Page 69 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

Alisa swallowed hard.

“Thank you, Coach,” she whispered, quickly wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “I won’t let you down.”

Chapter 13

In the evening, Alisa dialed Tora through a VPN on her PS5, and they had to talk without cameras, but it didn’t matter, because Alisa only wanted to distract herself, to talk to her at least a little, and she still could not believe that they had been dating for almost three months already, although because of how busy both of them always were, they spoke once a week, or even less often, and besides, because of the problems with the Internet in Russia, Alisa often could not call at all, because nothing worked, and in the city her phone simply turned into a brick without the Internet, a useless thing, really, and that caused some kind of emptiness in Alisa’s chest, because it was sad to live in a world like this.

“Alisa?” Tora’s voice came through the headphones.

“Yes, yes, I’m here, hi…”

“Hi,” Tora replied dryly, sounding very tired. Apparently training had been exhausting again.

Alisa decided to start with something casual.

“Well… how was your training? Are you and Loke working on a new choreography or what?”

“Well, kind of, yes, the coach wants us to add new elements, to make the program a little more difficult for the Olympics.”

Yes, of course, they had been accepted to the Olympics immediately, because how could they not take these figure skating stars? The whole world was waiting for them at the Olympic Games, but no one was waiting for Alisa anywhere. In general, she herself had not gone anywhere yet, although after talking to the new coach, Arkadiy, the hope of somehow ending up at the Olympics had sparked in her heart again.

Alisa started screen sharing for Tora and launched Resident Evil 2 Remake, a game about viruses and zombies and some kind of apocalypse, a game she had only heard about before, but this year it was on sale, and she decided to buy it. Relaxing with horror games? That was something new. The music on the title screen was already terrifying, but Alisa kept fiddling with the settings while Tora stayed silent, and then Alisa suddenly realized that she had not said anything at all about Tora and Loke’s new choreography.

“Well, I hope they’ll give you something beautiful, I don’t doubt you,” Alisa said coldly, and for some reason she was upset that she would no longer skate in pairs, at least not this year, she should have been happy for her girlfriend, but everything felt strange… inside her there was a conflict, where one part of her was incredibly happy for Tora, and the other was furious that she herself had failed in every possible way in pair skating. It was difficult.

“Yes, I hope so too, well, are you going to start the game or what?” Tora said softly, and Alisa heard from the rustling that she had probably already lain down on the bed.

“Oh, yes, sorry…”

Alisa started the game and immediately realized that medium difficulty was going to be torture, because every sound scared her, and she screamed at every zombie or every sudden noise, and the zombies did not die, you had to put several bullets into their heads, they would fall, but after a while they got up again anyway, and there were never enough bullets, which infuriated Alisa, and she did not even notice how completely she had immersed herself in the game, until suddenly she realized that Tora had been silent for a very long time, so maybe she had disconnected? But when Alisa opened the console menu, she saw that Tora was still there, she had probably fallen asleep.

“Tora?” Alisa whispered. But there was no answer.

“Good night, Tora… I’m so sorry…” she whispered with longing in her voice, and then she ended the call and turned off the console too, and by then it was already midnight, and she had to get up at five in the morning.

I wish we had never called each other… It was stupid…

Alisa said it bitterly to herself and turned over in bed, trying to fall asleep through the anxious thoughts that maybe their relationship simply was not working the way she wanted it to. She had always thought that relationships with girls would somehow be easier, because they understood each other on a different level than a man and a woman, who in their essence came from different worlds… and she thought it would be fun, but as it turned out, unspoken things, unlived emotions, resentment, and, most importantly, fear, all of it was devouring Alisa from the inside, and she did not know what to do.

She needed to sleep.

* * *

In the summer, training in the gym became more important and time on the ice was reduced, and Alisa hated that period, because she did not like being in the gym, although she knew perfectly well that it was just as important as training on the ice, because it was in the gym that the foundation was built and the first technique was developed, and it was important to train even the smallest movements until they became automatic, so that later on the ice you would not make a mistake and would do everything correctly.

But Alisa was always terribly bored repeating the same movements over and over again, especially here, where she was without her coach, because she had memorized all the exercises and all the technique long ago. But today she was training with Cherry, and Cherry helped her with different exercises, and it seemed that perhaps they were slowly becoming friends.

While they were resting between sets, they started talking.

“Thank God we’re training on ice before the hockey players today, I’m so tired of them!” Anfisa huffed aggressively, and the pink in her cheeks seemed to glow.

Alisa grinned quietly, fiddling with the jump rope in her hands as she prepared for her next set.

“Come on, they’re not all assholes.”

“They are exactly that, zero brains! They ruin everything in our practices!”

Alisa let out a laugh.