Page 122 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

Alisa’s lips parted, but no explanation came.

“No, I just… it’s just…”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Ivan studied her for another second, then let it go, finally.

The parade continued below, but the excitement had dulled into routine. The ceremony had been going on for nearly three hours. It was already close to midnight, and exhaustion settled heavily over the athletes’ box.

Alisa rubbed her eyes.

“I’m going to sleep, guys. Thanks for the evening. See you tomorrow!”

She waved at all the skaters. They waved back distractedly as she slipped out of the box and headed toward the exit.

Anfisa followed Alisa to the exit, also waving everyone goodbye.

Outside, the air felt colder. She walked toward the hotel, her body aching with fatigue and her mind still buzzing and loud with thoughts.

Tomorrow would be another training.

And then in a few days her performance - on 17 and 19th of February. But before that she would have to witness Tora and her partner Loke perform too.

And she was very nervous about them too.

Performance, performance, performance.

After her training session, she could stay and watch the men’s short program at 19:45. The boys would skate. And later, at 22:05, the team event ice dance free dance.

Tora would probably be there watching too.

Maybe their schedules would align. Maybe they would pass each other somewhere in the athletes’ corridors, or exchange a glance from opposite sides of the loggia.

Alisa allowed herself a small, secret hope.

She wanted that.

Chapter 24

It was strangely wonderful to train with the singles from early morning, at 6 a.m., Alisa was already on the ice and could finally feel the strength in her legs again. The jumps were not perfect, of course, but the triples were stable, clean enough to satisfy her for now, while the quads still came out inconsistently, which worried her endlessly. Still, this was only the first day of the Olympics, and there was still time to sharpen everything before her performance. Although to Alisa it felt as if time itself had split apart, rushing forward at insane speed and dragging painfully slowly at the exact same moment.

Arkadiy arrived about an hour after she had started training and immediately began correcting her jumps as they skated across the ice together. He kept talking about her shoulders, her posture, the angle of her body during takeoff, and after several exhausting corrections she finally started landing more consistently, even despite the fact that she had already spent almost two hours on the ice. Usually she could endure much more, but this week everything weighed heavier on her body, as if every muscle understood before she did herself how important these Olympics were.

She was at the Olympics.

Alisa still couldn’t fully believe it.

After practice, she headed toward the locker room with a faint smile on her lips despite the exhaustion pulling at her bones. At the end of training, Arkadiy had even praised her and let her go early, warning her that later there would be a group gym session with all the singles, pairs, and dance teams together, supposedly for “team spirit,” although Alisa suspected most of them would simply end up suffering side by side.

Another group of singles was already inside the locker room, and apparently some pairs skaters too, because the moment Alisa walked in she spotted Tora sitting on the bench, tying her skates. Her cute blue blade covers were practically glowing today.

Tora immediately lifted her head and awkwardly waved at Alisa. They were not alone.

Alisa waved back casually and greeted the others too. That junior skater Diana was there as well, though she completely ignored Alisa’s existence, so Alisa did not bother greeting her separately either. She dropped onto the bench beside her bag and began sorting through her things to change. Unfortunately, there were no showers at the arena itself; everyone had to wait until they got back to the hotel.

Alisa exhaled heavily from exhaustion as she pulled a sweatshirt over her training clothes and started unlacing her skates, when suddenly Tora’s skates appeared directly in her field of vision. Alisa looked up.

Tora stood in front of her holding a small Norwegian Olympic badge.