[Emily’s POV]
My phone buzzes with Maddie's text: ‘It's done. It went badly. Can you come get me?’ I'm out of my chair, leaving my coffee and laptop behind. The barista calls after me, but I'm already out the door.
The park is three blocks away. I run the entire distance. Maddie's still at that picnic table, sitting motionless. Her parents' car is gone. I slow to a walk as I approach. Maddie doesn't look up. She's staring at nothing. "What happened?" I ask.
Maddie's voice comes out flat, emotionless. "I told them. My dad said I'm confused, that this is trauma from the bullying, that you've influenced me. He said it's a sin. That I need to choose—my family and skating career, or this lifestyle."
The word 'lifestyle' drips with her father's disappointment. "My mom just cried. Said she loves me but doesn't understand."
My heart breaks listening to this. She doesn’t deserve that, she did all she could to please them, to protect herself, and the moment she chose herself, they turned her back on it. I seethe just thinking about it. "Where are they now?"
"They drove away. Said they need time to think." Maddie's laugh is hollow. "Time to decide if I'm worth keeping."
I sat down beside her, take her hand in mine, damn anyone who sees it. She’s more important right now. "What do you want to do?" I ask carefully.
"I don't know." The admission sounds like surrender. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t squeeze my hand back. I need to strain my hearing just to figure out what she’s saying.
I rub soothing circles on her skin, wishing I could kiss her hand, take her pain away, hide her in a cocoon where everything’s fine. "I'm so sorry."
Maddie finally looks at me, her eyes hollow. "My dad basically said I have to choose—them and my skating career, or you."
My throat goes tight. "What are you going to choose?" Maddie stares at me for a long moment, then looks away without answering. I understand—she doesn't know yet, can't know yet. I don't push. "Come on." I pull her up. "Let's go back."
We walk to campus slowly, Maddie on autopilot. She's in shock. I keep hold of her hand, terrified if I let go she'll float away.
Back at the dorm, my mother is waiting—I'd texted her after getting Maddie's message. She takes one look at Maddie and opens her arms.
Maddie breaks down completely, sobbing into my mother's shoulder. All that flat emotion from the park comes pouring out, and my mother holds her through it. "You're so brave," Mom says quietly, fierce. "You're so brave and I'm so proud of you."
It takes fifteen minutes before Maddie calms down. My mother produces tissues from somewhere—moms have magical pockets—and announces with authority that brooks no argument: "We're going to dinner. All three of us. You need to eat."
"I'm not hungry," Maddie protests weakly, but Mom ain’t having it. She tuts at Maddie disapprovingly.
"Doesn't matter. You're eating anyway. Emotional devastation is not an acceptable meal replacement." She shakes her head. “Instead I propose pasta. Or pizza. Or both. Maybe burgers? Whatcha say?”
Maddie doesn’t want to pick, so Mom takes us to this little Italian place near campus, the kind with checkered tablecloths and candles in wine bottles collecting wax since the Reagan administration. My mother orders for all of us—pasta and bread and salad, comfort food in portions designed for small armies.
Once the food arrives, Mom starts in with questions like she's conducting a friendly interrogation. "So, Maddie. Emily tells me you're doing physical therapy for your ankle. How's that progressing?"
Maddie looks startled that anyone wants to talk to her about anything, let alone skating. "It's... going okay. I'm cleared for light practice now. No jumps yet, but I can do basic movements."
"That must be frustrating," Mom says, twirling pasta onto her fork with the expertise of someone who's perfected the art. "Being cleared for 'light practice' when you're used to triple axels. That's like telling a race car driver they can use a golf cart."
A ghost of a smile crosses Maddie's face. "Yeah. Exactly like that, actually."
"When do they think you'll be cleared for the big stuff again?" Mom asks, and there's genuine curiosity in her voice, not the polite kind people use when they're making conversation they don't care about.
"Maybe another month or two. Depends how the ankle responds." Maddie picks at her pasta, then adds quietly, "If I can still afford to skate by then."
Mom's expression doesn't change, doesn't fill with pity or awkwardness. She just nods like Maddie said something perfectly reasonable. "Well, you will. Because I know my daughter, and Emily doesn't make promises she can't keep. If she says you'll find a way, you'll find a way. She's stubborn like that."
"Mom," I protest, but I'm smiling. Her nonchalance and certainty fill the air with something that tastes like hope. And fresh pasta, of course, but that’s not thanks to her.
"What? It's true.” She looks at me pointedly. “Remember when you were seven and decided you were going to learn to do a backflip off the diving board? I said no, your grandma said no, the lifeguard said absolutely not.”
She makes a dramatic pause. “You spent three months practicing on the trampoline until you could do it safely. Then you did it off the diving board anyway and gave me a heart attack."
"I stuck the landing," I point out, pride seeping into my voice. That’s my thing, my whole schtick—do something impossible until it becomes possible.
"You gave me gray hair." Mom turns back to Maddie, who's actually smiling now, a real one. "My point is, Emily commits. So if she's committed to making sure you can keep skating, it's happening. You might as well accept it now and save yourself the stress."
Maddie's throat works like she's trying not to cry again. "Thank you. For dinner, for being here, for... everything."
"Honey, I'm not doing anything special. I'm just being a mother." Mom reaches across the table and squeezes Maddie's hand. "Which, by the way, is something you deserved from your own parents today. I'm sorry they couldn't be that for you."
Maddie nods, blinking rapidly. We eat in silence for a moment, and then Mom pivots smoothly back to safer topics.
"So tell me about this triple axel. Emily says it's the holy grail of women's figure skating. What makes it so difficult?"
And just like that, Maddie's talking. Haltingly at first, then with more animation as she explains rotation and timing and the physics of launching yourself into the air and spinning three and a half times before landing on a blade the width of a pencil.
Mom asks follow-up questions, leans in like she's learning state secrets, and by the time dessert arrives—tiramisu she insists we share—there's actual color back in Maddie's cheeks.
That night, after my mother leaves with a long hug and promises to check in tomorrow, Maddie and I lie in bed together. The room is dark except for streetlight through the blinds. Maddie's staring at the ceiling.
"What are you thinking?" I ask.
"I keep waiting to regret it. To wish I'd stayed in the closet. But I don't. I just wish..." She trails off.
"You wish they loved you enough to accept you." I offer quietly. The feeling is familiar—the same one I had when I was young and didn’t understand why my father left.
Maddie nods, tears sliding silently into her hair. I hold her through it. Finally, when the tears slow, she asks: "What if they never come around? What if this is it?"
I choose honesty, because that’s the best I can offer her. "Then we build a life without them. It'll be hard as hell, but we'll do it."
"Will you really stay?" Her voice breaks. "Even if it means I can't skate? Even if I have to drop out because I can't afford it?"
"Yes. But it's not going to come to that. We'll find a way. Scholarships, loans, something." Maddie holds onto that promise, fingers gripping mine in the dark. We lie there in silence, both awake, both thinking about futures that suddenly look very different.
Eventually her breathing evens out, and I think she's fallen asleep. But then she says quietly, with sudden clarity: "I need to talk to Coach. I need to explain why I might not be able to continue skating."
The realization settles over both of us. Tomorrow she'll have to explain that her skating career might be over not because of injury, but because her father would rather lose his daughter than accept who she loves. I hold her tighter. There's nothing left to say tonight.