Chapter 2: The Late Walk Home
The frost was a fine, crystalline dust over everything, catching the amber glow of the streetlights and holding it. Louise’s breath plumed in front of her, a ghostly echo of his beside her. His shoulder, clad in a simple black wool coat, was six inches from hers. It felt like a magnetic field.
“You really didn’t have to,” she said for the third time, her words swallowed by the muffled quiet of the evening street. The café was five blocks behind them, locked and dark.
“I know,” Ilia said, his hands buried in his pockets. He didn’t elaborate. He just kept walking at her slow, measured pace, his strides shortened to match hers. “It’s a nice night. Cold, but clear.”
It was more than nice. The world felt distilled, sharpened. The sound of their footsteps was precise, a rhythmic crunch on gritted pavement. She was hyper-aware of everything: the faint click of a distant car door, the distant hum of the city, the scent of frozen earth and his subtle, clean soap.
“I close three nights a week. You can’t possibly ‘just be passing by’ every time,” she ventured, the boldness of the statement making her face warm.
He glanced at her, a smile playing on his lips. “Maybe I’m cultivating a new routine.”
“A routine of bad coffee?”
“The coffee’s fine.” He paused. “It’s the view I like.”
Her heart performed a clumsy, hopeful somersault. She focused on the sidewalk ahead, on a treacherous patch of black ice glistening under a lamppost. She aimed for it, a deliberate test of her own coordination, or perhaps a need to disrupt the tension. Her boot slid, her balance faltered.
His hand was there before the gasp fully left her lips. Not on her arm, but around her hand, pulling her gently upright. His grip was firm, assured through the soft leather of his glove. She was steady in an instant, but he didn’t let go.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, staring at their joined hands.
“Don’t be.” His thumb moved, a slow, deliberate stroke across her knuckles. “I’ve spent years learning how to fall. And how to get back up. Holding someone steady is easier.”
The simple contact was a point of searing heat. He was a world champion. His hands were instruments of his art, photographed and analyzed. One was currently wrapped around her ordinary, chapped fingers.
“Are you?” he asked, his voice low.
“Am I what?”
“Free. This weekend.”
The question hung in the frozen air. She’d almost forgotten her own stammered question from the moment he caught her. Are you free this weekend? He’d asked it so casually, as if inquiring about the weather, while his hand burned against hers.
“I… work Saturday morning,” she said, the automatic deflection. “Until two.”
“Saturday after two, then.”
“What would we do?” The question was out, tinged with genuine bafflement. What did people like him do with people like her?
He finally released her hand, but the warmth remained. “Whatever you want. A walk that doesn’t involve me rescuing you from ice patches. A movie. A bookstore.” He shrugged. “The thing you said about predictable just being waiting… I don’t want to wait.”
They had reached her building, a modest brownstone with chipped paint on the railings. The safe, predictable end of her journey. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, turning to face him. In the porch light, his features were all sharp angles and soft shadows, his eyes utterly focused.
“A bookstore?” she repeated.
“You have that smell about you. Of paper. And quiet.” He said it as a simple fact. “I like it. It’s different from the rink.”
The validation was so specific, so observant, it disarmed her completely. He wasn’t offering a flashy date at some exclusive club. He was offering something that felt, terrifyingly, like he’d seen her.
“Okay,” she said, the word barely a whisper.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Saturday. After two.”
A slow, real smile broke across his face, transforming it from focused intensity to something open, youthful. It was a smile she’d never seen in any of his press photos. “Good.”
He took a single step backward, giving her space to ascend to her door. She fumbled for her keys, her fingers clumsy with cold and nerves. She got the key in the lock.
“Ilia?” she said, not turning around.
“Yeah?”
“You really don’t like that coffee, do you?”
A soft laugh drifted up to her. “No. I really don’t.”
“Then why keep buying it?”
The pause was long enough for her to finally glance back. He was standing exactly where she’d left him, a solid, patient figure in the pool of light. His expression was earnest, stripped of any pretense.
“It gave me three minutes of your time, three times a week. It was a transaction. You had to talk to me. I liked the transaction.”
The honesty was a physical blow. It was so stark, so simple, it rendered her intricate web of insecurities momentarily meaningless. He’d paid for bad coffee just to exist in her space. To make her talk to him.
She had no answer. She just nodded, pushed the door open, and slipped into the familiar, dim hallway.
From the other side of the wood, she heard his footsteps finally move away, crisp and steady on the frost. She leaned against the wall, the cold from the plaster seeping through her coat. She could still feel the precise pressure of his gloved thumb on her knuckles. She could still see the look on his face when he’d admitted to the transaction.
For the first time, the quiet of her apartment waiting upstairs didn’t feel like peace. It felt like an interruption. The weekend suddenly yawned in front of her, no longer predictable, no longer safe. It was a vast, unknown territory, and he was waiting for her in it.
And the most frightening part was, she now desperately wanted to go.