Part 6. March 2020

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.

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.

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.

She nods like a little soldier and jumps again.

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.

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’m overheating in a thick turtleneck and knit scarf. There are gloves stashed away in the pockets of my parka.

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.

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.

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.

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.

His cheeks go pink, and I don’t think it’s just from the thirty-five-degree weather.

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.”

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.

I can hear a note of restrained laughter in his voice.

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.

I have to stop myself from uttering the three little words that almost roll off my tongue next.

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.

My stomach does a backflip.

He gazes at me for a moment that feels like an eternity.

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.

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.

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.

She blushes. “Thanks.”

Hallie exhales. Her shoulders visibly relax.

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.

The words come easily because they’re the truth.

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.

An event coordinator taps Hallie on the shoulder. “It’s time,” she says.

Hallie glances at each of us. “Bye.”

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.

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.

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.

Nobody has to say out loud what she really means: her best event is now over, so it could all go downhill from here.

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.

Hallie scowls and slumps down further in her seat. There’s a beat of silence between us.

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.

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.”

She tilts her head and stares at me.

She takes a long sip of her water and shakes her head slowly.

She sighs dramatically.

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.

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.

She pants and gives a half-hearted thumbs-up. “Don’t congratulate me until the score is ready,” she warns.

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.

A full point! Selfishly, I glow with excitement.

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.

Hallie zips up her tracksuit and pulls the hoodie down low.

She shoves her feet into her Uggs and slings her gym bag over her shoulder.

She makes a beeline for the nearest exit.

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.

She scans the crowded room.

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.

Jasmine is watching expectantly.

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.

The bartender slides a menu my way, and I order a glass of wine as quickly as I can.

She would grow up to be the kind of woman who raves about lettuce.

That sounds like a euphemism for bad.

She winks, as if there’s a camera waiting somewhere to catch her reaction. There’s not.

The question catches me off guard. “We don’t really need to discipline her.”

Jasmine doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she sips quietly from her wineglass. I regret speaking so candidly about Dimitri in front of her.

The word still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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.

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.

Discomfort clings to me like an itchy, too-small sweater. There’s more I want to know.

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.

Maybe that’s a step too far, but Jasmine doesn’t disagree with me.

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.

We don’t even need to say it out loud.

We both look limply down at the remaining salad on our plates.

Jasmine lets out a low whistle, understanding the implication: Hallie’s not like we were. “Good for her.”

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

I groan.

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.

He doesn’t greet me.

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.

There’s real concern in his voice.

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.

But Dimitri’s already halfway to the bedroom. We’ve been dismissed.

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.

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.

The edge of my voice sounds hard. Angry. Ugly.

For a moment, I feel too bitter to speak.

The elevator doors ding open on the seventh floor, and I follow him to his room.

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.

Ryan bites his lip and shakes his head. I can’t tell if it’s in disbelief or disagreement.

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.

He sighs. His face contorts, but I can’t tell if it’s with guilt or exasperation.

My anger blooms into rage, then betrayal.

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 shudder and the words slip out before I can register what I’m saying.

Ryan bites his lip. His eyes search mine for a long time.

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.

I rise from the bed. I can’t stand being close to him right now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As mortifying as that was in the moment, I discover the humiliation feels just as fresh recounting it the next day. Sara visibly cringes.

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.

The realization stings.

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.

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.”

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.

She bites her lip and slides her phone across the table toward me.

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.

It’s late March; Trials are at the tail end of June, with the Olympics stretching from late July through early August.

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.

Tears prick at my eyes. I inhale deeply to calm myself down, but it doesn’t really work.

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…

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.

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.

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.

This isn’t like her. She hasn’t been her typically energetic, goofy, fun-loving self since before Nationals. This isn’t good.

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.

So, apparently, he won’t even speak to me unless it’s through her.

That’s our usual routine, but today, I want to try something different.

She groans. “Do we have to?”

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.

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.

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.

She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on top, looking very, very small.

That catches her attention. She stares at me, dumbstruck and horrified.

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.”

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.

Her lower lip trembles, and she buries her face in her knees.

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.

I turn and flinch. There’s Ryan, awkwardly ruffling a hand through his hair.

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.

That much, at least, I can manage.

He moves past me toward the parking lot, then stops and turns.

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.

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.

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 step cautiously inside. The house is quiet. “Of course.”

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.

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.

She gives a small smile at the word “friends” and sips her wine. “Yeah.”

I don’t want to push her, but I know she didn’t call me over here just to chitchat.

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.

Her voice is low and quiet, as if she can’t quite trust that we’re really alone.

She nods. “I know. I haven’t told him yet. I need to get my life in order first. But… I’ve decided.”

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.

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.

Jasmine falters, and her expression crumples.

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.

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.

She shrugs.

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.

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.”

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.

She shrugs at him and looks at me. “Bummed, I guess.”

She nods. “Yeah.”

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.

She gives him a skeptical look.

She laughs. “No, I’ll be good. I appreciate all that, really, but no smashing necessary.”

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.

I think I know where Ryan is going with this, and I don’t like it.

There’s no way Dimitri would have ever used the word “excited.” Ryan’s exaggerating.

Hallie beams. “Well, that’s nice!”

He shoots me a meaningful glare, and I hesitate.

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.

She seems relieved to see me, which is, I guess, better than the alternative—miserable.

She wrinkles her nose. “No. He was at least nice enough to leave me alone while I packed today.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

She looks up from the box she’s taping shut with a sour, stunned expression. “No. We wouldn’t have known each other.”

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.

He probably didn’t invite her out; he probably just told her they were going, and that was that.

She pushes the box to the side and starts on another one.

She absentmindedly fidgets with her necklace, surveying the spread of clothes still laid out on the bed.

An idea comes to me, half-formed and fuzzy.

Jasmine leans onto the bed, too, and tilts her head.

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.

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.

I’m happy to help her with whatever she needs. She should know that by now.

Suddenly, her eyes sparkle, and she bolts upright.

The old memories of our competition ritual, our good-luck charm, come flooding back.

We loop our arms around each other’s shoulders. I’m not sure what to say.

I squeeze her tighter and join in.

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.

He looks surprised. “Oh! Believe it or not, I was actually coming to find you.”

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.

He’s piqued my curiosity.

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.

His compliment warms me, but I can’t let it soften me toward him.

He looks surprised.

I purse my lips. “I’m sure it was.”

I’m shocked but hopeful.

Ryan leans his elbows onto the desk and presses his fingers to his temples. He exhales a ragged sigh.

There’s too much at stake for me to jump to conclusions.

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.

My heart races as I tell him emphatically, “It’s not. You’re right.”

That’s the next step that will make all of this feel real.

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.

He looks somber but heartfelt. When he offers up a hopeful smile, his dimple flashes beneath his tender, dark eyes.

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 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.

He drives away, and I watch his headlights vanish around the corner. I shouldn’t miss him already, but I do.

• CHAPTER 28 •

Ryan invites me and the Conways in for a meeting before practice the next morning. Kim, Todd, and Hallie look anxious when they arrive. I’m secretly glad Ryan included me in negotiations about Hallie’s career this time around.

Kim frowns. “And vague.”

Her parents dart confused glances from me to Ryan. I bet they’re surprised to see me here.

He comes around the desk to lean against it, hesitating like he’s trying to find the right words to explain his mistake. This can’t be easy for him, even if he understands now how crucial it is to turn down Dimitri’s job offer. Thick tension fills the room.

Kim and Todd look surprised; Hallie looks deflated.

He looks at me for backup. I appreciate that he doesn’t take the liberty of revealing uncomfortably personal details to the Conways without my permission.

Hallie’s jaw drops. “Whoa.”

For so many months now, I’ve felt powerless to stop Hallie from getting hurt. To see how quickly and effectively I could change her fate is mind-blowing. I’m so grateful that the Conway family came around to my side immediately.

Hallie nods in approval, but Kim and Todd exchange worried glances.

Todd piles on. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to ask: can we trust you?”

Ryan straightens up. “You can trust me. You can trust both of us,” he says, nodding at me. “I couldn’t do this without Avery.”

I watch Kim and Todd chew that over for a few moments. She sighs heavily.

Todd gives me a small smile. “Thanks for everything you do,” he says.

Ryan grins. “That’s what I like to hear.”

JUNE

2020

• CHAPTER 29 •

Then, bam, it’s June. While the rest of the country starts to slow down for summer vacation, time speeds up for us. The Olympic Trials take place on Saturday, June 27, and the Olympics begin less than a month after that, on Friday, July 24—soon enough that I have a running countdown in my head that tracks how many days we have left. I don’t need to check a calendar; the days tick down automatically for me. It’s twenty-five, then twenty-two, and now we’re in the teens. This is what I’ve been preparing for since last October, and what Hallie has been looking forward to for quite literally her entire life.

The Olympics are just close enough now that regular people are getting excited. On one lunch break, Hallie squeezes in a phone interview with Kiss 108, the local Top 40 radio station; on another, she takes a call from a People reporter. A whole crew from the Boston Globe arrived during practice one afternoon to take pictures and interview her for a front-page story. Ryan shooed the journalist and photographer away after forty-five minutes, insisting that Hallie’s energy was best spent on training at the moment. As the reporters packed up their camera equipment, her face fell just a little bit. I don’t blame her.

Competitive gymnastics isn’t like football or baseball in the sense that the general public will tune in for a big game or even be aware when the sport is in season—it gets one blip of fandom every four years. So, even though throwing a new responsibility on top of preparing Hallie for the Olympics seems like pure lunacy right now, Jasmine insists that we have to capitalize on this moment in order to gain media attention. She wants to launch the Elite Gymnastics Foundation publicly now, before the Olympics kick off, while elite gymnastics is having its moment in the sun. If we wait until after Tokyo, the public’s interest in whatever we have to say may be lost. People will only see Hallie and her Olympic cohort as buff Miss America stand-ins—shiny, patriotic trophies—not flesh-and-blood young women battling real systemic issues. And then, well before the first crisp day of fall, gymnastics will have fallen off most people’s radars.

So, while Hallie has been slipping out of the gym for interviews and heading home early to rest up as much as possible, I’ve been working alongside Jasmine to transform the foundation from a hazy idea into a solid reality. I text and email as much as I can during the day, and on nights and weekends we hole up in my living room to get work done. Maybe it’s because we trained alongside each other for years, but we’re a strong team now, too. Within a week, we’ve contacted a slew of former gymnasts to get them on board with publicly supporting this initiative and to collect donations. We’ve used that money to hire a web designer to create a site. And most important, we’ve started to assemble a team of mental health professionals, including therapists who have worked with athletes and sexual assault support group leaders. They’ll provide services either in person or remotely, depending on where the gymnasts live. We’ve gotten them to agree to working pro bono up front, and our goal is to fund-raise to pay for their services so there will never be any question if a gymnast can afford to access help.

Jasmine hooked us up with a five-minute spot on NBC’s morning news show for Monday, June 8, so we’ll be the first story breaking after the weekend. The goal is to announce the launch of the Elite Gymnastics Foundation, spread awareness for the sport’s desperate need for reform, and, of course, raise money. NBC is the obvious choice, given Jasmine’s connections; she’s a familiar face, so their viewers will be primed to hear what she has to say.

My alarm blares at five thirty on Monday morning. As I shower, I try not to dwell on how nervous I am. It’s been eight years since I’ve spoken to a reporter or been on TV. Doing press used to feel exciting—I liked when my competitions were broadcast live for viewers at home, and any questions thrown my way were easy to answer: How hard had I been training lately? Was I happy about my big win? Were the London Olympics on my radar? This is entirely different. I’m publicly calling out the failures of the sport that gave me everything.

Jasmine dictated specific instructions on everything from what to wear to how to speak. She says I need to wear a simple, professional, solid-colored top or dress—no prints, because they look distracting on camera, and no green, because the green screen will turn me into a floating head. I own nothing remotely right, so I’ve borrowed a coral-red shift dress from her closet that I can just barely squeeze into. Jasmine promises the camera will only film me from the waist up. I’ve never mastered the ability to blow-dry my hair, but I do my best attempt at it while running through the sound bites I’ve practiced. Jasmine will do most of the talking on-air, but I can’t be entirely mute. It’s funny, I was never afraid to hurtle myself into the air and perform impossible-looking stunts, but saying a few lines to a camera crew strikes me as terribly intimidating.

I step into my most professional-looking pumps to give myself a confidence boost, pour coffee into a thermos, and drive to NBC’s studio. Jasmine meets me in the lobby. She’s in a bright blue wrap dress with fluttery cap sleeves that show off her toned arms, reminding viewers of her athletic past. She chose these outfits on purpose: red and blue to remind everyone that even if we criticize the American Gymnastics Federation, we’re still wholly in support of Team USA.

She looks closely at me and scrunches her nose. “The makeup artist can cover up your dark circles—no worries.”

Jasmine leads us to the fourth floor, where the receptionist greets her by name, and then through a maze of hallways until we’re in the greenroom.

The room isn’t actually green—it’s white with gray carpeting, brown furniture, and multiple TVs tuned in to the show. A handful of people sit around in suits and dresses like ours; they have faces that seem vaguely familiar, or maybe it’s just that everyone on TV looks more or less the same: conventionally attractive but airbrushed in an eerily bland way.

A twenty-something producer in a headset comes flying toward us.

Jasmine shakes her head. “Everyone gets touch-ups,” she insists.

The producer drops me off in a room just big enough to contain a single chair in front of a mirror decked out in lights and a table full of beauty products. A makeup artist dabs concealer under my eyes, as Jasmine promised, and slicks on hot pink lip gloss before I can protest that I don’t really feel like myself in so much makeup. Next, the producer brings me to the room next door, where a hairstylist finishes the transformation with a curling iron and an intense blast of hair spray. When she’s done, I look like… well, I look just as polished and professional as Jasmine always does. With a pang, I realize that if my life had turned out differently, none of this would faze me. I wouldn’t be bare-skinned in a ponytail at Summit; I would be contoured and curled at NBC. This would be my reality.

I find Jasmine back in the greenroom. On TV, the meteorologist talks about the seventy-five-degree days coming this week. Jasmine stares vacantly in the direction of the TV, but she’s not focused on the screen. Her knee bounces up and down. I understand why she’s nervous—my heart is pounding, too—but I’m surprised the pressure is getting to her, of all people.

She turns toward me, and her jittery knee slows to a stop. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I will be.”

I grab her hand, and she gives mine a squeeze.

Soon, the producer breezes back into the greenroom. “Come with me,” she says to us, jerking her head. “Commercial break just hit.”

We follow her down a hallway and around a corner into a dark studio space jumbled with lighting equipment, rubber cables, and, further back, a glossy, L-shaped desk with two open seats for us diagonal from Cynthia King, the news anchor. Another producer clips tiny microphones to the necklines of our dresses. If I hadn’t watched Jasmine do it first, I would have been bewildered: Jasmine expertly threads the thin cable over her shoulder, hiding it under her hair, and turns to let the producer clip the mic’s battery pack to her bra underneath her dress. I follow her lead, flinching at the feel of his hands. He zips my dress up again and gives the first producer a thumbs-up. We’re ready.

I follow Jasmine onstage, letting her take the seat closest to Cynthia, who greets her warmly. In contrast to the dimly lit backstage, the lighting here is bright and white and blinding. Cynthia, clad in a pearly pink dress with a neat bob and gravity-defying eyelashes, looks like a Real Housewives star in the sense that she could just as easily be thirty-five or fifty. She says hello and asks how I am, but I’m too nervous to squeak out anything more than a hello. She and Jasmine make pleasant small talk, which seems frankly insane to me with just seconds to go before we’re on live television, but Jasmine looks unfussed. I’m relieved that she’s settling into her element.

Cynthia cocks her head like she’s connecting the dots. “You’re leaving your husband the coach, and speaking out about abuse in the sport?” she asks slowly.

Jasmine freezes next to me. “Well, um…”

Cynthia raises an eyebrow, shuffles her papers, and clears her throat.

The cameraman falls silent, flashing three fingers, then two fingers, then pointing straight at us.

We’ve practiced that Jasmine will deliver the announcement of the foundation, but now she seems shaken. I glance at her, unsure if I should take over her lines. On live television, every second feels like it stretches out for ten minutes. But finally, thankfully, she collects herself and launches into the speech we wrote together.

A chill runs through me. Delia, Skylar, and the other girls should have justice.

I pivot to the sales pitch. “This is important work, but it’s not easy, so we are raising money on EliteGymnasticsFoundation.com to fund these initiatives.”

I’m surprised at the steady way my words flow. It feels as if the lights and cameras and unnatural stage makeup fade away, and all I need to do is explain why I’m here.

I knew this question was coming. It was part of our pitch to the network—a good sob story will catch people’s attention more than anything else we could say. Neither of us is ready to talk publicly about Dimitri yet, but there’s still plenty I can say.

Jasmine and I wrote five different versions of that line before we hit on the right one, and maybe the familiarity of it stirs something in her.

The network cuts to a commercial break, and the producer shuffles us quickly offstage, unclipping our mics and sending us back to the greenroom.

She beams. “Girl, this is just the beginning.”

In the greenroom, I dig my phone out of my purse. I’m caught off guard by a text from Ryan. After the breakup, our endless stream of texts came to a sudden halt; now we rarely text, and only about work.

I caught you on TV, he wrote. Very impressive. Just wanted to say congrats—what you and Jasmine are doing is so cool.

I had mentioned the segment to him, but I didn’t think he’d bother watching it. It’s one thing for him to pay lip service to our cause, but this shows he actually cares. I’m happy to hear from him. I slip my phone back into my purse without mentioning it to Jasmine.

I drive directly from NBC to the gym, where I change out of Jasmine’s dress into an old pair of Soffe shorts and a faded T-shirt with Summit’s logo splashed across the chest. I pull my hair back into a ponytail but don’t bother scrubbing the gloss off my lips.

I hesitate to explain where I was earlier that morning. I haven’t told her anything at all about the Elite Gymnastics Foundation because it felt too embarrassingly personal. But now that she’s asking, I don’t have a choice.

I doubt she watches cable news—and anyway, she’s been in the gym all day. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if this was lighting up her Twitter feed.

She squeals a little. “Avery!”

It’s a funny thing for her to say—if anything, I’m proud of her. That’s how this relationship dynamic is supposed to go. But, hey, Jasmine and I created the foundation for the sole purpose of making life healthier and happier for girls like Hallie. If she’s on board with the idea, I’m elated.

Hallie sashays across the gym and finds Ryan filling up his water bottle.

He turns to look over his shoulder.

She leaps—and I mean literally executes a perfect, 180-degree split leap—in front of him. I wish I was her age and had that much energy on a Monday morning, or ever at all.

He laughs. “I heard. Pretty amazing, huh?”

Maybe it’s because the Olympics are drawing closer, or maybe it’s because of Jasmine’s near celebrity status, but either way, the response to the NBC segment is thrilling. The story gets picked up by other outlets, including ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the Boston Globe, Cosmo, and BuzzFeed. Jasmine and I are invited on GymCastic, the gymternet’s most revered gymnastics-themed podcast, and a wave of current and former elite gymnasts urge their Instagram followers to donate to the foundation. Within three days, we raise nearly ten thousand dollars. It’s far more money than I could have hoped for.

We were disappointed that AGF never reached out to us directly, though when prodded by Cosmo, the organization apparently “declined to comment.” Predictably, the worst reaction came from Dimitri. He called Jasmine five times, and when she refused to pick up, he left a voicemail threatening that we better not say a word about him. She saved the voicemail—just in case we ever need it.

It’s nerve-wracking but exciting to have the foundation getting this much attention so early on. It feels like yet another good omen: now that I’ve encouraged Ryan to turn down Dimitri’s offer and work alongside Jasmine to make a real difference in this sport, I feel more capable and confident than I have in a long time. People say good things come in threes. And this summer, there’s only one goal left to tackle. It’s a big one. But I’m ready.

• CHAPTER 30 •

By Friday, of course, the countdown has dropped to just fifteen days. In two weeks’ time, Hallie will be about to compete at Trials; in six weeks, she could potentially be marching with the rest of the United States Olympic fleet at the opening ceremony in Tokyo. This afternoon, though, the only place Hallie is going is back and forth across the length of the beam. Ryan and I watch patiently as she drills her tumbling pass—a back handspring, whip back, back layout step-out—over and over. The goal is for her to smoothly connect each move into the next and finish the series with a satisfying thwack of a clean landing, no wobbles whatsoever.

As a rap song blares from the speaker, Hallie stands with her toes a millimeter from the edge of the beam and stretches her arms out in front of her, centering herself. Her chest rises and falls as she takes a deep breath. Then, in one sleek, catlike motion, she swings her arms behind her and lunges backward into the tumbling pass. The back handspring is solid, but she’s probably been doing that since she was nine years old. What’s trickier is the whip back, a fast-moving, arched flip in which her hands float a foot above the beam, and safely transitioning from that to a soaring back layout, which requires rotating high in the air with her body and legs extended to their fullest length. She lands with one heel just inches from the opposite end of the beam, and teeters ever so slightly to catch her balance. It’s not good enough, and she knows it.

She looks a little frustrated with herself, but she nods and scurries back to the other end of the beam to start over.

Ryan turns to me.

He speeds up nervously. “Jade Castle agreed that if we wanted to partner with them for a fund-raiser, one hundred percent of the proceeds for drinks ordered there would go directly to the Elite Gymnastics Foundation, as long as we tip the bartenders.”

He looks directly at me now, and I’m almost too stunned to speak.

He winces. “Or if you hate the idea, I don’t have to do anything at all. I haven’t agreed to anything with Jade Castle yet—I just called to ask.”

I can’t believe he really did this. It’s not out of character, exactly—I know he’s a thoughtful person, and I’m sure his friends would have no problem drinking enough to raise a sizable chunk of money—but I’m blown away that he would do all this for me.

Hallie flips across the beam and sticks the landing. She leans dramatically into a bow.

He drops his voice and turns to me. “I wanted to find a way to show you how sorry I am for almost taking the Powerhouse job. I made a huge mistake by not listening to you from the moment you told me what Dimitri’s really like, and I hate that I upset you by taking so long to come around. I know this isn’t enough, but I hope it’s a step toward showing you that I really do care about keeping Hallie and the other girls safe and happy.”

His apology that night at Summit was one thing, but this is on another level entirely. This shows me that he’s listening and learning, and isn’t that all anyone can ask for? He made a mistake and isn’t just owning it—he’s fixing it. I wish we were somewhere else so I could give him a hug.

He exhales, relieved. “Jade Castle had a big birthday party reservation cancel, so they actually have space for us at seven o’clock tomorrow night,” he offers. “Unless that’s too soon, in which case, we can figure something else out.”

My stomach drops, and it’s not just because Jade Castle was the scene of my disastrous first Tinder date after moving back to Greenwood.

I’m not ready to spend time with Ryan outside of work. If I’m honest with myself, I know I’m not fully over him yet. That’s why we’ve barely spoken about anything except for Hallie since our breakup, and that’s why I can’t bring myself to open Tinder again, even though the app sends plenty of reminders that people nearby have swiped right on me.

I hesitate. “Have an amazing time.”

Hallie finishes beam and heads to vault next. I’m not her coach for either event, so even though I watch from the sidelines and offer encouragement, there’s unfortunately enough space for my mind to wander.

I’m touched that Ryan would organize a fund-raiser. I’d worried that I’d trusted him too easily, and felt duped that I’d fallen for a guy who would shove the worst moments of my life under the rug so that he could climb the career ladder. In the aftermath of the breakup, it was easy to boil everything down to simple black and white: he was wrong, he was a bad guy, and so we were over.

But life isn’t so black and white. People are complicated, and they can grow. I certainly have. I can’t deny that between Ryan turning down Dimitri’s job offer and him organizing this fund-raiser, I’m starting to see him in a better light. He wants to learn and make amends. He’s open to changing his mind, even when it comes at a personal cost. Despite the frost between us ever since Nationals, it wouldn’t be fair to ignore that he’s taken significant strides to earn my approval again. The next step might be forgiveness.

I sit on the edge of the blue floor and pick at a piece of fuzz coming loose from the fabric. Sixty feet away, Ryan leans over the vault table, explaining something I can’t quite hear to Hallie. He talks with his hands, and she nods along. Hallie’s attention is tightly fixated on what he’s saying; I can tell from the serious way she stands with her hands on her hips, biting her lip. She trusts him, doesn’t she? Maybe I should trust him, too.

SOS, what are you doing tomorrow night? I text Sara on my lunch break.

I’m eating last night’s leftover tilapia and zucchini straight from the Tupperware in my car. Ryan’s invitation, however casual, made me too jittery to eat within the same building as him.

I have a friend’s housewarming party at 8, wanna come? she texts back.

Ryan invited me to drink with his friends tomorrow night at Jade Castle, I write. It’s a fund-raiser for EGF.

Her response pops up before I can continue typing: ???

I lied and said I had plans with you. I don’t wanna go alone. But I do think I might want to go. Please come with me? I text.

It sounds so pitiful laid out like that, but I know Sara won’t judge me.

How’s this: I’ll come with you for a bit, then head out to the party once you find your footing? she asks. Slash you have two drinks and feel fine.

That second one sounds about right, I write. Thank you. Love you.

I finish the fish and text Jasmine to join us. She knows, of course, that Ryan turned down Dimitri’s job offer, but I think she’s still skeptical of him—or anyone who would willingly associate with her ex, to be honest. I can’t blame her. I care about her opinion, and I’d feel less guilty over my storm of conflicting emotions toward Ryan if I had her approval of him. I want her take on this situation. I’m strangely relieved when she texts back that Ryan’s fund-raiser sounds amazing. She says she wants to go.

On Saturday night, I arrive at Jade Castle a little after eight with Sara and Jasmine by my side. The restaurant’s lounge is dimly lit and crowded, filled with vaguely familiar faces I’ve seen around town. I spot Ryan standing with a cluster of people by the window, holding a beer and in the midst of conversation with some guys. He’s in a pair of dark jeans and a light blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I don’t recognize most of the people he’s with, but I spot his friend Goose with his girlfriend, Melissa.

I catch Ryan’s eye.

He winds his way through the crowd and tentatively gives me a one-armed hug.

It’s close enough to the truth. Jasmine brought over a bottle of wine for the three of us to share while Sara and I dabbed on makeup and put on sundresses. I felt more comfortable coming here tonight with a little liquid courage in my system.

Ryan gestures to the bar. “Of course.”

Sara orders a vodka soda, and I ask for the same. Jasmine squints at the array of spirits lining the back shelf of the bar and sighs at the row of draft beers.

The bartender gives her a weary look.

She grimaces. “Another vodka soda, sure.” Under her breath, she mutters, “Great bar.”

We take the drinks over to the edge of Ryan’s crew.

The gymnastics world is tiny—I wouldn’t be surprised if she had crossed paths with anyone here.

I feel uneasy—not sure what to say to Ryan, too awkward to say hi to Goose or Melissa, and too nervous to strike up a conversation with any of his other friends. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. But then, the high-pitched ding of a knife against glass cuts through the noise of the bar.

He steps on a chair so he’s high above the crowd. Conversations fade out, and people turn to face him.

Ryan raises his glass. “So please, drink up, and don’t worry about how you’ll feel tomorrow morning. Okay? And while I have your attention, the founders of the foundation are here—let’s give a round of applause to Avery Abrams and Jasmine Floyd.”

He raises his drink in a toast, and everyone else follows suit.

It’s a strange sensation, having people clap for me. It’s happened before, of course, at plenty of competitions, but that was different. Back then, crowds cheered me on because of what I had been trained to do. Tonight, they’re cheering me on for what I’m doing for others. This is new for me, but I like it.

Ryan hops down off of the chair and joins us.

He raises his hands in defense. “I know, I’m glad I turned down the job,” he says. “You’re going to Tokyo, right?”

I’m in the same boat.

Ryan runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, my plan is to travel around Asia.”

Later, after Ryan moves on to chat with other people, we get another round of drinks. When they’re finished, Sara says she has to get going to her friend’s housewarming party. She invites Jasmine and me along. Jasmine, sorely in need of a real girls’ night out, gladly accepts, and so I do, too. I don’t want to put a damper on her night. We all say goodbye and thank Ryan for throwing the fund-raiser. Sara and Jasmine move ahead while I hang back.

He scans the room. “Let’s say twenty people, an average of two drinks each, maybe…” He pauses to do the mental math. “Three hundred and fifty–ish?”

That pays for two therapy sessions, maybe three, tops. But I’m still grateful.

The emotions I’ve been feeling all day crest. All at once, I’m grateful and bittersweet and nostalgic for what we had together. I have to leave; I know if I stay any longer, I’ll only be keeping myself in a situation primed to make me miss him.

Before I can overthink it, I throw my arms around him in a quick hug. The wave of comfort I get from my body flush against his feels like a shock. It’s overwhelming.

I join Sara and Jasmine outside, and soon we’re on our way to the housewarming party. It’s a get-together at a condo in Coolidge Corner in Brookline with a sliding glass door that opens the terrace up to a pretty, starry night. Sara introduces me proudly to her friends, and they all go slack-jawed when they hear I’m possibly on my way to the Olympics. A lanky guy in a chambray button-down brings me plastic cups of beer—apparently, the real glasses haven’t even been unpacked yet—and shyly asks for my phone number at the end of the night. He’s so not my type that the request catches me off guard, and even though the prospect of dating someone new still feels too strange right now, I give it to him. Maybe what I need is a distraction that will take my mind off Ryan for good.

It’s only hours later, when I wake in the middle of the night to get a glass of water to soothe my parched mouth, that I see the text from Ryan. I must have missed it while I was sleeping. I rub at my eyes, not sure if I’m awake enough to read the message properly. But I read it three times in a row, and it seems solid. I can’t believe it’s real.

It was really great to see you tonight! The fund-raiser was a huge success. We raised $410. But I know that’s not enough to make the kind of difference this cause deserves, and so I’m also donating the money I would’ve spent on my travels after the Olympics. Total, it’ll be nearly $3,000. I know you’re probably going to protest, but I’ve been thinking about this for days. I saved up the money for something important, and there’s nothing more important than this.

• CHAPTER 31 •

Team Hallie Conway flies to the Olympic Trials in St. Louis on separate flights: Hallie and her parents in the morning, Ryan in the afternoon, and me and Sara on an evening flight so she didn’t have to call out of work. Hallie insisted that Sara fly halfway across the country with us because she wanted a private yoga session before the big day. Paying for Sara’s round-trip flight, hotel room, and meals probably costs the Conway family nearly two thousand bucks, but they don’t seem to flinch. They’ve already sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into this dream so far—it’s not worth risking everything and winging it the morning of Olympic Trials by insisting that Hallie practice yoga on her own.

Sara and I are sharing a hotel room, so at seven thirty in the morning we walk together from our room to Hallie’s, where we pick her up and continue on to the hotel’s fitness center. Sara called ahead and confirmed that the fitness center’s yoga studio would be available for them to use. She has a yoga mat strapped to her back and totes a bag full of supplies: a foam block, a speaker, a bottle of lavender essential oil. Hallie emerges from her hotel room in leggings and a stretchy tank top; she’ll get ready and put on an actual leotard for Trials after yoga and a light breakfast.

Sara nudges her down the hall toward the elevator. “Oh-kay, let’s go chill out for an hour and find a more positive attitude.”

The yoga studio is located at the back of the fitness center, through a door along the far wall of the gym. As we walk past a row of treadmills and ellipticals, through a crew of sweaty dudes working out on weight machines, we cross paths with Ryan, who’s bench-pressing weights. He grunts, sets the bar back on the holder, and removes one headphone.

Sara leads Hallie into the yoga studio and closes the door. I’ve never joined one of their sessions, and I wouldn’t dare interrupt now. It’s good for Hallie to have some solo time with Sara to focus on relaxing for the day ahead.

He removes his other headphone and sits up, grinning. “Yeah?”

He shrugs. “Eh.”

I can’t help it—I cover my face with my hands. “Okay!” I say brightly. “I’m gonna take your money and run, I guess, before you change your mind.”

He laughs. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

His mouth twitches nervously. “Well, that’s good. And… you?”

I can feel my heart pounding as I tell him how I really feel; vulnerability is fucking scary. But then, a smile spreads across his face, and I’m flooded with relief. It’s the exact same exhilarating sensation you get when you’re flying upside down above the high bar on a release move and catch it solidly. It’s a dangerous thrill, but then you know you’re safe.

He flexes one arm, and the muscle swells. I resist my instinct to look impressed, and instead say goodbye and walk out of the gym with my head held high.

I get some coffee, fruit, and yogurt at a café near the hotel, and then return to my hotel room to make myself look a little more presentable for the day. I know the cameras will catch at least a few glimpses of me, and some concealer and mascara will go a long way. I’m blending the makeup under my eyes when I see my phone light up with an incoming text. My stomach drops when I catch the name on the screen—it’s Tyler. We haven’t spoken once since I left LA.

Hey. I just wanted to say that I heard you’re doing really well now, coaching and launching that organization. It all sounds really impressive. Congratulations!

I laugh, dumbfounded. I can’t believe he reached out at all, especially to praise my accomplishments. He never expected me to make anything of myself again; he didn’t think I had the drive to dream, achieve, or succeed anymore. It’s deliciously satisfying to see him recognize how wrong he was. I wish I could travel back in time to that fight, the one a few months before our breakup, when he found me sitting on the kitchen floor with my wineglass in the middle of the afternoon and criticized what looked like a lack of ambition. If only that version of myself could see my life now.

I dash off the briefest, politest text I can muster. It’s funny: for years, I cared more about him than anyone or anything—where he was, how he was doing, what he was up to. But now I don’t even care to know what his life looks like.

Thanks! Hope everything’s going well.

I’ve got more important things to do.

At nine, I meet Hallie in her suite. She invited me to sit with her as she gets ready, and when she opens the door, she looks visibly more relaxed than she did just ninety minutes earlier.

We head into the bathroom, where I flip down the toilet seat and sit, and she plugs in a hair straightener. When it’s hot, she irons each section of hair until it’s perfectly smooth, then brushes it all into a high, tight ponytail and blasts the crown of her head with extra-strength hair spray. I never wore much makeup when I was her age—not even to competitions—but this generation of gymnasts grew up watching beauty tutorials on YouTube and spending their allowances on Urban Decay Naked palettes and Kylie Jenner lip kits. They’re so much savvier and sophisticated than I ever was; during competitions, they look like Hollywood starlets on the red carpet.

She shrugs. “But I’ll do concealer, highlighter, and a little blush and bronzer.”

She expertly applies those, then moves on to eye shadow primer, three different shades of sparkly eye shadow, black eyeliner, and several swipes of mascara. I feel like I could learn a thing or two from her.

She opens the closet door and pulls out two hangers.

Hallie holds up one leotard in front of her, then the other. The first is bright purple, with an ombré effect on the bodice, mesh cutouts on the sleeves, and a spray of rhinestones over the chest. It’s like the sporty version of a beauty pageant gown—what Miss America might wear for her talent portion. The second one is much simpler: entirely red and flecked with silver shimmer.

It truly doesn’t matter what she wears; the most important thing is that she feels confident. I don’t want to accidentally pick the one she’s leaning against and trigger her to second-guess her instincts.

She purses her lips. “You know why I like the red one?” she says shyly.

I try to remember if she’s worn it before, but I can’t recall.

Suddenly, I know exactly what she’s talking about.

She nods. “I wanted to be just like you. I still do.”

A hard lump forms in the back of my throat. For so many years now, I’ve felt like a failure: I failed to make the Olympics; I literally failed out of college; I floundered through a failing relationship. I squandered my fresh start in California, and I neglected to take care of myself the way I deserved. But none of that matters to Hallie. In her eyes, it seems as if I’m an inspiration. I’m a role model. And most important, I’m a coach who has helped to give her a fair shot at achieving her lifelong dream.

I blink hard twice and shake my head to keep the tears at bay. Now is not the time. Hallie puts the purple leotard back in the closet, then takes the red one into the bathroom to change. When she opens the door again a minute later, she twirls in a circle to show off the look.

Now that she’s pointed out the connection, it’s impossible to ignore. Clad in red, she looks an awful lot like I did eight years ago. Except now, Hallie looks confident. Self-assured. Happy. I desperately hope she has better luck today than I did.

• CHAPTER 32 •

The competition arena looks the same. It always does. No matter where you are in the country or the world, regardless of who’s winning or what the year is. The familiar, standard-issue apparatus and mats and chalk bowls are arranged on a basketball floor under fluorescent lighting, surrounded by bleachers, with frenzied energy pulsing through the air. Ryan and I flank Hallie as we arrive, looking like a real team in our matching Summit tracksuits. For the first time in months, I truly feel like the three of us are in sync again. I’m glad Ryan and I got the chance to talk this morning.

Hallie takes in the view of the arena with a curious expression.

She nods, slips out of her tracksuit, and jogs to the floor to run a few laps. Ryan slides closer to me on the bench, bridging the empty space Hallie left behind.

He trails off. He doesn’t need to say the rest. I know what he’s thinking: we got together, broke up… and yet, we’re still here. So is Dimitri, across the arena. He won’t even look at me.

It’s a crowded roster: fifteen gymnasts competing for just four real spots on the Olympic team. Technically speaking, two other gymnasts are named as alternates, just in case anyone gets seriously injured during the Olympic Games—they can swap in and compete as backups. But obviously, nobody aspires to be an alternate. That means that after barely missing the chance of a lifetime, probably by a fraction of a point, you have to sit on the sidelines and cheer for your teammates to achieve your dream. It sounds like torture. As terrible as my experience was, at least I could choose not to watch the competition from the comfort of my own home.

Hallie is up against several gymnasts I know—Emma Perry, Delia Cruz, Maggie Farber, Kiki McCloud, Skylar Hayashi, and Brit Almeda—and also several that I don’t: Olivia Walsh, Madison Salazar, Riley Robinson, Jocelyn Snyder, Ayanna Clayton, Taylor O’Connor, Charlotte Chan, Lucy Shapiro. It’s dizzying and heartbreaking to consider that the majority of these girls will have their careers end today. The next few hours will change all of their lives.

Once again, Hallie has been assigned to start on bars, which means she’ll cycle through vault, beam, and then floor. Apparently having finished her cardio warm-up, she trots back to where Ryan and I are sitting to stretch. She rolls her wrists, bends over her feet, and occasionally waves at cameras passing by.

Before the first rotation starts, Ryan squats down next to her and waves me over to join.

She nods heavily, then hugs each of us.

I’m secretly glad that she’s up first on bars, because that will get her started on the right foot. She puts on her grips and warms up for the allotted few minutes, and then waits for her turn. When the announcer booms her name over the loudspeaker, she waves to a girl in the stands holding a poster with her name on it as she strides toward the bars. This is her moment to shine, and she knows it.

She centers herself in front of the low bar, lifts her chin, and with just a hint of a smug smirk, jumps forward into her mount. Across the arena, another gymnast’s floor music begins to play, but it’s clear that Hallie has tuned out everything except the bar under her hands. Her body rockets cleanly to the high bar, where she swings up into a handstand, pirouettes, and flings herself into the series she’s been drilling all year with Ryan: a Tkatchev into a Pak Salto. It’s gorgeous. She finishes strong with two giants and her breathtaking dismount, a double-twisting double back tuck. Hallie sticks the landing solidly with her fingers splayed out in an elegant flourish. The audience cheers as she straightens up into a proud salute for the judges, then waves to the crowd. That was a goddamn perfect routine.

Ryan, who was spotting her release moves, high-fives her with both hands. They look triumphant as they make their way back to where I’m sitting.

The judges barely need to deliberate. They award her routine with a well-deserved 15.150.

Hallie squeals, smooshing a hand over her mouth to muffle her excitement.

By the end of the first rotation, she reigns in second place. The only person who scored even a sliver higher than her for the first round was Dimitri’s gymnast Emma, with a 15.250 on beam. That doesn’t faze me. Emma is freakishly, supernaturally, horrifyingly talented. Hallie’s second-place showing is still fantastic. With a strong start like that, she could be a real contender for one of the four Olympic-bound spots.

Thanks to her excellent bars routine, Hallie’s sure-footed confidence carries over to vault. The event goes by in such a flash, I don’t even have time to get nervous. She sticks clean landings on both her first run, an Amanar, and her second, a Mustafina. After her final salute, she glides back to the bench serenely. The judges reveal her score as she settles down: 14.975.

Vault is the shortest event, which means there’s a bit of wait before the second rotation ends and we can see where Hallie will fall in the rankings. As she sucks down the contents of her water bottle, I watch the competition. Delia polishes off a glorious floor routine. Ayanna completes an impressive series of release moves on bars. On beam, Charlotte sways off balance when trying to land a front aerial and loses her footing. The crowd lets out a somber “Ooooh” when she falls to the ground. I cringe; I feel so terrible for her. She climbs back up on beam and finishes her routine with a disappointed grimace.

When the second rotation ends, Hallie has dropped into fourth place. That’s still a very good spot to be in—if the competition were over right this second, she’d make the Olympic team—but it also means there’s no more room for error or bad luck. If she doesn’t perform the hell out of her next two routines, or if anyone else happens to have a startlingly successful showing, it’s game over.

I’ve always known, of course, that making the Olympic team is a long shot. I knew there were no guarantees of Hallie’s success when I signed on to coach her. But somehow, I’ve never thought through exactly what to say or do to console her if it turns out that she doesn’t make the team, despite our best efforts. There’s no good way to comfort a person whose sole dream has just slipped away. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

Hallie heads off to warm up for beam.

He knows me well enough to see through the calm act I’m putting on for Hallie.

He reaches for my hand and runs his thumb soothingly across my palm. The gesture is comforting.

He heaves a giant sigh. “Me, too.”

I barely breathe when it’s Hallie’s turn on beam. The problem with this apparatus is that you can’t get cocky: it doesn’t matter how talented you are or how hard you’ve worked to prepare—you can still fall, and then you’re screwed. “Come on, come on, come on,” I whisper, watching her execute the back handspring, whip back, back layout step-out combo we’ve drilled so many times. It’s solid, but I still can’t relax. Every muscle in my body tightens as she winds up to perform the wolf turn. I’m relieved when she stays on the beam without a wobble. There’s a brief glint of surprise on her face, too. Her dismount goes smoothly, too, and it’s only when she salutes the judges that I can finally exhale. The routine was good, but not great: I can imagine one tiny deduction for not seamlessly connecting two jumps, and another one for a leg that could’ve been a little bit straighter. But overall, it was a fine showing.

She barrels back to the bench, where I wrap her in a hug and stroke her hair.

She shudders. “At least beam is over.”

The judges give her a 13.500, and by the time the rotation ends, that lands her in sixth place—barely in Olympic contention, but only as an alternate. She’s fallen behind Emma, Kiki, Delia, Taylor, and Ayanna. From what I can tell, the problem wasn’t that her beam routine was terrible, but rather that everyone else had an unusually great rotation. I wish I could calculate what score she’ll need in order to guarantee a full spot on the Olympic team, but I don’t know how to even begin figuring that out. My stomach cramps with nerves.

Hallie presses her lips together like she’s trying not to wince or groan. I kneel down in front of her, gripping both of her hands in mine. I have to go off script.

The hairs on my arms stand up on end. Hallie locks her eyes with mine and nods seriously.

She gives me a hug and heads to floor to warm up.

I groan. “I just hope it was enough.”

I’m almost too antsy to watch Hallie practice her tumbling passes, but I know I have to pay attention in case there’s any last-minute practical advice I should offer her. I wish we could just fast-forward through the fourth rotation.

Finally, enough time creaks by and it’s Hallie’s turn to compete on floor. Ryan and I stand fifteen feet to the left of the judges’ table, which is just about as close as we can get without causing a distraction. Adrenaline rushes through me as her name is announced over the loudspeaker one more time.

Hallie composes herself at the edge of the floor. She smiles warmly at the judges as she salutes, then gracefully walks to her starting spot. She settles into position and waits for her music to begin. For a moment, everything is still and quiet—or as quiet as a bustling arena like this can be. She’s a vision in sparkling red. As the jazzy opening notes play, she blossoms into a swirl of motion. The flick of her wrist is precise and delicate; the swing of her hips is flashy and flirty. She’s always been a gymnast, but here, after months of hard work, she’s developed the grace of a dancer, too.

On her first tumbling pass, she bounds cleanly across the floor, rocketing skyward in an elegant stag jump to channel her extra energy. It works beautifully: she looks powerful, strong, and in control of every movement. She dances toward another corner of the floor, polishes off two precise leaps, then dives straight into a second excellent tumbling pass. As I watch her prance, pirouette, and flip, I get a chilling sense of excitement. This is one of the most gorgeous routines I’ve ever seen from her. Something genuinely special is unfolding here—this is a determined athlete at her peak.

After Hallie executes her third tumbling pass seamlessly, something in her posture shifts. By this point in a floor routine, even the fittest gymnasts can start to look a little sluggish or out of breath. But Hallie looks even lighter and more buoyant than ever. With fifteen seconds left in the routine, she bursts forward into a triumphant fourth tumbling pass, landing easily on her feet. As she sinks into her final dramatic pose, her face crumples with joy. She holds the position just long enough to give the end of her routine a real sense of gravitas, and then bounces to her feet to salute the judges. The minute she’s done, I see her eyes glistening with tears of joy. She claps one hand over her mouth and waves to the crowd with the other. The audience roars in applause.

She lingers on the floor for a few seconds longer than necessary, soaking up this once-in-a-lifetime moment. The judges are still deliberating over her score, so for the next few precious seconds, this is all that matters—she delivered the hell out of a routine that challenged her, scared her, and forced her to grow into a better athlete. Soon, her fate will be sealed, but for now, I can tell that she’s happy with herself. That’s a rare feat in this sport.

She bounds off the floor into my waiting arms.

Ryan joins us for a group hug. “You were phenomenal. Incredible. The best I’ve ever seen,” he says.

Suddenly, she freezes. Her score appears on the scoreboard: 15.100, pushing her into second place. Even though there’s one more gymnast left to perform on floor, it doesn’t matter what score she’ll receive—she won’t knock Hallie out of the top four slots.

Ryan and I break away to look at the scoreboard, then turn back to her in awe.

Watching her recognize that her lifelong dream is coming true is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. I can’t help the tears coming. I don’t mind. We’ve all worked hard enough to justify them.

Not her. Not Hallie and Ryan. Us. All of us.

In my own time as a gymnast, there were so many ecstatic moments, like when a gold medal was draped around my neck or the day I qualified for Olympic Trials. But truthfully, nothing quite compared to this victory. I feel as if I could burst from bliss.

The medal ceremony is a happy blur. In the end, Emma takes the top spot, as everyone knew she would. Hallie is the surprise dark horse in second place, followed by Olympic veteran Delia, with Kiki rounding out the team in fourth. The girls confer for seconds before they announce their team name: the Fantastic Four, superhero reference very much intended. Madison Salazar and Taylor O’Connor are named alternates.

There’s no avoiding it—I feel terribly sad for the girls who didn’t make the cut. But if I can come back to this sport years later as a coach and make a real difference, they can, too. There’s life for all of us after our gymnastics careers end. It just might take some time to figure out exactly what that means.

Hallie’s parents have stumbled, dazed and overjoyed, from the bleachers into the main part of the arena, where they shower their daughter with hugs.

It’s crowded in the center of the arena, anyway—gymnasts, families, judges, photographers, reporters.

We walk by the bench with our bags so Ryan can grab his wallet, then wander down a maze of hallways until we find a vending machine, chattering the entire way about the highlights of Hallie’s performances.

The vending machine is stocked with Gatorade bottles lined up in bright, color-coded rows. Ryan tilts his head.

He feeds dollar bills into the slot and presses the right buttons. I lean against the side of the machine as it whirs to life, retrieving the plastic bottles and dropping them down with two solid thunks. It’s cool and quiet here. After today’s whirlwind, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Tonight, I’ll sleep easily in the luxe hotel bed, and tomorrow we’ll all book our flights to Tokyo. This doesn’t feel real. It’s unbelievable, somehow, that after all these years, I’m finally going to the Olympics. Everything is falling into place. Or, rather, almost everything.

Ryan bends down to pick up the drinks and hands me one, interrupting my train of thought.

He starts to open his bottle, but I stop him.

I kiss him before I can lose my nerve, sliding my arms over his shoulders and pulling him toward me. I can feel the muscles in his shoulders tense for a split second, and I lean back, but then I see a dimpled smile spreading across his face.

We find our way back to each other tenderly. His hands brace my hips, and soon, our lips fall into rhythm together. I’ve spent so many months aching to be close to him, and from the way his mouth moves against mine, it’s clear that he’s felt the same way. He kisses me deeply, and it just feels so right.

I didn’t know it was humanly possible to feel more relief and happiness than I’ve already felt today, but I’m so glad that my gut instinct was right—he wanted that kiss as much as I did. Ryan takes the Gatorade out of my hand and places both bottles on the linoleum floor by our feet so that he can kiss me again. It’s perfect.

He speaks slowly and fiercely, giving each word the weight it deserves.

I go very still, even as my heart races. His dark eyes search mine.

I feel a rush of pure joy and a ballooning sense that everything is right in the world. This moment? It’s better than a perfectly stuck landing. It’s sweeter than the view from the top of the medal podium.

I know I’ve never stopped. This time, I’m not self-conscious to voice how I really feel. Suddenly, the significance of where we happen to be standing hits me, and I can’t help but laugh.

His eyes light up. “It was Nationals. I asked if you knew where the vending machine was.”

I smirk and lean back against this current vending machine, fingers dancing over his chest.

JULY

2020