A corner of the living room serves as a shrine to what once was. There’s a life-sized cardboard cutout of me, frozen forever at seventeen years old, in a red-white-and-blue spangled leotard with chalky thighs and a pile of medals around my neck. Trophies, medals, and competition photos fill the floor-to-ceiling bookcase behind it. I heave my suitcases past the living room, up the stairs, and into my childhood bedroom. It’s still painted a childish shade of pink, and there’s a smattering of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling. Once-glossy posters of gymnastics greats like Nadia Comaneci, Mary Lou Retton, and Shannon Miller cling to the walls.
I flop on the bed. Compared to the king-sized one I shared with Tyler, this twin-sized mattress feels like a flimsy pool float. I’m no longer a hundred pounds of pure muscle; I don’t fit here anymore. I look at my phone with a sigh, wishing desperately for any sort of distraction. I have no texts; barely anyone knows I’ve moved.
I open Twitter. At first, it’s a mindless stream of news, memes, and snippy comments from people I can’t remember following in the first place. I see missives about gratitude and accountability from Krista, my old college roommate; according to her tweets, she’s been sober for a year now. But then a headline catches my attention. My heart lurches as I open the story on TMZ: TYLER ETTINGER NEWLY SINGLE? SPOTTED COZYING UP TO A SWIMSUIT MODEL.
I read it over—once, twice, three times—but the words seem to swim on the screen. Someone on Twitter recognized Tyler at Bootsy Bellows, a celeb-studded club in LA, and took a grainy video of him grinding up on a woman that TMZ identifies as model Brianna Kwan. She apparently had a four-page spread in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue this year. In a fit of self-loathing, I hit play on the video. He nuzzles her neck as his hand trails down the front of her dress; she tilts her head back to whisper something in his ear. Paparazzi caught them outside the club, too, striding hand in hand from the back door to a waiting black car. Tyler knows what he’s doing—he knows better than that. He’s the one who taught me how to ditch the paps or throw them off the trail: don’t show affection or even walk within the same photo frame when photographers are around unless you want the attention. He never did. He said he didn’t like too much publicity around his personal life, but now I just wonder if he didn’t want it with me.
TMZ concludes that Tyler has likely split from Avery Abrams, his ex-gymnast girlfriend of four years. “Or if not, he’s sure to hear from her soon…” the site snarked.
I shove my phone under my pillow and bury my face in it. While Tyler is moving on, I’m spiraling into the worst version of myself: lethargic, self-pitying, aimless. The same way I felt after Trials. The version of myself that he didn’t want anymore. I want to scream. I feel full of bitter rage in a way that makes me tear up. I went so many years without crying: not when Dimitri assigned me triple sets of conditioning because I talked back one day; not when a fall off beam knocked the wind out of me; not when I developed a stress fracture in my spine at fourteen. The Olympic Trials failure opened up a floodgate I couldn’t close. Ever since then, the littlest things set me off. It’s embarrassing, how quickly hot tears spring to my eyes now.
This isn’t little, though. I wish it were.
I pull up Tyler’s Instagram on my phone and scroll down, scanning for the occasional photos he posted of me or of us together. There should be one from a month ago, when we attended his cousin’s wedding together—but it’s gone. So are the pictures from our anniversary getaway to San Francisco. It’s like he’s erased me. My stomach drops when I see he’s unfollowed me, too. Worse, still, I see he just recently followed that swimsuit model.
I feel sick. I can’t remember the last time Tyler touched me the way he touched Brianna in the club, like my skin gave off the oxygen he needed to breathe. I knew our relationship had its issues, but Tyler always said that if you love each other, you stick it out the whole time, no matter what. Nothing a person could say or do would push you away forever. I believed him, because he was the first guy I’d ever really dated, and he had had a serious girlfriend in college. He knew. He and Megan had the kind of relationship where they went on summer vacations with each other’s families and talked about future baby names. It only dawned on me later that he eventually left Megan, too.
* * *
When the phone rings at dinner, I’m grateful for anything that cuts through the conversation. Mom plated an endive salad and asked probing questions about why I think Tyler broke up with me; she served grilled tilapia and suggested jobs I could apply for; she refilled our water glasses and peppered me with updates about childhood friends I haven’t seen in fifteen years. She can’t do silence or stillness. She picks up the call on its second ring.
“Abrams residence, Michelle speaking.”
I push a bite of fish across my plate and try to shut out the unwanted image of Tyler’s fingers snaking down Brianna’s taut abs. Mom listens, draws out an elongated “ummm,” and cocks her head toward me.
“Sure, I’ll put her on.” She covers the receiver with one hand. “Avery, phone for you.”
I can’t imagine who it is. Nobody knows that I’m here. I take the phone from Mom and wander into the living room.
“Hello?” I ask uncertainly.
“Avery, hi,” a male voice says. “I’m sure you don’t remember me. It’s been a million years. This is Ryan Nicholson.”
Of course I remember him. His name is seared into my memory; you never forget the name of your teenage crush. Ryan was a top gymnast around the same time that I was. He trained in Florida, and like me, he was homeschooled for most of his teenage years. Because we both competed on a national and international level, we crossed paths at meets a few times a year. When my best friend Jasmine and I made lists of the cutest boys we knew, his name was always on them. To be fair, we were both homeschooled and knew of just eight or ten boys who didn’t sport rattails—an unfortunately popular fad among male gymnasts in the 2000s—but still. His thick, dark hair; chocolate-brown eyes; and nicely muscled arms and abs made a lasting impression. He went to the Olympics in both 2012 and 2016.
“Ryan! Hi. Wow. It’s been a minute.”
“It sure has been,” he says.
“Um, so…” I say.
It’s like all normal social niceties have completely fallen out of my brain.
“I hear you’re in town again,” he says.
“How?” I blurt out.
I wonder if he read the TMZ story and drew his own conclusions.
“Winnie told me she ran into your dad at the grocery store yesterday.”
Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. She’s the office manager at my old gym, Summit. I loved her.
“Oh! Right,” I say, relieved. “What have you been up to all these years?”
“Has it been that long?” he asks. “Wow. I mean, well, a lot of things. Training. I went to the University of Michigan for gymnastics, and competed in London and Rio. Did some traveling for a while. And I’ve been coaching, too. You?”
“Well, I just moved back to Greenwood,” I say, hoping that covers it.
There’s a beat of silence on the line.