“I’m just not sure that’s enough,” he says. “Not when there’s so much at stake. As long as we’re responsible for Hallie, she comes first. There can’t be any distractions.”
Distractions. The word reverberates uncomfortably and settles into the pit of my stomach. That’s what I’d be: a distraction. I can’t look at him. I’m not a monster—I don’t want my love life to stand in the way of Hallie’s shot at Olympic glory. But I don’t think it’s quite that simple. She would never need to know. I fiddle with the zipper of my jacket.
“Look, I’m not saying no to this. To us,” he says, reaching out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I’m just saying we need to think carefully here, because the Olympics are right around the corner. And you, more than anyone, can understand how devastated Hallie would be if she doesn’t make it.”
I’m sure Ryan didn’t mean to do it, but linking my feelings for him now to the depression I felt years ago just crushes me. It’s cruel.
“I have to go,” I mutter, blinking back tears.
Ryan doesn’t protest as I head back inside.
FEBRUARY 2020
• CHAPTER 13 •
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Hallie asks at practice a week later.
I hold her feet as she dangles her upper body off the back of the vault, then muscles her way up into a sitting position. Her abs swell in size by the second.
“What?” I spit out, caught off guard.
I’m very careful to resist the urge to peek across the gym at Ryan. In fact, I’ve spent the majority of the past week avoiding him, because it’s painful enough to replay our awful last conversation in my head every night before I fall asleep. I don’t want to have to relive it in his presence, too.
“I asked if you had a boyfriend,” she repeats, finishing another rep of crunches.
She rarely, if ever, asks about my life outside the gym. I don’t share, either. Did she Google me? If so, there’s a handful of tabloid stories about me and Tyler—I hope she didn’t uncover those.
I laugh nervously. “No. Why?”
Her face turns beet red, and it’s not from the physical exertion. She can do this workout in her sleep.
“I was just wondering because you’ve seemed kind of sad all week, and I wondered if you got into a fight with your boyfriend,” she mumbles, rushing to add, “I just wanted to see if you were okay, butnevermind.”
“Oh my god,” I mutter, more to myself than to her.
The last thing I want to do is to make a scene, because then Ryan will come over and ask what we’re laughing about.
“Hallie, no, that’s very sweet of you,” I say quietly, trying not to attract attention. “I appreciate you checking in on me. I’m fine, just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Got it, got it, got it,” she says. “Uh, sorry for asking.”
She dips backward into another crunch. “So, you’re single, then? I know my aunt is always trying to set up my older cousin,” she says, giggling.
“Hallie, focus!” I say, clamping down harder on her feet. “Ten more reps in this set. Let’s go.”
We make it through conditioning without any more forays into my personal life. When it’s time for her to move on to bars, she skips off to the changing room to grab her grips. I’m relieved she didn’t dig any deeper. I remember what it was like when I was her age. I knew that the girls I had grown up with had boyfriends, or at least dates to the winter semiformal. I opted for homeschooling instead of attending an actual high school, but even I heard rumors about my old classmates having sex, saying I love you, flirting at beer-soaked parties. I wondered if some people were born hardwired for it, the way I was primed for athletic excellence. I couldn’t fathom having the guts to do any of that on my own. (But a death-defying stunt on a sliver of wood? Sure, no problem.) I’m impressed that Hallie was brave enough to ask me about my personal life—and I wonder how much of her curiosity stems from wondering what it’s like to have a personal life at all.
My ponytail has loosened over the course of the morning, and it sags toward the nape of my neck. I take down my hair and am in the process of redoing my ponytail when my hair elastic snaps. I don’t have another one on me, so I head to the supply closet, tucked in an alcove at the back of the gym. The door is slightly ajar. I push it open farther and nearly bump straight into Ryan, who’s running his fingers over the shelves, like he’s in search of something.
“Oh! Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
“No worries,” he says, turning around to glance at me.
He looks worried, though, as if he’s waiting for me to say or do something inappropriate again.
“Uh, hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says, turning back around.
I rack my brain for some witty joke or easy banter to break the tension, but instead, I just freeze up. He tilts his head slightly, like he’s waiting for me to say something, anything.
“I just came back here for another hair elastic,” I explain, pointing to my awkwardly lumpy hair, still half-stuck in the shape of a ponytail. “Mine broke.”
“I see that,” he says, pulling the box of hair supplies off one shelf and offering it to me.
I find a fresh elastic, flip my head over, and smooth my hair back into a high, tight pony. I feel more like myself this way.
“Have you seen the blocks of chalk?” Ryan asks. “I know we’re running low, but I thought there was at least one more case in here.”
I scan the shelves, which are brimming with athletic tape, gauze, Advil, cans of hair spray and butt glue covered in chalky handprints, and water bottles branded with Summit’s logo. A colorful pile of latex resistance bands spools in one corner of the closet.
“Uhhh, yeah, here you go.”
I crouch down to the bottom shelf, where there’s one remaining block of chalk half-hidden in a white plastic bag. Our hands bump when he takes it from me.
“Thanks,” he says, turning to lean against the shelves.
Crammed into this narrow closet with him, it hits me that I miss the easy way our conversations used to flow, before I kissed him and messed everything up. Aside from strictly necessary conversations about Hallie’s training, we’ve barely exchanged a single word since then. We’ve stopped eating lunch together, too.
“How’ve you been?” I ask.
He exhales with the slightest hint of a laugh and looks down at the chalk in his hands.
“We’re really doing this?” he asks, muttering it more to himself than to me.
“Doing what?” I ask, suddenly alarmed that I’ve crossed a line.
He gestures vaguely at the space between us and makes air quotes. “You know… ‘How’ve you been?’ Pretending things are all normal, when, in fact, the first time we’ve spoken about anything but Hallie all week is because we accidentally stumbled into the same closet.”
I bite my lip, feeling the sensation of embarrassment flood my entire body. I always thought I had a decent poker face; it’s something I picked up from years of competing in front of judges, hiding grimaces when I was in pain or pissed about a low score. It’s mortifying that Ryan has seen right through me this whole time.