The rink at six in the morning belongs to the machine and me. I am Lena, twenty-six, and I have skated this ice before anyone else for four years, because that is how you become technically perfect: alone, early, without witnesses. Today there is someone at the boards.
Viktor. Black jacket, hands in his pockets, watching me finish a twizzle sequence as if he's grading it. Two years ago he told a journalist I had the emotional range of a metronome. The quote made it into every profile since.
“Your partner's out for the season,” he says when I glide over. Not hello. “Torn ligament. Your federation called mine at midnight.”
“I know what happened to my partner.”
“Then you know why I'm here.” He steps onto the ice in skates I didn't notice him wearing. He is taller than I remembered, and he stops far too close, the way lifts require. “Six weeks to qualification. One free dance. Theme's already filed.” He pauses. “It's about love, Lena.”
I laugh, because the alternative is to hit him. “Whose idea was that?”
“Fate has a sense of humour.” He holds out his hand for the first hold, palm up, waiting. It is a simple thing, a partner's hand, and I have taken hundreds. This one I stare at. Somewhere in the stands the coach has arrived and is pretending to check her phone. The ice hums under us. Viktor doesn't lower his hand and doesn't say anything clever, and for the first time in two years I can't tell whether he's mocking me or asking.
