Page 43 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

“We? No… we…”

Before Alisa could say anything stupid, Lev interrupted.

“Our personal life is our personal life. Let’s not ask intimate questions.”

He said it seriously enough that the journalists only laughed awkwardly and then finally moved on to the other skaters, and without that same teasing enthusiasm anymore, as if they had already spent all their curiosity on the first questions. After that there were only serious conversations about careers and Olympic quotas and preparations and everything else.

Soon everyone was standing separately in pairs while the reporters divided themselves into little groups, each wanting to ask one pair their own questions, and finally they drifted away from Alisa and Lev too.

Lev immediately grabbed her by the shoulders and hugged her.

“We won the gold, damn it!”

He shook her lightly, almost laughing, but Alisa did not feel what she thought she should have felt. She only felt strangely empty… this was not what she had imagined winning the championship would feel like.

“So, are you coming to the club with me tonight, or are you going to—”

“Shh!” Alisa hissed immediately, cutting him off.

“Not here, Lev, are you crazy? What if someone hears?”

“You think they understand Russian?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter, there are journalists everywhere…”

Alisa looked around anxiously, but the reporters were already gone. Only the skaters’ families remained on the ice, along with their coaches.

“I don’t know…” Alisa said quietly. “Let’s see, okay?”

Lev nodded and skated away toward the locker room, and Alisa stayed where she was for a few seconds longer, watching Tora and her mother.

Her heart tightened painfully.

Tora seemed to be loved simply because she existed… simply because she was herself. Even after winning only bronze, no one was calling her useless or telling her she had failed. No one was looking at her as if she had ruined everything.

They loved her for nothing. Or maybe, Alisa thought, that was exactly what real love was.

God… what a nightmare my life is, Alisa thought, lowering her head as she skated toward the locker room. For some reason, anger from everything that had happened suddenly overwhelmed her. She clenched her jaw as she began changing clothes.

Then her phone vibrated.

It was a message from Tora.

Alisa opened it immediately, still standing half-dressed in the nearly empty locker room, where there were no bags except her own and the Estonian woman’s, because apparently she was still somewhere giving interviews.

Tora: Location pin drop

The message contained only a location.

Tora: See you in two hours!

Alisa smiled despite herself.

Alisa: Accepted

She did not even open the map. Most likely it was another hotel. She was already used to the fact that they met in hotels, always wherever Tora was staying, because somehow it had happened that Alisa had never once had a room to herself, or else the room had been too small for two.

Two hours later, after showering and changing into an ordinary tracksuit, Alisa finally opened the location Tora had sent her and called a taxi to the address. It was some small building somewhere closer to the center.