us at the door in a silver dress and she hugs me and then she turns to Mateo and says something in Swedish that makes him laugh - his Swedish is functional now, improving weekly, still occasionally disastrous in ways that have become their own running joke. He says something back that makes herraise her eyebrows at me over his shoulder with an expression of complete approval.
“You look incredible,” Iris says to me. “I told you. Green dress.”
“You saved me,” I agree.
She squeezes my arm and we go in.
The ballroom has high ceilings and is elegantly decorated. There are tables set for dinner, a stage at the far end, and the names of Sweden’s sporting year laid out in the program I’m handed at the door.
I find my name.
Regional Champion, Figure Skating.
Mateo finds his.
Rising Star, Ice Hockey - SHL.
He looks at it for a moment and then he takes my hand.
We’re at our table - Brita and Iris on one side, Mateo on my other and a Swedish speed skater and her husband across from us who turn out to be excellent company - and then I see him.
Erik.
He’s three tables away so I have a good chance to examine him. I haven’t seen him since everything happened, but he looks older than he should - tired, somehow. He’s with a woman I don’t recognize.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
I pick up my wine glass.
Beside me, Mateo’s hand finds mine under the table.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t make it into a thing, just leaves his hand there, steadying and certain. He’s always been there for me without ever making a speech about it.
I watch the stage.
I’m okay. Genuinely. Erik is three tables away and I feel… nothing much. It’s faint and distant. Present but not painful. Not anymore.
He sees me.
I watch it happen - the recognition, something moving across his face that I can’t quite read and don’t particularly want to.
I look back at the stage.
Mateo squeezes my hand once.
