Page 138 of Goal Line
The male announcer, whose name I’ve forgotten, adds, “The only thing that remains to be seen is if it’s enough to move them ahead of the Canadians for a possible gold tonight. But either way, they’re definitely Olympic bound come February.”
On the ice, Christopher bends to pick Eva up, his arms around her thighs as he holds her in the air so she can wave to the crowd. As the screen zooms in on their faces, it’s easy to read his lips as he looks up at her: “You did it.”
He sets her down and they move to each side of the ice, taking a bow and waving to the crowd as an unbelievable number of stuffed animals shower down from the stands. And when they turn toward us and take their final bow, Eva doesn’t head directly toward the kiss-and-cry booth. Instead, she skates to the boards closest to the stairs near our row and motions me down.
I scoot past my mom and Helene, holding tight to Gigi, before jogging down the stairs with one hand on the rail as the crowd around us stands and cheers. And when I get down to ice level, I reach forward and wrap one arm around her midsection, lifting her to sit on the boards so she can pull Gigi and me into an embrace.
“You did it, Evie,” I say, smiling into the crook of her neck.
“I hope so. We’ll see.” She pulls back, and her smile is huge. She knows she did it, she just doesn’t want to jinx it.
“There’s no way that performance didn’t earn you a ticket to the Olympics.”
Christopher skates over then, and we shake hands before he helps Eva down and they skate to the opening, put their skate guards on, and take a seat in the kiss-and-cry booth.
“Your first competition in six months,andsince having a baby. How did that feel?” the announcer asks before holding the microphone out to Eva. I tilt my head back to watch the interview on the screen, not wanting to miss a second.
“Phenomenal.” Eva takes a deep breath, still panting after the intense performance.
“All her hard work paid off,” Christopher adds.
“What aboutyourhard work?” the interviewer asks him.
“It was nothing compared to what she had to do to come back from a challenging pregnancy and giving birth.” He beams down at her with pride, and then their heads tilt up as the judge’s scores start populating the screen.
As expected, the performance puts them into first place with only one pair left to skate. They move over to the winner’s circle to watch the reigning world champions, a pair from China, take the ice, and I return to my seat.
Six minutes later, as the entire arena awaits the final scores, Eva and Christopher are clutching hands, waiting to find out if it’s a silver or a gold for them tonight. The second the scores appear, Christopher tackles Eva in a hug that almost carries them out of their seats because, while their competition put on a great performance, they came up short.
My throat tightens as I consider what this moment means to Eva—to put on the performance of a lifetime, when only a couple of months ago she was battling her own self-doubt while also tuning out the critics who said there was no way she’d be able to compete on an international level so quickly after giving birth. And as I watch my mom and hers jumping up and down and embracing, I know that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
Eva and Christopher stand and wave to the crowd in the midst of thunderous applause. Just then, my phone starts buzzing like crazy in my pocket. At first, I plan to ignore it and remain in the moment, but the buzzing continues, so I pull my phone out.
My teammates, who got back from a road trip, are flooding the group chat that I namedAssholesa while back as a joke. It’s not even eight in the morning in Boston, but apparently they all watched the performance after arriving back in town.
Walsh
Holy shit, man. Eva was amazing!
Colt
Right? Jules is all choked up, and she doesn’t cry.
Drew
Audrey’s already asking about going to watch her in the Olympics.
Zach
Ashleigh too. Group trip?
McCabe
Colt and I will be playing, so we’ll see you there. You can watch me score on him.
Colt
Right, because that’s ever happened.
