Saturday morning, Otis appeared at Theo's desk with two coffees and the expression of a man who had already heard a version of events through bakery channels. Otis was tall, perpetually slightly sunburned even in winter, and incapable of whispering.
"Bridie says you fell into her sister," Otis announced.
"I fell. She intercepted. There is a photographer. There may be evidence."
Otis handed him the coffee. "Are you going to do the thing where you get scared and write a perfect email that never sends?"
"I'm trying a new thing where I send imperfect texts that do."
"Growth," Otis said solemnly. "Terrifying. Also, Bridie says if you hurt Rowan again she will stop selling you the Tuesday scone, which for you is basically exile."
"I am aware of the stakes."
Otis leaned on the desk. "For what it's worth, I almost dated Bridie and failed because I treated carefulness like a personality. Don't copy me. Carefulness without movement is just fear with better branding."
Theo spent the rest of Saturday cutting audio from a nurse named Ysolde who talked about holding strangers' hands at three in the morning. He kept hearing Rowan's question—flirting or panic—under the waveform. He texted her a photo of the skates drying on newspaper: Exhibit A in the case of Man Who Confused Ownership With Skill.
Rowan sent back a photo of a tiny skate charm on her keychain: Exhibit B in the case of Woman Who Still Loves Ice Even When Ice Is Complicated.
On Sunday, Rowan taught three back-to-back lessons at her home rink in Brooklyn, an indoor place with tired vending machines and excellent ice. Her student Tilda, age eleven, landed a clean waltz jump and then burst into tears on schedule. Rowan knelt, ignoring the protest in her own knee.
"Good tears or storm tears?" Rowan asked.
"Good," Tilda gulped. "But also I don't want to mess it up next time."
"Next time is allowed to be different," Rowan said. "Different is not the same as ruined."
After lessons, Bridie arrived with soup in a jar and the soft interrogation face she used when she loved someone too much to be casual. They sat on the rink's lobby bench under a bulletin board crowded with competition schedules and lost-and-found gloves.