“Minimize it. It’s not only college hockey. It’s your life. Your career. This is what you’ve been building since you were - what, six years old?”
“About that.”
“So don’t minimize it to make it hurt less. Own it. Own how much it matters.”
“It’s terrifying when something matters that much,” she says. “I know that. I know exactly what that feels like.”
“The competitions?”
“I used to get physically sick before major events. Not nerves exactly - more like my body trying to eject the pressure before I had to carry it onto the ice. My coach at the time told me to breathe through it. Told me the fear meant I cared and caring was the whole point.”
A shadow crosses her face when she saysmy coach- there and gone.
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes.” A small smile. “And sometimes I was sick and scared and I went out there anyway.”
“And?”
“And I skated,” she says simply. “Because that’s what you do. You leave it at the side and you play.”
“What if it’s not enough? What if I go out there tonight and give everything and it’s still just - not enough?” It’s the first time I’ve said that out loud to anyone, including myself.
“It will be. Go show them.” Simply. Like it’s a fact she’s stating.
Somewhere above us the rink is filling up. In thirty-five minutes I have to be a captain again. None of that feels quite as mammoth and impossible as it did ten minutes ago.
“Thank you. Really.”
She looks at me, and the distance between us is nothing, it’s been nothing for weeks. I lean in slowly, and she doesn’t move away. I press my lips to hers gently, and she kisses me back the same way.
No urgency. No interruption waiting to happen.
I pull back - she’s looking at me with an expression I don’t have a word for.
“Go play,” she says softly.
I stand up.
I offer her my hand and she takes it. I pull her to her feet and we stand close for one more second in the stairwell light.
“Elida…”
“Go,” she says. But she’s smiling.
I go.
ELIDA
I stand in the stairwell after he’s gone and press my back against the wall.
Own it. Own how much it matters.
I said it to him but I felt it land somewhere in my own chest too.
I straighten my jacket and go find my seat.
MATEO
