hey, Lucas messages me. what’s up?
Not much, I write back. Just moved back here this week from LA, actually.
You grew up here? he asks.
I hold my breath. Yeah, I write.
But miraculously, he doesn’t seem to recognize me. Instead, he asks what I’m up to tomorrow. When I answer truthfully that I have nothing major going on, he invites me out for a drink tomorrow night. I hesitate, then swipe quickly through a few more potential matches. Nobody else stands out to me. So I say yes. It’s not like I have anything better to do.
* * *
Jade Castle is a mediocre Chinese restaurant with one of the few liquor licenses in this formerly Puritan dry town. My family never came here; we always preferred to eat at Ming’s House—not that I could ever have anything besides the steamed chicken and broccoli—because Jade Castle has always attracted a less family-friendly crowd. When I arrive at seven thirty tonight, I spot the father of one of my middle school classmates sitting at the bar with a girl half his age, and a large round table crowded with boys in matching lacrosse team jackets, probably using an expired ID swiped from an older brother. I take an empty bar stool; I’m not sure if Lucas intended for us to eat or not. When a bartender asks if she can get me a drink, I awkwardly decline. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been on a first date, and it feels like the muscle has atrophied. I felt optimistic setting up the date on the app, but now my confidence has evaporated.
Lucas walks in at seven forty, when I’m on the verge of losing my nerve and leaving.
“Avery?” he asks, tilting his baseball cap up to reveal a baby face and a smattering of freckles. He has a narrower frame than I expected; a Boston Red Sox jersey hangs from his shoulders.
“Hi,” I say, unsure whether to rise and hug him.
I make an attempt to stand, but my feet get tangled behind the leg of the bar stool. He slouches onto the seat next to me instead and leaves his phone faceup on the bar.
“You want a beer?” he asks, not quite making eye contact.
“Uh, sure,” I offer.
When the bartender glances our way, he holds up two fingers, and mouths, “Two.” I get the distinct sense that he’s been here on plenty of dates. He drums his fingers on the bar in a staccato rhythm, then visibly relaxes once he sees her returning with our drinks.
“So, LA, huh?” he asks finally.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you move back?”
The question makes me frantic. “Uh, I just needed a change.”
“Must be wicked nice out there,” he comments. “Warm. Beautiful. You go to the beach a lot?”
I feel stupid telling him I spent six years in LA and can count my number of beach days on one hand because I wasn’t confident enough to wear a bathing suit.
“Yeah, all the time,” I lie.
It’s obvious that this date is not off to a strong start. And what’s worse, it’s not a stretch to imagine my future as a string of evenings just like this one, probably at this exact bar, probably while Lucas conducts a similar string of dates a few bar stools down.
“So, you teach? What are the kids like?” I ask, turning the conversation to him.
“The kids are fine. Bunch of Goody Two-shoes, a couple of class clowns, mostly smart kids,” he says. “You know how this town is.”
I do. The suburb’s strong public school system attracts a wildly overachieving, goal-oriented population. When I was in elementary school, nobody thought it was weird that I spent sixteen hours after school every week training in a gym because everyone else spent that amount of time on horseback riding lessons, piano lessons, theater classes, or all three.
I don’t know what else to say, so I cast around for anything we might have in common.
“Is, god, what’s her name? Mrs. Marcotti? Is she still teaching math these days?”
He nods and rolls his eyes. “Yep. With a stick up her ass.”
“She was a tough teacher,” I say, ignoring the rude comment.
“You had her?” he asks.
“Yeah, in seventh grade? Eighth, maybe?”
“Me, too. What year did you graduate?”
“Uh, 2010? I mean, technically. I was kind of homeschooled the last few years.”
He cocks his head and really stares at me. For a few stretched-out seconds, neither of us speak.
“You’re that girl,” he says, squinting like he’s trying to recall the details. “The gymnast.”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, sipping my beer in an attempt to shut down this line of conversation.
“You were that girl in that video!” His voice gets louder.
My blood runs cold. In my most pathetic moments, I’ve watched the damn video alone. But Lucas is jubilant, leaning in closer but talking louder than ever.
“I knew you looked familiar!” he says cheerfully.
I feel cornered. I shrug and try to cast around for another topic of conversation to distract him.
“So, do you ever—”
Lucas opens YouTube on his phone and starts to type in “worst gymnastics crashes.” It doesn’t take him long to zero in on the clip he’s searching for. He gleefully hits play, and I hear the familiar roar of an athletic arena cut through the bar’s din. I can hear the faint, singsongy chant of my name—“Let’s go, A-ve-ry, let’s go!” I don’t need to watch; I know it by heart: me, nineteen years old, in a shimmering red leotard and a ponytail, performing the sharply sultry opening dance moves of my floor routine at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Even all these years later, the music stirs my muscles; this is where I pirouette; this is where I roll my hip. I ground myself back into reality on the bar stool, willing myself into stillness.
But I can’t forget what I know is playing out on-screen: the younger version of me launching into my first tumbling pass. It’s the most impressive one of my routine: round-off, back handspring, whip, back handspring, double-twisting, double back somersault. I had performed it a thousand times before. But this time, I underrotated and came crashing down onto the blue spring floor while I was still spinning. There was a horrific shredding sensation in my knee before my hands even hit the ground.
“Gnarly,” Lucas says emphatically, shaking his head at the screen. “I used to watch this all the time. Sick.”
My floor music continues as the audience gasps. I scream. Lucas taps the screen to watch the crash over again, cutting short the moment when Dimitri rushed onto the floor to carry me away in his arms. My stomach lurches as I watch Lucas lean even closer to the video.
I clear my throat. “Please turn that off,” I say.
“I can’t believe this is you,” he says, glancing from me to the screen. “You were so tiny back then.”
He makes no move to stop the video.
“Can you—?” In a jolt of frustration, I grab the phone out of his hands and shut the video off, leaving the phone facedown on the bar.
I do my best attempt at a smile, but I can sense it comes out all thin and strained.
“Whoa,” Lucas says, holding up his hands as if to prove he’s harmless.
“I don’t like to watch that,” I try to explain as calmly as possible. I swallow. “That right there? That was the end of my gymnastics career. And a lot of stuff changed for me after that. It was hard, okay? So, please, let’s stop watching it.”