Chapter 21: Second by Four Tenths

We skated into twelve thousand people who had just watched something terrible and did not yet know what to do with it.

At first, nobody clapped.

Theo took my hand at center ice, and I felt his thumb slide once across my wrist.

Then the music began, and I stopped listening to the arena.

The opening lift went up clean.

I looked down at the crowd from over his head and saw faces turned up to me.

I laughed out loud, once, in the middle of it.

The side-by-side jumps landed together, with one sharp sound.

Then came the place in the music where the throw was.

I felt his hands change on my waist.

"I have you," Theo said, against my ear.

"Throw me."

He threw me.

I went up and over and down.

I came out of it on one foot with my arm flung wide, and the roar that hit me was enormous.

Theo reached me before the music ended.

He did not pick me up this time.

He took my face in both hands and held it, and we skated the last bars like that, with our foreheads together.

The scores came up in the kiss-and-cry.

Second place, by four tenths, behind a German pair who had skated clean and cold.

"Tomorrow," Theo said.

"Tomorrow," I said.

A woman in a grey fleece was waiting in the corridor when we came off.

She was holding her tablet against her chest.

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