Page 119 of Ice Dance

Music played, other dancers performed their best, and I didn’t see or care about any of it. I sat on a bench, numb, cold, far away from it all.

He’d fallen. But not in the dance. Our dance had been perfect. I was so proud of him. I wanted him to know that.

What if I’d lost him?

I checked my phone over and over. Nothing from Dylan.

An hour passed.

Someone told me we’d won the gender open. But we wouldn’t be dancing in the final against the best from the other categories. We would not win the Meridian Cup. I didn’t care.

The other categories had their winners now too.

And the news came down for me to accept the Gender Open First Place medal.

I didn’t want to, not without him. How could I stand on the podium alone, when Cam was supposed to be beside me? This was his moment as much as it was mine and he wasn’t here.

His body, so loose and limp in my arms . . .

God.

Why had I let him dance? Why had it come to this?

I choked up, and tried to breathe around it.

“Hey, man,” Casey said, appearing from my left. I’d tucked myself into a corner to deliberately get away from prying eyes. And his were the last I wanted to see. “I wanted to come over here on behalf of the Canadian team and congratulate you both but . . . uh . . . well . . .”

I got to my feet and peered down at him. “Thank you.”

“How is he? Has there been any news?” he asked, looking up.

“No.” Casey was his friend, he deserved to know. And he did look pale and genuinely concerned. I just . . . couldn’t deal with him or anyone.

“Are you uh . . . going to accept the medal?”

I turned away. How could I? How could I act as though nothing were wrong?

“You should . . .” Casey called. “He’d want you to.”

Cam would. Casey was right.

And so, when the organizers found me, I agreed. I took my place at the side of the podium area, and when they called Camden’s and my names, I stepped onto the first-place podium. The Montreal City mayor placed the medal around my neck and shook my hand. She held on, then placed Camden’s medal in my fingers.

“Winners, of the Meridian Gender Open! Camden Navarro and Ren Hasegawa!”

They’d said Cam’s name first. He’d have liked that, because he knew what it meant. Finally, he wasn’t the backyard Montreal boy who didn’t deserve to be on the ice, he was the winner he’d fought so hard to be. A man who had fallen more times in life than most, and gotten right back up again each time.

The arena erupted in applause.

I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, but tried, even as they skipped down my face. I tried to smile, to be the gracious winner, but knew it sat broken on my face.

I raised Cam’s medal in the spot beside me where he was supposed to be standing, grinning like he would have been, and the crowd was on its feet, like it had been during our dance.

We’d performed the impossible, but he wasn’t here to hear this, to see it, to know he’d proven everyone wrong.

I would have given back all the medals I’d ever won to have him beside me in that moment.

Camden Navarro was my hero.