Each time deserved a gold medal for performance. Sleeping with an Olympian…well, I strongly recommended it after that. Their strength, their bodies, their endurance. God. No wonder it happened six times in three days. All the position changing. All the standing. All the roughness. All the hair yanking. Amira did an amazing job making me forget what I was about to fly back to.
But once I strapped into my plane seat, ready for the fourteen-hour flight to JFK, I set my music on shuffle, and the first song brought back all the memories I’d suppressed. The six sessions with Amira drained away, and the song swept me back to everything I’d forgotten I’d lost.
It was “XO” by Beyoncé, and tears claimed my eyes.
Chapter Seven
Everything felt different as I lay in my NYC hotel bed, like the heavy feeling of the last night of summer before school started. I couldn’t believe the Olympics were over, those two weeks that came every four years that we’d been counting down to the same way kids counted down to Christmas.
Lying alone, with no rare and dramatic spectacle on the other side of the wall, life became dull and ordinary in the snap of a finger, a flickering of a torch, a plane ride over the Pacific. And now I had to deal with the very thing I’d been pushing to the back of my mind. It was right in front of me, a hurdle I had to leap over if I ever wanted to get home to the bed that I missed and the R&R that waited for me the second I landed in San Francisco.
But not until I faced this issue and all the questions that came with it.
I’d had all this time to analyze what the hell had happened between me and Kennedy. Why she’d stopped texting. She didn’t even respond to my lipstick question, which informed me something was going on. The only thing I could think of was the Quamira coverage. She’d stopped texting when it all blew up.
But she studied journalism. She should have known that was dramatized.
The only way to settle this was to text her, but this overwhelming fear rushed through me; once I texted, we would figure out if this was going somewhere or not. There was so much to lose right after I’d won so much. I’d already whacked Olympic failure at the other end of the field, but my love life was next at bat. Once Kennedy and I talked about what had happened in San Francisco, we would find out if our paths really crossed, or if our time before Tokyo was a simple wave as we carried on straying paths.
The thought scared me to the point where I almost didn’t want to text her. But I was only going to be in the city for three days. I had to muster the courage and fight for us. If there was still something worth fighting for.
Hey, I’m in the city right now until Saturday. I was hoping we could meet up and talk if you’re free.
The next thing I knew, it was twelve hours later, and my phone bellowed the most obnoxious siren, alerting me that it was six o’clock in the morning and time to wake up for a day of interviews. I was so tired from the plane that even though I’d slept like a baby, the lingering tiredness weighed heavily on my eyes. When I turned off my alarm, I saw a text from Kennedy, waiting for my reply.
She’d responded five hours after I sent my text message. I’m free every day after six.
Still half-asleep, I typed, Can we meet up tonight? Eight p.m.?
And then I waited some more.
Lucy had scheduled interviews for The Today Show, The Tonight Show, the local NYC news, and a full feature and photoshoot for Sports Illustrated. She even squeezed in the first pitch for a Yankees game when they asked. All in three days. At least I got a free jersey out of it with “Hughes” and the number five, for my gold medals, on my back. For my Today Show interview, I threw on my wide smile, my five medals around my neck and strategically styled them the way all Olympians do on their media tour. I answered questions about swimming against Amira and our friendship, but the interviewer said it with a tone that hinted like it was something more. I said that we competed against each other at least once a year, so we had a civil friendship that was mutual respect for one another as well as fun banter.
And then I quickly shut down any rumors about us being more than friendly competitors. In case Kennedy was watching.
After my morning interview, all I wanted to do was sleep before The Tonight Show taping in the late afternoon. I could barely keep my eyes open as I headed into the hotel lobby and up the elevator. I could feel my irritability. I thought I could nap it off so I wouldn’t be cranky for my first late night appearance…or for when I talked to Kennedy right after. And the hour-long nap helped a little bit to keep me peppy. The interview was a fun distraction from the most dreadful thing I had scheduled for the day: Kennedy. Then I spent my whole Uber ride from Rockefeller Center to Brooklyn wiping my perspiring, jittery hands against my skinny jeans and feeling my chest tighten the closer we got to her apartment.
Right as the Uber dropped me off, I inhaled until it landed at the bottom of my lungs while glancing up at Kennedy’s four-story building. I exhaled as I walked up the stoop and buzzed her apartment. Seconds ticked by slowly as my brain kicked on anxious gears that hadn’t been in use since before the Olympics, when I pulled the plug and refused them from operating. But ever since I’d landed in NYC, I could feel the gears moving and producing all these thoughts that made it hard for me to take a much-needed afternoon nap or stop my hands from sweating. It wouldn’t shut off.
When she buzzed me in, I took my time climbing to the second floor, trying to buy more time to settle my tremulous pulse. I knocked on her second-floor apartment, and she opened the door dressed in an oversized purple NYU sweatshirt and short gray Soffe shorts. My gaze fell to her legs, remembering how toned and perfect they were, and then my mind reminded me that I couldn’t react to her beauty or our chemistry until we settled the unsettled.
“Hey, come in,” she said with a cordial smile that seemed to hold back a lot.
Her apartment was bigger than I expected a Brooklyn apartment to be, but then again, she lived with three roommates, sharing two bedrooms, more people to pay for space. Light wooden floors. Tall windows that brightened the apartment. And even though the kitchen was practically a corner, the cabinets were modern, with full fridge and stove. Cute furniture and decorations really made it feel like home. She gestured me to the couch across from a white brick fireplace that had a TV mounted to the wall above it. Textbooks littered the couch and floor, prompting me to move an open notebook from the couch to the coffee table.
She offered me a glass of pinot noir, and of course, I accepted. I was going to need alcohol to get through this conversation. She sat on the farthest end of the couch and took a large gulp. That gave me a clear indication of how uncomfortable she was.
“What are you studying for?” I asked to make small talk and also procrastinate about getting to the questions. I bought myself time by taking liberal sips of wine to ease my anxiety, hoping it would stop my hands from shaking.
Kennedy glanced at her collection of books. “Long-form editing.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
She offered a quick and thin smile, a sign that she had a lot of thoughts swirling in her mind. “Different editing techniques and how to apply them to the documentary we have to make. Nothing remotely exciting.”
“Is it hard?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Just time consuming. How are you? Still jet lagged?”