Last April was the part of their history that Bridie had carefully not mentioned while distributing croissants. They had met in March at a listening night for Theo's station, a cramped bookstore basement where Otis had dragged Theo to be social and Bridie had dragged Rowan to stop being a hermit with excellent posture. Rowan had laughed at Theo's joke about public radio pledges. Theo had asked for her number with the shaky confidence of a man borrowing bravery from free wine. They had gone on three dates that felt like the beginning of a map.
Then Rowan had a showcase for her students. She had asked Theo to come. He had said yes. On the afternoon of the showcase, his producer dropped an emergency interview in his lap—a senator, a narrow window, the kind of yes that built careers. Theo texted Rowan that he might be late. He was not late. He was absent. He heard her voicemail later, calm and precise: "The kids looked for the friend I said was coming. I looked too. Don't worry about it."
He had worried about it. He had also, catastrophically, taken three days to call her back because shame made him slow. By then Rowan had decided that people who disappeared for work would always disappear for work, and she did not have room for another person who loved a schedule more than a promise. They had not fought so much as cooled. The spring turned into separately lived summers. Bridie kept baking. Otis kept making faces across the office. Neither of them pushed until December, when the croissants arrived like a subpoena.
On the ice now, Rowan did not look at him. "You want to do last April here? With the Christmas tree watching?"
"I want to do it before Minneapolis turns into a reason not to," Theo said.
She slowed, and he managed to slow with her without falling, which felt like a minor miracle. They drifted near the boards under a canopy of string lights.
"You chose the senator," Rowan said.
"I chose fear dressed up as opportunity," Theo said. "I told myself you'd understand because you're disciplined. I used your discipline against you. That was ugly. I am still ashamed of it. I am not asking you to clap for the shame."
Rowan's breath left her in a white ribbon. "Good. Because I don't clap for shame. I also don't pretend I was only wounded innocence. After you no-showed, I told Bridie you were exactly the kind of man who loved stories more than people. That was a cheap sentence. You write about night-shift nurses like they matter. You showed up for Otis when his father was in the hospital. You are not a man who only loves stories. I said it because it made my hurt look clean."
Theo swallowed. The rink music shifted again. Somewhere a child fell and got up laughing.
"So neither of us is fully forgiven in one night," he said.
"Correct," Rowan said. "Forgiveness is not a light switch. It's more like learning an edge. You fall. You adjust. You try not to take other people down with you while you learn."
"If I fall, are you coming with me?" Theo asked again, quieter than before, and this time it was not panic.
Rowan looked at him fully. "Ask me on Thursday," she said. "After we see what the photograph thinks we were."
They skated one more slow loop after that, not talking much, as if the April air between them needed room to settle into December. When Rowan finally guided them toward the exit, Theo's ankles were announcing their grievances in a chorus, and he accepted the announcement with humility.