• CHAPTER 12 •
Monday’s practice slips by in a flash. Hallie, clad in a blinding neon orange leotard sprayed with sparkles, whips through warm-ups and conditioning with alarming grit, charges down the vault runway like a sprinter, attacks her tumbling with gusto, and moves with an impressive sense of focus on beam. Nationals—the annual competition that brings together the country’s top talent—is one of the most important events of the year, and it’s just two months away. The upcoming competition sharpens the pressure. When Hallie’s moving in top form, like she is today, practice never drags. It’s impossible to look away from her.
She and Ryan have spent the final hour of the day together on bars, drilling her new Tkatchev–Pak Salto combo. It’s coming together nicely; right now, she can pull it off just fine, though she has some work to put in before the combination looks effortless. That’s the gold standard in gymnastics: making the impossible look not just possible, but easy. I’ve been sitting and stretching on the sidelines, watching Ryan tracking Hallie’s movements as she arcs through the air. His arms are outstretched; he’s ready to catch her if she falls.
“It’s six,” he says finally, after what must be her thirtieth attempt at the move.
“What?” she says, spinning around to look at the clock. She gapes. “No! I was just getting into it.”
“Time to go,” he says. “You know your parents like you out of the gym in time for homework.”
“One more?” she pleads.
He laughs. “One more. Then you gotta get out of here.”
“Avery, would you film this one?” she asks.
She likes to have video clips to post on Instagram—though, of course, only the most jaw-dropping ones actually get posted.
“Sure,” I say, digging my phone out of the pocket of my fleece zip-up and getting ready to record. “Ready when you are.”
She takes her position under the high bar. Ryan grabs her by her waist, and she jumps; he helps her reach the bar. She does a move called a kip to swing up so the wooden equipment is flush against her hips, then screws up her face in a look of pure concentration before launching into a handstand, giant, and finally, a Tkatchev followed swiftly by a Pak Salto. Her compact body flings over one bar, then between the two, and it’s magnificent. Once the final move is complete, her knees bend, and her shoulders sag into a relaxed swing. She knows she’s nailed it. She drops down and jogs over to my spot on the mat to watch the playback.
“I look pretty good, right?” she muses.
“You do,” I admit. “I’ll text this to you.”
“Thanks!” she says. “Okay, now I can head out. I just wanted to nail it once.”
She strips off her grips and heads across the gym to pack up for the night. Ryan jumps up to the high bar himself, swings back and forth, and drops back down to the mat.
“You leaving, too?” he asks.
I shrug. “I mean, I guess? My new roommate, Sara, invited me to another yoga class tonight, but I told her practice might run late.”
“We never run late,” he points out.
“Yoga seems boring. But I can’t tell her that,” I say.
He laughs. “Gotcha.”
Ryan meanders around the bars and leans against one of the silver poles holding up the apparatus.
“So, if you’re not doing anything, then, would you want to get dinner?” he asks. He clears his throat and hastily adds, “As friends.”
If only he knew how I regret saying that I only wanted friendship.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I say. “It’ll be cool to catch up outside the gym again.”
“Yeah? Awesome. Maybe a bite at Stonehearth Pizza?”
I know the place. Wood-fired pizza with surprisingly healthy toppings, which is a plus, but brightly lit and full of kids—less than ideal.
“I was actually planning to cook tonight. I could make us dinner?”
Too late, I realize that inviting Ryan over might feel too intimate.
“You love to cook, I love to eat,” he says, like the decision has been made.
Maybe I’m overthinking it.
“Perfect.”
“Cool, I’m just gonna go grab my coat from the office, then,” he says.
As we walk together from the bars to the door, I try to pretend that everything is fine and normal, and that I haven’t spent the past two weeks wishing for another opportunity to spend time alone with him. When I duck into the changing room to pick up my parka and purse, I spend an extra thirty seconds fixing my ponytail and putting on a coat of mascara from the tube I find in the bottom of my bag. This is not a date, I remind myself as I lacquer up my eyelashes.
I find Ryan in the lobby, leaning against the wall and looking at his phone. There’s something casually intimate about the way he waits for me; it’s something Tyler did when I met him after football practice. But I can’t let myself think that way.
“Hey,” he says, straightening up when he sees me. “I was thinking I can follow you in my car?”
“Sure thing. Let’s go.”
He tails me across town, and I try not to look back at his reflection in my rearview mirror too often. I also refrain from turning on the radio, in case he gets an embarrassing glimpse of me bopping my head along to the music. I try to remember exactly how messy the apartment was when I left this morning. I don’t think there are any random bras tossed over the arm of the couch, but I could be wrong.
I meet him in my driveway, and we climb the stairs to my apartment together. This is not a date, I remind myself, as I unlock my front door and usher a handsome, funny gentleman inside. This is my first time inviting a guest over to my new apartment, and it’s a little nerve-wracking. I distract myself by babbling to Ryan about the tortellini soup recipe I was planning to try out tonight.
“So, it’s actually a good thing you’re here, because it was so much soup to make for just one person,” I explain.
“Glad to hear I’m good for something,” he says.
I sift through my fridge and cabinets, picking out the right ingredients to make the dinner. Cooking will keep me busy in front of Ryan, which is a relief because it’s jarring to see him sit on one of the yellow bar stools in my kitchen, watching me work.
“Hey, do you want some wine?” I ask.
I hope he’ll say yes, so I can have some, too. It’ll take the edge off.
“Yeah, I could do a glass,” he says.
I find a bottle of red wine in the cabinet and give us each a generous pour. The first sip is so flavorful, that alone calms me down a notch.
There’s a lull in the conversation as I start to peel and chop an onion. The apartment feels quiet without Sara here.
“Can I help?” he asks. “I’m no chef, but I can follow instructions if you tell me what to do.”
I consider the recipe. “Do you think you’re up for the challenge of chopping celery?”
He nods. I hand one to him along with a knife and a cutting board, and we get to work side by side at the kitchen table. Our knives thwack rhythmically into our respective vegetables, and I realize again that I don’t know what to say that will strike the right balance between friendly and polite.
Ryan clears his throat. “Hallie was great today,” he says. “Clean, on point.”
I’m both relieved and disappointed that he brought up work. It’s easy, safe territory—I don’t have to worry about accidentally saying anything unprofessional or inappropriately personal. But on the other hand, well, it’s work. I don’t want to be just his coworker.
“Cheers to that,” I say, raising my wineglass.
He clinks his to mine. “Cheers. Seriously. Let’s just hope she keeps up the good work,” he says, sighing.
“I’m sure she will,” I say. “You’re a great coach.”
“I do all right,” he says, shrugging. “But you had Dimitri. The best. I’m jealous.”
“You’re jealous I had him?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice full of awe. “He’s a legend. I tried for years to get him to take me on, but he only coaches women’s gymnastics. What was he like?”
“Tough,” I say honestly, moving on to mince a clove of garlic. “Really brutally tough. I like your style better.”
“Really?” He looks skeptical.
“Oh, one hundred percent. Hallie loves you. Dimitri was… intense.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eh, I don’t want to get into it. Let’s just put it this way: he had insanely high expectations, and it was impossible to meet them all.”
“Huh. I’m sorry to hear you had a hard time with him.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” he says.
“It’s fine,” I say again, using a tone that I hope will shut down the subject. I stand up to start cooking the veggies in a pot on the stove. “I’m fine.”
Luckily, Ryan doesn’t keep digging.
“Coaching’s really the only thing I’m qualified for at this point, so I better make the most of it.”
“You went to college, though—what did you study?” I ask.
“I majored in business so I could always have the option of starting my own gym, if I wanted to,” he explains. “But I don’t think I was the most dedicated student. I went to school on a gymnastics scholarship, and that was mostly what I cared about.”
“Would you really open your own gym?” I ask.
“Maybe far in the future. But for now, I’ve realized I’d be happier coaching than doing anything else, and you don’t need a degree to do that—just experience, and obviously, these incredible muscles.”
“Modest,” I observe dryly.
“It’s one of my best qualities,” he jokes. “How long were you in college for?”
“Only a year and a half.”
He snaps his fingers. “That explains it all, then.”
“What?”
“Why you’re so terrible at beer pong,” he says, eyes sparkling with pure delight at delivering a playful burn. “Most people get a full four years to practice.”
“Oh, very funny,” I say, pursing my lips and pretending to be annoyed. “As I recall, we won that game. Mostly because of you, but still. We won.”
“True, true. So, why’d you leave school?”
My answer tumbles out before I can second-guess myself. “I was completely, totally, and majorly depressed. And also, I partied too much to ever make it to class.”
He lets out a low whistle. “That got dark fast.”
I wince. “Too dark?”
“Nah, it’s good to be honest,” he says. “Sorry you went through that.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say.
I shrug and turn my attention to the pot on the stove so I don’t have to see what I assume is a look of pity. But when I look back at Ryan, he doesn’t look like he pities me at all. He nods in a way that makes me think he understands.
“You spend all this time obsessively focused on this one thing, and it becomes your whole identity, and then it’s gone,” he says quietly. “And then it’s like, well, what now?”
“Exactly,” I say, relishing in the fact that he gets it.
“But you’re doing all right now?” he asks.
“Kind of the best I’ve been in a long time, actually,” I say, suddenly realizing just how true that is. “You?”
“Yeah, it’s all good,” he says.
This time, Ryan raises his glass and clinks it against mine.
“Well, cheers to that,” I say.
I want to say something more, to come up with a clever idea to toast to, but I get tongue-tied when he makes eye contact over our drinks. Instead, I finish making the soup and ladle it into two bowls. I’m pleased with how it turned out—savory, hearty, bursting with flavor. It’s a simple meal, but Ryan seems impressed.
“This beats Stonehearth, hands down,” he says appreciatively, scooping up a tortellini with his spoon.
Over dinner, Ryan regales me with stories from his travels. Years of competing across states and countries sparked his love of seeing new places, and now he saves up for as many trips as he can.
“Next up, obviously, I’m saving to do a trip around Asia after Tokyo—if Hallie makes it to Tokyo, of course,” he explains. “You ever been?”
“No, I haven’t,” I admit. “What’s been your favorite trip so far?”
He thinks for a moment. “Traveling for gymnastics is always cool, but you don’t get tons of time to actually explore or indulge in great food, so… hmm. I guess my favorite would be the summer that Goose and I backpacked across Europe together.”
I wish I had done something like that.
“And obviously, we saw some of the best beaches in the world,” he says.
“Why obviously?” I ask. “I’d think that would be, like, the Caribbean.”
He leans in closer and stage-whispers, “Nude beaches.”
“You perv!” I squeal. The wine has definitely started to go to my head.
He holds up his hands in protest. “Hey, I’m just a man.”
“I don’t know if I could ever do that,” I muse.
“What, go to a nude beach?” he asks.
“Yeah. I mean, maybe years ago, when I was in shape, but certainly not now.”
He raises an eyebrow, then looks down in intense concentration at his bowl.
“What?” I ask.
He sips his soup. “You could go,” he says, coyly glancing up at me.
“Did you strip down?” I ask.
“When in Rome…” he replies.
I feel precariously close to the edge of saying something stupidly flirty, so I shove a tortellini into my mouth to keep myself from speaking. Discussing nude beaches makes me wonder what Ryan looks like naked, which is absolutely the very last thing I should be doing.
We linger after we finish eating. He tells stories about what Hallie was like when he first met her (apparently, “tiny, furiously hardworking, adorably wholesome, and too energetic”—or in other words, exactly like she is today). We go off on tangents about gymnasts we competed alongside a decade ago, musing about the few in the public eye today and the majority who faded into quiet lives. We try to gauge where we fall on the spectrum, and jokingly agree to not let the fame go to our heads.
Ryan runs a finger around the rim of his empty wineglass, and his mouth screws up to the side.
“What?” I ask.
“I was going to suggest another glass, but that’s probably not the wisest idea if I have to drive out of here,” he says.
“True,” I say.
“But this was fun,” he says, suddenly serious. “I mean it. I’m glad we did this.”
“Me, too,” I say.
“Let me pay you for half the groceries and wine,” he says, reaching for his wallet.
“Oh, no, no,” I protest. “I was going to make all this, anyway.”
“Avery, it’s fine, I don’t mind,” he says.
“No, really, I can’t let you pay for this,” I insist.
“Fine,” he says heavily. “But next time, I’ll win.”
“Oh, next time?” I retort. “We’ll see about that.”
I like that we can match each other in competitive spirit.
“And in the meantime, let me help you clean this up,” he offers.
“Now, that, I can accept.”
We spend a few minutes clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. He takes the most annoying task, hand-washing the pots, of his own volition. For a split second, the rhythm of cooking and cleaning together reminds me of living with Tyler, and I forget that Ryan isn’t my boyfriend. I feel a dull sense of loneliness, thinking ahead to the rest of the night, once he’s gone. It only gets worse once the kitchen is clean and he grabs his coat from the hook by the door.
“I’ll walk you to your car?” I offer, lingering by the couch, suddenly feeling shy.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he says. “It’s cold.”
“I don’t mind,” I insist.
It’s January in New England, which means that getting ready to head out the door requires serious effort: jackets zipped, scarves wound, gloves tugged on. Outside, it’s pitch-black. The driveway is only partly lit by the golden glow of a street lamp. By the time we reach Ryan’s car, parked behind mine, I’m not ready for the night to end. There’s an easy comfort between us—a type of intimacy that only grows between two people who have lived the same kind of life. Ryan reaches for his car door. I don’t overthink what comes next; it just happens.
I lean forward and I kiss him. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. He kisses me back, slipping an arm around my waist, and bracing us both with a hand against the car window. His lips are soft, and his embrace is sturdy and strong. There’s a warmth radiating from him, even on this frigid night, and I like the way I fit in his arms. I could stay here happily forever, even if it’s freezing, even if we shouldn’t be doing this.
And then, suddenly, he pulls back. He pushes off the car and shoves his hands into his pockets. Even his eyes flicker away from mine. Without him hovering over me, I feel cold and exposed.
“Avery,” he says softly. “We’ve talked about this. We know it’s not a good idea.”
I’m shocked by how much his rejection hurts. It’s embarrassing to have to be reminded that my past self made a responsible decision that my present self is too emotional or tipsy or lonely to adhere to.
“I… I’m sorry, I just…” I stammer.
The easy banter over dinner, the fuss over paying for groceries, the comfort of cleaning up side by side—maybe this wasn’t technically supposed to be a date, but it sure felt like one. And what happened next was simply a natural extension of the night. Wasn’t it? I sigh, and in the cold, my breath becomes a visible cloud.
“I just thought that maybe you wanted this, too,” I say.
He gives me a sad look that makes my entire body feel weighed down with two-ton anchors.
“So you don’t want this,” I clarify.
It’s mortifying to say that out loud, but he has to understand how he made me feel tonight. I want him to recognize that he made me feel like there was possibility blooming between us again.
“I’ve really thought this through since New Year’s Eve, and as much as I wanted this to work between us, you were right—it’s just not a smart idea for us to jump into anything,” he says.
I hate that he’s using my own words against me. I’m afraid if I protest, my voice will come out thin and whiny, like I’m begging for his affection.
“Oh,” I manage to squeak out, feeling very small.
He sighs. “I don’t want to push you away.”
“Right. I know we talked about being just friends,” I admit. “I’m sorry if I crossed a line, then.”
He looks down at his feet and doesn’t say anything. I can feel whatever sliver of a chance of us being together evaporating, and it makes me feel frantic with desperation.
“Do you feel like there’s something between us?” I blurt out. “Because I do. I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise.”
“I…” He trails off and rubs his jaw. I’m overcome by a desire to kiss that spot, but I refrain. “I do. Of course I do, Avery. Come on. You’re beautiful, and so unbelievably strong, and I feel so at home talking to you. I like that we’re cut from the same cloth: competitive, hardworking, goal-oriented. It’s rare to find someone like that who also has room in their life for someone else.”
Against my better judgment, a thrill runs through my body. My brain feels like a jumble of confetti and trumpets and parades. And then I notice the way his voice lilts downward at the end, like there’s a “but” coming. My heart races and then skids to a stop.
Sure enough, he starts with, “But—”
I have to cut him off. “Here’s the thing, Ryan. Whether or not it’s convenient, or whether or not it’s a good idea, I can’t just walk away from the fact that being around you makes me happier than I’ve felt in a long time.”
I sound ten times braver than I feel. It’s terrifying to be so honest with him, but I’m in too deep now to turn around. I have to keep going—I owe it to myself to at least try to win Ryan over. I take a deep breath and barrel on.
“And this isn’t just about me. You have a great job and a great life, but I know you want more. I bet you’ve been lonely. That’s why you jumped into a relationship right after retiring from gymnastics. That’s why you flirt with me, even when you say you know better. I know what it’s like to want a real connection and not find it, and it’s awful.”
Ryan is still just inches away. I take in the soft, dark depths of his eyes, the faint scar over his eyebrow, the smattering of stubble along his jaw, his tensed, broad shoulders. He swallows.
“You’re right,” he says quietly, not breaking my gaze. “About all of it.”
“Okay…” I say, feeling hopeful, though not secure enough to relax just yet.
“I’m just not sure that’s enough,” he says. “Not when there’s so much at stake. As long as we’re responsible for Hallie, she comes first. There can’t be any distractions.”
Distractions. The word reverberates uncomfortably and settles into the pit of my stomach. That’s what I’d be: a distraction. I can’t look at him. I’m not a monster—I don’t want my love life to stand in the way of Hallie’s shot at Olympic glory. But I don’t think it’s quite that simple. She would never need to know. I fiddle with the zipper of my jacket.
“Look, I’m not saying no to this. To us,” he says, reaching out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I’m just saying we need to think carefully here, because the Olympics are right around the corner. And you, more than anyone, can understand how devastated Hallie would be if she doesn’t make it.”
I’m sure Ryan didn’t mean to do it, but linking my feelings for him now to the depression I felt years ago just crushes me. It’s cruel.
“I have to go,” I mutter, blinking back tears.
Ryan doesn’t protest as I head back inside.
FEBRUARY
2020
• CHAPTER 13 •
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Hallie asks at practice a week later.
I hold her feet as she dangles her upper body off the back of the vault, then muscles her way up into a sitting position. Her abs swell in size by the second.
“What?” I spit out, caught off guard.
I’m very careful to resist the urge to peek across the gym at Ryan. In fact, I’ve spent the majority of the past week avoiding him, because it’s painful enough to replay our awful last conversation in my head every night before I fall asleep. I don’t want to have to relive it in his presence, too.
“I asked if you had a boyfriend,” she repeats, finishing another rep of crunches.
She rarely, if ever, asks about my life outside the gym. I don’t share, either. Did she Google me? If so, there’s a handful of tabloid stories about me and Tyler—I hope she didn’t uncover those.
I laugh nervously. “No. Why?”
Her face turns beet red, and it’s not from the physical exertion. She can do this workout in her sleep.
“I was just wondering because you’ve seemed kind of sad all week, and I wondered if you got into a fight with your boyfriend,” she mumbles, rushing to add, “I just wanted to see if you were okay, butnevermind.”
“Oh my god,” I mutter, more to myself than to her.
The last thing I want to do is to make a scene, because then Ryan will come over and ask what we’re laughing about.
“Hallie, no, that’s very sweet of you,” I say quietly, trying not to attract attention. “I appreciate you checking in on me. I’m fine, just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Got it, got it, got it,” she says. “Uh, sorry for asking.”
She dips backward into another crunch. “So, you’re single, then? I know my aunt is always trying to set up my older cousin,” she says, giggling.
“Hallie, focus!” I say, clamping down harder on her feet. “Ten more reps in this set. Let’s go.”
We make it through conditioning without any more forays into my personal life. When it’s time for her to move on to bars, she skips off to the changing room to grab her grips. I’m relieved she didn’t dig any deeper. I remember what it was like when I was her age. I knew that the girls I had grown up with had boyfriends, or at least dates to the winter semiformal. I opted for homeschooling instead of attending an actual high school, but even I heard rumors about my old classmates having sex, saying I love you, flirting at beer-soaked parties. I wondered if some people were born hardwired for it, the way I was primed for athletic excellence. I couldn’t fathom having the guts to do any of that on my own. (But a death-defying stunt on a sliver of wood? Sure, no problem.) I’m impressed that Hallie was brave enough to ask me about my personal life—and I wonder how much of her curiosity stems from wondering what it’s like to have a personal life at all.
My ponytail has loosened over the course of the morning, and it sags toward the nape of my neck. I take down my hair and am in the process of redoing my ponytail when my hair elastic snaps. I don’t have another one on me, so I head to the supply closet, tucked in an alcove at the back of the gym. The door is slightly ajar. I push it open farther and nearly bump straight into Ryan, who’s running his fingers over the shelves, like he’s in search of something.
“Oh! Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
“No worries,” he says, turning around to glance at me.
He looks worried, though, as if he’s waiting for me to say or do something inappropriate again.
“Uh, hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says, turning back around.
I rack my brain for some witty joke or easy banter to break the tension, but instead, I just freeze up. He tilts his head slightly, like he’s waiting for me to say something, anything.
“I just came back here for another hair elastic,” I explain, pointing to my awkwardly lumpy hair, still half-stuck in the shape of a ponytail. “Mine broke.”
“I see that,” he says, pulling the box of hair supplies off one shelf and offering it to me.
I find a fresh elastic, flip my head over, and smooth my hair back into a high, tight pony. I feel more like myself this way.
“Have you seen the blocks of chalk?” Ryan asks. “I know we’re running low, but I thought there was at least one more case in here.”
I scan the shelves, which are brimming with athletic tape, gauze, Advil, cans of hair spray and butt glue covered in chalky handprints, and water bottles branded with Summit’s logo. A colorful pile of latex resistance bands spools in one corner of the closet.
“Uhhh, yeah, here you go.”
I crouch down to the bottom shelf, where there’s one remaining block of chalk half-hidden in a white plastic bag. Our hands bump when he takes it from me.
“Thanks,” he says, turning to lean against the shelves.
Crammed into this narrow closet with him, it hits me that I miss the easy way our conversations used to flow, before I kissed him and messed everything up. Aside from strictly necessary conversations about Hallie’s training, we’ve barely exchanged a single word since then. We’ve stopped eating lunch together, too.
“How’ve you been?” I ask.
He exhales with the slightest hint of a laugh and looks down at the chalk in his hands.
“We’re really doing this?” he asks, muttering it more to himself than to me.
“Doing what?” I ask, suddenly alarmed that I’ve crossed a line.
He gestures vaguely at the space between us and makes air quotes. “You know… ‘How’ve you been?’ Pretending things are all normal, when, in fact, the first time we’ve spoken about anything but Hallie all week is because we accidentally stumbled into the same closet.”
I bite my lip, feeling the sensation of embarrassment flood my entire body. I always thought I had a decent poker face; it’s something I picked up from years of competing in front of judges, hiding grimaces when I was in pain or pissed about a low score. It’s mortifying that Ryan has seen right through me this whole time.
“Ryan,” I say, sighing, doing my best attempt to sound supremely casual. “I am just asking how you are. This isn’t some covert sneak attack attempt at rekindling anything. Not that things were, uh, kindled in the first place. Trust me, I got the message.”
I cross my arms. I feel like a fool for trying to strike up a conversation with him in the first place.
But instead of looking upset or embarrassed, his expression is apologetic.
“Avery, I’m sorry, no, you’re right. I know things have been kind of weird since that dinner, and I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to be a professional here—keep my distance, not make things awkward. This is new territory for me,” he explains.
“Same.”
He exhales heavily and gives me a hopeful look. “We’re not doing too badly, right?”
“What, at keeping this quiet?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Well… Hallie just asked me if I had a boyfriend,” I say, not daring to mention that she only wondered because I seemed sad about potentially fighting with him. That’s information Ryan simply never needs to know.
He laughs. “And what did you tell her?”
“The truth, obviously!”
He tilts his head, encouraging me to continue.
“I told her no, I wasn’t seeing anybody,” I clarify.
“Got it,” he muses.
He shifts his weight, and my view of the doorway behind him disappears completely. Nobody can see me in here with him, not even if they tried. I’m close enough to take just one step forward and kiss him, but I know I shouldn’t. I inch backward, away from him, but my foot catches on the pile of resistance bands spilling out on the floor and I trip. The shelves are freestanding metal ones; I’m sure everything would topple down onto me if I grabbed them for support. I pitch off-kilter, and Ryan lunges forward to steady me.
I find my balance quickly, but Ryan doesn’t let go. Not at first. His fingers are wrapped around my bicep and my waist, and I’ve braced myself against his chest. He looks down at me. I look up at him. He looks down at his hand wrapped around my torso, like he’s just fully registered that it’s there, and can’t quite believe it. His lips, just inches away from me, curl up in an embarrassed sort of smile. I hate that I like his strong hands holding me up.
Then I hear Hallie’s voice calling my name. The sound jolts me out of Ryan’s arms. I squeeze past him, through the doorway, and into the main part of the gym so I can find Hallie.
“Avery? Avery?” she calls.
I find her near the bars, clutching her phone, frozen in place.
“Did you see the news?” she asks.
Her voice sounds timid.
“No, what news?” I ask.
She glances at Ryan, coming up behind me, then back to me. She holds her phone to her chest and motions for me to come closer. I get a bad feeling.
“Ryan, could you give us a sec?” I ask.
He looks confused, but ducks away.
Hallie flops belly-down on one of the plush crash mats by the bars. I sit cross-legged next to her. She sighs, hands me her phone, and then buries her face in her arms.
“Just read it,” she says, voice muffled and dejected.
My heart sinks when I read the New York Times headline on her screen: “Olympian Delia Cruz Accuses Sports Medicine Dr. Ron Kaminsky of Sexual Assault.” Of course Hallie isn’t the only one he intimidated or abused. I feel so stupid for not realizing she isn’t an isolated case. I know Delia, sort of. She’s halfway between my age and Hallie’s, so we briefly overlapped for a year at competitions, but we were never close. Back when I knew her, she was this bubbly, outgoing kid with a mane of springy, dark curls sprouting from her scrunchie. She used to sneak gummy bears into her gym bag and hand them out covertly in the locker room.
I skim the rest of the story, but after the endless wave of sexual assault allegations against politicians, CEOs, and Hollywood producers over the past few years, the details are sickeningly familiar. Delia says Dr. Kaminsky molested her while allegedly treating her for a hamstring injury. Her mom, like Hallie’s mom, was in the room. The Times reports that a representative for Dr. Kaminsky vehemently denies the claims.
“I had no idea,” Hallie says, voice shaking. “Delia never told me.”
I’m at a loss for what to say. I try to imagine what I would want to hear if I were in her shoes, but I come up frustratingly short. It’s not like I ever had heart-to-hearts with Dimitri.
“Hallie, this is awful. I’m so sorry you had to find out like this,” I manage.
She stares glumly off into space for a long time.
“Maybe if I had said something… spoken up… this wouldn’t have happened to Delia?” she asks.
She looks to me hopefully, as if I have the answers. It’s too horrible to comprehend. But this time, I know what to say.
“No,” I insist. “This isn’t your fault. The only person who could’ve prevented this is him. This is not on you. Please remember that.”
I realize that if Dr. Kaminsky did this to Delia, and nearly did it to Hallie, he must have done it to other girls, too. It’s too awful to imagine how many others there are, how big this is.
Hallie is still flat on the mat, but now her chin digs into her hands and her lower lip curls inward, like she’s trying to prevent it from trembling. I don’t know what to do, but I know I have to try something. I stroke comforting circles on her upper back, and her eyes start to water.
“Hallie?” I ask tentatively.
“It’s just… I don’t…” she begins, hastily rubbing away her tears and sniffling. “This is not supposed to be happening right now.”
“I know.”
“I have to focus right now,” she insists.
“Well—” I start, intending to remind her that taking care of herself is far more important than muscling through practice, but she’s too incensed to let me speak.
“I hate him, I hate him, he makes me so mad, I hate him so much!” she says, voice curdling with anger.
She’s close to shouting now. Other gymnasts and coaches have turned to stare. I want to snap at them. It’s like a spotlight follows Hallie around the gym; she’s the only one here worth gawking at. But right now, she’s not performing. She just needs privacy.
“Why don’t we take a break from this and head outside for a bit?” I ask.
I can practically see the first thought that flashes through her head: No. I need to work. But then she heaves a sigh, wipes under each eye, and nods silently in agreement. She strides across the floor and the vault runway—the other gymnasts defer to her right of way, letting her cross before they resume tumbling and sprinting—and pushes open the gym’s side door. It opens out to the parking lot. There’s a set of metal stairs there that we can sit on. It’s cold outside, but she’s been working hard; I bet the chill feels good on her bare arms and legs.
Hallie perches on the top step, hugging her knees to her chest, and kneads her chin into her kneecaps. She rocks back and forth silently, shaking her head. It looks like there’s too much frantic energy to contain in one tiny body. She leaps to her feet and her arms fly out in rage. She lets out an anguished groan into the frigid air and stomps her bare foot against the pavement.
“It’s just not fair!” she shouts.
And then she shrinks down into herself. She crosses her arms tight across her body and steers herself into me for a hug. I hold her close and stroke her hair. I guide us to sit down on the steps, and do the one thing I wish someone had done for me, back when I was in pain and enraged and swimming in sadness: I give her a plan. I suggest that if she feels comfortable, she should consider telling her parents the truth about her appointments with Dr. Kaminsky. She agrees to do it, and I offer to be there with her for that conversation, if she wants. And then, as a family, they can all figure out how to move forward—whether that means reporting what happened to her to the police, or simply letting it go. I remind Hallie that there’s no pressure to come back to practice today, or tomorrow, or any day.
“The most important thing right now is to take care of yourself,” I tell her. “Trust me, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, that matters even more than your training does.”
She nods. I hope she believes me.
The next week is awful. Delia Cruz goes on Good Morning America, looking steely and powerful in a sleek white suit, and gives a searing retelling of the most horrific moments of her life. On Twitter, she releases a statement encouraging other survivors of sexual assault to get help. The replies to her tweet are mostly full of love and support, but there’s a mountain of replies from hateful trolls, too. I can’t even begin to fathom the mental gymnastics they have to employ to convince themselves that she’s the one ruining Dr. Kaminsky’s life, not the other way around.
Maggie Farber comes forward. So does her teammate Kiki McCloud. And then there’s a wave of others who speak up, both household names who competed in the Olympics and athletes who never quite made it into the spotlight: Emily Jenkins, Bridget Sweeney, Liora Cohen. By the end of the week, there are six names splashed across most of the major TV shows and publications, and a sickening sense that more will come. I feel both shocked and relieved, like I dodged a bullet. It was only by sheer luck that I visited other doctors instead of him.
Tara Michaels, the prominent conservative pundit and self-professed lover of “family values” who wears enough pearly pink lip gloss to single-handedly keep Sephora in business, unleashes a tirade that goes viral. She says it’s “disturbing” that America swallows up the stories of these six “unreliable” teenagers without giving a “respected” doctor a chance to tell his side of the story. “Facts are important,” she urges, disregarding that most of her own facts happen to be wrong. Half the gymnasts who have come forward are in their twenties by now. Dr. Kaminsky’s lawyer already issued a blanket statement denying any wrongdoing. Tara’s speech is peppered with racist jabs toward Delia, Kiki, and Emily, whose photos flash on-screen. The producers could have chosen photos of the athletes with medals around their neck; instead, they picked crotch shots—straddle jumps and leaps, taken from below. By the third time I see the video clip circulating online, it has more than ten million views.
The internet churns with impassioned headlines about how America has failed its girls; how gymnastics is just a beauty pageant masquerading as a sport; how this is what happens when parents don’t pay enough attention to their own kids. There’s a lot of outrage directed at the sport, the parents, the gymnasts themselves—but I don’t see enough of it aimed at Dr. Kaminsky. You’d think, given how many powerful men have fallen into scandal over the past few years, that collectively, we’d know how to do this by now.
The gymternet—the blogs, podcasts, and Twitter accounts run by die-hard gymnastics fans with passionately engaged followers—lights up with commentary and analysis of the situation. I tried listening to one podcast episode, but turned it off halfway through. The hosts sounded defeated. There’s no pleasure in dissecting this tragedy.
Hallie told her parents about how Dr. Kaminsky had made her feel, and they swiftly connected her to the best children’s therapist in the Boston area. She insists on coming to practice each day, though there are dark circles under her eyes and her usual boundless energy sags. She used to keep her phone tucked away in the changing room while she trained, but now she keeps it nearby so she can stay updated in case any more gymnasts come forward. She doesn’t seem to want to speak out publicly, and given what the other six gymnasts have gone through, I don’t blame her.
What haunts me the most, though, is Ryan’s reaction to the situation. Hallie had asked me to tell him the truth about her experience with Dr. Kaminsky.
“I’d feel awkward talking to him about it, you know?” she had explained. “I know he should probably know, but I just can’t.”
The day the Delia story broke, Hallie decided to leave practice early. She called her mom to come pick her up, and I waited with her in the locker room so people didn’t keep staring at her. Once she left, I found Ryan in the gym and told him we needed to talk. We sat in a quiet, empty corner of the gym, and I relayed the entire dismal story. He looked shocked and sad when I summarized what happened to Delia, but downright grief-stricken when I shared how Kaminsky had made Hallie feel. His face crumpled.
“No,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Is she okay? How is she holding up?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “She’s angry. Upset. Sad. Who wouldn’t be?”
He punched a stack of crash mats, and the solid thump of his fist echoed around the gym.
“I told her to go to that scumbag,” he spat out. “This is my fault.”
“It’s not,” I said gently.
And because nothing in the world was right, I stepped forward to give him a hug. I held him for a long time.
“I just had no idea,” he repeated over and over, looking pained. “Everyone trusted him.”
I was at a loss for words again.
“Maybe,” I said finally, “that was the problem.”
• CHAPTER 14 •
It’s been a hell of a week, so on Saturday morning, when Sara invites me to yoga for what must be the fifteenth time, I say yes. Anything is better than sitting around, reading infuriating tweets about the scandal. If yoga can help take my mind off that, I’m willing to try it.
“Yay, this is fab! I’m so excited to have you in class today,” Sara says, giving me a quick squeeze of a hug. “You don’t have a yoga mat, do you?”
“Nope. You know, I’ve never actually done yoga before.”
“Not a problem. There are extra mats at the studio. You should bring a water bottle and wear something comfortable that you can move in—probably not a leotard, though, just FYI. Like, leggings, tank tops, that kind of thing.”
“Trust me, it’s not like any of my old leotards even fit anymore,” I joke. “I wish.”
“Don’t do that,” Sara says gently.
“What?”
“Make comments like that about your body,” she explains. “There’s no need to beat yourself up.”
“I don’t—” I start to protest.
But I do. Constantly. I can’t remember a time before I was acutely aware of every inch of my body: every muscle, curve, and soft spot. Dimitri taught us that our bodies were our tools, the same way an artist would use a paintbrush. That’s why we had to be so strict and disciplined with the way we ate and worked out, he explained. And at the time, it all made sense: the intense diets, the weekly weigh-ins, the way he punished us with hours of conditioning if we overate or gained weight. Every week, he’d jot down our height, weight, and measurements in a little blue notebook. He wore a withering expression when we failed him, whether we gained a pound or confessed to eating a slice of pizza. That expression still flashes across my mind every time the waistband of my jeans digs into my stomach or I consider indulging in a dessert.
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” I say. It’s awkward to realize that Sara can tell exactly how I feel about my body. “Old habits die hard, you know?”
Sara gives me a kind smile. “Yoga totally transforms the way your mind relates to your physical self. You’ll see. I bet you’ll like it.”
An hour later, she leads me into Mind & Body Yoga. The studio has shiny wooden floors, a row of leafy green plants at the front of the room, and soothing music wafting from the speakers. The other participants in the class—mostly twenty- and thirty-something women, but a few teenagers and a handful of men, too—unroll colorful yoga mats facing the front of the room and begin to stretch. Sara hands me an extra mat, along with two foam blocks.
“In case you need to prop yourself up to get through some of the more challenging poses,” she explains quietly.
I try not to scoff, but come on. I’m a former elite gymnast. I think I can survive an hour of yoga.
Sara sets up her own mat horizontally at the front of the room. When the studio is mostly full, she kicks off class by encouraging us to lie down in a comfortable position. I expected everyone to lie flat on their backs, but I’m surprised by the variations: legs splayed out, knees butterflied out to the sides, heads propped up by foam blocks. Sara leads the class through a breathing exercise in a melodic, trance-like voice.
“In through your nose,” she intones with a kind but serious expression. “Out through your mouth. And then, when you’re ready, another inhale.”
After what feels like eons of breathing, Sara slowly leads the class into a sitting position, and encourages us to emit an om on the count of three.
“One, two, three, all together, now, om…” she says.
The class erupts into noise that stretches on for longer than I expected, and I run out of breath before the rest of the class. The second time we try it, I attempt to sustain the sound longer than anyone else—well, second longest, since being the very last person to keep it up would draw more attention than I really want. I’m surprised at the effort it takes.
By the time Sara leads us from a sitting position to a standing one, I’m antsy for the real work to begin. I know that yoga is about relaxation and meditation, but it’s exercise, too, isn’t it? Eventually, we settle into downward dog. People around me emit little sighs and groans as they sink into the position.
“Beautiful breath sounds,” Sara compliments. “It’s okay to let go and vocalize your efforts.”
From downward dog, we move through a series of poses with names like warrior one, warrior two, half moon, and crescent moon. Sara encourages us to “flow” from one to the next and be “intentional” about our breath, whatever that means. The language of yoga feels funny to me, but I suppose gymnastics has its own language, too. The class moves slowly at first, but soon, we’re breezing from one pose to the next in a way that makes me sweat. Sara winds her way through the maze of mats, correcting postures with a touch of her hand and whispering words of encouragement. I can’t help but feel competitive about it: I want to perform so flawlessly that she won’t have to correct me at all. It would be one thing if I were a couch potato who struggled to get the poses right—but I’m not. I’m a world-class athlete, or at least, was one. This should be a piece of cake. I crane my neck to glimpse the way my neighbor, a curvy woman in a pink workout tank that reads HUSTLE FOR THAT MUSCLE, sinks into warrior two, and try to angle my body to match hers.
That’s when I feel Sara’s hands on my hips. “Like this,” she says, tilting my left side forward and my right side back. She trails a finger up the back of my neck, causing me to look ramrod straight ahead instead of at the people around me. And then, as if she’s reading my mind, she whispers, “It’s not a competition. Just listen to your body and do what you need to do.”
“Okay, but is this right?” I whisper back.
She pauses and gives an infuriatingly serene wave of her hand. “There’s no such thing as right or wrong, as long as you’re focused on your breath and your flow.”
“But—” I protest.
It’s too late. Sara has already moved on to another student. This, I think, is why I hate yoga. There’s always a right way to do everything.
Once the class has more or less all caught up to downward dog again, Sara takes her place at the front of the yoga studio and demonstrates another sequence of postures. Between the bent knees, angled hips, and outstretched arms, these are a little more complicated. I have to concentrate to get the series right. As I move from one pose to the next, I feel my muscles stretch and quiver; this class is more taxing than I expected. While my thighs quake through chair pose, Hustle for That Muscle Girl’s quads look rock solid. I stare down at my legs, willing them to stay locked into place, but the only thing that happens is a fat droplet of sweat drips off my nose and splashes onto my kneecap. I inhale deeply, like Sara taught me to, and I’m surprised to find that maybe—just maybe—it actually does help. Thirteen trembling seconds later (but who’s counting?), I breathe a sigh of relief when Sara tells the class to stretch upward into mountain pose, which is just standing up straight.
“You’re stronger and softer than your mind knows. But your body knows,” she says—whatever that means.
We cycle through the sequence again, and when I end up back in chair pose, I grit my teeth. This time around, I know what I’m up against. I’m determined to make it through the full duration without breaking perfect form.
“If at any point, you’re not feeling what the class is doing, take a break,” Sara intones in that oddly soothing yoga voice. “Sit in child’s pose or shavasana. There’s real power in tuning in to your body’s truest needs.”
Real power. Real power. Through the burning sensation in my thighs, I want to scream at Sara: You know what real power looks like? Standing atop an Olympic podium with a gold medal draped around your neck, that’s what. Or training hard for thousands of hours until you know you have ultimate control over your body’s every movement. Not tapping out when it gets a little bit tough.
“Chair pose is challenging for a reason,” she says, voice floating through the room. “The key is to listen to your body and make adjustments that honor your journey through the pose.”
Before I can register what’s happening, I’m dropping to the floor and stretching my torso and arms over my knees into child’s pose. I’m “honoring my journey.” It’s embarrassing, but relief washes over me. My thighs relax, my breathing evens out, and the muscles around my shoulders loosen. I’m frustrated with myself for dropping out of the challenge, but when I roll my head to the side and peek out at my classmates from under my arm, it looks like nobody’s even noticed me. Hustle for That Muscle Girl resolutely blows out a steady stream of air from pursed lips. The pair of teen girls on my other side don’t seem to blink. Sara only comes my way to press her palms into my lower back.
I can’t remember ever dropping out of a workout like this before. When I was Hallie’s age, if Jasmine or I were tired or in pain, we’d wait until Dimitri got wrapped up in a conversation with another coach or went to the bathroom before we dared take a break. A few moments of rest weren’t worth the threat of his backlash. It was impossible to truly relax when you feared he’d deliver a physically taxing punishment or a cruel joke at your expense.
Back then, Dimitri’s pressure-cooker coaching style made sense: winners work hard, and we wanted to win. Even if Sara’s philosophy is a little new age for me, I hear what she’s saying. Listen to your body; connect to your body; honor your body. Push yourself when you can, and rest when you need to. It goes against everything I was raised with, but in hindsight, maybe Dimitri should have been softer with us. More forgiving. Less intense. After all, I worked hard all the time, just like he wanted me to, and I still didn’t win. I don’t regret the way gymnastics shaped my life, but I do wonder if the few fleeting moments in the spotlight were worth the lifetime of pain I know I have ahead of me.
I take a deep breath. Sara’s hands have drifted away from me; she’s moved on to another student. I concentrate on doing a mental scan of my body. I feel the spongy surface of the yoga mat under my fingertips and the center of my forehead, and I can sense the thin sheen of sweat between my breasts. The soft curve of my belly rests against my thighs, and my hips hinge backward in a comfortable stretch. My feet are tucked under my bottom, and when I wriggle my toes against the mat, I feel the sensation flex all the way up my legs. More than anything, I feel present, and that makes a sob escape from my throat. It’s mortifying to cry here, but somehow, I don’t think anyone will mind.
For years, I ignored physical pain and warped my desires into discipline. I controlled my body with the sheer strength of my mind. Maybe now it’s time to turn all that around—to let my mind dictate the way my body moves. On my next exhale, I transition into downward dog—my calves feel warm and loose this time around, even as a tear rolls down my cheek and mixes with my sweat. I kneel for a moment to wipe my tears with the hem of my tank top and drink in the cool water that’s been waiting for me all practice. I do a sun salutation to catch up to the rest of the group. The simple way my breath and my movements sync up makes me feel airy, light, strong, and yes, powerful.
I make it through the next twenty minutes without taking a break, but I wouldn’t mind if I needed to. It’s strange—I didn’t realize I’d come so far. I mimic Sara’s movements as she leads the class from a one-legged balance to core-strengthening exercises to half-pigeon pose, which stretches out your hip flexors like taffy. In the final few minutes of the class, she asks us to lie down on our backs with our eyes closed in shavasana. She walks softly around the room with a bottle of lavender essential oil, dropping a dot of it on each of our shoulders.
“I’m going to close out the class with a few words of wisdom from the poet and activist Audre Lorde, and the song of the Tibetan singing bowl,” Sara says softly. The little noises around the studio—coughs, sighs, slurps from water bottles—grow still in anticipation. “ ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.’ ”
Then the melodic sound of the Tibetan singing bowl resonates and spirals throughout the room, growing and growing until Sara strikes the bowl and it clangs to a stop.
“You can stay in shavasana until you’re ready to rise again,” she says simply.
I let myself sink into the mat. Energy swirls through my body, but my limbs feel heavy with relaxation. I hadn’t wanted to give into Sara’s woo-woo, spiritual sort of stretching, but even I have to admit that it felt kind of, well, nice. The combination of exertion and mindfulness makes me drift off into thoughts about the ways in which gymnastics shaped my relationship to my body: my body image, my insistence of pushing through pain, the distant way I regarded my physical self first and foremost as a tool. Over the years, I’ve tried not to think about it too much. But here, it’s impossible to avoid.
Suddenly, Sara is squatting next to me. “How’d you like the class?” she asks.
I crane my neck to look at the clock at the back of the room. Five minutes have passed, and the rest of the class has already rolled up their yoga mats and filed out of the studio.
“It was… wow.” That’s all I can manage.
“You think you’ll come back again?” she asks.
Sunlight pours into the studio through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I get a startlingly clear vision of myself returning to this spot again and again. I could do this, couldn’t I? I feel peaceful here, similarly to the way I relax when I cook. The steady movement of the class meant my mind never wandered off to Ryan, Hallie, or even the terrible scandal in the news. Instead, I had no choice but to focus on the flow between poses, my breath, and the sound of Sara’s voice. It’s not a stretch to see how I could develop a craving for this, unwinding here at the studio after a long day at Summit. And if just one session already feels transformative for me, I can only imagine how it could help Hallie. Maybe this is exactly what she needs to rein in the anxiety she’s felt lately.
“Yeah, I’ll be back. And next time, there’s someone else I’d like to bring, too.”
• CHAPTER 15 •
Hallie wrinkles her nose when I tell her about my idea at the end of practice on Monday.
“Yoga? I mean, I already do so much,” she says, looking skeptical.
She’s cross-legged on the floor of the changing room, stretching the white thigh-high socks she got at her friend’s Sweet Sixteen, embroidered with the girl’s initials, up her legs. The thick socks strain over her muscular calves, though, and barely graze her knees. She gives a final tug and gives up. I bet the party wasn’t as fun as she expected it to be; she probably had to say no to the cake and head home early to stick to her sleep schedule.
“But what if you could have private yoga lessons here at the gym?” I counter. “Barely any extra work on your part, and I think it’ll help reduce stress over the next few months.”
“I’m not stressed,” she snaps.
She looks wild, with a cloud of frizz escaping her ponytail at the temples. But then her expression softens. She must understand, on some level, how that’s just not true.
“I’ll try it once,” she agrees. “If Ryan thinks it’s a good idea, too.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I promise.
Hallie shoves her feet into sneakers, stands up, and slings her gym bag over her shoulder.
When she turns to walk away, I catch a glimpse of what’s on her screen. I recognize it because I saw it, too, earlier that day—Delia Cruz’s Instagram encouraging her followers to donate to RAINN, a nonprofit that supports sexual assault survivors. Hallie’s broad shoulders look small and slumped as she disappears around the corner and heads outside to her mom’s waiting car.
I know Ryan’s still inside, probably cleaning up alone. All the other classes and team practices have wrapped up for the night, and the rest of the coaches have headed home. The lobby is empty by now, too; the usual rows of Lululemon moms playing games on their phones have cleared out of the plastic folding chairs. I head back into the gym to find Ryan and talk to him about setting Hallie up with yoga lessons.
Sure enough, I find him in the back corner of the main part of the gym, cleaning chalk dust and sweat off crash mats with a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels. He’s changed the music from its usual Top 40 radio station to what must be his own classic rock playlist.
“Hey, what are you doing back here?” he says, spritzing a mat with soapy water.
“I wanted to get your opinion on something, but while I’m here, can I help?” I ask.
He pauses and looks at the waist-high stack of mats he’s yet to clean. They’re each eight or twelve inches thick, but still—that’s a lot of mats.
“If you really don’t mind, sure, take a mat,” he says. “What’s up?”
I drag the next mat off the stack and pull it parallel to the one he’s cleaning. He hands me the spray bottle and I get to work.
“So, I finally went to yoga this weekend, and it was amazing,” I explain. “Not just the workout part—though that actually wasn’t half-bad—but the mental part of it.”
“Nice.”
“And it made me think that Hallie could actually really benefit from adding yoga to her routine, especially now and during the next few months.”
“Yeah? Why?”
I consider how personal and vulnerable I actually want to get here. I want him to understand how yoga could clear Hallie’s head in a way that gymnastics never could. But I don’t know if I’m ready to share the rest of my thoughts with him. I don’t doubt that Ryan had a hell of a time during his competition days, dieting and pushing through punishing workouts. But I also know that, as tough as it could’ve been for him, it wasn’t the same as what I went through. While puberty signals the end of a girl’s gymnastics career, it’s the real beginning of a man’s: gaining weight and developing muscle only makes him better at the sport.
And Ryan never trained under Dimitri. He probably never worked out on an empty stomach, worrying that his vision would go fuzzy and black around the edges as he sprinted down the vault runway. He probably never tried to convince himself the quaking pain in his stomach was from too many crunches instead of skipping a meal. He wouldn’t understand how restorative it was to be in a place in which you simply had to listen and react to your body’s needs.
Gymnastics has changed lightning-fast, even in the decade since I was Hallie’s age. The top athletes in the sport these days aren’t eighty-five-pound waifs like some of the ones I looked up to as a kid—they have real, solid muscle and power, like Hallie does. She’s smarter than I ever was, and she knows she can’t perform her best if she’s starving. But she faces a new set of pressures I never could have imagined: a more difficult scoring system; watching her competitors’ skills ratchet up every day on Instagram, just like their follower counts do; the disturbing sexual abuse scandal and its coverage on every news channel in America right now.
“I’m just saying, I think she’s going through a tough time right now, and what I loved about the yoga class I went to was the emphasis on self-care,” I say.
I cringe at how hokey that sounds, and I try again.
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea for her to have a place to chill and zone out, where she doesn’t have to worry about being the best, or training for some goal,” I explain. “She can just stretch, listen to my roommate’s cheesy but weirdly effective mantras, and have an hour to herself, away from the news.”
“She does seem pretty stressed,” he admits, ripping off another square of paper towel.
“I think yoga would be a great way for her to relax,” I say.
“Then sure, let’s do it,” he says. “You’re thinking of having your roommate work with her?”
“Sara’s awesome, yeah.”
“Maybe an hour or two a week?”
“I’ll set it up!”
I can’t wait to tell Sara.
“Cool, thanks,” he says. “You’re the best.”
He finishes cleaning one mat, drags it back to its regular spot under the bars, and takes off his sweatshirt before starting on another mat. Underneath, he has on a white tank top that reveals the full scope of the Olympic rings tattooed on his bicep. I’ve seen the bottom edges of it peek out from his T-shirts before, but I’ve never seen the whole thing. It’s not quite as bright as I imagined it would be—instead, the colors are ever so slightly faded, as if it were simply a natural part of his skin.
“What?” he asks, a little self-consciously.
He must have caught me staring.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, embarrassed. “I’ve just never seen your tattoo before, that’s all.”
I scrub furiously at the mat beneath me until my paper towel begins to shred.
“Oh! Here, look.”
Ryan comes over to kneel next to me on the mat. I don’t really like most tattoos—you only get one body, and I doubt most things in life are worth permanently etching into your skin. But this one makes my heart beat faster. I know the Olympic Games have their roots in ancient Greece, when men held footraces and threw javelins in a festival to honor the god Zeus. The athletic challenges were revived in Athens in 1896, when the first modern Olympic Games were held. When you remember the history, it’s hard not to see Olympic athletes like modern-day Greek gods.
“Can I touch it?” I ask timidly.
He laughs. “Sure.”
I run my finger over the outline of the rings. He earned this.
“If you wound up going to the Olympics, would you have gotten one?” he asks.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, nodding. “I mean, I’d want a small one, somewhere easy to hide, but yeah.”
“Why hide it?” he asks. He flexes his bicep, and the rings jump. “It’s an honor to join the club.”
“I don’t know, tattoos aren’t really my thing,” I say.
The expression on his face falters just a fraction of an inch.
“But yours, though… I like yours a lot,” I rush to add. “That’s probably the only one I’d ever consider getting for myself.”
“If you were to get one, where would you put it?” he asks.
“I used to think about this all the time, you know?” I tell him. “I thought maybe my ankle.”
“Huh.” He wipes his finger over the bare skin of my ankle, like he’s imagining ink there.
“Or the other place I was considering was the side of my ribs.”
I brush my fingers along the spot over my tank top. Ryan’s gaze follows my hand. He reaches out to gently slide his thumb over the same stretch of my torso. His knuckles accidentally graze the side of my breast, and I pretend like I don’t notice, like my skin doesn’t buzz with anticipation, like I haven’t already imagined what his touch would feel like there.
But then Ryan leans closer, and his hand is on the nape of my neck, and his mouth is on mine. The kiss is slow and sweet, but that’s all it is: one kiss. I savor the softness of his lips and the nuzzle of his stubble against my cheek for a long, lingering moment, and then he pulls away. As soon as I register the distance between us, a dull pang erupts in my chest.
“Why did you do that?” I ask in a hushed voice, even though I know there’s nobody else around.
“I… I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he admits.
“But we said we shouldn’t,” I remind him, hating myself for saying it out loud.
“We said we wouldn’t,” he says. “But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we’re making a mistake.”
I can barely believe what I’m hearing. I go very still, almost too nervous to swallow, as if I could make the wrong move and ruin whatever is about to happen.
“So what are you saying?” I ask.
“I’m saying that I know what’s at stake here. We’re not wrong to be cautious,” he says slowly, as if he’s choosing every word with the utmost care. “But, god, Avery, I can’t ignore how I feel about you anymore. If I don’t tell you this now, I know I’ll regret it for a long time. I need you to know that I like you—really like you.”
There’s more urgency in his voice now, and he shifts on the mat to sit up straighter. He takes my hand in his.
“I’ve had a crush on you from the day we met, you know that?” Ryan says, flushing pink at the memory. “At some competition years and years ago? I recognized you in some arena hallway, and you told me where to find the vending machines.”
“I still can’t believe you remember that,” I say, grinning.
He nods. “Of course. You were hot and insanely talented and so entirely out of my league.”
If this were any other moment, I’d brush off the compliment and make a self-deprecating joke, but I’m frozen in awe.
“Trust me, the crush is still there,” he continues, squeezing my hand. “But it’s more than that now. I want us to give this a shot for real.”
Ryan’s gaze is brimming with exhilaration and hope, and I know I’ll remember the way he looks right now forever. Here’s this Greek god of athletic prowess and ambition, made suddenly and startlingly human—full of emotion and desire. He’s reached the pinnacle of human achievement, won one of the most coveted honors in the world, traveled the globe, and yet he’s here. And he wants me.
“What do you think?” he asks.
There’s a slight tremor in his voice—he’s nervous. I have a million thoughts swimming through my head right now, and it’s surprisingly difficult to pick just one to voice. Finally, I collect myself enough to speak.
“If anything real happens between us, I think we should keep it quiet, just so we don’t distract Hallie,” I say.
“Absolutely,” he says, nodding.
“But if we agree about that, then my answer is yes,” I say, scooting closer to kiss him lightly. “I want you. I want this. I want us. We’d be idiots not to give this a try.”
“Yeah?” he says, like he can’t quite believe I agree.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling so happy my heart could burst.
This time, when he kisses me, I can feel him smiling. He cups my cheek with one tender hand, and I get lost in the hypnotic way his lips move against mine. It’s like our bodies instinctually know that this is—finally—right. The kiss feels like a celebration.
He guides us down so we’re lying on the mat, which is now, thankfully, clean. Somehow, the athletic equipment and fluorescent light overhead fade away, so all that matters is him in front of me. We’re lying side by side, facing each other, with the rest of the world and all its distractions blocked out. As deliciously thrilling and tender as our kiss on New Year’s Eve was, this is even better. His hands roam from my hair to my hips to the spot on my rib cage he grazed before everything changed. His fingers slip across the hem of my tank top, and I press into him, encouraging him to slide his hand underneath the fabric, against my bare skin.
After keeping a polite distance from him for so long, it’s almost unfathomable to me that this is real. I don’t care if this is the right place to do this—I don’t want to think at all. I kiss the sharp edge of his jaw, then the soft curve of his earlobe, and then a trail down his throat. He groans softly and rolls on top of me, propping himself up on his elbows, with his legs intertwined with mine. I like the solid sensation of his weight on top of me. I let my hands wander across the taut, powerful muscles in his shoulders and down his back; they feel even better than I had dared to let myself imagine.
“Take this off,” I say, tugging at his shirt.
Ryan obeys, revealing an exquisite set of abs. I can’t help but reach out and touch them, just to make sure I’m not dreaming. They’re perfectly solid—this is real.
I pull my own top over my head, not bothering to make a disclaimer about my lack of abs. He wouldn’t have said all those things if he didn’t think I was beautiful, if he didn’t want me exactly how I am. And anyway, there’s a glint of desire in his appreciative gaze that makes it clear he likes what he sees. It’s intoxicating.
He lies back and pulls me on top of him so I’m straddling him. Now I can feel that there’s no question of whether he’s attracted to me. I lean forward and kiss him deeply; my hair falls like a curtain around us. He unhooks my bra and tosses it to the side. His touch is electrifying. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this with anyone, but that’s hardly the reason this feels so good. It’s because this is Ryan, and that feels like a victory. I want more of this—I want all of him.
I trail one finger under the waistband of his green track pants, then another. He grinds his hips up into mine, like he wants more, too. I start to tug his pants down, but he stops me.
“Is that too much?” I ask.
He shakes his head and bites his lip. “No, but wait.”
He stands up and extends his hand to me, pulling me up, too. He toys with the waistband of my black yoga pants.
“Can I take these off?” he asks softly.
“Yeah,” I say.
He slides them off my hips and down my legs. I step out of them and kick them to the side. Before I realize what’s happening, he’s lifted me up so my legs wrap around his waist. If Ryan were anyone else in the world, I’d probably be self-conscious about my weight in his arms, but there’s no reason to worry. I know he’s strong enough to handle me. He carries me to a tall block by the metal high bar, usually used for training, though obviously not tonight, and sets me down so I’m sitting at the edge of it. He maneuvers smoothly so my legs are hooked over his shoulders. He looks at me, gauging my reaction, then plants a soft kiss on my inner thigh.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“Mm-hmm.” I nod.
More than okay, I think.
He kisses me again, farther up my thigh, and then again, right at the edge of my underwear. He skims his hands over me, landing with his fingers curled around the lacy fabric at my hips.
“And what about this?” he asks.
I lean back on my elbows and tilt my hips up so he can fully undress me. When his mouth is on me again, I could melt. At first, I want to watch him. But before long, I relax fully, flat on my back on the block. I’m not surprised when, minutes later, Ryan proves that his talents don’t solely extend to athletics.
I slide off the block, not 100 percent sure that my legs won’t turn to jelly when they hit the floor, and steady myself with a hand against his chest.
“You. Wow,” I breathe.
I pull him toward me for a kiss, wrapping my arm around his neck.
“You’re pretty ‘wow’ yourself,” he says.
My instinct is to return the favor, but we wind up back on the mat. His pants and black boxer briefs are off now, and he kisses my hair. I reach for him, but then I realize we have a problem.
“Do you have a condom?” I ask.
His face goes slack. “No, I wasn’t planning for this at all. There… might? be one in my backpack, and I’ll check, but it’s in the office.”
He kisses me and gets up to put his underwear and pants back on. He looks like he’s about to move toward the office, but thinks better of it. He grabs his shirt and tugs it on over his head.
“Just in case anyone’s out there,” he says, winking.
“There better not be!” I yelp.
I pull my knees up to my chest and watch him jog across the gym. He disappears around the corner, and once I hear the door swinging shut behind him, I can’t help but let out a laugh. It’s ridiculous that any of this is happening at all, much less at Summit. But, of course, it would happen here. This is where everything in my life has always taken place.
A minute later, Ryan’s back, with a look of triumph on his face. “I found one,” he says, shaking the foil packet.
Another minute later, and we’re both naked again—sweaty, breathless, and happy. There’s a certain stereotype about sex with gymnasts, and I heard enough jokes about it in my early twenties from gross guys at clubs to last a lifetime. The truth is that, yes, while we may be stronger and more flexible than the average person, we’re still just regular human beings who like regular sex. Putting your feet behind your head isn’t all that exciting when that’s just your typical Tuesday morning. That said, there’s nothing regular about sex with Ryan. He looks at me with awe, like he wants to memorize this moment. His fingers linger over the tender spots by my waist, the edge of my hip, the nape of my neck.
Later, once we’re exhausted, he puts his arm around me and I lay my head on his chest. It’s quiet, except for the low hum of the radio and us catching our breath. He kisses my temple and pulls me closer to him, so my thigh rolls over his legs. I kiss his collarbone and drift my fingers over the outline of his tattoo.
“Just in case I didn’t make this clear earlier, I, um, like you,” I say into his chest.
“I got that, yeah,” he says. “I’m really glad this happened.”
I grin. An easy silence passes between us. He strokes my hair absentmindedly.
“Sorry to derail cleaning the mats,” I say.
He laughs and looks around. “Now we have a lot more cleaning to do.”
“But we can do it together.”
• CHAPTER 16 •
I used to count time in days: thirty days till the start of football season; fourteen days till the rent is due; three days till I run out of clean underwear and have to do laundry. But now it drags out in minutes, ticking by slowly in my head: I know how many minutes it’s been since Ryan’s last sweet good morning text, or the last kiss we stole in the supply closet, or the last time he came home with me after practice and we stayed up until 2 a.m., trading stories over a bottle of red wine. I had forgotten how sweet it is to let yourself fall for someone. I can’t help but replay our hookup when I’m washing my hair in the shower, and I snap to attention when I hear his name in the gym. I feel giddy whenever his texts pop up on my phone. On Tuesday night, I was so distracted that I forgot I had brussels sprouts in the oven until the smoke detector jarred me out of my daydreams.
It’s nearly six thousand minutes later—four days—when Sara comes to Summit to give Hallie a private yoga lesson. Between Sara’s work schedule and Hallie’s training plans, Friday is the best day; it also happens to be Valentine’s Day, although I don’t dare fixate on that. It’s too soon into whatever this thing with Ryan is to celebrate the holiday in any real way.
Sara was thrilled when I asked if she would work with Hallie. Without breaking Hallie’s trust in me, I told Sara as much as I could—that Hallie is having a tough time in the months leading up to the Olympic Trials, and now more than ever, she needs to reduce her stress and build her confidence. Sara said it would be an honor to help her. And once I told her about what happened with me and Ryan on Monday night, she was doubly excited to come to the gym. I made her promise to play it cool in front of him, especially when Hallie is around.
“Since we’re not telling her about us,” I explained to Sara. “Because, you know, the whole point is to reduce stress, not add to it.”
“Got it,” Sara said. “I promise not to gawk.”
Of course, the moment she saw Ryan at Summit on Friday afternoon, she gawked.
“He’s so cute,” she mouthed dramatically the first moment his back was turned.
I take Sara, Hallie, and Ryan upstairs, where there’s a dance studio and a party room for children’s birthdays. I flick on the lights, illuminating the wooden floors and ballet barres installed against a mirrored wall. Sara sets out the two yoga mats and a pile of foam blocks. Hallie stands with her back to the mirror and one hip jutting out, her arms crossed skeptically over her chest.
“Sara and I are roommates, and she’s a great teacher,” I tell Hallie, trying to warm her up to the idea.
When I suggested yoga to Hallie, she had balked at the idea. Even after relenting to one private lesson, she still wasn’t thrilled to try it.
“Have you ever done yoga before?” Sara asks Hallie.
Her voice has an extra drop of honey in it. It’s clear that Sara recognizes this is not exactly Hallie’s idea.
“Yeah, once, back in middle school gym class, before I got a tutor,” Hallie says flatly.
I can practically read her mind: This is exercise?
“I didn’t really like it,” Hallie adds, as if she can make this lesson disappear just with the sheer force of her surliest teenage attitude.
“Well, this will be totally different,” Sara says cheerfully. “Look, I’m not some weirdo old gym teacher who wears basketball shorts with tube socks.”
It’s a good point: Sara’s wearing matching leggings and a cropped tank top in a pink, orange, and purple ombré that reminds me of the sunset. She looks visibly, recognizably strong, and this seems to soften Hallie to her slightly.
“I guess,” Hallie says, tilting her head.
“Here, why don’t you do the honors of picking today’s playlist?” Sara offers, handing Hallie her phone.
“Cool,” Hallie says swiftly, nodding.
She starts to scroll through Sara’s Spotify.
Sara gives me a bemused glance, as if to say, Look. We’ll be fine.
“Um, guys? This is a private lesson,” Sara says to me and Ryan, pointing to the two mats on the floor. “I promise I’ll return her in one piece once the hour’s up.”
“Right, right, we’ll be going,” Ryan says.
“Yeah, we’ll go… somewhere,” I say, scrambling to temper my voice so I don’t sound too thrilled by the prospect of a free hour with Ryan in front of Hallie.
“See you soon… and have fun,” Sara says.
I follow Ryan down the stairs to the first floor, but when we reach the lobby, neither of us has anywhere to be. He looks blankly toward the gym, then the office.
He steals a glance toward the parking lot. “We could get out of here.”
“We can’t!”
He shoves his hands into his pockets and gives me an irresistibly flirty grin. “Who’d notice?”
“What if Hallie needs us?” I point out.
The dimple in his cheek winks at me, which I find makes it somehow harder to focus on making good decisions. “I bet you’ve never broken the rules here in your life,” he says.
He’s right. The pressure of these four walls somehow makes me feel like a hardworking kid again, terrified to break a rule, lest Dimitri see me.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I agree, pushing open the building’s front door, not bothering to even grab my coat.
I bounce down the steps to the parking lot. The gym is on a mostly isolated stretch of road, neighbored by a nondescript office building on one side and thickets of pine trees on all others. Even if we wanted to walk into the town center, it would take longer than the journey would be worth. Ryan catches up to me, jangling his car keys.
“I didn’t think you’d actually say yes,” he says.
“I can break a rule or two,” I insist.
“Reliving your LA wild-child days?” he teases.
Ryan unlocks his car, and I get inside.
“Where to?” he asks, flipping on my seat heater, then turning the radio to his favorite classic rock station.
“Um…”
Greenwood is small and boring. Growing up here, if I wasn’t at school or in the gym, my only real hobby was trawling CVS for Bonne Bell Lip Smackers and issues of Seventeen.
“Come on, you grew up here, you must know somewhere,” he prods.
“Let’s go to Lolly’s,” I decide.
“I don’t know it,” he says.
“You don’t know Lolly’s? Best chai latte in the world?”
He shakes his head. “In the world? I mean, that’s a pretty high bar. I don’t know if you want to set my expectations there—”
“Oh, shut up.”
I give him directions, and ten minutes later, we’re inside the tiny café. I haven’t been here in a decade, but the peeling floral wallpaper, chintzy armchairs by the brick fireplace, chalkboard menu, and gently piped-in soft rock songs from the easy-listening station are exactly how I remember them. Lolly herself is still behind the counter, though her once-dark hair is now mostly streaked with gray. She’s wearing a floral apron and does a double take when she sees me.
“Avery, is that you?” she yelps, coming around the counter to give me a hug.
“Hi!” I greet her, suddenly feeling squeezed by the surprising strength of her embrace.
“I haven’t seen you in, gosh, what, a million years? Where’s Jasmine?” she asks.
Ryan cocks his head.
“This used to be my spot with Jasmine on cheat days,” I explain. “We’d ask for extra whipped cream on the chai lattes and sit here for hours in front of the fireplace.”
“The best kids hogged the best seats in the house,” Lolly tells Ryan. “Not that I minded, of course.”
“I didn’t know you were that close with Jasmine,” he says to me.
“Those two? My god. Matching orders, matching outfits, all the way down to the matching scrunchies.” She turns to me. “How is she these days? I don’t see much of her, either.”
“Oh, Jasmine?” I ask, stalling for time. Somehow, telling Lolly that I don’t see much of her either feels like I’d be letting her down. I give her a big, plastered-on smile. “She’s great. Has a big job. Married. The whole nine yards, all great.”
“And you two?” Lolly says, gesturing between me and Ryan.
I try not to look too alarmed. “Oh, no, we’re not married!” I say, maybe a hair too loudly. “We, uh, work together.”
“I see,” Lolly says coyly. “Well, you two look very nice together. What can I get you?”
Ryan follows my lead and orders a chai latte with extra whipped cream. While he pays Lolly for the drinks, I examine the framed newspaper clippings hung by the door. They’re slightly yellowed with age, but I remember the thrill I got the day the first one was hung. Lolly saved the Boston Globe clippings announcing that two local girls were on their way to the Olympic Trials. Jasmine and I skipped the sugary drinks that day and asked for plain tea; Lolly, who had the round, soft body you’d expect from a woman who made baked goods for a living, had rolled her eyes and told us to live a little. “This is us living,” I remember telling her, pointing to the newspaper clipping.
The story isn’t long, but it features a black-and-white photo of me and Jasmine, frozen at nineteen years old, with our arms slung around each other’s shoulders. The date on the framed article feels so far away—a lifetime ago. Next to it, there’s a bigger framed article, the paper’s front-page story from the day Jasmine returned home from London. There’s a larger, color photo of her by herself with a pile of Olympic medals splayed out across her chest. I wonder what the younger version of myself would say if she saw me here now, lying to Lolly about Jasmine, Ryan trailing behind me, out on a furtive break from Summit. I don’t think she’d understand how I got into this situation at all.
Ryan sets down the chai lattes on the table between the armchairs, then comes up behind me. He’s quiet for a moment, reading the two framed clippings.
“Ah, I see,” he says. “You took me here just so I don’t forget you’re a hometown hero.”
“I brought you to a place I loved,” I correct him. Sass floods my voice. “And, uh, was a hometown hero. Once upon a time. Not so much anymore.”
Jasmine’s photo floats in my peripheral vision, and I try to block it out.
“Your hometown must be the same way, no?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Men’s gymnastics isn’t so much of a big thing. People at home thought it was cool I made the Olympics, but they didn’t… I don’t know, ‘crown’ me, the way they crowned the women’s gymnastics team.”
He makes air quotes around the word, and I understand exactly what he means. I wonder if he felt bitter about it, too.
“So it’s not just me?” I say, almost embarrassed that I want him to agree and confirm how I feel.
There are times I’ve wondered if Jasmine’s success only looms so large for me because of how tight we were and how close I came to having it, too. I can’t see her clearly because of who she is, who we were together. I’m fairly sure she’s still a household name. But time makes fame evaporate; maybe her star has cooled long enough that now she’s just a regular person again, the kind of former athlete who can make it through her hometown’s grocery store without being stopped in aisles four and seven for autographs. But somehow I doubt that.
“Look,” Ryan sighs, kissing my forehead. “Forget about Jasmine for now. Let’s drink these lattes you love so much.”
We sink into the armchairs by the fireplace. There’s something different about the steaming beverages in the ceramic mugs, but it takes me a moment to figure it out. A heavy sprinkle of cinnamon forms a pristine heart on top of the whipped cream, and there’s a heart-shaped chocolate bonbon on the side of my saucer. I spin around; Lolly is watching us.
“I may have whipped up a little something,” she says.
“Happy Valentine’s Day?” he says hopefully, like he’s waiting for my approval.
I’ve felt like the most gooey, starry-eyed version of myself all week, but this pushes me even further over the edge. The gesture is just sweet enough without feeling too serious.
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” I say, beaming.
He exhales, relieved, and leans across the table to give me a kiss. I feel warm and golden, and I know that has nothing to do with the glow of the fireplace.
“I know this is probably the tiniest Valentine’s Day gesture ever, but I didn’t want to go too overboard,” he explains.
“No, no, anything else would’ve been too much,” I agree. “This is perfect.”
“Okay, cool. A lot of the guys I know complain about Valentine’s Day, like it’s such a hassle to do something nice for the person you’re with, or like it’s somehow less special to do flowers or dinner on a holiday. But that seems so backward to me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“If someone makes you happy, why not celebrate that?” he asks, blushing like he’s just realized how vulnerable he sounds. He clears his throat and looks away from me. “Anyway, this is just a tiny way for me to say that this week has been amazing. That’s all.”
I try not to fixate on his words: Happy. Amazing. They make my stomach flutter in the best way.
“Just so you know, I didn’t get you anything,” I say apologetically. “And now I feel bad.”
“Come on, don’t feel bad,” he says, taking my hand in his. “I came up with this on the spot, and it took two seconds. And anyway, your gift to me is introducing me to this place.”
He sips slowly from his latte, considering it. I taste mine carefully, letting the beverage dribble out from under the cloud of whipped cream so as not to disturb the cinnamon heart. It’s fragrant and flavorful.
“Yeah, it’s official,” he says. “You’re right. This is delicious.”
“I told you! I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”
“Now I finally trust you.”
“What, like months of working together didn’t earn that?”
“This sealed the deal.”
Chatting in front of the crackling fireplace, nestled into the coziest spot in town, I feel at home in a way I never did in LA. It’s not hard to imagine endless winter afternoons curled up in these armchairs with Ryan. It would be so easy, so satisfying, so comfortable. I’ve learned my lesson already: I know it’s not smart to get lost in giddy feelings, daydreaming about a future with a man who might someday break my heart. I don’t want to repeat that mistake. But for whatever reason, things with Ryan feel different. I don’t worry about losing my spark around him.
Ryan glances at the clock hanging above the cash register. His face falls.
“We probably have to get going,” he says.
We drain the last of the lattes, and I savor the sweet, spicy dregs at the bottom of the mug. I hug Lolly goodbye, and she makes us promise to come back before another ten years slip by.
“Because let’s face it, honey, I’m not getting any younger,” she says, sighing. “And anyway, I like him. Keep him around.”
Ryan laughs lightly and reassures Lolly he’ll come by for another latte soon.
On the ride back to Summit, I point out landmarks—not Greenwood’s most notable spots, necessarily, but the places that marked my childhood here: my elementary school, the sushi spot my family likes to go for birthdays and anniversaries, the house where I attended my first and last boy-girl party growing up. The town looks extra sleepy in the winter. White and gray Colonial homes match the pale sky and dingy snowbanks; the trees are bare and skeletal. Inside the car, though, it feels like summer. Ryan drives one-handed with his fingers laced through mine in my lap as a Bruce Springsteen song blares from the radio.
We slip into the gym with three minutes to spare. Ryan heads into the office, while I sit at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Sara to finish Hallie’s lesson. I hear the Tibetan singing bowl, then silence, and finally, a few murmured words. I can’t make out what Hallie and Sara are saying, but when they appear in the staircase a minute later, Hallie has a pleasantly dazed look on her face.
“How’d it go?” I ask.
She passes me on the staircase, and I notice that her typically excellent posture has a new ease to it, like she’s gliding.
“That was actually pretty chill,” she says.
“Huh, imagine that,” I say, resisting the urge to gloat further.
“Thanks for having me in,” Sara says, more to me than to Hallie.
“Maybe you’ll come back again next week?” Hallie asks.
Sara and I exchange glances.
“I think that’s a great idea,” I say.
• CHAPTER 17 •
I do dumb things when I’m falling in love. That’s what I think for the entirety of the forty-five minutes I spend in the front seat of Ryan’s car on Saturday night, nearly nauseous with nerves, as he drives us to Dimitri and Jasmine’s house for a cocktail party in honor of my former coach’s fiftieth birthday. When Ryan asked me earlier that week if I’d be his date for the night, he told me that if it was too awkward given my strained relationship with Jasmine, I could skip it. But oh, no. I told him it’d be fine. I think I might have even said it’d be fun. It was like my brain had entirely evacuated my body: I wanted to spend a night out with Ryan, so I said yes. It was that simple. Even though I haven’t seen Jasmine since her twentieth birthday or Dimitri since the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Their house is in a tony suburb, tucked away from the street at the end of a long driveway that winds through looming clusters of pine trees. We park at the end of a row of cars adorned with bumper stickers of gymnasts performing handstands and splits. I smooth down the front of the dress I borrowed from Mom last night when I realized that nothing in my closet could magically make me look three sizes smaller and eight times more confident than I currently am. The dress is rich purple, with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a skirt that skims easily over my hips and thighs. If it were any other night, I’d feel pretty in it.
My heart races as we make our way to the front door. I wonder if Dimitri and Jasmine know that I’m Ryan’s date. I wonder if they think about me at all anymore. I mentally review what I’m going to say to them, which boils down to polite but not overly enthusiastic compliments about their home and a few casual comments about how my life is amazing, my job is fantastic, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, and everything is actually perfect, thank you very much. My palms are slick and clammy. I pull my hand away from Ryan’s to wipe it on my dress.
Ryan heaves the golden knocker—of course it’s gold—against the door. Jasmine opens the door and trills an eager “Hello!” She beams at Ryan first. When she registers who I am, her face freezes. For a terrifying moment, she falls silent. But then, just as she was trained to do, she snaps back into action.
“Avery?!” she squeals. “Come here, oh my god. It’s been, what, how many years?”
She delivers an enthusiastic air-kiss and half a hug while balancing a precariously full cocktail.
“Hi,” I manage. “It’s so good to see you again.”
She steps back, ushering us into her home. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she says, and it sounds like the truth. “This is amazing.”
The house reminds me of my parents’ place. It’s not decorated in the same style—Jasmine and Dimitri’s tastes seem more modern and eclectic—but it’s full of the kinds of odds and ends that older people accumulate over a lifetime. There’s an expensive-looking credenza in the foyer that holds a single orchid in a hand-thrown pot and an unusual, abstract painting illuminated by a pair of matching silver sconces.
Jasmine shuts the door behind her. Clad in a figure-hugging black sheath, snakeskin stilettos, and the perfect hair and makeup she wears on TV, she looks foreign to me, like my old best friend is acting out a role in a play. She takes our coats and leads us into the kitchen, where a cluster of Dimitri’s friends congregate around the marble island set up as a bar. I can hear Jasmine explaining the three custom cocktails they’re serving that night, but I can’t focus on listening to their ingredients at all, because the crowd of guests shifts, and that’s when I see Dimitri.
It’s unnerving to see him dressed up in a charcoal-gray sports jacket and tie. He looks older, too, with more pronounced lines settling into his forehead and a cleanly shaven head. His dark, beady eyes and bristling mustache are exactly the same as I remember. He’s talking and laughing with a man about his own age while measuring a shot of vodka he pours into a shiny silver martini shaker. His voice booms above the chatter of the party, or maybe my ear is still tuned to listen for it, even all these years later.
“Dimitri,” Jasmine calls across the kitchen.
He doesn’t hear her.
She rises ever so slightly on her toes and lifts her chin, as if to repeat herself, but thinks better of it and settles back down. It’s almost as if she’s nervous—like he’s still the coach and we’re his athletes. She winds her way around the kitchen, stilettos clicking against the hardwood floor, and touches him softly on the arm.
“Look who’s here, babe,” she says, gesturing at us.
He looks up, and then I see it: a grimace, a glint of disgust. He presses his lips into a tight line, and that’s almost scarier. I’m a split second away from grabbing Ryan’s hand and whispering that this was all a mistake, that we should just go home, when Ryan waves enthusiastically.
“Hey, happy birthday!” he says, leaving my side to go shake Dimitri’s hand. “Thanks for having us. I really appreciate the invitation.”
Dimitri sets down the martini shaker, wipes his hands on a dish towel, and smoothly meets Ryan halfway. He shakes his hand slowly.
“This is your date?” he says.
His Russian accent has faded slightly.
Ryan nods and looks pleased, like he’s proud to have brought me. “Yes, sir.”
“I know her well,” Dimitri says. He turns to me and holds out his hand. “Come.”
My body’s first response is to start moving, and I loathe how very deeply his training has been ingrained in me. I do my best to stand tall and not break eye contact. I don’t want to look like a little girl that he can order around anymore. I lift my chin and give Dimitri my firmest handshake.
“Happy birthday. It’s great to see you again,” I say, straining to offer him a polite smile.
He steps back and lifts my hand, as if he expects me to twirl, and looks me up and down.
“Great to see you,” he echoes. “There’s so much more of you to see now.”
He shoots Ryan a mocking wink, as if he expects Ryan to comment on my weight. I drop Dimitri’s hand, but resist the urge to shrink from him. I don’t dare glance back at Ryan for support. I can stand up for myself.
“I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” I say.
I pull myself up to my fullest height. In heeled leather boots, I’m an inch taller than he is, and I want him to remember it.
“And you haven’t lost your sass,” he retorts. He turns to Ryan and adds, “You must have your hands full with her, no?”
“Avery’s an amazing coach,” Ryan says.
“Wait, you work together?” Jasmine interjects, glancing from me to Ryan. “I thought Avery was your date?”
“Uh…” Ryan stalls and turns to me for guidance.
“We, um, yes,” I fumble. “I’m Ryan’s assistant coach at Summit, and I’m also here as his date.”
Jasmine wraps her arm around Dimitri’s midsection and leans her head on his shoulder. “Aw, another gymnastics power couple, just like me and my babe,” she coos.
She looks at him adoringly and presses a kiss to his cheek. I look away; to me, that relationship will always seem wrong.
“Power? How many gold medals between the two of you?” Dimitri asks. He gestures to the living room, and when I turn, I see a wall studded with medals and trophies. “Let’s count them up and compare, and then we can talk.”
He’s not joking. He’s keeping score.
The doorbell rings, cutting through the tension in the room.
“I’ll get it,” Dimitri says quietly. “Jasmine, make sure our guests have drinks.”
As he passes us, he ignores me and gives Ryan a respectful nod.
Jasmine takes a deep breath and puts her hands on her hips. “Drinks?” she asks.
“Please,” I say.
I glance at the cocktail menu she must have printed up. The names could not be more painstakingly chosen: there’s a whiskey-based drink named the Olympia, a wine spritzer garnished with a sprig of jasmine called the Jasmine Fizz, and a twist on the Moscow Mule dubbed the Moscow Man. I choose the Jasmine Fizz by process of elimination—it’s the least humiliating option to order. Ryan opts for the Moscow Man, and I wonder if he chose it out of deference to our host. Jasmine steps back to the kitchen island to mix our drinks, leaving us alone.
“That was intense,” Ryan mutters to me.
“That’s Dimitri for you,” I respond.
He raises his eyebrows and nods heavily. “I can’t believe I’m actually here at his house.”
“Their house,” I correct, glancing at Jasmine.
I’ve known about their relationship for six years now, ever since they started dating, but that hasn’t made seeing them together any less jarring.
“Are things… weird? Between you and Dimitri?” Ryan asks quietly.
I don’t respond right away. I look carefully at Ryan, taking in his hopeful expression, his serious, dark eyes, and the tense way his shoulders are set. Despite Dimitri’s behavior, I know Ryan idolizes him. I could spoil his impression of him in just a few words, but it seems cruel.
“He was disappointed in me,” I say finally. “He wanted me to be an Olympic champion, and when I didn’t make it…”
The memory comes flooding back. I bite the inside of my cheek and shake my head, as if I can dislodge the reminder of that painful summer.
“He was done with me,” I say. “He didn’t check in on me. He took Jasmine to the Olympics and never turned back to see if I was okay.”
I can’t bring myself to tell Ryan about his abusive coaching style, or the way I still hear his taunts about my body every time I look in the mirror, or the fear I felt just now, trying not to flinch in front of this man who used to make me quiver. Not here. Not now.
But Ryan grimaces anyway. The way Dimitri dismissed me is enough to cause him to furrow his brow and sympathetically squeeze my shoulder. He knows how close a gymnast and coach can be; I’m sure he can imagine how awful that rejection felt.
Jasmine sidles up to us with the two drinks.
“Cheers!” she declares, clinking her own Jasmine Fizz to mine.
Ryan joins in the toast, and she peppers him with questions about his work, gushes about how much she misses Summit, and joyfully accepts his invitation to come by sometime. I linger by his side, feeling suddenly like the third wheel. I try to snap out of this tense, dark mood and match her level of enthusiasm, but it seems impossible. Jasmine wears her peppy persona like a second skin. I know she’s not really like this. The megawatt smile, the relentlessly upbeat energy—back when we were close, she turned it on for the judges; now, she does it on TV. I’m curious if she lives fully like this now, hiding her sensitive soul, her nervous side, and her darkly funny jokes from Dimitri, smoothing out her quirks until she’s a flat reflection of whatever he wants her to be. She always did know how to perform.
“I don’t mean to keep you, Ryan,” she says, touching him lightly on the arm. “I know you’re here to socialize with the other coaches. Why don’t you go off and enjoy? Avery and I can catch up.”
My stomach drops. Ryan glances at me inquisitively, and I have no choice but to grin back at him.
“Go,” I say.
He looks uncertain, but leaves my side to join in on a nearby conversation with three stocky men. Jasmine and I each take a long sip of our drinks. I don’t think either one of us knows what to say.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I respond, searching for the right words.
I have seven years of burning questions for Jasmine, and none of them are appropriate cocktail party fodder. Do you realize that you got everything I ever wanted? How did you end up married to that monster? Are you even happy?
“I don’t mean to stare, I’m sorry,” she says, blinking, embarrassed. “It’s just, wow. It’s still so surreal that you’re here.”
“I only moved back a few months ago,” I explain.
“From LA, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, LA,” I confirm. “I came back for this coaching opportunity. It was just too good to pass up.”
She never has to know the truth.
“So, are you two, like, a thing now?” Her eyes dart in his direction.
I wish I had thought to hammer out a joint answer to this question with Ryan before we walked in the door. I don’t want to say yes, only to have him find out and think I’m overestimating his feelings for me. It’s not like we’ve had the What are we? talk yet. But downplaying my situation with Ryan doesn’t feel right, either. I settle for a purposefully coy sip of my drink.
“Oh my god,” she says, dropping her voice down to a whispered squeal and clutching my arm. “This is nuts, isn’t it? After all these years? We always thought he was so cute.”
For a split second, I forget everything, and we’re just teenagers again, best friends, teammates. We were so close, we were each other’s designated Butt Glue Girl—we’d take turns applying the roll-on adhesive just under the edges of our leotards before competitions so we wouldn’t get uncomfortably distracting wedgies in the middle of routines. I’ve never really understood flashbacks before, but this one comes roaring back with full clarity. And then the moment is over, and I get the ice-cold sensation that Dimitri is watching me, and I duck my head down. I remember to speak quietly and control myself.
“It’s very sweet how this has all come full circle,” I manage to say. “And you? You and Dimitri? I still can’t believe it.”
The enthusiasm on her face flickers before she catches herself. “I know. Isn’t it funny how life works out?”
“I had no idea you were even into him back then,” I admit.
I feel bold saying it, daring her to acknowledge how bizarre her relationship appears to be.
“Oh,” she says, blushing. “Well, nothing happened until I was a little bit older, obviously. You had already moved by then. And it just…”
Her gaze drifts over my shoulder toward her husband, and she loses focus.
“Made sense,” she says finally.
There’s another flicker of emotion on her face, but then it disappears without a trace. I think about the way we used to play Fuck, Marry, Kill while stretching at practice, and how Dimitri was too old and weird to be put on the list, even as a joke. We seriously weighed the pros and cons of Kevin Federline, and Tom, the gym’s janitor, and even Alexei, a gymnast with a gross rattail we saw at competitions. But Dimitri? Not even once. I cannot fathom one single thing about Dimitri and Jasmine that makes sense.
She looks at me brightly again. “Do you want a tour of the house?”
As she leads me through the home she shares with a man old enough to register for an AARP card, the man who once—when she was twelve years old—poked the side of her bottom left exposed by her leotard, observed it jiggling, and told her to “watch it with the cookies,” I feel increasingly disturbed. She shows off the new velvet throw pillows meticulously arranged on the white bed in the master bedroom, and the monogrammed towels hanging in the en suite bathroom. She chirps about the gorgeous natural sunlight in the home office, though I realize neither of them works from home, and tosses a wink when we enter the guest room, or as she calls it, “someday, a baby’s room.” She does this all while traipsing three or four steps in front of me, far enough away that we never have to face each other. The tour is so tightly packed with minuscule details about where she purchased this rug, or why she deliberated over that paint color, that there is simply no room for me to interject and ask what the fuck is going on.
When the tour concludes on the first floor, Jasmine offers to refresh my drink, which I accept. The minute the glass is full, I find Ryan on the couch in the living room. He lights up when he sees me, scooting to the left and patting the space next to him so that I’ll take a seat. He drops away from the conversation with the other two men in the living room.
“You’ll never guess what Dimitri said to me while you were with Jasmine,” he says, excitement straining through his hushed tone.
I rack my brain and feel a slow sinking feeling in my gut; nothing good could come of this conversation.
“He offered me a job,” he says, beaming.
“At Powerhouse?” I ask.
“It would start this fall, after the Olympics. I could bring Hallie—she’s young enough that she could train for 2024, and Dimitri and I could train her together,” he explains. “I mean, think about it: more resources, better facilities, working with Dimitri Federov.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” I say.
Ryan’s face falls slightly.
“I mean, wow. That’s a lot,” I continue, rushing to switch to a more congratulatory tone.
“I’m really excited,” he says. “I can’t believe he wants to work with me.”
“What would Hallie’s parents think?” I ask, trying to find a hole to poke in this plan.
“I don’t know exactly, I’d have to talk to them,” he says. The lilt in his voice makes me realize he hasn’t thought through this part yet at all. “I can’t see why they’d turn down Dimitri. True, Powerhouse is slightly more expensive than Summit, but not by much, and it’s literally the best training center in the world. So.”
He smiles as if to say, That’s that.
“If you leave Summit, who else would train her?” I wonder out loud.
He shrugs. “Well, you’d still be at Summit, wouldn’t you?”
Training her on floor is already intense—I’m not sure if I’d be confident enough to tack on beam, bars, and vault, too. And anyway, the Conways probably wouldn’t trust me to pull that off. So if Ryan leaves and Hallie really does want to train for 2024, the Conways would probably follow him. And that means I’d be left behind.
Ryan sips from his drink and stares off into the distance. It’s clear that mentally, he’s no longer here at this party—he’s in Tokyo, watching Hallie climb the podium; he’s at Powerhouse, working as his idol’s right-hand man; he’s fast-forwarding decades ahead to when he’s the most respected coach in the entire sport, just like Dimitri is now.
I have to tell him the truth.
“I just…” I say, lowering my voice to a notch above a whisper. “I think you should really consider this before you say yes. I don’t think working with Dimitri is the right move—not for you, and definitely not for Hallie.”
I wish he would understand without making me say it.
“Let’s head out?” I suggest.
He kisses my temple and rises to stand. “We’ve barely been here an hour. Let’s stay for a little while longer, cool?”
I hesitate. I don’t know what else to say. “Cool.”
We mill around. An older couple asks if I “used to be Dimitri’s girl,” and I have no choice but to nod—Yep, that’s me. Dimitri’s girl. I get a third drink, just to have something to do instead of watch Ryan laugh at Dimitri’s jokes. Finally, he comes to find me in the kitchen.
“You wanna get going?” he asks, touching my arm.
“Yeah,” I say, tamping down the instinct to add, Let’s get out of here.
I rustle up fake warmth to say goodbye to Jasmine and Dimitri. Jasmine insists that we must get together for drinks soon. Dimitri nods silently and stoically at me, then shakes Ryan’s hand.
“We’ll talk,” Dimitri says smoothly.
Ryan looks beatific.
In the car ride back to Greenwood, Ryan invites me to stay over at his place, but I ask him to drop me off at my apartment instead. I turn on the radio, but he turns it off a few seconds later. It’s quiet, with just the hum of the engine to keep us company.
“You don’t seem all that happy about Dimitri’s job offer,” he observes.
“It’s flattering that he asked you,” I say evenly.
“But you don’t think I should take it,” he counters.
“I…” I stare out the window as houses and trees whiz by us in the darkness. “I am incredibly grateful for Dimitri. He changed my life. He could’ve made me an Olympic champion, if things had gone differently. But he’s not a nice person, or a good person, or a person who would treat Hallie fairly.”
“He’s tough and old-school,” Ryan says, shrugging. “That’s what makes him legendary. Coaches aren’t made like that anymore.”
“He’s tough, yeah, but he’s…”
I trail off and bite my lip. I want to say abusive, but that’s not a word you throw around lightly.
“Did you hear what he said about me? Basically calling me fat?” I ask, changing tactics.
“What?” he asks, sounding disgusted. “I didn’t notice.”
“Yeah. ‘There’s so much more of you to see now,’ ” I recite.
Ryan sighs heavily. “That’s not cool.”
“Exactly, it’s not. Imagine hearing that, but worse, all day, every day, when you’re thirteen years old,” I say.
Ryan flicks on his blinker and makes a turn, so it takes a while for him to respond. I get the sense that he’s grateful for the extra time to formulate a response.
“I’m sure he’s not a saint, but this is the opportunity of a lifetime,” he says finally. “I get one shot at a job like this, and there’s no better coach in the entire sport. Every boss has their shortcomings—there’s no ‘perfect’ job.”
I hate that he makes air quotes around the word. It makes me feel as if he thinks I’m overreacting. I study his profile in the moonlight. I wonder what would happen if I described to him in unflinching detail what it was really like to spend the most impressionable years of my childhood with Dimitri. I can’t muster up the energy to explain what he’s really like if Ryan will only defend him.
I sigh and slump back in my seat.
“It’s late,” I say. “We don’t have to talk about this now. If you’re happy, I’m happy for you.”
He reaches across the gearshift to hold my hand. His warm fingers weave through mine and rest in my lap.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” he says, squeezing my hand.
I don’t squeeze his back.
MARCH
2020
• CHAPTER 18 •
Nationals are a week away, and Hallie is still struggling. She can’t control her power on her forward tumbling pass—the front handspring, front full-twisting layout, front double-twisting layout—so I suggested she add a stag jump on the end. That way, any energy that comes bounding off the tumbling goes directly into a real, choreographed move. She’ll get points for a jump, rather than a deduction for not sticking the landing. A stag jump should be pretty: one knee bent at a ninety-degree angle in front of your body, with your other leg trailing out long and straight behind you, and your arms thrown triumphantly in the air. But Hallie’s is tense and tight, and it throws off her timing going into the next segment of her routine. Once she loses her cool, it’s hard to recover. The rest of the routine gets rushed.
“Okay, let’s move to the tramp,” I suggest. “We can work on your form there.”
We’ve been finessing this one second of her routine for fifteen minutes now, and I can tell that Hallie is running low on both energy and patience. It’s true that the trampoline is a less physically taxing place to jump repeatedly than the floor is—the elastic power mesh bounces you right back up, obviously—but also, no matter how old or sophisticated a gymnast gets, there’s still nothing quite as joy-inducing as playing around on a trampoline. And more than perfect form, more than excellent technique, what Hallie really needs right now is to feel good. Going into a competition, an athlete’s mental headspace is just as important as her physical well-being, if not more so.
She trudges over to the trampoline, and after a few lazy bounces, she gets serious.
“Stag jumps?” she asks, confirming her task.
“On every bounce,” I say. “Focus on getting that back leg nice and straight.”
She swings her arms to get some momentum, then bounces into shape. With each jump, she thrusts her right leg a little harder behind her.
“That leg needs to come up faster,” I observe. “That’ll keep the jump short and sweet, which is what we want.”
She nods like a little soldier and jumps again.
“Faster,” I insist. “The leg comes up quick and high, then snaps back.”
“Snaps back,” she repeats, continuing to bounce.
At the height of each jump, her chin tilts up and her fingers flick out with style. She looks like a star up there. It’s gratifying to see her improve after months of working together.
And after seeing Dimitri last week, that’s what I need: I have to know that I’m helping Hallie, not hurting her. If I pass down what he did, I would never forgive myself. Hallie screws up her mouth in concentration as she tracks the distance between her and the trampoline. Her full body weight plunges down on the black mesh and she rebounds brightly into the air once more. Her limbs soar jubilantly into shape; at the peak of her jump, she beams. She knows she nailed it.
I haven’t seen Ryan outside of practice since Dimitri and Jasmine’s cocktail party. I’ve gone to yoga after work twice, and on the nights I’ve been free, he’s had plans with friends. All week, I’ve felt starved for attention; I had forgotten what it’s like to crave somebody like this. I could physically feel the way I yearned for quality time with him—sometimes, low in my gut; other times, like an actual pang in my chest. When he texted me yesterday evening to ask if I’d be free for a date night tonight, I replied yes practically while my phone still buzzed with the incoming message.
He texted confusing instructions: I have a secret plan for us. Wear something warm, and make sure you have socks.
Socks? What’s the plan? I wrote back.
He replied, Like I said—it’s a secret ;)
I knew I wasn’t going to weasel the truth out of him, so instead, I tried to puzzle out what we could possibly be doing—hiking? skiing?—and took great care to find a matching pair of socks without any holes. Tonight, after drilling stag jumps with Hallie on the trampoline, Ryan and I waited until Hallie had left the gym’s premises in her dad’s car before we both climbed into his car. We decided earlier that I’d stay over at his place and he’d drive me back to the gym the next morning. The plan made me feel as if we were serious and committed, or at least on the way toward it.
“So, now you can tell me where we’re going,” I say once he’s pulled out of the parking lot.
“Nope,” he says.
“Not even a hint?” I ask.
He’s resolute. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
He talks about how much fun he had dreaming this up, and how it’ll be the perfect way to chill out in the midst of Nationals prep, but I just can’t focus. My mind ping-pongs from sleuthing out where he’s taking me to our last in-person conversation about Dimitri’s job offer. We haven’t had a chance to discuss it. There’s so much I could say to him—and as much as I want to ask how he’s feeling about what Dimitri said, I don’t want to ruin the romantic mood.
He drives through the town center and pulls into Osaka Sushi. The familiar wooden sign gives me a burst of nostalgia, but it takes me a moment to piece together why he’s so excited.
“I told you about this place, didn’t I?” I say, suddenly recalling. “When we were driving through Greenwood after Lolly’s.”
“Your family likes to come here for special occasions,” he says.
“Ryan! You remembered.” I take off my seat belt so I can properly lean across the car to give him a hug and a kiss. “But wait, the socks? Warm clothes? Was that just to throw me off?”
I’m overheating in a thick turtleneck and knit scarf. There are gloves stashed away in the pockets of my parka.
“That’s for after dinner,” he says, winking as he gets out of the car.
Ninety minutes later, when we’re happily filled up on a sashimi platter and a sake flight, I still don’t know where we’re going next. But Ryan did insist on heading out of the restaurant as soon as the bill was paid, rather than lingering at the table. I get the sense we’re on a deadline. In the car once again, I feel warmed by the sake from the inside out, touched by the romantic gesture of bringing me back to Osaka Sushi, and high on the anticipation of discovering where this adventure all leads. Whatever desire I had earlier tonight to ask Ryan about Dimitri has faded away. It’s not that I don’t care—it’s that moments like this don’t come around often. It’s not every day that a gorgeous man throws together a surprise date packed with personal touches at a series of secret locations. I slide my hand into Ryan’s and squeeze a silent thanks.
Finally, the jig is up: he pulls off a main road down a narrow street that winds into the town forest. He drives slowly through the heavy thicket of pine trees until we reach a clearing. There’s a cul-de-sac full of cars streaked with winter grime parked near an outdoor ice-skating rink. Although it’s a dark night, the rink itself is bright, thanks to white floodlights and golden Christmas lights wrapped around aluminum poles. I’ve been to this rink a few times for my elementary school classmates’ birthday parties, but it’s only now, as an adult, that I see how charming this spot really is.
“This is so sweet!” I exclaim, getting out of the car.
“Do you skate?” he asks.
He looks hopeful but hesitant, the way people do when they hand you presents with the tags still attached in case you want to return them.
“I haven’t skated in years, but I always liked it as a kid,” I say.
“Me, too,” he says.
A rink attendant in a red clapboard shed asks for our shoe sizes and hands us clunky skates. We lace them up and totter to the edge of the rink. He steps over the threshold first, then extends his hand so I can steady myself as I step onto the ice. I take a few tentative glides with my hand hovering over the railing in case I lose my balance.
We make a slow first lap side by side, getting used to being on the ice. There aren’t many other people here—three couples in casual clothes and a single skater in athletic gear who makes sharp turns and elegant spins—so it’s calm enough to go at our own pace.
“So far, so good, but I bet I’ll fall flat on my ass at least once tonight,” I say.
“I’ll catch you,” he says.
“Don’t you dare. I’ll probably pull you down with me,” I warn.
“You’re not gonna fall,” he predicts. “I remember you on beam back in the day—your balance is absurd.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I say.
He’s right, though; by our second lap, I feel sturdier, and by our third, I’ve regained my confidence. I slip my hand into his and trust my balance enough to plant a kiss on his cheek as we glide. I can’t help but see flashes of the future—maybe we’ll hike this spring, canoe this summer, train for a half marathon together this fall. We’re both used to solitary sports, but there’s something appealing about tackling new adventures as a pair.
As we continue to skate circles around the rink, we whisper theories about the other couples—which ones seem happily in love, which seem more like old roommates who couldn’t give a damn about each other—and resolve to never fall into the latter category. We trade stories about ice-skating experiences as kids, and the Olympic skaters we’ve met over the years. On some laps, we don’t talk at all, content to enjoy the twinkling lights nestled into the forest and the blur of our hazy reflections gleaming on the slick ice. With Ryan, silence doesn’t feel like pressure.
But there’s one question I can’t get out of my head.
“What’s all this for?” I ask finally.
“A guy can’t take a girl out?” he replies.
“Of course, of course. But, I mean, this is spectacular.”
His cheeks go pink, and I don’t think it’s just from the thirty-five-degree weather.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing you in the gym,” he says slowly. “And at your place, and at mine. But I’ve never really treated you to a real date night, and you deserve that.”
“Oh!” I say, touched.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not, uh, the fanciest guy,” he says sheepishly.
“You?” I joke back. “Huh, never would’ve guessed.”
He smirks. “And I thought about a gourmet dinner somewhere, but I know you love to cook. I know you’d rather cook than be waited on.”
“True,” I admit.
“So I thought your old favorite sushi place would be a treat, and this would cap the night off perfectly. I hope you like it?” he finishes.
“I love it,” I say. “Thank you for planning such a fabulous date.”
I don’t mean to, but I flash back to a “date night” with Tyler. Or, rather, it was supposed to be a date night. Instead, we watched Fast & Furious 6 in silence while we ate Easy Mac. He had told me not to bother with cooking a special meal for date night. He didn’t get that cooking for him felt like another way to show my love. He fell asleep before the movie was over. But this feels entirely different—it’s thoughtful and personal. He put care into choosing something I’d like.
“So you’ll keep me?” he says.
I can hear a note of restrained laughter in his voice.
“Eh,” I joke, pretending like I’m attempting to make up my mind. “I’ll keep you.”
I skate to a stop and pull him gently toward the railing. I steady myself against it and kiss him deeply, slipping my fingers under his scarf to hold him close. It’s true that there’s a certain thrill about kissing someone for the first time, when you can only guess what it’ll feel like, how your bodies will respond to each other’s, and if there will be sparks. But this is thrilling in a different way: comfortable, familiar, easy. I can anticipate the way his lips will move against mine. I know there will be sparks. I can’t believe how lucky I am.
The rink is quieter now; we’re among the last people left. It’s a picturesque moment, but I know there’s a bigger reason tonight makes me so happy. Being here in his arms feels exactly right.
“What an incredible night,” I say.
I have to stop myself from uttering the three little words that almost roll off my tongue next.
“You are incredible,” I say, swallowing the too-soon words and choosing the safer ones instead.
He nuzzles closer and kisses me again. When he pulls back, he hesitates, like he’s trying to determine exactly what to say next. I wonder if the same words are running through his head, too.
“I…” he says.
My stomach does a backflip.
He gazes at me for a moment that feels like an eternity.
“I’m really glad you’re here with me,” he says, pulling me closer for a kiss.
Everything about it—the steady pressure of his hand on the curve of my hip; the scent of pine; the slippery surface of the ice beneath our feet—I commit to memory. I want to remember every detail, because this is the night I know for sure that I am falling in love with Ryan Nicholson, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
• CHAPTER 19 •
A chill runs up my spine when I enter the National Championships arena in Miami. The nervous energy hanging in the air feels just as real as the mingled scent of chalk dust and sweat. I follow Hallie and Ryan around the perimeter to find a spot to settle down, and I can’t help but drink it all in: the crunch of errant bobby pins underfoot; the spare cans of hair spray and bottles of butt glue rolling out from unzipped gym bags; the ritual gestures of gymnasts warming up; the satisfying scrchhh of grips being Velcroed on and off wrists; the anxious parents snapping gum in the bleachers. I savor every bit of it. I feel as if I’ve come home again. The moment I walked through the door, I straightened up, lifted my chin one notch higher, and tightened my ponytail. This time around, though, nobody’s watching me. This isn’t about me.
We’re here for Hallie. It’s her day. She finds a bench on the far side of the arena, closest to the beam, that has yet to be claimed by anyone else and drops her duffel on it.
We’re all clad in matching navy tracksuits embroidered with Summit’s logo over our hearts. Hallie removes her jacket, revealing a gleaming, emerald-green, long-sleeved leotard. It’s spangled with Swarovski crystals across her collarbone and down the center of her chest, like a glittering necklace or a piece of armor. If she goes to the Olympics, her competition leotards will be chosen by the American Gymnastics Federation, and she’ll probably be clad in red, white, blue, or all three. But for now, she can wear whatever she likes. I know this leotard is one of her favorites because it brings out the green flecks in her hazel eyes.
There are armies of gymnast-coach teams just like us scattered across the venue. I spot Delia Cruz rolling her wrists in supple circles to warm up for bars. Maggie Farber and Kiki McCloud sit with hands over their faces while their coach tames down their ponytails with hair spray. Across the arena, Dimitri reclines on a bench while his group of Powerhouse gymnasts stretch silently. I recognize their faces and names, though I don’t know them personally. His star student is Emma Perry, a fiercely talented competitor who’s probably the front-runner of the entire sport. He has Skylar Hayashi and Brit Almeda, too—the former is a vault specialist who began performing flawless Amanars at fourteen years old and has only gotten more intimidating since then; the latter is a decent if less memorable athlete who brings in reliably fine scores but doesn’t quite have that X factor. I don’t think Ryan has broached the subject of Dimitri or Powerhouse with Hallie or her parents yet. In the frenzied lead-up to Nationals, there hasn’t been time.
Each gymnast’s competition roster is assigned randomly. When the schedule flashes on the big screen that looms above the arena, Hallie’s face hardens. She’s up first on bars, which means she’ll spend the rest of the day rotating through vault, beam, and then floor. She doesn’t complain, though; she knows NBC’s cameras have likely already begun swirling, and she’s smart enough to understand that her reaction to the news shouldn’t be a dismal one.
“I just want to get floor over with,” she whispers to me.
“I know. I’m sorry. Let’s stretch,” I suggest, stepping forward to place myself protectively between her and any cameramen who might be approaching with a long lens.
She dutifully nods, slips off her track pants, and stands to begin her warm-up. She runs through the same basic set of moves she’s completed daily since childhood—bending over her knees in a pike, rolling out her wrists, straddling her legs wide—but this time, every movement is packed with intention: pointed toes, straight spine, sucked-in core. She waves at a pair of little girls in the bleachers holding up a sign with her name printed on it in colorful marker.
An announcement cuts through the noise of the stadium: fifteen minutes until the competition begins, which means it’s time for Hallie to warm up on bars. She’s on the same rotation as Delia and Brit, and the three gymnasts take turns chalking up and practicing elements of their routines. There’s an unintentional hierarchy: Brit defers to Hallie because she’s the stronger athlete, and both girls defer to Delia, because she’s become something of a legend, a mother hen, a spokesperson for the horrors of the sport ever since the accusations broke. Today, Delia’s leotard is teal. I heard Jasmine discussing it during her TV segment; teal is the color of sexual assault awareness.
At the one-minute mark, Hallie signals to us that she’s all set.
“Last-minute pep talk,” Ryan says. “Huddle up.”
Ryan wraps a protective arm around Hallie’s shoulders and slides a nonchalant arm around my waist. Hallie’s breath is shallow. This isn’t her first rodeo; it’s clear that she knows as nervous as she is, she has to fake it till she makes it. Otherwise, she’ll psych herself out.
“I just want to tell you one more time how proud I am of you,” Ryan says, locking eyes with Hallie. “You’re strong, you’re tough, and you have trained so hard for this for so long.”
She blushes. “Thanks.”
“And don’t let the prospect of floor rattle you all day,” he says. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t?” she asks, surprised.
“The new choreography? Fantastic. The updated tumbling passes? Genius. I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never seen you as poised or as elegant as you’ve been performing lately.”
Hallie exhales. Her shoulders visibly relax.
“Oh,” she says, almost laughing to herself. “Right.”
“Avery?” Ryan prompts.
I didn’t prepare anything to say. When I was competing, it’s not like Dimitri ever gave any sort of warm, touchy-feely pep talk like this one. A gruff request to stop whining and keep my chin up, maybe, but nothing like this. I swallow.
“You have no idea how good you have it,” I say. “How easy this will be. How prepared you are. You are a natural superstar, and you have Ryan, who’s amazing, and you have an incredibly supportive family cheering you on.”
The words come easily because they’re the truth.
“Every single day, I am so proud to work with you, because you never give up and you never lose what makes you you,” I continue, ignoring the lump forming in my throat. “I’m lucky to be on your team. And I can’t wait to see you rock this competition.”
I squeeze my hand around her shoulder. I didn’t expect to be so emotional, but seeing Hallie here, just inches away from a competition that could make her a front-runner at Olympic Trials, I’m overwhelmed. I break the huddle to give her a tight hug.
“Thank you, guys,” Hallie says, her words muffled into my hair. “Seriously. Thank you.”
An event coordinator taps Hallie on the shoulder. “It’s time,” she says.
Hallie glances at each of us. “Bye.”
“You got this!” I call out.
Ryan goes with her. He’s there to hover by the high bar throughout the duration of her routine, ready to lunge forward during her riskiest release moves when she’s most likely to fall, in case he needs to catch her. I don’t want to be a distraction, so I’ll watch from the sidelines.
Hallie reaches into the chalk bowl to add one more layer of dust to her grips, and nods to Ryan that she’s ready. Moments later, an announcer’s voice booms over the loud speaker. A hush falls over the crowd in the bleachers.
“First up on bars is Hallie Conway,” the voice booms.
The audience roars a cheer. “Let’s go, Hallie, let’s go!” I call out, clapping.
Hallie strides to the center of the low bar, totally transformed. She stands tall, suddenly looking five years older and twice as serene as she really is. She raises both arms to the table of judges and beams, performing the customary salute of respect that every gymnast does at the beginning and end of each routine. I see a judge flick to a new sheet in her notebook and peer over the tops of her thick-rimmed glasses.
Hallie takes a deep breath, then jumps on the low bar and swings up into a perfect handstand with such easy grace that I forget to be nervous for her. She transitions smoothly to the high bar, then pirouettes in a handstand, and executes a clean Tkatchev–Pak Salto combo, flinging herself backward and soaring smoothly down to the low bar. Everything is tight, as it should be: vertical handstands, straight knees, pointed toes, rock-hard core. The routine concludes with a mesmerizing series of giants—swinging, 360-degree circles around the high bar—and then she’s slicing through the air into a double-twisting double back tuck. The moment she hits the mat, she’s sturdy and sure of herself—she sticks the landing. The audience erupts into a cheer as she arches backward.
Hallie waves to the crowd, turning to face each corner of the arena to blow grateful kisses.
Giddy, she crashes sideways into Ryan for a one-armed hug.
“Amazing job,” I say, high-fiving her in a burst of chalk dust when she makes it back to the bench. “You nailed it.”
“That felt great,” she says.
“Because it was great,” Ryan says.
Thirty seconds later, the judges confirm what everyone knows: It was a beautiful performance. They award her a 15.025—and anything in the fourteen range or above is incredible. By the end of the first rotation, she’s in fourth place—Emma, Delia, and Kiki have just barely edged her out for the top spots. Hallie’s face falls slightly.
“Don’t worry, you have three more rotations to go,” Ryan points out. “The rankings will change.”
“Yeah, but I just finished bars,” she protests.
Nobody has to say out loud what she really means: her best event is now over, so it could all go downhill from here.
“Vault’s next,” I say brightly. “Just focus on nice, solid landings, and you’ll be just fine.”
Per the rules of the competition, she competes twice on vault. Judges score both efforts, then take the average as her final score. Her first run, an Amanar, is impressive. But any success there is canceled out by the deductions she receives for the two extra steps she takes upon landing her second vault, a Mustafina.
I know the rules of the sport well enough to know better, but it still seems incredibly unfair that Hallie gets points docked for her dynamite energy. She’s like a high jumper in a ballerina’s body—if she were a track-and-field star instead of a gymnast, her explosive power would make her an Olympic champion. But not here. My nerves feel frayed as I watch the judges grimly turn over the final score: 13.250. Hallie slips to fifth place. The mood on the bench is tense.
Her third rotation is beam, and if there’s one event that demands confidence and precision above all else, it’s this one. When I was a gymnast, beam was always intimidating, but at least I felt in control of the experience. If I shook or bobbled or fell, it was my own fault. But now, as Hallie competes, that sense of control crumbles. My muscles spasm as I watch her move. When she pirouettes, I crane my neck, as if I can manipulate the speed of her spin. As she wobbles on the landing of a front aerial, my stomach and glutes and thighs clench hard, as if I can keep her centered on the beam through sheer force of will. Her tumbling pass—a back handspring, whip back, back layout that’s usually just pure fun to watch—tilts slightly off center. One foot curls desperately around the beam, while the other leg ricochets sideways in a last-ditch attempt to regain balance. She stays on, but just barely. After her dismount, she salutes limply to the panel of judges and trudges into Ryan’s arms.
Hallie makes it back to the bench just as the stony-faced judges reveal her score: a flat 12.850. That means she’s officially slipped down to ninth place. I feel sick. As long as she doesn’t completely bomb floor, she should qualify to compete at Olympic Trials. (The top fourteen competitors will go to Trials.) But there’s no guarantee of that—anything could happen at a competition, especially with her confidence at an all-time low right now—and ninth place is a brutal, embarrassing spot to be in, even out of seventeen total spots. Ideally, she’d be in the top five or six, if not fully in the top three for medal contention. I hate to imagine Jasmine’s commentary right now. It can’t be good.
Ryan spots Hallie’s empty water bottle and goes to refill it.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promises.
Hallie scowls and slumps down further in her seat. There’s a beat of silence between us.
“I’m completely failing,” she says morosely. “I’m messing up over and over again on live TV, looking like a total idiot.”
“Hey, scoot,” I say, moving to sit next to her. “You’re not an idiot. At all. I promise.”
She slides over a few inches but doesn’t look at me. She’s staring at the big screen, transfixed as Emma sticks a powerful double-double on floor and makes it look easy.
“I’m in ninth place,” she spits out. “Ninth place. That’s for idiots.”
“You have to stop calling yourself an idiot,” I say.
She gives me a look full of skeptical contempt that reminds me she is still a surly teenager. She might have traded in the typical trappings of a teen girl’s life for the discipline, demands, and pressures of a fully grown adult athlete’s, but this is one thing she can’t change. She’s a sixteen-year-old girl, behaving the way any sixteen-year-old would.
She scrunches up her face. “I didn’t work this hard to be all the way down the scoreboard.”
“I know,” I say carefully. I try to figure out what to say to lift her spirits. “But maybe there’s more to it than that. What if you can just appreciate the fact that you’ve worked so hard to be here? I know you get so much joy out of performing. Just go out there and have fun showing off what you can do, you know?”
She tilts her head and stares at me.
“You’re nuts,” she says. “You’ve lost it.”
“I’m just trying to show you the silver lining,” I insist. “Because there is one.”
“If you kind of squint,” she adds.
“Squint really carefully, yeah,” I say. “You’re here. You deserve to be here.”
She takes a long sip of her water and shakes her head slowly.
“You sound extremely yoga right now,” she says.
“I’m just jealous that you get to go out there and deliver the hell out of your next routine,” I say. “You’re living my dream.”
She sighs dramatically.
“I’ll go slay on floor if you promise to stop talking like a corny Oprah knockoff,” she says.
“Deal,” I say, extending my hand.
She shakes it. “Deal.”
An event coordinator waves Hallie over to start warming up for floor. I shout ridiculously supportive comments as she walks away. But once she’s gone, the pit in my stomach returns.
Floor warm-ups fly by. Brit delivers a surprisingly lovely performance to a delicate piece of classical music, and Hallie whispers to me that she must have gotten new choreography. Up next, Delia strides calmly onto the floor to perform a knockout routine that inspires the audience to give her a standing ovation. On the big screen, you can see tears glittering in her eyes as she waves to her fans and hugs her coach. The moment is powerful and heartbreaking. When the judges award her the breathtakingly high mark of 15.275, it’s clear she’s earned every bit of it.
Meanwhile, Hallie is trembling. She rises from the bench and shakes out each leg so her knees don’t buckle beneath her. More than any other moment in her life, the pressure is on.
“Let’s go, Hallie!” I call out.
“Come on, Hal, you got this,” Ryan says loudly.
“We had a good talk while you were gone,” I say. “I think she’ll be okay.”
“If she’s not, I think her parents will skin us alive,” Ryan mutters.
Hallie’s name rings out over the loudspeaker, and the judges flick to new sheets of paper in their notebooks. She salutes at the edge of the blue mat, then struts into position. There’s a high, clear beep to signal that she should prepare herself, and then the opening notes of her new floor music. This is her first time performing the routine I crafted in competition, and I’m anxious to see how it’s received.
Hallie throws herself into the first few fierce steps of her choreography, just like we practiced, and I am so proud. She’s a swirl of limbs and piercing gazes as she pivots, backs up into the corner, and lunges into her first tumbling pass. She whips across the floor with enough energy to power a fleet of Maseratis, rocketing skyward at the end into the stag jump we drilled on the trampoline. Her leg levers up elegantly behind her, and she lands on beat.
She beams and surges onward through a frenzied attempt at her leap series. She’ll get a small deduction for failing to hit the full 180-degree split, but it’s a marked improvement from the first time she tried that combination. When she slides down to set up her wolf turn, I cringe and grab Ryan’s hand. His palm glistens with sweat. Hallie’s brows knit together as she steels herself to spin. I can’t breathe as I watch her rotate cleanly. It’s the best wolf turn I’ve ever seen her do.
On her second tumbling pass, she flies high above the floor and sticks the landing. As she prances through her choreography, I whisper a prayer. Please keep this up. Please let this be okay. Hallie attacks her third and fourth tumbling passes with pure grit. She spirals through the air and digs in her heels when she lands. As the music hits its final note, she throws her head back into the dramatic pose we practiced so many times in the Summit mirror. Her chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath. There’s a second of silence, and then Hallie climbs to her feet, saluting the judges with all the energy she has left. The crowd claps as the judges continue to scribble down notes.
Ryan and I intercept her along the side of the floor for high fives and hugs, and we walk back to our spot together. Her breathing is ragged.
“Hallie, that was unbelievable,” I tell her excitedly. “The best I’ve ever seen you perform.”
“You were awesome,” Ryan confirms.
She pants and gives a half-hearted thumbs-up. “Don’t congratulate me until the score is ready,” she warns.
“Don’t worry about the score; that was phenomenal,” I insist.
I hope, of course, that the judges reward her for one of the best floor routines she’s probably ever done in her entire life. But I’m also nervous—they don’t award medals for personal improvement. Her score will be compared to the other gymnasts’.
The judges deliver their score: 13.475. It moves Hallie up to seventh place.
Hallie lets out a low moan. “That’s not good enough,” she wails.
“That’s a full point higher than you got at Worlds!” Ryan crows. “That’s a real improvement, Hal. You should be very proud of yourself.”
A full point! Selfishly, I glow with excitement.
“If this were Olympic Trials, seventh place wouldn’t be enough to make the Olympic Team,” Hallie says, sounding panicked.
Ryan kneels down in front of her and takes her hands. “But this isn’t Trials,” he points out. “You have months to go. So much can change between now and then.”
Hallie looks suspiciously around the arena. “Yeah, but everyone else will be training to improve, too.”
I want to say something reassuring or encouraging, but everything I come up with sounds hollow or worthless. Seventh place is a complicated place to be: she’s not knocked out of Olympic contention by any means, but she’s not a shoo-in, either. It would be exciting to land here if this were Hallie’s first elite competition, but it’s not. She didn’t come this far to only make seventh place. It’s an uncomfortable middle ground, achingly mediocre when gymnasts are used to flashy wins or spectacular failures. Hallie could go either way from here… or she could float into obscurity, never quite making a name for herself in this sport.
“I know today wasn’t what we hoped for, but I’m still proud of you,” I say finally.
Hallie zips up her tracksuit and pulls the hoodie down low.
“Bars was beautiful,” Ryan adds. “Vault was pretty solid, too. Next time, we’ll work on—”
“I can’t think about that now, all right?” Hallie snaps.
She shoves her feet into her Uggs and slings her gym bag over her shoulder.
“I can’t stay here anymore. Bye.”
She makes a beeline for the nearest exit.
“Wait!” Ryan calls out to her.
“I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” he tells me, darting after Hallie.
My first instinct is to follow them, but I know Hallie doesn’t want a full audience right now. If she wanted me with her, she would’ve told me. Instead, she wants to grieve today’s results alone. I don’t blame her. So I sink down onto the bench and watch glumly as other gymnasts gleefully celebrate their wins. My heart hurts.
• CHAPTER 20 •
I’m still alone an hour later. I don’t want to be. Ryan and Hallie never returned to the arena, and my text to him went unanswered. I head back to the hotel. I had originally assumed that Ryan and I would share a room—we spend two or three nights a week at each other’s places, anyway, and I was even looking forward to our first trip together as a couple. But Ryan had pointed out that it’d look suspicious for us to share, especially since Summit had already paid for us to sleep separately. Our rooms are at opposite ends of the seventh floor; Hallie and her parents have a larger suite on the eighth.
When the elevator doors slide open on the seventh floor, I step out in the cool, blandly carpeted lobby. There’s an array of kitschy beach-inspired decor hanging on the wall—shiny pink seashells, dried-out coral and starfish—alongside black-and-white photos of the Miami skyline. I should turn left and head down the hall to my room, but instead, I turn toward Ryan’s. I knock, but he doesn’t come to the door.
I walk the long stretch of hallway back to my own hotel room. The maid has been here: the bed is freshly made and my jumble of clothes and extra shoes and phone charger are stacked neatly on top of my luggage. I kick off my shoes, flop diagonally across the bed, and try to resist the urge to check my phone. Instead, I stare at the white stucco ceiling for a few moments, ruminating on Hallie’s disastrous performance today and wondering if she simply had an off day or if I had failed to properly prepare her. Too depressing.
I miss Ryan. I feel silly admitting it to myself, because I just spent the entire day with him, but I do. When we’re working, it doesn’t really feel like we’re spending time together—I can’t fully relax around him when I know other people are watching us. If I had to guess, he’s probably still with her, comforting her, and that makes me feel even worse: heartbroken for Hallie, ashamed over how I failed as a coach, depressed by what this means for my career, and self-indulgent for wishing Ryan could be here with me instead. I don’t want him to come over and analyze what went wrong today. I just want him here as my boyfriend.
I get up to shower off the day, if only because there’s nothing else I really want to do (and everyone could benefit from bathing after spending time in an arena that smells like feet). The hotel room’s bathroom is outfitted in cream-colored tile with vanity lights over the mirror that feel like the height of glamour compared to my apartment in Greenwood. I linger longer than I need to in the shower. When I get out, wrapped in a fluffy white hotel bathrobe that feels wonderfully thick and heavy over my shoulders, I’m relieved to see a text from Ryan—until I read it.
Hey, sorry, I’m actually not free to hang out right now, he wrote. Let’s talk later?
His words make me feel lonelier. I spent countless hours in LA waiting for Tyler to text me back, to come home, to want to see me. Eagerly waiting for scraps of attention is the most pathetic feeling in the world.
Sure, I type.
I consider delaying my response by several minutes to give him a taste of his own medicine, but that’s too juvenile to feel rewarding. I should know better than to behave like a child. I press send.
I’m too restless to sit around this room, so I get dressed and head downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant. Vending machine snacks aside, I’ve barely eaten all day, and it’d be good for me to get some real food. I didn’t realize it until now, but I’m hungry. The restaurant’s vibe mimics the beachy decor from upstairs: the upholstery on the chairs looks speckled like sand, and nautical bits and bobs like buoys and fishing net hang from the driftwood bar.
“Just one?” the hostess asks.
“Just me,” I say, pretending to be cheery and fine about that.
She scans the crowded room.
“So, it’ll be about fifteen or twenty minutes for a table for one, but I could seat you now at the bar, if you’d like,” she offers.
“The bar’s fine,” I say.
There aren’t many free bar stools, either, though I see one crammed between two larger men, and another… Oh. Next to Jasmine. I move toward the seat between the two men, but she sees me before I can sit down. For a split second, neither of us says anything.
“Hey!” she says, waving me over.
“Will that seat work?” the hostess asks.
Jasmine is watching expectantly.
“It’s fine, thank you,” I tell the hostess.
I wedge myself into the seat on Jasmine’s right. She’s dressed for TV: gleaming lipstick, sleek blowout, lemon-yellow shift dress. There’s a glass of white wine and a leafy green salad in front of her.
“I wondered if I’d bump into you,” she says, giving me an air-kiss by my cheek.
“Good to see you,” I say, even though the prospect of a conversation with her makes me anxious.
The bartender slides a menu my way, and I order a glass of wine as quickly as I can.
“Plus, uh, whatever salad she’s having,” I add.
“It’s delicious,” Jasmine gushes.
She would grow up to be the kind of woman who raves about lettuce.
“It was so interesting to watch Hallie compete today,” she says. “You know, knowing you coach her now.”
“ ‘Interesting’?” I echo.
That sounds like a euphemism for bad.
“I loved her new floor routine,” Jasmine insists. “I made a note of it on-air, even—I was talking about how you choreographed it yourself, and how excited I was to see Hallie compete it for the first time today.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised. “That’s actually very nice of you. Thank you.”
“I’m sure she would’ve liked to do a little bit better in the rankings today,” Jasmine says. “But, hey, you know I always love to root for the underdog.”
She winks, as if there’s a camera waiting somewhere to catch her reaction. There’s not.
“She’s a good, hard worker. I think she’ll bounce back just fine,” I say.
“She’s not tough to discipline?” Jasmine asks.
The question catches me off guard. “We don’t really need to discipline her.”
“Sure,” she says skeptically.
“No, really. It’s actually been really interesting, figuring out a coaching style that’s different from the one we grew up with,” I continue. “You remember, Dimitri always said he was hard on us because that would be best for us. But with Hallie, I don’t know, she just works hard.”
Jasmine doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she sips quietly from her wineglass. I regret speaking so candidly about Dimitri in front of her.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to imply anything about the way he coached. I know, obviously, things are different now that he’s your… husband.”
The word still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“No, it’s all right, you don’t need to apologize,” she says, twisting her diamond engagement ring and staring down at her salad, like she’s trying to find the right words. “I know he… I mean, he was…” She trails off and sighs heavily.
“Is he still like that? I mean, when it’s just you two?” I ask tentatively.
I know I’m prying, but it occurs to me that Jasmine might not have anyone else she can talk to like this. We used to confide in each other all the time—more often than not about the man who’s now her husband—but I wouldn’t be surprised if she stays tight-lipped about what he’s really like among her new set of friends.
My salad arrives. Jasmine pauses, politely watching the busboy set it down in front of me. She looks grateful for the opportunity to collect her thoughts before she speaks.
“He’s a good man,” she finally says in an even voice. “He provides a beautiful life for us, and he is so respected in the community, and he makes me happy.”
I know what Jasmine looks like when she’s not being totally honest. I’ve seen it before, back when we were kids. It was easy to lie about doing two sets of reps of crunches instead of three, or to pretend we didn’t eat the extra whipped cream on our chai lattes at Lolly’s. I’m not married, so I can’t judge firsthand what’s normal and what’s not in her relationship. But she doesn’t sound like a woman in love. She sounds like a defense attorney.
“Right,” I say.
Discomfort clings to me like an itchy, too-small sweater. There’s more I want to know.
“But what’s it… like? Being married to him? I mean, I can’t imagine,” I say.
It sounds like I’m openly gawking, and I guess I am. I’ve spent years wondering what their relationship could possibly be like, and after getting a glimpse of it at their party, my curiosity has only intensified.
She gestures to the bartender for another glass of wine.
“I mean, you know him,” she says, shrugging. “Sometimes, he has his… moods,” she admits. “You remember those.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And he… he’s particular, you know? He likes things to be a certain way. Sometimes, he gets upset when things aren’t right.”
“He used to take it out on us,” I say bitterly.
Maybe that’s a step too far, but Jasmine doesn’t disagree with me.
“He meant well, but it wasn’t right,” she says.
“It took me a long time to clearly see how that affected me, because at the time, it all felt so normal,” I say. The words come more easily now, since I know Jasmine will agree with me on this point. “Or, at least, if not normal, like everything was in service of a greater goal.”
“Glory,” we intone at the same time, like we’ve heard thousands of times before.
In the back of my head, I hear the word in a guttural Russian accent, and I bet she does, too. For a moment, the past seven years collapse, and I feel like we’re just kids again—giggling friends who finish each other’s sentences. It makes me miss how we used to be. Nobody has ever replaced her.
“But I think that’s changing, no?” she says. “Dimitri’s old-school, but he’s pretty much the only one left.”
“I mean, Ryan and I do our best,” I concede. “Hallie’s mostly pretty easy, but even so, we don’t push her any harder than she’d push herself. I mean, god, the world is not a good place for gymnasts right now. You know what I mean.”
“I do,” she says heavily.
We don’t even need to say it out loud.
“But as horrible as that is, this isn’t the first time there’s been a scandal like that—awful things like that have happened before,” I point out.
“In dark, shady fucking corners, yeah,” she says grimly.
“The rest of the sport, though? I think it’s getting a little better,” I say.
“I think I see that, too,” she says. “At competitions, it’s like… whoa. The girls all have muscles and thighs and don’t hide the fact that they eat.”
We both look limply down at the remaining salad on our plates.
“I don’t know about the girls Dimitri works with, but Hallie has personality. Sass. Or, as he might call it, attitude,” I say.
“Nothing we were allowed to have,” Jasmine adds, shaking her head.
“Ha. No. But Hallie’s good. Happy.”
“She’s okay with food?” Jasmine asks.
“She eats, she does yoga, she’s confident…” I say.
Jasmine lets out a low whistle, understanding the implication: Hallie’s not like we were. “Good for her.”
“She has a tutor, but she has a whole plan: Olympics first, then college. She talks about going to law school someday. For her, there’s a whole world out there,” I explain.
I don’t have to spell it out for Jasmine. For us, there was no other world. We’re here, after all, aren’t we? I stab a piece of lettuce with my fork.
“I wanted to be a fashion designer,” Jasmine says suddenly. Her eyes are spacey, vacant, like she’s dreaming about some far-off memory. She turns sharply toward me. “Did you know that?”
“Maybe?”
I vaguely recall her sketching evening gowns and spindly high heels on a long car ride to a competition. We must have been twelve. She erased and redrew and erased and redrew each line on a model’s body until it matched the vision she held in her mind.
“But then, you know, everything just happened. London and then the post-Olympics tour and then all these motivational speeches at gyms and then Dimitri and NBC, and here we are,” she says, shrugging like she blinked and it all just fell into place, like one domino after another. She gives a short laugh. “What was I supposed to do, duck out and learn to sew?”
My question comes tumbling out before I have time to realize that it’s a rude one. “Are you happy?” I blurt.
The words hang in the air. Jasmine uncrosses and crosses her legs, catching one stiletto along the rung of the bar stool and taking a long sip of wine.
“Of course I’m happy,” she says finally. “I just wonder, sometimes, what else could’ve happened—would’ve happened—if we’d grown up differently.”
“Without Dimitri, you mean,” I clarify.
“With a different coach, more options, another life,” she says, gesturing vaguely around the restaurant.
The wine is getting to her now; there’s a looseness to her energy, so unlike the sensitive, tightly wound girl I used to know.
“Which is why,” she continues, “you can’t let Ryan take the job.”
“What job?” I ask.
“The one they’re talking about right now,” she says, pointing above us, like it’s obvious. “Upstairs. In our suite. No matter who they’ll coach together for 2024—Hallie or someone else—that girl deserves better.”
“Ryan’s with Dimitri?” I ask blankly.
I have the sickening sensation of being the last person to know what’s going on, and I hate it. I don’t want to have to play catch-up with my own boyfriend’s whereabouts and career.
“Where’d you think they were?” she asks, alarmed, as if she suddenly realizes that I’ve been in the dark. “Oh, honey.”
I groan.
“You can’t let Ryan take the job,” Jasmine says, her tone growing urgent now. She clutches my arm. “I shouldn’t say this, and if you tell anyone I did, I’ll deny it, but keep Hallie away from Dimitri. Let her be good and safe and healthy. Let her have a future outside of this world.”
“What’s your room number?” I ask.
“Room two twenty,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Like 2020—for good luck.”
“Of course he would request that.”
“I’ll cover your meal if you cover for me,” she says, holding a finger to her lips. “Go.”
I race to the elevators.
• CHAPTER 21 •
The moment before I knock on Dimitri’s door, my stomach tightens and my mind spirals into tight focus. It’s the same sensation I used to get right before I saluted the judges and strode forward to perform a routine. I knock.
Dimitri opens the door. Surprise flits across his face.
“Hi,” I say.
He doesn’t greet me.
“Your girlfriend’s here,” he calls over his shoulder.
He cocks his head and clicks his tongue, signaling for me to enter. Somehow, that’s more humiliating than him shutting the door in my face. There was a time I spent more of my day with him than with my own parents. Now he won’t even use my name.
The suite is far larger and nicer than the room I’m staying in. The bedroom is identical to mine, but there’s also a lounge with a pair of upholstered armchairs and a love seat arranged around a coffee table. There’s a crystal decanter of whiskey with two matching, half-filled glasses. Ryan rises from one of the armchairs, confused.
“Avery? What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I’d like to talk to you,” I say, hoping my voice comes out steady and strong.
“I’m in the middle of something,” he says helplessly. “I texted you earlier, remember? I said we’d catch up later?”
“I know,” I say.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
There’s real concern in his voice.
“Well, yeah, I’m fine, but…” I wish I had prepared something more convincing to say ahead of time. “I just… I really would like to speak with you. Now.”
“Where are your manners, girl?” Dimitri says, looking amused. “We’re working out business here.”
The way he calls me girl, it’s like he’s hurled me more than a decade into the past. He has a knack for making me feel so small. It makes me burn with rage, especially because I know he’s right—I barged in here without an invitation—but I can’t apologize. I can’t bow down in front of him and pretend to be sorry. I’m not.
Ryan looks from me to Dimitri and back again.
“Go,” Dimitri says, waving his hand to dismiss us both. “Ryan, we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“No, Dimitri, it’s fine…” Ryan starts to protest.
But Dimitri’s already halfway to the bedroom. We’ve been dismissed.
“All right, bye, thank you for everything,” Ryan rushes to say.
I hate how furious and flustered and thrown off course I feel, just from spending one single minute in Dimitri’s presence. But maybe it’s for the best—maybe this is exactly the raw, hateful energy I need to fully convince Ryan he can never work with that man.
Ryan follows me out of the suite. I turn to face him the minute the door closes behind us, but he shakes his head, pressing a finger to his lips, and ushers us farther down the narrow hall, toward the elevator. I jab the up button.
“What was that?” he says finally. “Are you really okay? Is Hallie okay?”
“I’m fine, she’s fine,” I insist.
We enter the empty elevator, and the tight quarters make it feel impossible to keep my thoughts to myself. We’re so close, he can probably hear what I’m thinking.
“What were you talking about?” I demand.
The edge of my voice sounds hard. Angry. Ugly.
“I’ve made up my mind. I want to work with Dimitri at Powerhouse,” he admits.
For a moment, I feel too bitter to speak.
“But you know he’s not a good guy,” I say.
The elevator doors ding open on the seventh floor, and I follow him to his room.
“I know you’ve said that,” he says carefully.
I grab his arm and stop walking. “That’s not fair.”
He sighs and pulls his arm away. “Okay. It’s not, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
Now, in his hotel room, I stare at him expectantly, waiting for him to produce any explanation that makes sense. He sits on the edge of the bed, and I join him reluctantly. My heart pounds. I just want this conversation to be over with.
“I think this is a mistake,” I tell him plainly. “Dimitri would crush Hallie. You see how rudely he treats me, don’t you? He’ll be ten times worse to her, day in, day out. He’ll yell at her if she doesn’t perform up to his insanely high standards of perfection, and then he’ll scream at her if she dares to cry or fight back. He’ll call her cruel names. He’ll make her keep a diary of everything she eats and he’ll review it once a week while she stands on a scale in a leotard. He’ll punish her for gaining half a pound. He’ll isolate her from her friends. Ryan, I know you think he’s a legend, but he’s a nightmare.”
Ryan bites his lip and shakes his head. I can’t tell if it’s in disbelief or disagreement.
“I’m sorry that you grew up like that,” he says in a strained voice. “I really, really am. Please don’t get me wrong. He must have changed—he’s not like that anymore.”
“I don’t believe that,” I say firmly. “And anyway, it’s not worth the risk. Girls who train with him don’t grow up to have healthy, normal lives.”
“Well, look at you,” Ryan says, shrugging. “You turned out fine.”
“Exactly! Look at me,” I say. “It’s been a long road to feeling remotely okay.”
It’s increasingly impossible not to shout. It feels like a match just caught fire in my chest. I ignite with anger. I’ve seethed silently about this in the past, but I’ve never let it all out before.
“Since I moved back to Greenwood, I’ve finally, slowly, just barely started to cobble together a real, adult life that I’m proud of,” I explain. “A lot of that has to do with working with you. But I am twenty-seven years old. Twenty-seven! It took me the better part of a decade to get here. I was reeling. I had no education, no ambition, no goals, no full-time job. That’s not me. That’s not who I was supposed to be. For years, my life just… stalled. And I couldn’t get back on track.”
“You can’t blame that all on Dimitri,” Ryan says softly.
“He’s certainly not innocent. He pushes people down so they can’t get up,” I fire back. “And look at Jasmine. He broke her down so hard, she never left. He’s despicable.”
“Kaminsky’s despicable. Dimitri’s just tough,” Ryan says.
“I’m telling you, what you’re doing is just plain wrong,” I argue. “No decent person would do this.”
“I’m not feeding Hallie to the wolves, Avery,” Ryan says. “I’ll be there with her. I’ll protect her.”
“Does Hallie know you’re doing this? Do her parents?” I ask.
He sighs. His face contorts, but I can’t tell if it’s with guilt or exasperation.
“We’ve been talking about it for weeks,” he admits. “I didn’t include you in the discussions because I knew you would never work with Dimitri.”
My anger blooms into rage, then betrayal.
“And when did you think you’d tell me?” I ask. My voice breaks. “I’m not just your coworker. This isn’t about you ditching your job. I’m your girlfriend, Ryan. You’re supposed to tell me things, not go behind my back.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry for not telling you about my plans sooner.”
I shake my head. I’m too overwhelmed to speak. What is there to say? I don’t recognize the person I’m arguing with.
“I feel so stupid,” I say finally.
“Why?” he asks.
I shudder and the words slip out before I can register what I’m saying.
“Because this whole time that I’ve been falling in love with you, you’ve been keeping secrets from me.”
Ryan bites his lip. His eyes search mine for a long time.
“I… I didn’t know,” he says. “That you felt that way,” he clarifies.
I look away, cheeks burning hot. There’s a painful, stretched-out silence. I wait for him to say those words back to me. If he loves me back, he won’t take the job. He’ll make things right. But he doesn’t say a word. I feel tears threatening to well up and a painful lump building in my throat, but I know I won’t cry. It’s a skill I learned long ago, honed so Dimitri would never see me more vulnerable than I could handle. The irony of it all feels bitter. I clear my throat.
“Please don’t take the job,” I say. “That’s all I can say. That’s the only thing left to say.”
I rise from the bed. I can’t stand being close to him right now.
“Avery, I’m sorry,” he says. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t really believe Dimitri’s changed. He’s a legend. He’s going to make Hallie a star.”
“Do you want her to be star? Or do you want him to make you a star coach? You’ll leave me and Summit behind in the dust.”
“I’d take you with me, if you wanted to come,” he offers.
“Right, sure, because that’s ideal: working alongside an emotionally abusive asshole and the guy who doesn’t love me,” I snap. “Sounds great.”
He leaps up from the bed. “I didn’t say I didn’t love you,” he says.
I take a deep breath. “Do you?” I ask. “Do you love me?”
He wavers for a moment, like he’s going to say something. But he doesn’t.
“We’re done,” I say, walking quickly to the door so he can’t see the tears springing to my eyes for real this time. “We’re over.”
I turn the door handle hard and storm out, hurrying toward my room at the opposite end. I wait for the sound of him chasing after me, begging me to change my mind. But there’s nothing except the cool hiss of Ryan’s door as it eases shut behind me.
• CHAPTER 22 •
The day after I get home from the National Championships, needing a distraction, I text Sara and entice her to be home at seven for one of the most exquisite meals I have under my belt: seared scallops on a bed of fresh corn and roasted hazelnuts, swirled in a creamy, paprika-infused brown butter sauce. Scallops cost a breathtaking twenty-four dollars per pound at the grocery store, and their soft, delicate white bellies make them tricky to cook without charring the skin and leaving the insides raw. In other words, don’t bother attempting to make them unless you know what you’re doing and have a reason to splurge. I’m making a pound and a half of them tonight because I want to feel talented and productive and like myself again as I recount the story of my breakup to Sara. I lost sight of who I am over the course of my relationship with Tyler; I need to prove to myself that I haven’t forgotten that again while dating Ryan.
I’ve unloaded the groceries and preheated the oven when Sara walks in and drops her yoga mat by the door. She taught a class tonight, so wisps of blond hair frizz up from her topknot, and her cheeks glow pink. It’s true that teaching yoga isn’t as physically taxing as doing it, or so she tells me, but she’s still one of those girls who never sweats. As a person who spent a good chunk of her teenage years sweating on national television, I’m jealous.
“You’re officially my favorite person, do you know that?” she says, taking in the paper-wrapped scallops and the ears of corn. “This looks amazing.”
“Thanks, but save your compliments for when you taste it,” I say. “Hey, do me a favor? Will you shuck the corn?”
“Sure thing. Looks fancy. What’s the occasion?” she asks.
I look up carefully from the paprika I’m measuring. “Ryan and I broke up,” I say.
Sara gasps and gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m so sorry,” she says, hugging me.
“Well, technically, I broke up with him,” I add. “We had a fight, and…”
I press my lips together into a tight smile so they don’t tremble. I can’t let myself cry again—not now, not after I’ve spent the better part of the last two nights crying myself to sleep. It feels important to add the technicality that I was the one to break off the relationship. I can’t stomach being the girl who gets dumped twice in six months.
Sara sinks into the kitchen chair next to mine, and while I slide the chopped hazelnuts into the oven and pat each scallop dry with a paper towel, I recount what happened. I don’t have to litigate Dimitri’s wrongdoings for her; I say he was emotionally and verbally abusive, and she understands.
“The most embarrassing part is that when we were arguing, I accidentally told Ryan I was falling in love with him,” I say.
As mortifying as that was in the moment, I discover the humiliation feels just as fresh recounting it the next day. Sara visibly cringes.
“Did he say it back?” she asks.
“Nope,” I reply. “If he had, maybe things would’ve gone pretty differently.”
“Do you really love him?” she asks.
I sigh. The question sounds deceptively simple—yes or no. But there are too many other emotions swirling through my head right now to make sense of the situation: sadness, anger, embarrassment, shame, regret.
“I guess I’m just confused,” I say, puzzling through the thoughts out loud. “I thought I loved him. But the way he’s acting? Going behind my back, taking that job, not listening to what I’m saying about it? That makes me question who he really is.”
The realization stings.
“I’m really sorry he let you down,” Sara says softly. “He should’ve believed you.”
“That’s what’s so weird about it, though! He was devastated over what Hallie went through. He believes all the other gymnasts who have come forward about Kaminsky—it’s not that he’s one of those men’s rights activists who’s all about guys being innocent until proven guilty. He’s always cared. Just not now.”
“Maybe because now, this issue is personal for him? It’s about his career, which means he’s not thinking as clearly as he should?” Sara guesses.
I groan at how infuriating the situation is and drizzle olive oil into a hot skillet. I gently place the scallops one by one, listening to the sizzle as they bathe in oil. Cooking scallops looks intimidating, but it really all comes down to precise timing and skill—just like gymnastics. Not that I ever really want to think about gymnastics ever again, especially not right now.
“And then, ugh, the next day, we had to fly back from Miami together,” I say. “Me, Ryan, and Hallie, all in one row.”
“That really blows.”
“Yeah, sitting between my secret ex and a kid who’s mourning the potential end of her athletic career for three hours was a real treat.”
“How’s Hallie doing?” Sara asks.
I shrug and flip the scallops. “Not great,” I say. “Her confidence is shot, she’s stressed beyond belief, she’s frantic that she’ll fail at Trials.”
“Yikes,” Sara says.
I finish the recipe, mixing bright yellow kernels of corn with the rich, slippery sauce, and plating it carefully all together so it looks like a real gourmet treat. I turn around and I’m just about to set Sara’s plate in front of her, when she makes a sour face.
“What?” I ask.
She bites her lip and slides her phone across the table toward me.
“I hate to show you this, but this just popped up on my feed, and I think you should see it,” she says, wincing.
The screen is filled with Ryan’s most recent Instagram, a photo of him I must have missed. His arms are slung around Dimitri and Jasmine’s shoulders, and his satisfied smile gives me goose bumps. Dimitri looks the same as always—gruff, like he’s only posing to humor them. I search Jasmine’s face for clues, but she’s wearing that blankly beautiful newscaster look again. It’s impossible to tell what thoughts are running through her head. The background of the photo looks familiar, but I can’t quite place it until I spot the glint of medals against the wall behind them—it’s Dimitri and Jasmine’s house. They’re cozy enough to do dinner at home together now, I guess.
“I can’t believe I have to work with him for months,” I say, groaning.
It’s late March; Trials are at the tail end of June, with the Olympics stretching from late July through early August.
“You gotta focus on Hallie? Forget about him?” Sara says. I think she means it like a statement, but the absurdity of working on a three-person team with your ex for months is too much, even for her. “Channel your energy into the right places, block out the distractions, all that kind of stuff.”
I try not to grimace, but right now, I need something a little stronger than yoga. There’s half a bottle of red wine left corked on the counter, although it feels like a bad omen to pour a glass from it: Ryan and I opened it together last week. But the only other drink with a buzz to it is Sara’s home-brewed kombucha, so wine it is. Fittingly, the flavor has turned bitter. I drink it anyway.
“It’s just not fair,” I say, pushing away my plate of scallops.
Tears prick at my eyes. I inhale deeply to calm myself down, but it doesn’t really work.
“I want to be strong about this,” I say. “I don’t want to let this drama with Ryan get to me. I h-h-hate that I’m the kind of person who gets so thrown off course by stupid, dumb feelings.”
My shoulders start to shake with gentle sobs, and I wish I could disappear into a black hole. I don’t want Sara to see me like this. It’s embarrassing to lose your shit over a guy you’ve only dated for a handful of months, especially when Sara met me shortly after a breakup with a different guy. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck, right? And if I look like a boy-crazy mess, well…
“Avery, you’ve got to give yourself a break,” Sara says, interrupting my spiraling thoughts. “It’s okay to feel sad. Breakups are sad! That doesn’t make you weak.”
“Ryan’s not sad. He’s ‘networking,’ ” I say, making vicious air quotes.
“He posted one picture,” Sara says gently. “That doesn’t tell you what he’s really feeling on the inside.”
I nudge a scallop with my fork. I wish I could know what he was thinking: if he believes what I said about Dimitri; if he regrets not chasing after me; if he’s wondering how I’m doing right now, the same way I’m wondering about him. I miss him, even though I know I shouldn’t. He crossed a line, and he was wrong—I feel this on a cellular level—but the only comfort I crave is a hug in his sturdy arms. It strikes me as heartbreakingly unfair that the one person who would lift my spirits best is also the person who crushed them.
I want Ryan to stroke my hair and whisper apologies into my ear and promise me he’ll take my word more seriously next time. I need him to tell me he cares as deeply for Hallie as I do, and that he wants to protect her and girls like her, no matter what the cost, even if it means his career doesn’t zoom up the ladder as quickly as he’d hope. I took it for granted that I could trust him. Now I realize I shouldn’t have.
“Sweetie, it’s going to be okay,” Sara promises.
She tries to catch my gaze, and because I don’t want to ruin her night, too, I let her.
I muster up enough energy to pretend like her advice is helpful. “Right,” I say.
“Let’s eat,” she suggests. “Dinner looks incredible.”
But I’ve lost my appetite.
APRIL
2020
• CHAPTER 23 •
I’m in a terrible mood. I’m fifteen minutes late to practice because I couldn’t overcome the overwhelming dread of getting out of bed. The sight of Ryan’s spare blue toothbrush in my bathroom made me crumple. I don’t want to face him, but calling in sick would be worse.
I stride across the lobby, past the life-sized cutout of Hallie, beyond the poster with my face hanging dustily from a forgotten spot on the rafters, onto the floor. Ryan is chatting with another coach. His shoulders are hunched, and he leans his chin onto his fist as he talks; from the awkwardly self-conscious way he speaks, I’d bet anything that he’s discussing Nationals, even though I’m out of earshot. Once he notices me approaching, he shifts ever so subtly. He straightens up and clears his throat. He gives a small nod of recognition in my direction but doesn’t pause to say hello. The way he brushes me off looks so subtle to an outsider, but it stings because it’s light-years away from his attitude toward me even just a few days ago. I can’t believe I said that I was falling in love with him and was met with silence.
Hallie’s not here yet. I cruise to the water fountain just to have something to do. I lean against a low practice bar and look at my phone to kill time, but I can’t fully relax. The energy in the gym is all wrong. I can feel Ryan not even halfway across the room. Most of the kid gymnasts are too young or too casual about the sport to have understood the full ramifications of Hallie’s performance at Nationals—if they’re even aware a competition took place, they probably think it’s cool that she went at all—but the older, elite-track girls understand. So do their parents. Especially their parents, the ones who watch Hallie as if she’s a weather vane that can evaluate the gym’s worthiness and predict their own daughters’ success.
Hallie slinks into the gym ten minutes later with her tracksuit hood shielding half her face and quietly settles down in an empty corner of the floor to warm up. I head over to greet her, but she barely looks at me. Ryan joins us, squatting down to Hallie’s level on the floor and giving me a respectable amount of space. Luckily, Hallie is so caught up in her own morose world that I doubt she’ll even notice the tension between me and him.
“Actually, I’m just gonna warm up by myself, if you don’t mind,” Hallie says, slipping her AirPods into her ears and shutting us out.
This isn’t like her. She hasn’t been her typically energetic, goofy, fun-loving self since before Nationals. This isn’t good.
“Okay,” I say uncertainly.
“Just let me know when you’re ready for conditioning, okay?” Ryan asks.
She gives a curt nod, slides into a wide straddle, and slumps forward so her cheek rests against the floor. Sometimes, coaches will sit behind a gymnast in a straddle and press her down flatter into the floor for a better stretch; all I want to do is give her a hug. I hate seeing her so sad like this.
Normally, if Hallie were working on her own, Ryan and I would hang out. But I have nothing to say to him—not anything appropriate that I could say here, anyway. From the way he avoids me, I don’t get the sense he’s interested in speaking to me, either. So, instead, I do a little ab work until I panic that it makes me look like I’m peacocking for him. I get up and straighten up the supply closet, even though nothing is really out of place. I bounce lazily on the trampoline, turning back tuck after back tuck just because they’re simple and fun. I go to the bathroom and run my hands under the faucet for three times as long as I need to, just because I feel lonely and out of place in the one spot that’s always felt like home. I loathe everything about today. Nothing about this entire disastrous situation feels right—nothing.
Eventually, I wander back into the gym and perch on one of the beams to watch Hallie condition with Ryan from a safe distance. After her shaky performance at Worlds last fall, Hallie returned to the gym with a powerful vengeance. She threw herself into her practice with dynamite energy, ready to shape herself into a better athlete. But this time, returning from Nationals, her spirit couldn’t be any different. Across the gym, she’s supposed to be drilling sets of reps on bars: chin-ups, pull-ups, and leg lifts. She dangles loosely from the high bar and works with sloppy form. If she cared about the outcome, she’d work better. Work harder. She’s throwing today’s practice away.
I don’t know the specifics of the ups and downs of Hallie’s athletic career as well as, say, Ryan would, but I know enough: she was a supernaturally talented kid, and when her coaches said she had a real shot at an elite gymnastics career if she took training seriously, her parents made sure she had every advantage: a private coach at Summit, summers at training camps, a tutor so school would be more flexible. She always performed well enough in competitions to nab medals and level up. For Hallie, the Olympics probably never felt like a long shot. And now, to come so close and still worry you’re not quite good enough? That can’t be easy.
I feel for her. I wish circumstances were different—it’s only human to need some time to rebound, recharge, and return with a better attitude. But time isn’t on her side, and if she wastes the next few weeks or months by sulking, she’s letting a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice wither and die. It sounds dramatic and unfair, but so is this sport.
Hallie trudges my way, clutching her side and breathing hard from the workout Ryan just gave her.
“Ryan says we should start with floor today,” she says.
So, apparently, he won’t even speak to me unless it’s through her.
“Sure, let’s go,” I say brightly, trying to lift her mood.
“You want me to warm up tumbling first?” she asks.
That’s our usual routine, but today, I want to try something different.
“Actually, let’s hold off on that for now,” I say. “I want to go over the video of your Nationals routine together.”
She groans. “Do we have to?”
“Yes, we do, because that’s how we’ll know what to target over the next few weeks,” I insist, using my most authoritative voice.
It’s often all too easy to feel transported back in time at Summit, and to lose sight of the fact that I’m actually a decade older than Hallie, but it serves me well to remember I’m in charge sometimes.
“Let’s go, I have it on my phone,” I say.
“I hate this,” she mutters. “You’re the worst.”
“You’ll thank me when you win a medal on floor at the Olympics, okay?” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
We sit with our backs to the cool concrete wall and watch the routine on my phone screen. If it’s cringeworthy for me to watch her stumbles and mistakes again, this time with Jasmine and Barry’s sharp commentary playing in the background, I can only imagine how she feels.
“Ignore the commentary,” I say, turning my phone on silent.
To a casual viewer, Hallie’s routine gleams. She looks like a superstar dream. But to me, the mistakes are obvious: her leap series doesn’t hit the requisite 180-degree splits; there’s just a hair too much power on one tumbling pass; her poise drops as she loses energy toward the end of her routine. The second the video is over, Hallie pushes away the screen.
“I get it,” she says darkly. “I suck.”
“You don’t suck,” I retort.
She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on top, looking very, very small.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you,” I warn her. “You gave an amazing performance at Nationals, but you need to deliver an even stronger performance at Trials if you want your athletic career to continue. If you don’t use this moment to learn from your mistakes and grow, you might as well just quit now.”
That catches her attention. She stares at me, dumbstruck and horrified.
“Quit now?” Hallie repeats.
“I get that you’re sad, I get that you’re jealous of girls like Delia and Emma, I get that none of this went the way you hoped. But you’re still here, in fighting shape, and you have the opportunity of a lifetime coming up in just a few short weeks,” I remind her.
She sighs and doesn’t look at me for a long time. “I’m just afraid that it won’t matter what I do to prep,” she admits. “Like, what if I’m not good enough? What if that’s just it? Some people have what it takes, and some people don’t.”
“You can’t think like that,” I say.
“But what if it’s true?” she asks. “I mean, how many millions of little kids take gymnastics classes? And then, what, only four people actually make the Olympic team every four years? Come on.”
She’s right, but I don’t want her to think that way. A failed Olympic hopeful probably isn’t the most convincing person to deliver a pep talk right now, but I’m the person she’s got. I fumble for the right words; I think back to the girl I was moments before competing on floor at Olympic Trials in 2012, and what I’ve so desperately wished I could have said to her. What I wished I had known.
“There are no guarantees at all,” I say finally. “Not in gymnastics. Not in life. But you have to give this the best goddamn shot you have, I swear to you, because it’s the one chance you have.”
Her lower lip trembles, and she buries her face in her knees.
“Now get up,” I command.
I stand, hands on my hips. For a moment, I worry that I’ve gone too far. She doesn’t move. But then she pushes herself off the ground to stand up. Her cheeks glisten with tears, and her chest rises and falls with emotion, but she’s here. Standing. Ready to work.
MAY
2020
• CHAPTER 24 •
The calendar slips into May before I know it. Each day at Summit is tightly packed: Hallie’s schedule is dominated by heavy-duty practice and punctuated by appointments with a revolving door of professionals: yoga and meditation sessions led by Sara, acupuncture and massage by a team of sports medicine doctors I found at Children’s Hospital in Boston, visits from a nutritionist to map out her pre-Olympic meals. I give so many pep talks, I spend my lunch breaks Googling inspirational quotes. My nights are busy, too: I hang out at home with Sara, go out for drinks with Jasmine more regularly now, and visit Mom and Dad for dinner when they complain it’s been too long since they’ve seen me.
I’m glad I’m mostly busy, because even with the little free time I have, it’s too easy to dwell on what happened with Ryan. The sadness creeps in during idle moments when I least expect it: I’ll be washing my hair in the shower when I realize how badly I miss kissing him. Or I’ll be waiting by the stove for water to boil when I get the urge to text him—and I can’t anymore. When I’m lying in shavasana at the end of yoga class, I should be relaxed. But instead, I rake over every memory I have of Ryan from February and March, trying to spot the moment I missed him betraying me. The last thing I want to do is let the weight of the breakup crush me. I have to keep moving in order to eventually move on.
When practice wraps up on Monday night, I’m heading out of the lobby when I see a missed call and a text from Jasmine. I pause in the doorway of the building to read the message.
Do you happen to be free tonight? Would love to talk to you. It’s important.
I’m about to text her back when I hear a noise behind me—someone clearing his throat.
“Oh, sorry,” I say, stepping outside into the warm spring night. It’s finally nice enough that you can get away without a jacket, and blips of music float by as cars drive past with their windows down. “Didn’t mean to block the door.”
I turn and flinch. There’s Ryan, awkwardly ruffling a hand through his hair.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.
We’ve worked alongside each other just fine, but that’s the key word: “alongside.” Not with each other. Outside of communicating the essential logistics of Hallie’s training schedule, we’ve barely spoken two words to each other since returning from Nationals. I’m afraid that if I start, I won’t be able to stop, and I’ll blurt something embarrassing and emotional.
“It’s okay,” I say.
That much, at least, I can manage.
He moves past me toward the parking lot, then stops and turns.
“Everything all right?” he asks.
“Yeah, I just got a weird text, that’s all,” I say.
I don’t tell him it’s from Jasmine. From what she’s told me, he and Dimitri are spending more and more time together. I don’t want whatever I say to Ryan to get back to Dimitri.
“I hope she’s okay,” he says.
He looks concerned, but he doesn’t move from his spot on the pavement. If our relationship had unfolded differently, I’d be able to tell him everything. He’d reassure me things would be okay. But now, ten feet sits between us, and it feels like ten miles. I know that neither one of us will close the distance.
“Yeah, it’ll all be fine,” I say.
I cross my arms and lean back against the door frame. He seems to get the message—I have nothing more to say to him. He waves good night and gets into his car. I wait until he drives away to text Jasmine back.
I’ll come over now, I tell her.
I’m nervous pulling into Jasmine’s driveway. We’ve seen each other plenty of times since Nationals, but always in public—never at home. Together, we’ve split oysters and sauvignon blanc at a French bistro, shared a big veggie pizza at Stonehearth in the town center, and even met up on a Saturday afternoon to get manicures together (I rarely indulge in them, but she promised it would be fun, and I have to admit, it was pretty nice). There’s an unspoken agreement: we don’t hang out around Dimitri. I don’t know if he’ll be home tonight.
I heave the gold knocker against the door and hear the pitter-patter of bare feet inside. Jasmine opens the door looking unlike I’ve seen her in years. Her face is free of makeup, so completely so that I can see the dark circles beneath her eyes and a blemish forming on her cheek. Her hair is unceremoniously pulled back into a low ponytail, and she’s wearing saggy gray sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. She looks both embarrassed and relieved to see me.
“I’m so glad you came,” she says, pulling me into a hug. “Thank you so much.”
I step cautiously inside. The house is quiet. “Of course.”
“He’s not home,” she says, as if she can read my thoughts. “It’s poker night. He’ll be out for hours.”
“Oh, okay.”
I mean Oh, good, but I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic.
She leads us through the kitchen, where she pours me a glass of rosé to match the one she’s already drinking, and then into the living room, where we settle onto the ivory-colored sectional beneath the wall of medals. She pulls her feet up under her. On the glass coffee table beside us, a fragrant candle burns brightly.
“I know we don’t really do this,” she says, gesturing at the couch between us. “Or at least, not for a long time.”
A decade ago, there was nothing unusual about us spending hours in each other’s bedrooms, sneaking snacks and talking about the movie stars we thought were cute. But that was before London, before she got married, before we grew apart and grew up.
“We can do this,” I say. “We’re friends.”
She gives a small smile at the word “friends” and sips her wine. “Yeah.”
“So…” I say, trying to prompt her.
I don’t want to push her, but I know she didn’t call me over here just to chitchat.
“I have news,” she announces.
“Okay,” I say gently.
I can’t help but race through the options: she’s not pregnant—she’s drinking wine—but maybe it’s something about Dimitri and Ryan, or her career, or worse, a health scare of some kind, or something terrible with her family.
She gives me a nervous look and takes a deep breath, as if she’s psyching herself up to say whatever it is out loud.
“I’m going to leave Dimitri,” she says.
Her voice is low and quiet, as if she can’t quite trust that we’re really alone.
“Oh my god, Jasmine,” I breathe. “Wow.”
She nods. “I know. I haven’t told him yet. I need to get my life in order first. But… I’ve decided.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” I ask.
“Part of me has known for a long time that marrying him was the wrong decision,” she explains. “It felt right at the time, but I was swept up by him, and I was so young, and I wasn’t thinking straight. He had a way of intimidating me—more so back then—and when he said we should get married, I wasn’t brave enough to say no. But…” She hesitates, then admits, “Part of the decision came from talking to you.”
“Me?”
I clap a hand to my mouth. I never hid my contempt for him, but I never outright told her to leave him, either. Meddling in a marriage, encouraging a wife to leave her husband—it all feels too adult for me. I’m way in over my head.
“It started at Nationals,” she recalls. “At the bar, remember? Nobody has ever dared to tell me to my face that Dimitri is…” She stops short and scowls. “An emotionally abusive asshole. But you did. You know what he’s like, better than anybody.”
“Not as a husband, though,” I say.
“Even still,” she says. “Once you said it, I couldn’t ignore it. It gnawed at me for days afterward. Everything he had said and done over the years, I brushed it aside. But you didn’t, and it made me think that I shouldn’t, either.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Our relationship wasn’t balanced, you know?” she continues. “There was never a time when it felt like I had the upper hand, ever. It was always him. We were gymnast and coach and then husband and wife, but the dynamic between us never shifted. We were never equal partners, the way you’re supposed to be.”
“I wondered about that,” I admit. “When I first heard you were together, I just… I couldn’t make any sense of it.”
“I didn’t know how strange the relationship was,” she says. “I didn’t see how unhealthy it was.”
“You deserve so much better than him,” I say. “I mean, nobody deserves him at all, but especially not you.”
I’m relieved for her, but I’m afraid for what I’ve set into motion. I know that, on average, it takes women seven attempts to finally leave their abusive husbands for good. I wonder where Jasmine will go; I’d let her stay with me and Sara, if she wanted to, even though the prospect of Dimitri banging on our door late at night makes me feel sick with nerves.
“I think I know that?” she says tentatively, like she isn’t ready to fully commit to the idea just yet. “I mean, I look at my life, and the only common thread throughout all the different parts—gymnastics, TV, marriage—is that Dimitri has always been right there behind me, making me feel small. Everyone else cheers me on. But with him, it’s always…”
Jasmine falters, and her expression crumples.
“Nothing is ever good enough for him. I’m not good enough for him,” she says. Her voice gets high and tight. “He says I’m too anxious, too sensitive, too mediocre.”
“Maybe you’d be less anxious if he didn’t make you so anxious,” I point out.
I don’t know if she even hears me—now that she’s started to spill how she really feels, she barrels on, spitting out the insults Dimitri has hurled her way over the years.
“The dinner is late,” she recites. “And my cellulite is bad. I supposedly interfere with his schedule. I really don’t think all that is true, but no matter what I do, the comments keep coming… I thought marriage was about being on each other’s team, you know? But not mine.”
She gingerly places her wineglass on a coaster on the coffee table and sinks back into the cushions with a hand pressed over her mouth to muffle her sobs. For a moment, her shoulders shake, and I reach across the couch to hug her. She leans into the embrace, and we stay like that for a long time. I rub her back and wonder, with a sickening feeling in my gut, what it must be like for her to prepare to leave the man she has been with for most of her childhood and the entirety of her adult life. I can’t fathom it. She is so incredibly brave—she always has been. I hold her until she steadies herself, returning to the normal rise and fall of her breathing.
“I’m sorry for getting emotional,” she says quietly, wiping away her tears.
“Please, there’s nothing to apologize for,” I insist.
She shrugs.
“You know, I’m here if you need anything—any help at all,” I tell her.
“There’s a lot I need to figure out,” she says, sighing. “All my money is in a joint account, and I’ll need a place to live, and I need to find a good divorce lawyer. That stuff, I can do on my own. But maybe, when it’s time, you’ll help me pack up and move out?”
“Of course,” I promise.
She suddenly looks shy. “Or even if you just continue to be my friend, that’s more than enough, you know. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we came back into each other’s lives. Really and truly just blown-away grateful.”
She gives me the most tender smile, and I feel so touched that she sees me as a person who will have her back again. It’s heartbreaking to watch her reckon with the broken pieces of her relationship, but I’m proud that she trusts me to help her heal and move on. Before Nationals, I never would have guessed in a million years that Jasmine and I would be friends again—could be best friends again, the kind of presence in your life where it doesn’t matter if you cry in your sweatpants or your voice cracks when you reveal the gnarled insecurities and fears that keep you up at night, because that person loves you for you and loves you for good, forever. I didn’t think a friendship of that magnitude could abruptly drop dead and be revived nearly a decade later. But this time, I’m glad to be proven wrong.
• CHAPTER 25 •
A few days later, as I’m jamming my feet into sneakers and getting ready to head out of my apartment for practice, Jasmine sends me a text.
Another one, she writes, copying a link to a news story.
The text shows a preview of the NBC story, with the headline “A Seventh Gymnast Accuses Dr. Ron Kaminsky of Sexual Abuse” and a photo of Skylar Hayashi taken at a competition. I feel disgusted as I click on the story and wait for it to load. I don’t know much about Skylar other than that she’s one of Dimitri’s gymnasts, she only competes on vault, and as far as I’ve seen, she can stick perfect landings in her sleep.
I sink down on the couch to read more. NBC reports that Skylar came forward on Twitter early this morning, writing, “I have some difficult news to share. Like many of my fellow athletes, I survived sexual abuse by Dr. Ron Kaminsky. For those of you who may be suffering in silence, I encourage you to seek the help you deserve. #MeToo.” NBC notes that Skylar accused Kaminsky of abuse following similar allegations from Delia Cruz, Maggie Farber, Kiki McCloud, Emily Jenkins, Bridget Sweeney, and Liora Cohen, and that Kaminsky’s criminal trial is set for this winter. The American Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s governing body, issued a statement this morning in support of its gymnasts’ bravery, but that doesn’t feel like enough to me. They must have known what was going on. Didn’t they?
Reluctantly, I head outside and drive to Summit. I know Hallie is going to be shaken up today, and I wish I had a way to shield her from all of this pain. What Skylar and Hallie and all the other girls are doing is already painful enough. They’ve already sacrificed enough of their childhood, their freedom, their health, and their families’ peace of mind in order to be where they are. It’s unbelievably unfair that grown men, monsters, can step in and make everything even worse.
When I spot Hallie glumly sprawled across a crash mat, I don’t have to ask if she’s seen the news. I can tell.
“Skylar,” she says heavily. “You saw?”
“I did,” I say.
“Out of everyone, I didn’t think it would be Skylar,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, out of all of us, she’s, like, the normal one.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Hallie sighs. “She has school friends. She has a boyfriend. She’s really pretty and goes to Aruba with her family every winter, and she went to a Post Malone concert last month.”
“This can happen to anyone,” I say gently.
“Yeah, but you’d just think… ugh, god…” Hallie says, trailing off. “You’d hope that not everybody’s life would be ruined, you know?”
I nod, because what else is there to say?
Ryan approaches us gingerly, squatting down so he’s on Hallie’s eye level. He glances at me and gives a nervous half smile as a greeting.
“Hi. How are you doing?” he asks Hallie.
She shrugs at him and looks at me. “Bummed, I guess.”
“Because of Skylar’s news?” he asks.
She nods. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want to push you too hard today,” he says. “I’m sorry you’re having a tough morning.”
I’m surprised by how gentle he is with her. Trials are six weeks away—there isn’t time to take it easy, especially not when Hallie’s less of a shoo-in for the Olympic team than we all had hoped.
“Thanks,” she says. “I mean, I’m okay. It’s just… unfair.”
“It is. It really is,” he says. “Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you right now?”
She gives him a skeptical look.
“I’m here if you want to chat,” he says warmly, sounding like a coach and a protective big brother all rolled into one. “Or if you want to smash things, I can bring in my old printer and a hammer. Or we can skip practice today and pick up tomorrow.”
She laughs. “No, I’ll be good. I appreciate all that, really, but no smashing necessary.”
“Okay. Just let me know,” he says.
“Will do.”
He starts to rise, but appears to think better of it. “If it’s any comfort, I have a tiny piece of news that might cheer you up,” he says.
“Trials are canceled, and I can go straight to the Olympics?” Hallie guesses.
I think I know where Ryan is going with this, and I don’t like it.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I mutter.
“Well, I’ve been talking with Dimitri, and he seems really excited about training you for 2024, if you still want that,” he says, offering a small smile.
There’s no way Dimitri would have ever used the word “excited.” Ryan’s exaggerating.
Hallie beams. “Well, that’s nice!”
“Just passing along a compliment,” Ryan says.
“I mean, I guess a lot depends on what happens this summer, but… without making promises, I think I do still want to keep 2024 open as an option.”
“Cool,” Ryan says, high-fiving her.
“Dimitri’s intense, isn’t he?” Hallie says, turning to me. “I mean, he’s the best, but he’s intense. Right, Avery?”
“Yeah, he’s intense,” I say darkly.
“Avery,” Ryan says quietly, as if he’s warning me.
He shoots me a meaningful glare, and I hesitate.
“I’m sure whatever happens, you’ll be amazing,” I tell her diplomatically.
It’s the truth. Not the whole truth, but there’s only so much I can say without crossing an inappropriate professional line.
She squeals and drums her hands against the mat. “Eep, thanks.”
Ryan smirks. “Glad I could cheer you up. Let’s get to work.”
• CHAPTER 26 •
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jasmine got her shit together to leave Dimitri pretty quickly. Within two weeks of her telling me she wanted to divorce him, she had already contacted a good divorce lawyer, funneled away enough money into a separate bank account in order to put down a deposit and the first month of rent on an apartment in Cambridge, and officially broke the news to Dimitri. She told me she was going to do it on a Friday night; I spent all evening holding my breath, waiting for the frantic phone call that she needed help. I stayed in and watched a movie on Netflix with my phone resting in my hand, just in case. But the call never came—just a text at nearly midnight, asking me to come by the next morning to help her pack up her things. I was relieved.
So, on Saturday morning, for the final time, I drive to see Jasmine at her house. It’s a gorgeous seventy-five degrees outside, but I get a chill waiting on the front step for her to open the door. It’s hard to imagine that after nearly a lifetime with Dimitri, she’ll be leaving him behind for good. She opens the door in white jeans and a pink tank top and throws her arms around me into a hug.
“Thank you for coming!” she says.
She seems relieved to see me, which is, I guess, better than the alternative—miserable.
“I’m happy to,” I say. “Is Dimitri home?”
She wrinkles her nose. “No. He was at least nice enough to leave me alone while I packed today.”
“So, then, last night went okay?” I ask.
She heaves a sigh and starts to trudge up the stairs to her bedroom. “Yes and no. At first, he was furious. He screamed at me. He wanted to know if I was cheating, and he accused me of sabotaging Tokyo by throwing this distraction his way at a ‘crucial time,’ ” she says, rolling her eyes and making air quotes with her fingers. “He was mad at me, but ultimately, he didn’t argue with me. I mean, he can’t pretend like our marriage is happy. I think we’d both be happier with a divorce.”
“Wow.”
It’s a tiny, meager thing to say, but words just aren’t forming for me. I can’t imagine standing up to Dimitri like that. I’m impressed by her bravery.
We enter her bedroom, and I try not to think about the would-be baby’s room down the hall. The crisp white bed is covered with folded piles of clothes, and there’s a stack of cardboard boxes piled in one corner of the room. On the nightstand, there’s a roll of packing tape and a black Sharpie alongside Jasmine’s engagement ring and wedding ring, and a silver photo frame turned facedown.
“He told me that he would ruin me, that I’d never work in the sport again, that I was an ‘ungrateful bitch’ who was giving up the best life with the ‘greatest man’ I’d ever know,” she recalls, spitting out each brutal word. “But, I mean, fine. Nothing worse than anything he’s said before. And, most important, he let me go.”
“He let you go,” I repeat dumbly, trying to absorb how casually Jasmine tosses off his cruel remarks.
I remember how horrible he was to us years ago, but it’s different to hear of him hurling insults like that at his wife. It’s depressing.
“He said he was angry with me, but he wouldn’t stop me,” she says. “His exact words, I think, were that I’m now ‘an adult woman who can make her own choices.’ ”
“As if you weren’t when you got married,” I say, filling in the implication.
“Barely,” she admits. “I was twenty-one. I had been on a few dates with guys my own age, but he was the first person I dated. He was the only man I’d ever really known.”
Someday, when a little more time has passed, Jasmine will eventually dip one toe in the dating pool, and she’s going to discover an entire world out there: electrifying first dates; butterfly-inducing texts; real, equal love. Maybe heartbreak, too. But at least this time around, she’ll be standing on her own two feet, away from Dimitri’s shadow.
“So. Help me put everything into boxes?” she asks.
“Of course.”
We work side by side, stacking her jewel-toned shift dresses, workout clothes, and thick winter sweaters into cardboard boxes, securing them shut with strips of tape, and labeling each box with thick, definitive black lines of Sharpie. I don’t want to dwell on the reason she’s moving out, but there’s still so much I’m dying to understand. Once she leaves here, that will all be in her past—today feels like the last chance I have.
“Do you ever think you would’ve had a real relationship with Dimitri if he weren’t our coach first?” I ask.
She looks up from the box she’s taping shut with a sour, stunned expression. “No. We wouldn’t have known each other.”
“How did it happen? We weren’t really… talking then,” I say awkwardly.
Even after all these years, I still can’t picture it.
She returns to taping the box, maybe so she doesn’t have to look at me as she explains this part.
“I did a TV segment at a news station in Boston after the Olympics,” she recalls. “He came with me—he was on-air, too. Instead of driving me straight back home afterward, he said he was in the mood for a drink, and so we went out to this Irish pub.”
He probably didn’t invite her out; he probably just told her they were going, and that was that.
“He ordered beer after beer after beer,” she says. “I didn’t order anything; I was just twenty, not old enough to drink legally yet, and I was too afraid of being recognized to even try. He gave me sips of his beer when he thought the bartender wouldn’t notice. And then, right there at the bar, he kissed me. I didn’t know what to do—it’s not like I was going to say no to him.”
“Were you okay with that?” I ask.
“Not at first! I was terrified,” she says.
“But as time went on, it wasn’t so bad?” I ask.
“You have to remember, Avery, I didn’t have anything to compare it to,” she says sadly. “No other boyfriends. My mom had been single practically my entire life. It’s not like I had other friends my age with regular relationships, either. So… in time, it felt normal. That’s all I knew. Plus, he was established, respected, he had money… When he wanted to get married, it didn’t even cross my mind to say no. I thought this is just what people did.”
She pushes the box to the side and starts on another one.
“We were so sheltered,” I say.
“Mm-hmm,” Jasmine agrees. “It’s nice that Hallie has you, someone she can talk to, someone she can trust. We didn’t have anyone like that at the gym growing up.”
She absentmindedly fidgets with her necklace, surveying the spread of clothes still laid out on the bed.
“I guess,” I say. I still find it hard to take a compliment.
An idea comes to me, half-formed and fuzzy.
“We could do something,” I say, trying to pin down the exact thought. “I mean, we could help these girls. We’ve been through enough to know what they need.”
“You mean like a support group?” Jasmine asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, gymnasts know to take care of their bodies… but I don’t know if most of them take care of their minds, too. I didn’t. What if we help connect girls to mental health resources? That way, they can get the support they need, no matter what they’re dealing with.”
“That would be so cool!” Jasmine says.
“If anyone could do it, it would be us,” I point out. “I mean, mostly you—you still have a real name in gymnastics. You could get people to care.”
Jasmine leans onto the bed, too, and tilts her head.
“We could do that, couldn’t we?” she says, awestruck. “We could really help.”
“This could change girls’ lives,” I say.
Jasmine gives me a knowing look. I don’t have to spell it out for her. The fact is if you train and compete as an elite gymnast, you get hit one way or another, if not multiple ways: maybe you get molested by a doctor or maybe you fail out of college because you’re too depressed and disoriented to give a shit anymore. Your body breaks down: your spine aches if you stand for too long, or your ankle is held together with metal screws, or you never fully shake off the habits you picked up to starve yourself.
“I like this a lot. And god only knows I’ll need something to keep my mind off…” She waves her hand vaguely around the bedroom. “All of this.”
We finish packing up Jasmine’s bedroom and bathroom quickly. The entire time, we work through ideas: what the group needs to do, how to make it happen, and even a name. We settle on the Elite Gymnastics Foundation, which would provide mental health services and support to top gymnasts.
I feel the same flood of adrenaline and desperate sense of longing I felt when I first fought for the coaching job at Summit. It’s not a new feeling, either; I remember the tangled rush of emotions from my own gymnastics career. Wanting things—wanting things so badly, my heart races and the hair on my arms stands on end—makes me feel alive and full of energy. Right now, I feel like I could stick a double-twisting layout flyaway off the high bar.
I’m not naïve—I don’t expect two former athletes to change the sport overnight. But if gymnastics taught me anything, it’s that if you work long and hard at something, astronomical, unfathomable success can be yours.
When Jasmine tapes up the final box, we carry everything downstairs to the foyer so the movers can pick them up later this afternoon. (All those years of conditioning really did come in handy.) We sit on the cool tile floor in the front hallway, leaning against the cardboard boxes with our feet splayed out in front of us.
“Girl, thank you,” Jasmine says, exhausted.
“This? This was nothing,” I say truthfully.
I’m happy to help her with whatever she needs. She should know that by now.
“I don’t mean just the boxes,” she says. “That was clutch, but I mean everything—the boxes, your friendship, this idea. It’s a big idea.”
“It is,” I admit. “And there’s nobody better in the world to do it with. It has to be you and me.”
Suddenly, her eyes sparkle, and she bolts upright.
“Huddle up?” she asks mischievously.
The old memories of our competition ritual, our good-luck charm, come flooding back.
“Let’s huddle up,” I say, beaming.
We loop our arms around each other’s shoulders. I’m not sure what to say.
“We can do this,” she declares.
I squeeze her tighter and join in.
“We can do this, we can do this, we can do this,” we chant.
It feels like coming home.
• CHAPTER 27 •
It’s tough to focus at practice on Monday. When I’m working one-on-one with Hallie—warming up, drilling tumbling, fine-tuning her techniques on floor—I feel present. But otherwise, my head is adrift. I clean crash mats and wonder about Jasmine’s move out of Dimitri’s house; I organize the supply closet and daydream about the Elite Gymnastics Foundation. The idea felt fresh and exciting when I first came up with it, but here, at Summit, it feels even crisper. I watch Hallie sprint down the vault runway and catapult herself through the air, and my heart surges with the desire to protect her. Brainstorming with Jasmine felt more abstract, but here, it’s impossible to ignore the very real person at risk right in front of me.
That’s why I have to talk to Ryan. I can’t sit by and watch as he takes Hallie into a dangerous situation. Arguing with him didn’t work the first time, but maybe then, I didn’t give it all the effort I had—maybe I held back out of fear of damaging our relationship. That’s not a concern I have anymore, obviously. If he ignores one last-ditch effort to deter him from joining Dimitri, then at least I can say I’ve truly tried my best. But I have to try now, before it’s too late.
After Hallie has left for the night, I wait for Ryan. I sit on the stairs in the lobby that lead up to the second floor, which positions me with the best view: from here, I can see half the lobby, the door to the gym, the door to the office, the door to the bathrooms, and the exit. No matter where Ryan is, I’ll be able to catch him. Sure enough, two minutes later, he rounds the corner from the office.
“Wait!” I call, springing up from my seat on the stairs.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
He looks surprised. “Oh! Believe it or not, I was actually coming to find you.”
“Why?” I ask.
He tilts his head. “There’s something I’m hoping to get your opinion on. If you’re open to talking to me about it.”
This is practically the most communication we’ve had all day.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He’s piqued my curiosity.
“You first,” he says. “Let’s sit in the office?”
We sit down. I gear up to tell him what’s on my mind, but my thoughts get tangled—I don’t know where to start. So much has changed since our breakup: my renewed friendship with Jasmine, her separation from Dimitri, what I can only imagine is Ryan drawing further into Dimitri’s inner circle.
“So, you might know that Jasmine and I are close again?” I start.
“I’ve heard,” he says, nodding.
“We’ve been talking a lot about how the culture of gymnastics at this level is just totally messed up, particularly for girls,” I explain. “I mean, even injuries aside, there are the issues with food and body image, mental health, sexual assault… and we want to do something about it.”
“That’s great,” he says.
“We’re launching a support network,” I continue. “We’re calling it the Elite Gymnastics Foundation. We’ll connect gymnasts to mental health professionals.”
“Impressive,” he says. “You’re the perfect people to make that happen.”
His compliment warms me, but I can’t let it soften me toward him.
“Well, you might want to wait before you start saying nice things to me,” I warn. This is my last-ditch attempt to get him to listen to me: “I need you to turn down the Powerhouse job.”
He looks surprised.
“So, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I went to Powerhouse on my lunch break today. It was… intense.”
I purse my lips. “I’m sure it was.”
“I’ve heard your stories about what it was like to have him as your coach, but seeing it firsthand felt different,” he explains. “I didn’t like the way he treated his gymnasts. He made fun of them for getting winded during conditioning; he called them ‘sloppy,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘useless.’ He came up with these absurd punishments, like running laps for falling off beam during just a regular practice.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but… Ryan, come on, what did you expect?” I ask.
“It made me have serious doubts about taking the job,” he admits.
I’m shocked but hopeful.
“Well, obviously, you know what I think,” I say.
“I guess I just wanted to confirm with you—do you think what I saw today was a one-off, bad day? Or is that who he really is?” he asks, squinting like he already knows the answer.
“That’s just him,” I say.
Ryan leans his elbows onto the desk and presses his fingers to his temples. He exhales a ragged sigh.
“Okay, then,” he says, more to himself than to me, with a small shake of his head. He looks up at me with a resigned expression. “Then that’s that.”
There’s too much at stake for me to jump to conclusions.
“That’s… what?” I clarify.
“I can’t take the job,” he says.
I’m reeling at how quickly he changed his mind. I can’t wait to tell Jasmine. I almost can’t quite believe that I’m hearing him correctly. Despite how much I hoped Ryan would come around, deep down, I don’t know if I ever really believed he would.
“It’s not the dream job I thought it was—not if he’s like this,” he explains.
My heart races as I tell him emphatically, “It’s not. You’re right.”
“I’ll talk to the Conways and tell Dimitri I won’t be working for him,” he says.
That’s the next step that will make all of this feel real.
“I can’t promise the Conways will accept my decision, though,” he warns. “If they got excited about Powerhouse, they might choose to transfer there, anyway.”
That makes my stomach flip—not only would Hallie still work with Dimitri, but if she leaves, Summit may not have much use for me anymore.
“If they still want Dimitri, they can go see his gym for themselves,” I suggest.
“Right,” he says. He pauses and bites his lip, then continues in a soft, serious tone. “I’m sorry it took me so long to listen to you. I should have trusted your opinion of him from the start. This isn’t an excuse at all, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around exactly how abusive he really was. I knew he wasn’t an easy coach, but everything you’ve told me is so different from the way I was trained—I just didn’t get it at first. And maybe I was starstruck by him. But I understand now, and I apologize for taking so long to get here. I understand if this isn’t possible, but I hope you can forgive me.”
He looks somber but heartfelt. When he offers up a hopeful smile, his dimple flashes beneath his tender, dark eyes.
“Thank you for saying that,” I manage. “It means a lot—it really does. Apology accepted.”
He ruffles a hand through his hair in relief and shoots me a grateful look. “I’m really glad to hear that.”
If Ryan and I broke up because he wouldn’t listen to the truth about Dimitri’s abuse, and now he’s come around and apologized, where does that leave us? I can’t help but wonder if the same question is on his mind. But even if we are on the same page, I’m not ready for us to move forward together again. All those months of hurt and distrust can’t dissolve in an instant. A single apology doesn’t reverse the pain I felt because of him.
And yet… I can’t lie to myself: my feelings for Ryan never went away. I shoved them down so I could stomach working with him day in and day out, and I tried to distract myself with Jasmine, with Sara, with cooking elaborate meals. Even still, I crave the easy way we used to joke around; I miss his secretly romantic side; I can’t forget how everything else melted away when he touched me. When we were together, he made me feel seen and understood—and I’ve spent enough time in the wrong relationship to grasp how special and rare that is.
I stand up to give him a hug. He holds me close to his chest. We fit together like we always did, with his chin resting on top of my head and my cheek nuzzled against his shoulder. It strikes me as unfair that love isn’t like a switch you can flip on and off at will; despite the storm of conflicted emotions I have over Ryan right now, he’s the one person in the world whose hug will make me feel better.
I pull back just enough to look up at him. He meets my gaze, and there’s a heaviness to his expression that I can’t quite read. Is it regret? Or longing? Either way, it makes my heart ache. For a split second, I feel his body tense beneath my arms, like he’s about to steel himself to kiss me. But then, just as quickly as it arrived, the moment disappears.
Ryan backs away, digging in his pockets for his car keys, furtively looking over my shoulder to the door.
“I should get going,” he says stiffly. “I’m glad we had this conversation.”
I nod. “Same—me, too.”
We exit through the lobby. He holds the door open for me.
In the parking lot, we walk in opposite directions to our cars, but I hear him call my name before I get inside.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Thank you. I mean it.”
He drives away, and I watch his headlights vanish around the corner. I shouldn’t miss him already, but I do.