He stopped flirting with women at the rink. He didn’t slip innuendos into every other sentence. He held doors open for Karen and Deena, helped with the vacuuming, didn’t argue with the new choreography or complain about the new short-program costumes—unitard tuxes—even though the slick black outfits looked more like wetsuits than skating gear. Karen found the sea change sweet, if a little spooky. Definitely preferable to swearing and striking out at inanimate objects. Sometimes, though, she found herself missing the sassy comments, the probing eyes, found herself waiting for them like an expected cymbal crash that never comes in a song, leaving some part of her unsatisfied. “You’re doing good,” she told him when she could feel how hard he was trying, how hard he was holding himself back, and he would look at her with such gratitude, it made her want to weep. And she got those looks often. She was with Nathan just about every second of the day. Breakfast. Driving the now snowy roads to the rink.
