The Sinner's Saint

BEST

"If I stand I'm falling." Can't argue with that. I help her up, get her to the barrier, talk her through stepping on sideways. She steps on normally and is immediately on the floor. I help her up again.

"I said sideways."

"I heard you," she says, which raises more questions than it answers. We try again. I move backwards pulling her forward, telling her to bend her knees, push with me and relax her shoulders. She's a fast learner because, once the panic settles she finds a rhythm and stops white-knuckling my hands so hard.

"You're doing so well mama," I tell her when she wobbles and I catch her, keeping my voice low. She looks away and fans her face and that makes me smile real big.

From the ice I look around at everyone. Rami trying to show Sasha how to turn without falling, both of them immediately falling. Liana and Siena holding hands, doing surprisingly well, moving in a slow easy line. Naomi and Aleyna in careful small circles, heads down, concentrating hard, whispering to each other about something. I love this.

Lev is moving quietly around the outside of the group, There when someone wobbles, then gone again. He's got his wonky almost-smile on his face, that silent-judging-but-also-trying face he does when he can't find the words to be supportive so he just acts instead. It's lowkey one of the cutest things I've seen.

His eyes come back to me every few minutes. Not in a way that obvious. Every time, I'm already looking somewhere else cause he cant see me blushing. Every time, his eyes stay on me for just a bit before he moves again.

Nobody's in a rush and nobody's pushing, It's easy in the way good mornings sometimes just are.

I catch Aleyna by the wrist before she faceplants and she giggles and wobbles away. I let myself just move for a bit after that, finding the rhythm, the ice makes everything go quiet under me the way it always has and the way nowhere else ever quite manages. Acc maybe when I'm with Lev but I digress.

Skating is like breathing for me, always has been. It was the one place I knew how to just exist without anything sitting on top of it, no performance, no noise, just moving, the cold and the sound of the blades. That was enough. But I don't do it like I used to, I don't come as often or stay as long or let myself go the way I used to go. When Corey died things shifted but muscle memory still does its shit.

On the days that I do skate, it's the most comforting thing I know.

I'm mid-glide when I notice the far door open from the corner of my eye. I know it's her before I even see her. The way she moves, the sound of her, the particular laugh she does when she's just trying to be polite, I've known all of it since beginning of time and it hits me the same way it always has, immediate and warm, like something coming back into place all at once.

I don't think about it. I literally just run on the ice, the way I used to when I was training, crossing the ice fast and very uncareful. If anyone didn't know I was a figure skater before they would piece it together immediately.

"NESSA!" She turns and gets her arms up just in time. I jump on her and she catches me like she was already expecting it, because she always is, spinning us once, laughing into my hair.

"I missed you oh my God."

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

"I had to handle something first. I was gonna surprise you."

"Mission accomplished, I'm extremely surprised!" She sets me down and holds my arms, looking at me the way she always has, warm and steady, like she's checking to make sure I'm still all there.