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“I’m starting a rumor”
The ice cracked beneath the skates as if it were slowly breaking apart, every sensation ran through her body and made her shudder, like a massive chill
though Robin barely noticed it.
Her lungs were burning, compressed beneath multiple layers, her thighs tense, and her mouth dry behind the guard that made her teeth grind.
The noise was deafening: screams, both of agony and happiness, fists pounding against the boards, the distant whistle that always seemed to come too late.
The scoreboard was still tied and the clock moved forward with an almost personal cruelty, one more and they would reach the gold final, it wasn’t very difficult.
Robin turned her head for a second, just one, maybe only two, toward the stands.
She wasn’t supposed to do that.
Never.
But she couldn’t help searching for her with her eyes, and there she was, far away yet so close at the same time.
Nancy Wheeler didn’t stand out, and yet, somehow, she did in Robin’s eyes.
Low cap, white jacket zipped up to her neck, gloved hands pressed tightly together, trying so visibly to keep warm. She wasn’t screaming like the rest, but the expression on her face told her she was just as emotional as anyone else in that stadium, maybe even more.
She wasn’t jumping. She was just watching, watching her closely, with that quiet focus and steady calm that had stolen Robin’s heart so long ago.
And Nancy never looked away from her, not to check the board, not to watch the puck, as if the game depended solely on her.
Robin smiled without realizing it, getting lost between reality, her memories, and that beautiful gaze for a few loud moments.
“Buckley!” someone faceless shouted. “Now!”
The puck dropped back to center and everything restarted at once, her body moving at full speed across the ice, gripping her stick as if it were an extension of herself.
She reacted fast, before her mind could run through the thousands of possibilities and outcomes.
Skates cutting the ice, a direct hit to her ribs, a quick pass, another collision that knocked the air out of her chest.
The world narrowed down to white lines, the sight of the small goal right in front of her, threatening, ragged breaths and the urgency to move.
The goal wasn’t hers.
It was a pass. Clean, precise, perfect, with no margin for error.
The puck went in, the opposing goalie fell to the ice and, for an instant, there was an expectant, ominous silence.
Then, the stadium exploded.
Screams wrapping around everything that could be wrapped around.
Robin shouted something wildly incoherent with a grin on her face, collided with another player, laughed with an euphoria so pure her face hurt and her cheeks burned with emotion.
The clock hit zero. They had won. They were going to the final.
Now it was all for gold.
Everything after that was a blur of noise.
More bodies crashing into hers.
Her helmet flew off somewhere. Sweat ran down her face and body, turning her into a small ball of heat.
Someone hugged her from behind, someone else shouted in her ear, she felt reporters surrounding her, everything felt like a dream.
Robin spun around and around, searching for something she couldn’t explain, or someone, until she saw her coming down the side aisle.
Jumping with excitement, not caring about anything or anyone.
Nancy.
She wasn’t wearing a visible credential, nor a huge sign with her name. She wasn’t wearing team colors, a cap, or a number on her shirt.
But she walked straight toward her, ignoring the existence of anyone else in the way, dodging bodies, with that expression that mixed pride and something else, and of course a smile etched onto her face, almost as big as her love.
Robin didn’t think about it more than three times.
She just went.
She cut through the chaos, dodged a cameraman, a volunteer, someone shouting her name and holding a jersey against her face.
When she had her right in front of her, she didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, clumsy and slippery and with too much force, throwing herself against her, and Nancy responded immediately, wrapping her arms around her waist and softly kissing the top of Robin’s head, nestled between her neck and cheek.
“I saw you,” Robin murmured, not knowing if Nancy could hear her or if her voice was even a voice at that moment.
“The whole game.”
She lifted her head just enough to look at her. Nancy’s eyes were shining and her cheeks were red from the cold.
“I know.”
The hug lasted too long.
It wasn’t obvious at first. It was the sum of small mistakes: the way Robin rested her forehead against Nancy’s temple, the way Nancy didn’t let go right away, the low laugh they shared, intimate, detached from the rest of the world.
As if they were alone.
Click.
A small, bright flash.
Then another.
And then a storm of bursts.
Robin noticed too late, when cameras were already pointing at them, when someone murmured something unintelligible nearby, when Nancy blinked and pulled away half a second later than she should have, muttering curses.
“Uh,” Robin said with a nervous smile, playing with her hair.
“Was that… was that… too much?”
Nancy opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t. She just looked around, at the sea of people, at the phones held high, and then looked back at her.
Still smiling.
At least they hadn’t kissed yet.
“Probably,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
Robin laughed, her heart still racing with joy and something else, still not fully letting go of her hands.
Somewhere, the stadium kept celebrating. Somewhere else, invisible but immediate, something was starting to ignite.
The internet, maybe.
Robin didn’t know yet.
She only knew she had won, that Nancy was there, and that for the first time since they arrived in Milan, hiding felt a little impossible.
“that hug wasn’t just friendly”
“she kissed her head”
“is it just me or do they look like more than friends”
Robin knocked on the door desperately once, twice, three times in a row, without waiting for an answer.
Her brain was running a thousand miles an hour and she couldn’t stop it.
“Okay, it’s not a medical emergency, I swear I’m not dying, I promise,” she said from outside as the door opened and revealed Nancy, hair loose and messy, wearing an oversized pajama shirt.
“But the internet is definitely dying. I think we broke it.”
Robin walked in immediately, closing the door with her foot, phone already in her hand.
“Hello to you too, my love,” Nancy said laughing, leaning against the door and looking at her with a calm smile.
“Look at this,” Robin said quickly, grabbing Nancy’s hands and dragging her toward the bed.
“And this. And this too. There’s a slow-motion video, who even does that? And someone said our hug lasted exactly four seconds longer than socially acceptable. What is even a socially acceptable hug?”
“Can you believe they’re drawing us?”
Nancy smiled calmly, moving closer, sitting on her lap and rolling her eyes.
She looked at her from very close as she ran her fingers through her hair, paying more attention to the sports bra she was wearing as pajamas than to the panic clearly consuming Robin.
She started tracing her neck, kissing every freckle, a routine already established.
“Four seconds isn’t that much,” she said, or almost whispered.
“It’s eternal in Olympic time,” Robin replied. “They’re making theories on Twitter and betting money on us.”
“Nance, real money.”
She slid her finger across the screen, showing headlines, tweets, bets, comments moving too fast to read them all.
She was so hypnotized she didn’t notice when she ended up lying back against the sheets.
Her short hair, once tied, now completely spread across the bed as Nancy explored her chest with skilled hands.
She didn’t notice that Nancy never took the phone.
Didn’t flinch at her touch.
Nancy was just looking at her again.
“Are you okay?” she asked, almost amused, now fully lying on top of her.
Robin blinked, as if only then understanding the position they were in. Her cheeks flushed instantly and her mind stopped working.
“Y-yeah,” she said. “I think. I just… I didn’t think it would be so immediate. I’m sorry.”
Nancy leaned a little closer, their noses touching.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I ran toward you. I have the right to be emotional, you just made it to the final, Rob. After these games we can, I don’t know, just be us.”
Robin let out a low, nervous laugh and with her free hand grabbed Nancy’s waist.
“My coach is going to kill me. I’m not supposed to create drama or anything unexpected… aren’t you worried or something?”
Nancy rested her forehead against hers, her lips now just millimeters away.
“Robin, babel,” she whispered, shaking her head. “We’ve been dating for four years. At some point the rumors were going to start, just think about it, okay.”
The phone vibrated again, but this time it was forgotten between them, face down somewhere on the bed, and Robin let it fade out on its own.
She lay back completely now, both hands roaming Nancy’s lower back, and pulled their mouths together in a smile.
It was a kiss filled with euphoria and emotion, but also with that deep knowing and longing that lived between them every day.
The world felt silent.
It was just the two of them, laughing, rolling on the bed.
The phone kept buzzing, but Robin’s head was already under Nancy’s shirt and she couldn’t care less,
it wasn’t so terrible if people started rumors if the rumors were true.
“they’re dating, it’s painfully obvious”
The hallways behind the rink were dim, lit by cold lights that buzzed softly.
The crowd noise reached them muffled, as if the world were happening in another very distant dimension.
Nancy leaned her back against the metal lockers.
The cold seeped through her shirt, Robin was too close, both hands wrapped around the skater’s waist.
“Someone could see us, you know,” she said between little kisses.
“No one cares, trust me,” Nancy replied, her hand caressing the taller girl’s cheek.
“Wish me luck, okay.” She pulled away gently, and Robin felt as if her soul split in half even though they were only a few centimeters apart.
“You don’t need luck, have fun,” she said, taking in Nancy’s beautiful clothes one last time before walking away too, heading toward the stands.
Neither of them noticed the camera that caught them, and it didn’t matter much when Nancy finally stepped onto the ice.
The stadium fell silent and Robin held her breath,
there were no screams, the audience was completely calm, but not the boring kind, the calm that precedes something important.
She watched Nancy take a deep breath, skate to her starting mark and lower her gaze for a second.
And for a second their eyes met and a huge smile lit her up completely,
then the music began, she saw how magic traveled through the skater’s body, the sound wrapping around every part of her.
The first glide was confident, fast, almost light. She wasn’t trying to dominate, but to flow.
Flow with her feelings.
The blades cut the ice with precision, every turn measured, every transition clean.
She spun through the air, her smile only growing wider, and Robin knew her own face couldn’t express more calm and happiness.
She watched her glide across the rink as if it were hers,
moving from one side to the other, confident and completely serene.
The first jump landed strong. Contained applause. Nancy didn’t react. She was already on to the next.
She turned, accelerated, let her body remember what it had practiced hundreds of times.
There was a youthful energy in the way she moved, a quiet confidence that didn’t ask for permission. In one of the step sequences, she lifted her gaze, their eyes meeting again, and Robin simply smiled back this time.
Their hearts met completely.
The final element came out clean. Not perfect, but secure. Nancy closed the choreography with a small, contained gesture, and when the music ended, the audience erupted in applause.
Stuffed animals hit the ice.
She could be seen breathing, relieved.
The scores came later, and it didn’t really matter what they were, the only thing that mattered was that Nancy looked happy.
Robin was crushed against the boards, people still applauding behind her, her credential still hanging crooked.
Nancy exited the ice, and she saw in a blur how she hugged her coaches and headed toward her.
It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t announced.
It happened in a moment in space-time written only for them.
Nancy took her face in both hands and kissed her.
A kiss full of relief, adrenaline, of it went well.
The noise wrapped around them: screams, applause, background music.
Nancy’s lips against hers felt as important as air itself.
No one was focusing on them.
They weren’t on the big screen.
But there were attentive, curious eyes. Long lenses. Journalists who weren’t watching the ice, but the margins of everything.
Robin laughed against her lips.
“You’re my star,” she said, breathless.
“You’re so dramatic,” Nancy replied.
They pulled apart quickly, still smiling, unaware of their surroundings, the murmurs, the video already uploaded before Nancy disappeared among the other skaters.
“short romance fueled by emotion or a real relationship?”
The microphone was too close.
Robin noticed immediately, as if that were the real problem and not the swarm of cameras in front of her or the fact that she hadn’t slept more than three hours straight in days or hadn’t spoken to Nancy since the kiss, she had run away, a little startled.
Which now seemed like the most important thing the internet had seen in centuries.
She adjusted her cap for the tenth time that afternoon, took a deep breath and smiled.
That automatic, slightly robotic smile she wore even when she had no idea what she was doing.
“Robin, congratulations on qualifying, we’re all excited for tomorrow,” a reporter said, far too energetic for that time of morning.
“We wanted to ask how you’re feeling.”
She took a deep breath, too nervous to think of a very deep answer.
“Also excited, I trust my team and I think we’re all working hard and giving our all to be able to win.”
The reporter jotted something down in her notebook and then looked at her again, now expectant, with an unpleasant smile etched on her face.
“Of course! Our next question is about the events after the match and yesterday afternoon at the skating competition.”
And there it was, the question.
Robin didn’t look at the camera, much less the reporter.
She looked a little past them, to where her team was gathered a few meters away, talking quietly and laughing, waiting to be interviewed.
No one was looking at her directly, but she knew one wrong word would be enough to make everything unravel and fall apart.
To distract someone. To shift the focus where it didn’t belong.
Nancy crossed her mind like a reflex.
She hadn’t seen her and missed her so much, even if it was stupid to think that way.
“Do you mean the celebration?” Robin asked, tilting her head as if she genuinely didn’t understand, trying to divert the topic.
The reporter smiled, knowing exactly what she meant.
“I’m talking about your special moments with skater Nancy Wheeler. Any comments?”
Robin blinked once. Twice. She kept smiling, trying not to smile too much at the name, trying not to look so nervous.
“Ah…” she said. “Yes. Well, we’re very good friends, her program yesterday was incredible.”
It wasn’t a lie, Nancy was her best friend.
“No comment then, noted.” The reporter didn’t push, which Robin deeply appreciated.
“Let’s talk about the play that took you to the final.”
And the interview continued its natural course, followed by others and the same question over and over again.
Maybe it was just time for it to come out, like Nancy said, but she really needed to get through the game before speaking publicly.
“they don’t look like just friends”
Nancy: good luck in your game!
You’ll try to make it to mine, right?
The final goal hit like a sharp blow to the chest.
The game had been long and grueling, hits to the ribs and defenders from both teams going back and forth, tied on both sides, one point each, and when the puck crossed the line, the whistle blew and the world became pure noise.
Robin raised her arms without thinking, purely on instinct, swinging her stick in the air, the shout breaking out of her, almost disbelieving.
The goalie shoved her into a hug, another player crashed her helmet against hers, the entire bench jumped onto the ice in a disordered wave of euphoria.
They lifted her into the air and she felt a thousand bodies colliding in an explosion of inexplicable and simply perfect joy.
They had won. Gold.
They had won and she had scored the final goal.
Robin laughed, breathed poorly, felt her legs shaking and as if no part of her body was really working correctly.
Everything around her was lights, cameras, overlapping voices.
Her name echoed somewhere, cameras pointed at her face, asking a thousand questions that turned into whirlwinds in her head.
Photos and medals, simple smiles, and she searched the crowd for that familiar face she needed so badly, needed to kiss from pure emotion, but she was winning her own medal.
The cheers continued and the celebration grew louder and louder, and yet, in the middle of all that, her mind was only in one place and one heart.
Had she finished already?
Was she skating?
Had she won?
Robin nodded for every photo and person without really listening. She checked the clock. Checked her phone. Nothing. Again, nothing.
She couldn’t stay, she needed to leave.
“I’ll… I’ll be right back,” she murmured, not knowing to whom, maybe a reporter or a teammate caught in the same ecstasy.
She slipped through bodies and flags, still half in uniform, dropping her helmet, her soaked jersey clinging to her skin, her hair completely undone. No one stopped her. No one could.
Outside, the icy air burned her lungs.
The walk to her car was a mix of clumsiness and urgency.
Her hands trembled on the steering wheel, her keys fell to the car floor repeatedly, the phone on before she even put her seatbelt on.
Robin wasn’t a good driver, but she had promised to try to make it.
She drove watching the broadcast, volume too high, eyes jumping from the road to the screen and from the screen to the clock over and over again, like a loop.
“Come on, come on…” she murmured without realizing it.
Thirty minutes had never felt so long and intense.
When she arrived, she barely parked. She got out of the car with her phone in hand, heart pounding in her throat.
She entered the venue almost running, dodging people, taking stairs two at a time, showing her credentials to anyone who asked.
She saw her before fully understanding what was happening.
On the ice, spinning, completely elegant and beautiful, the most perfect person she had ever seen.
Nancy was finishing. Robin froze for a second, as if her body had decided to stop her so she wouldn’t miss anything, trapped again right against the boards, flooded with flashbacks.
Nancy skated toward the center, breathing hard, hair pulled back any which way, arms still tense from the routine, and a radiant smile on her face showing how free she felt on that ice.
Robin couldn’t perceive time, she only focused on the screen and Nancy’s face as the center of her universe.
And when the gold was finally announced, and the results appeared while Nancy’s coaches hugged her with pure joy, Robin couldn’t hear the full words.
She only saw Nancy bring a hand to her mouth, sit in front of the cameras, eyes shining, her smile trembling just a little.
She won.
they both did.
Robin moved before thinking.
She crossed the barrier without permission, without logic, without remembering rules, cameras, protocols. None of that mattered. Only Nancy. Only getting to her side.
“Buckley!” someone shouted. “Hey!”
She didn’t stop to think.
She wasn’t going to think anymore, who cared.
Nancy looked up just in time to see her. Her eyes widened, surprised, and then, as always and forever, softened.
Nancy stepped out into the corridor and Robin reached her, breathless, hair a mess, jersey still marked by the game, hands cold and chest about to burst.
And just like that, she hugged her and lifted her into the air, kissing her with an intensity not exactly appropriate for the public, right there, in front of everyone.
It was a warm, intense kiss, full of contained laughter and relief, spinning around each other.
The cameras exploded, showing them both on the biggest screen, from afar Nancy’s coaches laughed as if this were the most childish thing they’d ever seen.
The crowd screamed.
The world made noise again and everything became real only with and around them, for one eternal second, no one else existed.
Nancy rested her forehead against Robin’s, laughing between heavy breaths.
“You’re bold, Buckley,” she said.
Robin nodded, wearing the biggest smile she’d had in days.
“I’m sorry, I love you.”
They didn’t say anything else.
There was no need.
No one cared. Nancy was right.
"so, you and the hockey player robin
buckley are dating?”
“yes”