Dear Chazz,

I'm sorry it had to be this way. I loved skating with you. We were an awesome team, and I'll never forget how powerful and good you made me feel.

And it's crazy, I know. But I love you.

Take care,

Jimmy McElroy

Chazz Michael Michaels stared at the words for a while, trying to absorb their meanings, all the while becoming conscience of a feeling inside of him getting colder and colder with each time he read the small pink-papered note.

He dropped it and it fluttered to the ground.

"Fuck!" Chazz roared, throwing his head like an anguished wolf, and let out a long mournful howl of loss.

He collapsed on the couch and half slid off, clutching his chest as if his heart would burst forth from it in pain. His thoughts crashed around wildly for several seconds, he tried to make sense of it all.

What had gone wrong? He and Jimmy had been doing fine! After the 2007 Olympics in which they won gold from performing the fabled "Iron Lotus," things had seemed pretty much perfect!

Chazz had convinced Jimmy into moving into his cozy house in Denver with him. They had been skating, having a good time, sharing each other's friendship. Some had accused them of being gay but they had simply laughed that off.

Jimmy broke up with Katie a couple months later because Stranz and Fairchild had forced the relationship to come to a halt when they decided to move their skating to Sweden. Jimmy had been really broken up about it and Chazz thought it was stupid because there was such a thing as long distance relationships.

"What email for Chrissake?" he told Jimmy who just wrung his hands and wept after Katie's tearful phone call.

So after that, they had even become closer. They were like brothers, sure, they still would squabble, but Chazz had really come to depend on Jimmy as one would depend on a spouse. It wasn't gay, he had told himself but he just wanted Jimmy to be around constantly. Jimmy made awesome scrambled eggs and ironed his pleather pants exactly the way he liked them, and he was cheerful and refreshingly naïve.

Chazz was way to macho to say aloud "I love you," or "I need you." However, Jimmy understood Chazz's grateful vibes.

Now, he was gone. Jimmy had packed his bags and left. The smell of peppermint lip balm and Snuggly fabric softener still permeated the house.

Jimmy hadn't even said where he was going. And Chazz was sure that all the times he had been abandoned before, his parents, the women he had loved, that this…this was the worst.

And he laid on the shag carpet and cried like a child does when they find out that dead means that you go to asleep and never wake up.